We look forward to welcoming you at the FFFB Summit

  Mariam is the founding partner of Start It Law, specializing in counseling and advising entrepreneurs and startups on formation, fundraising, intellectual property, technology transactions, and general in-house legal matters. Mariam also serves as attorney and scouting partner for Graphene Ventures (investors in Snap, Lyft, and Zum). A proud UC Berkeley graduate and Co-Captain of the Cal Dance Team, Mariam attributes much of her success to her well rounded Berkeley education and network. Prior to founding Start It Law, Mariam fell in love with technology while working at world renowned venture firm, Sequoia Capital. She went on to serve as outside counsel to leading accelerator, 500 Global, and numerous other startups, many of which have been acquired. 

Lily is the global program lead for the Underrepresented Founder Startups team at Amazon Web Services, where she is building programs to support underserved founders such as women, Hispanic, Black, LGBTQ, and other underserved groups. She has an MBA from University of Chicago, Booth School of Business with a concentration on Entrepreneurship. Prior to AWS, she created Sephora’s first accelerator for women founders and has funded over 65+ women-led startups in her five years at Sephora. She’s also a former founder herself who have sold her beauty tech startup and an angel investor. Lily brings extensive experience in entrepreneurship, accelerators, fundraising, and business development. 

Sandy is a growth executive and venture investor. Sandy has led growth teams at five companies spanning different business models and industries, such as Meta/Facebook, Pinterest, Indiegogo, and Descript. She is currently the Director of Growth at Descript, one of the fastest growing generative AI software companies and is OpenAI Startup Fund's largest investment to date. Sandy invests in software companies as a Venture Partner at IOVC and also advises early to later stage teams on growth marketing. Throughout her career, Sandy has worked with hundreds of startup teams to create go-to-market and growth strategies. Sandy has spoken at over thirty conferences on growth strategy, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

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Yvonne is an accomplished Investment Principal at Bosch Ventures affiliate office located in Sunnyvale, and sources, evaluates, and executes venture capital deals in North America. Her specialty are investments in deep tech fields such as AI, edge and next gen. computing incl. quantum, robotics, industrial IoT, mobility, climate tech, semiconductors, or sensors. She is an investor and non-executive board member of Bosch Ventures’ portfolio companies Syntiant, Zapata AI, UltraSense Systems, Aclima, and Recogni.

Prior to this position Yvonne was Director of Technology Scouting and Business Development, building up an Innovation Hub in Silicon Valley including startup scouting, business development while advising executives of the Bosch business units on their strategy. She has more than two decades of solid experience in manufacturing operations and engineering in the automotive and consumer electronics space – gained through different executive roles at Bosch

in Germany. Yvonne received a diploma in Experimental Physics from University of Siegen, Germany, and

holds a PhD in Applied Physics from University of Tuebingen, Germany.

Yulia supports the Primary Investment Team at Adams Street in all aspects of the investment decision-making process, including business due diligence, industry review, document negotiation, and portfolio management. Prior to Adams Street, she worked as an Investment Banking Associate Director at UBS within their Mergers and Acquisitions Group. Before UBS, Yulia held Investment Analyst roles with The James Irvine Foundation and Partners Healthcare Investment Office. 

Meera is a Senior Principal at Alumni Ventures and joined the fund in 2020. She focuses on enterprise SaaS (vertical & horizontal) and infrastructure and is involved in all aspects of the investment process, including sourcing, due diligence, transaction execution and portfolio company support. Prior to Alumni Ventures, Meera was a senior member of the finance and strategy team at Yale University where she managed a $1B P&L, led M&A transactions, and secured business development relationships with corporate partners. Meera also worked with early-stage venture funds and incubators like Create Venture Studio and Polymath Capital Partners and was responsible for launching business ventures, sourcing investments and establishing community relationships. Meera has a BA in Economics from Swarthmore College and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Vivian is a biotechnology entrepreneur and investor with a passion for sustainable and therapeutic innovation. Vivian drive for lasting impact led to the founding of ViaeX Technologies, a successful materials science startup acquired in 2021, which was incubated and founded at UC Berkeley. With a proven ability to translate cutting-edge research into commercially successful products, she has spearheaded the development of bio-based materials and therapeutics. Currently, Vivian serves as a Venture Fellow with SOSV, a leading global investor in early-stage biotechnology. Vivian actively scouts for projects aligned with IndieBio's focus on sustainability while also pursuing her own stealth startup venture.

   Lalitha is the Co-founder and Head of product strategy and marketing at ORO Labs, a company that’s committed to simplifying procurement by delivering a procurement automation platform that helps orchestrate end-to-end procurement and supplier management across teams. Lalitha is also a former product leader of SAP Ariba and a self-acknowledged “Procurement Geek” with more than 20 years of experience in the areas of procurement, supply chain and B2B cloud solutions. She knows firsthand the myriad challenges procurement teams face, loves tackling complex business process problems, and is deeply passionate about the user experience. 

 Ashley is the co-founder and CEO of Fauna Bio. Ashley has been recognized for her work by the SF Business Times Women Who Lead in Life Sciences, an Emerging Woman Founder in Bio by the Wave Summit, as well as representing Fauna Bio for the Fortune AI Minute. She has spoken at numerous events promoting the use of AI and novel genomics in drug discovery and mentors early stage founders through her work with On Deck Longevity Biotech and Nucleate Bio. She is a boarded avian veterinarian and her prior research focused on translational science, earning a PhD in Cancer Biology from Stanford. Her research works span >20 peer-reviewed publications, including Cell, Nature and Nature Medicine. 

  Amelia is the co-founder and CEO of Honeycomb, the leading AI family photography generator. Honeycomb has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Parents.com, and Motherly, and is backed by investors including Peter Boyce (Stellation Capital), Ben Ling (Bling Capital), Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures), David Cheng (DCM Ventures), and researchers from the lab of Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI.” Prior to founding Honeycomb, Amelia worked at multiple early stage Bay Area tech startups, including Udacity and Optimizely. She holds an undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard University and later completed her MBA at Harvard Business School while cross registered in ML classes in the computer science department. 

 Jacqueline is the Co-Founder and CEO of Artie, a startup specializing in real-time database replication, backed by Exponent Founders Capital, General Catalyst, and Y Combinator. Previously, she was an Investment Analyst at Balyasny Asset Management and an Equity Research Associate at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where she covered enterprise software companies. Jacqueline is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she majored in Applied Mathematics. 

 Rhonda is the Executive Director of the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program and the Bay Area Node for NSF I-Corps. As an entrepreneur, Shrader was an early team member of MIT-spinout Organogenesis, one of the first publicly traded regenerative medicine companies. She has founded—or was an early stage team member at—startups in biotech, behavioral health, nonprofit, retail, and AI. She was a long-time mentor for UCSF’s Idea-to-IPO course, and is an active advisor for NASA spinoff BrainAid. Shrader serves as a faculty member for UC LAUNCH’s Accelerator, the NSF’s National I-Corps program, and the U.S. State Department’s GIST program. She earned an undergraduate degree in neuropsychology and pre-medical studies from Harvard and an MBA from Berkeley-Haas.