Ben is an investment advisor in the Investment Management Division of Goldman Sachs where he advises high-net-worth individuals, families and select foundations and endowments. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs’s Investment Management Division, Ben worked in a variety of roles throughout the firm, serving as an investment banker and later directly supporting the firm’s Chief Administrative Officer who was responsible for the firm’s infrastructure globally. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Ben spent time in the National Economic Council at The White House.  

Ben has a BA with distinction in History from Yale University, where he was also a member of the Varsity Lightweight Crew Team. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School and was awarded a HBS Leadership Fellowship to work alongside the senior management team at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York following graduation. Ben serves on the Advisory 

Board of the National Executive Service Corps, which recruits former executives to serve on consultant teams to deliver high-quality solutions to nonprofit organizations.  He also serves on the Board of the Harvard Business School Club of Washington D.C. and the Board of the Holy Cross Hospital Foundation in Silver Spring, Maryland

Jonathan Chashper is a recognized professional offering fresh insight and a passion for innovation. He has a proven track record in planning, building and launching successful high-profile software solutions.As a dynamic leader and guide, Mr. Chashper’s leadership drives team cohesion and inspires individuals tostrive for even higher levels of achievement. Mr. Chashper has a solid technological background, enhanced with a first-class MBA.

Mr. Chashper, has founded ProductSavvy (www.productsavvy.com) in 2006, providing Product Management and Product Development support to software start-ups world wide.

ProductSavvy is a product acceleration company that understands business problems and how to convert them into successful products. ProductSavvy bridges the gap between business and technology by bringing to the table expertise in product strategy, product management and software development management.

The ProductSavvy team is a group of business and technology innovators with deep experience working in fast growth, technology focused companies. ProductSavvy is headquartered in the United States have built and grown products and companies in and outside of the US.

Prior to founding Product Savvy Consulting, he led the Software Development Department of AeroScout, which is the market leader in enterprise visibility solutions based on Wi-Fi and other wireless- networking standards. Before joining AeroScout, Mr. Chashper co-founded Netprox, a start-up geared towards building an application platform for the mobile Internet. At Netprox, Mr. Chashper led the product management and product development groups, leveraging his experience gained at Regisoft and Comverse Technologies. During his career path, Mr. Chashper designed, built and deployed large scale systems for a variety of customers including enterprises, telecom and cellular companies. He earned a B.Sc. in Computer Science & Mathematics from Ben-Gurion University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Suresh V. Shenoy is an Indian-American engineer, senior business executive and philanthropist.

He is the current President of WHEELS Global Foundation (WGF), an organization founded in 2013 by alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology in North America. It is an independent 501c3 charitable entity to provide innovative technology driven solutions to the challenges that affect the global rural population in six areas: Water, Healthcare, Energy, Education, Livelihood and Sustainability. 

Suresh V. Shenoy is also Executive Vice President at Alyx Technologies, a Virginia based IT systems consulting company. He served two terms as Chairman of the National Capital region of the American Red Cross. He also served as a Director of The Capital IIT Alumni Association, the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, Tech America, and Fairfax 2015 – the biennial World Games of Police and Fire Fighters with 12,000 athletes competing from 80 countries. He was the Programs Chairman of the PanIIT Global Conference held in Washington, DC in 2005. Mr. Shenoy served as President of the PanIIT Alumni Association in North America for the 2006-2008 Term and is currently Director Emeritus. He also represented Dranesville District on the Fairfax County IT Advisory Board for six years. He served on the CLOUD2 commission – an industry initiative directed by the Obama administration to study the impact of migrating government applications to the cloud and associated impact on procurement rules, data sovereignty, security, interoperability and other issues.

Mr. Shenoy is a Fellow of the Information Management Congress (Europe) and AIIM International (USA). He was awarded the Award of Merit by AIIM International in 2015 – the highest industry recognition for Enterprise Content Management technologies. He has been recognized by IBM Corporation as ‘Information Champion’ for his contributions to Enterprise Content Management technologies for four consecutive years 2009-2013 and received the Distinguished Service Award from the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. In 2010, Mr. Shenoy and his brother Sudhakar, were honored by the Northern Virginia Community Foundation for their leadership and contributions to Fairfax County and also received a citation for their community service from the US Congress.  He has taught Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the School of Information Technology & Engineering at George Mason University for over 12 years. He served on the Partner Advisory Council at IBM for 2014-15. In 2014 Mr. Shenoy was awarded “Distinguished Alumnus” by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, where he and his brother endowed the “Shenoy Innovation Studio” in 2006.  Mr. Shenoy has traveled widely throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East, has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (1972), and a MBA from the University of Connecticut (1975).

Padmanabha (GOPAL) Rajagopalan is currently Vice President of Strategy and Transformation in Verizon’s Global Supply Chain Organization. In this role, he is responsible for the digital transformation of supply chain and for driving strategic supply chain roadmap. Gopal has 22+ years of experience in the mobile phone industry as a researcher, engineer, product manager and strategic planner at the executive level.

Before his current position, he formed and led Verizon’s Network Supply Chain Operations and Verizon Services Ireland Limited (VSIL) for 3 years, one of the centers of excellence for Global Supply Chain & Services organization. In this role, he led a team that is responsible for all technology sourcing for Verizon that includes network and IT hardware, software and services driving more than $3B in cost savings over 3 years. Before that, he was part of the Corporate Strategy group at Verizon and served as Partner/Executive Director of Verizon Ventures where he established and led early stage investment strategy and execution, marketing and venture development for Verizon Ventures. Under his leadership, Verizon Ventures more than doubled the investments made in innovative startups. Gopal joined Verizon in 2005 and served in different leadership positions within the Wireless Marketing group including forming and leading a group in Verizon Wireless Marketing organization chartered with identifying and incubating new strategic businesses before formalizing as part of the product portfolio. Additionally, he has managed key strategic service partnerships with Google, Amazon & Microsoft with whom he closed on more than $200M/year worth of business development opportunities. He also led internal and external executive innovation initiatives that led to the discovery of disruptive companies with innovative concepts for enhancements to Verizon’s product & investment portfolio. 

Prior to this, Gopal was responsible for long term technology planning for handsets and successfullydefined and implemented OS and several cost saving strategies for Verizon Wireless. Before joining Verizon Gopal worked for several years in Motorola Inc., holding various positions in R&D, program management and product management. While in R&D, he was one of the primary software architects of the TDMA/GSM handsets, that were sold to major carriers in the US and Latin America. He holds 3 US patents.

Gopal holds a MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kansas and Bachelor of Science degree in Electronics and Communications (graduated top of class) from College of Engineering, Guindy (Anna University), India. His interests include golf, travel, astrophysics, metaphysics, mindfulness, astrology and learning Sanskrit.

James (Jim) Hunt is a seasoned (translation: “old”) technology and investment professional with a principle focus on companies with technologies that can have a positive impact on the national security sector markets. 

Hunt began his career in Washington in the mid 70’s as a U.S. Government scientist.  After eight years with the government, Hunt founded “BDS, Incorporated” where he served as CEO for ten years.  In 1991, BDS was merged with BTG, Incorporated and Hunt assisted in the integration of the two companies.  In 1992, BTG was taken public in a successful offering.  Hunt also served on the BTG board of directors.

Subsequent to his tenure at BDS/BTG, Hunt went to Price Waterhouse where he started and ran the firm’s system integration practice. After two years at PW, Hunt was recruited away with 17 PW colleagues and founded “Ernst & Young Technologies” (EYT), where he was CEO for eight years.  EYT was subsequently sold to Cap Gemini and Hunt served as President of Cap Gemini Technologies for two years, leaving Cap Gemini in 2006.

After leaving Cap Gemini Technologies, with two colleagues, Hunt founded “The MITA Group” a Washington-based consultancy focused on public affairs and business strategy.

Mr. Hunt began his angel investing activities in the mid 1990’s after the successful BTG IPO, with five investments in area companies. After over 25 years of seed stage investing, Hunt expanded his portfolio since the early 2000’s to the present over 120 early stage investment.  Hunt sits on numerous corporate boards.  Hunt has exited over 30 investments over the past ten years, the last of which was January of 2019.

Hunt’s investments are in the area of cyber and physical security, Internet-of-Things, data center management, social media, analytics, and mobile applications. 

As an active member of multiple angel groups and managing partner of “Lavrock Ventures”, a recently formed early stage venture capital firm,  Hunt spends a significant amount of his time scouting for world-class, game changing technology.

In addition to his investing activities, Hunt serves as a consultant to both government and corporate organizations in the area of overall strategy, product commercialization, channel strategies and M&A strategies.

Hunt has been an Adjunct Professor at the McDonough School at Georgetown for the past 20 years as well as at Notre Dame and teaches cornerstone courses in business planning and start-up business management and investing.  Hunt has also created and taught courses to international angels and entrepreneurs and has successfully launched four overseas ventures in the past several years, with particular emphasis on technology incubation in developing countries.

Hunt is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Rochester Institute of Technology and sits on the Notre Dame Engineering College Advisory Council.  Additionally, Hunt is a past president of the Computing Industry Technology Association.

Ashwin, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Revature, was key for the inception and execution of Revature. As CEO, Ashwin is responsible for running daily facets of the company, creating the strategic vision and ensuring that initiatives align with the company’s core values and culture. Previously, Ashwin held management positions with Satyam Computers. He has a Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics and Communications, from the Coimbatore Institute of Technology.

Ashwin has successfully guided Revature through 2 Private Equity cycles and has shown 100% YoY growth in the last 4 years. Revature empowers businesses around the globe with best-in-class talent and technologies. Currently Revature has reached several milestones including having the largest university partnerships in the country and also Revature is the largest employer of recent graduates in Software Engineering.

Andrew joined PropertyRoom.com as the President and CEO in 2014. He brings over 30 years of experience as a technology and services industry leader, including 20 years in e-commerce and digital marketing. In addition to his leadership and operating experience, he has worked extensively with the portfolio companies of multiple Venture Capital and Private Equity firms, including diligence, strategic advisory, interim CEO, Board and Advisory Board roles. He is also a Senior Technical Advisor to HBO’s Silicon Valley.

Andrew’s leadership experience includes EVP, Sales & Services, FoundationDB (acquired by Apple); SVP, Consumer & Enterprise, GlobalLogic (acquired by Apax Partners); Global Head, Sales & Services, GSI Commerce (acquired by eBay); COO, Visual Sciences (acquired by Omniture); COO, BroadVision; EVP, Services & Board member, Baan Company (acquired by Invensys); CEO, Coda; Managing Partner, Deloitte Consulting; and Founder & CEO, ICS Australia & New Zealand (acquired by Deloitte Consulting).

Andrew is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from The University of Melbourne and a Graduate Diploma in Computing from Monash University. He is an Operating Partner at Peak Equity Partners and Milestone Partners and serves on the Board of Directors of G5 Search Marketing, Occasion Brands, Viral Launch, Silectis and AGERpoint and Advisory Board of Acquia. In addition, Andrew is an Advisor to the TRaM program at the University of Melbourne.

Sundar Vaidyanathan is the Co-founder and CEO of Karsun Solutions, LLC. In this role, he is responsible for overall strategic direction of the company, developing and executing long-term strategies, and driving business results. Karsun Solutions has grown from being a start-up to a $60+ million dollars IT modernization company in the last 9 years. Sundar epitomizes Karsun’s commitment to modernizing enterprises through technology innovations. He is a proven leader with deep expertise in developing strong customer relationships, a passion for building high performance teams, and a disciplined focus on delivery excellence.

Prior to founding Karsun Solutions, Sundar held various leadership roles at Unisys Corporation and KPMG Consulting. In these roles, he led the strategy, development, and implementation of complex multi-million dollar IT programs with a successful track record in navigating and resolving complex delivery issues. Sundar is very active in the federal IT community and has served in several leadership roles within the Industry Advisory Council (IAC). He currently serves on the board as a Vice-Chair for Finance.

Sundar holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication from the College of Engineering, Guindy and Master of Engineering in Electrical Communication from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore . He earned his Master of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Marco is responsible for sourcing, diligence and closing of seed and early stage investments on behalf of the CIT GAP Funds designated a  Virginia Most Active Investor by CBInsights.  He serves as a board representative to a numerous portfolio companies and leads seed/early stage investment in aerospace/UAS, energy, and software sectors.  Marco has held leadership roles with funds recognized on five occasions by Entrepreneur Magazine’s VC 100 rankings and has invested in over 200 early stage startups throughout his career. 

Prior to CIT, Marco founded Exoventure Associates, LLC (Exo). There he conducted diligence, mentored entrepreneurs and served as a judge in global business plan competitions sponsored by the World Bank and the State Department in former CIS countries.  

Prior to Exo, he was founder of Monumental Venture Partners, LLC (MVP) making investments in security, information technology, telecommunications, software and medical devices sectors. MVP produced acquisitions of portfolio companies to Dolby Labs and Level 3 Communications. Before MVP, Marco launched New Ventures, MCI venture capital unit. Prior to MCI, he served Fortune 500, Federal and emerging market clients while with Booz Allen & Hamilton.

He began his career as an engineer at the Johnson Space Center training astronauts and flight controllers. Marco holds an MBA from The George Washington University and a BSEE from the University of New Mexico. He has been a National Science Foundation commercial reviewer since 2007 as well as a former NSF SBIR grant winner.

Peter Horst is a Fortune 500 Chief Marketing Officer, having led the creation of iconic products and campaigns at Capital One, Hershey, TD Ameritrade, General Mills and others. Peter now leads marketing consultancy CMO Inc. and sits on several boards. He’s a Forbes contributor and the author of the bestselling book, Marketing in the #FakeNews Era. 

Karen Smaw is the Director of Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. She is a tremendous resource for small businesses that want to locate and grow in Fairfax County.  She has created the “Starting a Business” workshops and almost 3,000 business persons and entrepreneurs have attended the sessions. The SBA and the Virginia Department of Business Assistance are partners in the workshop series. Smaw also created workshops for small businesses that want to grow, and for companies that want to export goods and services to other countries. Smaw is one of the first African-American women to serve on the board of the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce. She also serves on the boards of the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Fairfax County-based Community Business Partnership, and the University Life Advisory Board at Fairfax-based George Mason University.

https://speakerpedia.com/speakers/karen-smaw

Dr. Santhanam manages the $5.6M Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) program investing in commercialization and start-up companies spun out of five participating universities; Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland College Park, Baltimore and Baltimore County campuses, as well as Morgan State University.  Established in 2012, MII has invested $33M that has resulted in 87 startups, >$272M in follow-on funding and 7 exits till date.

Dr. Santhanam leverages over 20 years of experience in life science research, and a multidisciplinary background, providing subject matter expertise for conception, design and delivery of technical and commercialization solutions for start-ups. At TEDCO, Dr. Santhanam has served various roles over the years including Investment Analyst for the Maryland Venture Fund and Manager for the Life Science Investment Fund, where she was responsible for over $3M of seed investments and served in a Board Observer role for multiple portfolio companies.

Dr. Santhanam received a Master of Science in Clinical Biochemistry from University of Madras (India) and a PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Rutgers University, NJ. She did her postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute.

She serves on the Board of Directors of the Annapolis-based non-profit advocacy group METAvivor Research and Support, Inc., where she established the METAvivor research program to fund groundbreaking research to treat Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Under her directorship METAvivor has awarded over $4M in research grants and was selected as a premier patient-run Research Programs in VP Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative! She is also an active member of the Women In Bio- Capital region chapter.