Matthew Waldron is the Vice Consul at the UK Trade and Investment. Matt has major experience in the Silicon Valley Tech industry, working as World wide product launch manager for Logitech. With his experience in Silicon valley and his strong network with London’s Tech City’ community, Matthew will provide invaluable advice for the new Incubate Miami startups.
Jeffrey Gonzalez is a Senior Manager at Sapient Nitro, an integrated marketing and technology services company. Before that Jeffrey was Director of Accounts at Nobox Marketing group where he played an integral role in the stability and growth of our clients through strong leadership of the Nobox account group that is directly conducive to intelligent strategic thinking and more importantly has led to more effective client servicing by the account group. He’s also worked with a handful of tech companies including America’s Emergency Network, MTV Networks, Jepa Productions, Bravo Group, Merkley and Partners, OgilvyInteractive, and E Inc.
Rob Gonda is the Global Head of Innovation for SapientNitro, chair for the digital media council at the ARF, former editor-in-chief of the AJAX Developer’s Journal, co-author of “Real-World AJAX: Secrets of the Masters”, a passionate blogger, contributor to various publications, and frequent figure on the speaker circuit. He focuses on the intersection of business, marketing, and technology in order to deliver optimal user experience.
Pasquale Giordano was the Co-Founder of Promark/Zemex, an international distribution company that was taken public in 1997. Pasquale was the 2nd lead member of the IPO team that raised $474 Million making this the largest IPO recorded, at that time, for a computer distribution company. Pasquale is a profit-driven, results-oriented C-level executive with demonstrated experience within entrepreneurial and corporate global environments. He is skilled in building world-class organizations that elicit agile performance-based cultures, organizational efficiencies and technical enhancements. His areas of expertise span strategic financial planning and funding; change management and turn-around acumen, infrastructure development that marries operations and technology requirements, and highly focused sales and marketing plans targeted on Go-To-Market, Market Penetration, Revenue Expansion, or Exit Strategies.
Franc Nemanic was the Founder of Hostopia.com in 1999 which was an early pioneer of the SaaS space. Hostopia provided outsourced, private label webhosting, email, ecommerce, and application solutions for Telco’s, Cableco’s, ISP’s, Domain Registrar’s, and Webhosting companies including some of the largest companies in the world. Hostopia raised in excess of $8 million of private and venture capital. Hostopia had an IPO in 2006 on the TSX raising in excess of $30 million and was ultimately acquired by Deluxe Corporation (NYSE: DLX) in 2008 in an all cash transaction exceeding $120 million. Currently Franc is a founding member of the Miami Innovation Fund and volunteers his time as a member of the Executive Board of MIT Enterprise Forum for South Florida. As a consultant, he has advised numerous startups on how to raise capital and better structure their Marketing and Sales efforts.
Andrew Rachmell is a Cofounder at PeerBackers which is an online funding platform that allows business owners and entrepreneurs to raise capital from their “peers” in small increments in exchange for tangible rewards for those who contribute. His experience in the entertainment industry, producing television shows, transformed into his passion for entrepreneurship. With his product and experience he wants to help others achieve their dreams.
Marco Giberti is the President at Reed Exhibitions Latin America. Mr. Giberti is a successful entrepreneur and angel investor with more than 20 years of intensive experience in marketing and communications with focus on the media, internet and events industry. After a successful career as a corporate executive at Apple computers, Mr. Giberti gave free rein to his entrepreneurial spirit and became:• Co-founder and Board Member of Mind Opener, a leading publishing group in Latin America that was later sold to British Pearson Media Group, and
• Co-founder and Board Member of e-mind, an internet and media communications company that was sold to Liberty Media.
• President, CEO and co-founder of Mind Trainer, a firm specialized in the organization of major regional trade-shows and events.
Kevin Lerner is a Partner and executive Director at the Presentation team. His expertise in the strategy and content formulation of multimedia materials, together with exceptional communications and management abilities has given him the skills to drive The Presentation Team toward market excellence. Kevin brings over 15 years of experience in the Presentation/Corporate Communications industry, having worked with clients around the world to develop their presentations in various applications including PowerPoint, Flash, and Director.
Matthew Cole is the Founder at NorthBay Equity Partners with more than twenty years of private equity and investment banking experience in Latin America. He was a former principle at Texas Pacific Group focused on investments in Latin America. Mr. Cole was also a former investment banker with J.P. Morgan in New York, Chile, and Brazil with particular experience in private equity, mergers & acquisitions, and equity capital markets transactions.
Daniel Ortiz is the founder at International Design Group, an international web development and SEO company. Daniel has become very much apart of the incubate miami community through several short-term projects with local entrepreneurs. He also works with Incubate Miami to host a monthly WordPress Meetup group.
Greg Nelson has extensive experience in the biosciences area, where he represents a number of universities and a national laboratory in obtaining, evaluating, and licensing life sciences patents. Mr. Nelson is also very active in BioFlorida and served as the Secretary and General Counsel of the 2007 Executive Committee. Mr. Nelson is a founding member and past chair of the Florida Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society and a frequent lecturer, panelist and moderator on intellectual property topics.
Mark Arnold is a corporate transactional attorney primarily focused on mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital transactions, and general corporate matters. He has experience in securities issues and other corporate finance transactions representing both public and private companies in domestic and international matters. Mr. Arnold was honored by Florida Trend Magazine as one of its Up-and-Coming Legal Elite in both 2004 and 2006.
Jose A. Hernandez-Solaun is the Founder and President of Mango Consulting Group. Jose is also an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the University of Miami, where he judges the Business Plan Competition, mentors students in entrepreneurship. Previously, Jose worked for General Electric (GE), as Vice President of GE Capital, for ten years. During his tenure at GE, Jose attended multiple courses at the John F. Welch Leadership Development Center and also became Green Belt certified in Six Sigma methodology.
Dr. Gary Margules has direct business experience in technology management, academic technology transfer, strategic planning, corporate ventures, R&D/project management, licensing, regulatory affairs, clinical trials, and product development. He has twenty-nine years of research management experience (eight years with Cordis Corporation as Senior Scientist, three with Pfizer Hospital Products as Assistant Director of Technology Development, three with Senmed Medical Ventures as Director, Medical Technology, and fifteen with the University of Miami as Assistant Vice Provost for Technology Transfer and Industry Research).
Kevin Levy is a business, corporate and technology attorney. For over a decade, Kevin has represented global technology companies, as well as local entrepreneurial ventures. He has extensive experience providing strategic counseling and negotiating transactions for both U.S. and foreign-based clients. Kevin is frequently interviewed by the media on current business and technology law issues and trends, and he has received awards for his business and technology law practice from The Best Lawyers in America, Florida Trend, the South Florida Business Journal and Super Lawyers.
Mariana Ferrari is an International Innovation and Marketing Expert and Writer. She has been at the C-level of Fortune 100 companies like ING, in top management positions of the largest advertising agencies on earth, like Young & Rubicam or J W Thompson or managing multi-million dollar programs for companies like Philip Morris. She has over 20 years of multi-discipline (marketing, sales, crisis management, innovation & general management) experience in multi-national, multi-cultural and multi-sector environments such as retail, financial, consumer, tobacco, energy, etc.
Ralph Macnamara serves as the Director of Client Services for Kaufman, Rossin & Co., one of the largest independent accounting firms in Florida and one of the top 100 CPA firms in the country. He provides audit, accounting, tax and advisory services to a variety of public companies, private businesses and entrepreneurs. He co-founded the firm’s computer forensic practice and regularly assists clients with their computer forensic and information security needs.
Steve Luis serves as FIU Director of Technology and Business Relations in the School of Computing and Information Sciences. Over the last twenty years he has successfully lead higher education IT research and instructional enterprise services for the state’s largest IT and Computer Science degree programs. He conducts SCIS business development and outreach for the South Florida IT industry and created with management the SCIS Executive Industry Advisory Board. He has overseen dozens of in-house software development projects, establishing business requirements, designing software frameworks, implementing, and deploying them for administrative or R&D purposes.
Traver Gruen-Kennedy is now CEO of Molecular Power Systems, an energy creation company focused on sustainability through hydrogen technologies. A serial entrepreneur, his career has spanned numerous industries. In his past, Traver has served as the Chief Strategist and Vice President at Citrix Systems, Inc., an S&P 500 software company. Mr. Gruen-Kennedy was also ranked by NetworkWorld magazine (along with Michael Dell and Bill Gates) as one of the “25 Most Powerful People in Networking”. Mr. Gruen-Kennedy is further considered by many to be the “Father of the ASP industry”. He was elected and served two term as the founding Chairman of the ASP Industry Consortium.
Wayne Clary is currently responsible for leading key Worldwide Sales Technical Operations and Programs for Avaya . These programs empower real-time collaboration between the theater’s field technical sales organization with Avaya’s Business Units in order to drive marketplace responsiveness, innovation, competitiveness and growth. Wayne Clary has 20 years of experience in sales, marketing, software development, operations and business process re-engineering. He has led global technical support and consulting organizations and projects for companies such as Lucent Technologies and DIGITAL Equipment Corporation.
Patricia Palmer brings more than 25 years of senior management, sales/marketing, and operational experience in leading technology companies, together with financial experience developed more recently at Morgan Stanley, Laird Capital, and Oceana Partners. Her technology experience has included executive roles as: Northeast Regional Sales Manager for Dell Corporation; Vice President, Sales & Marketing of the Global Telecommunications Group for Unisys Corporation; Vice President/General Manager of Publishing Software for Xerox Corporation; Vice President/General Manager of XSoft Company; over 15 years with IBM Corporation wherein her positions included the role of Senior Manager of Worldwide Marketing & Product Management for the IBM PC.
Shannon DeRouselle provides general counseling and legal representation to a variety of technology, media, and web-based startup and other mid-sized companies. Shannon’s practice focuses on corporate finance transactions, intellectual property transactions, strategic ventures, and other complex commercial transactions. He advises entrepreneurs and companies from concept through liquidity event, and has participated in numerous early- and late-stage venture capital investments,representing both companies and investors.