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Board & Advisors
The Board
Andy Jenks
General Partner from Drive Capital
Andy Jenks
General Partner from Drive Capital
Andy has worn multiple hats throughout his career; Engineer, Founder, CEO, Investor, and has sat on multiple Boards as well as advises startups. Prior to Drive Capital Andy was Co-Founder and COO of Formation Data Systems, a venture-backed startup in the next-generation data center. Formation is a converged data platform rethinking the way storage is deployed for modern applications. Immediately prior to Formation Andy was an EIR at both Khosla Ventures(2012) and EMC Ventures(2011). Andy has had many operational roles including CEO of Autonomy Optimost, the Marketing Automation division at Autonomy and founder of 3 companies, including Formation. In 2002 Andy co-founded Discovery Mining, a widely recognized leader in Cloud-Based electronic discovery. Discovery Mining won multiple awards, including #188 on the 2007 Inc 500 and #18 on the Silicon Valley Deloitte Fast 50. Discovery Mining was acquired by Interwoven in 2008. In 2001 Andy was one of the technical founders of Infinite Research, a online marketing analytics company, which merged with Compete in 2002 and later sold to WPP. Andy truly began his technology career at Alexa where he was an engineer building search-based algorithms for the 7 petabyte web crawl. Alexa was acquired by Amazon.com and Andy worked within the research division involved with Amazon’s recommendation engine.
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Mark Fields
Partner, Alsop Louie Partners
Mark Fields
Partner, Alsop Louie Partners
Mark Fields is a Partner at Alsop Louie Partners. Prior to joining ALP, Mark was CEO, President, and member of the Board of Directors of Wickr, Inc., an end-to end encrypted communications platform enabling enterprises and consumers in more than 190 countries to safeguard proprietary information and sensitive communications. Prior to Wickr, Fields was the Founder and Managing Director of CME Ventures, CME Group’s corporate venture capital group. At its inception, CME Ventures focused primarily on cyber security, payments, next generation computing technologies, and curated big data technologies. Fields spent 15 years at CME Group, serving as a leader in the mergers & acquisitions, business and strategic development teams. Fields was recognized as one of Crain’s Chicago Business Tech 50 in 2015. Fields holds a BA in Economics from Rutgers University and an MBA from Pepperdine University. Fields serves as a mentor to young professionals and organizations. Currently, he serves on the Advisory Council of the Brennan School of Business at Dominican University, and the Board of Lauren’s Hope, a local social services organization.
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Christopher Junker
Chief Executive Officer, Ascent
Christopher Junker
Chief Executive Officer, Ascent
Chris is an experienced business leader with more than 30 years of experience in the software industry and has a proven track record of accelerating innovation and driving sales at high-growth software companies. He has had the privilege of working at established public companies such as iManage (HP), Interwoven and Autonomy, as well as start-ups, with a focus in SaaS, Legal Content Solutions, Artificial Intelligence, IoT and Big Data. In addition to his most recent position as CEO at Gauge Telematics, an IoT asset management platform company, Chris served as the CEO at, Complia Health, Microsystems Inc. (now Litera), SpringCM (now DocuSign), Fios, Inc. (now DTI). Chris holds a BS in Computer Science from Northern Illinois University and lives in Long Grove, Illinois with his wife and golden retriever Nelly.
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John Leitner
President, Ascent
John Leitner
President
Jon has worked for large companies as well as several startups where he helped grow and successfully sell some of those businesses. For most of his 28-year career he has managed and built sales and marketing organizations for companies including Interwoven, Fios and SpringCM. He has worked with boards of directors and early stage company CEOs to help them hone their go to market strategies. During his career, he has focused on accelerating revenue growth through efforts which included pioneering inside sales teams, partner relationships and thought leadership. He has led both direct and indirect sales channels. With a focus on creating customer intimacy while driving user adoption of those companies’ offerings. Jon holds a BS in Economics from the University of Rochester and lives in Massachusetts with his wife and four children.
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Industry Advisory Council
David Rudis
Chairman Of The Board, Acorn Wanger Mutual Funds
David Rudis
Chairman Of The Board, Acorn Wanger Mutual Funds
David Rudis spent over 30 years at LaSalle National Bank and its predecessor bank based in Chicago where he was part of the top executive team that took LaSalle from a small, struggling bank in the early 1980s to a highly profitable, super regional market share leader that was sold to Bank of America for $21bil in 2007. Following the sale David stayed on as president of BofA Illinois and also as the executive in charge of BofA’s national debit card and checking businesses. David is currently vice-chairman of the board of the Acorn Wanger Mutual Funds as well as lead director of First Hospitality, a U.S. developer, owner and manager of hotels.
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Chuck Papageorgiou
Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Ideasphere Labs
Chuck Papageorgiou
Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Ideasphere Labs
Chuck Papageorgiou is a market-proven Executive Leader, Business Operator and Enterprise Technologist with over two decades of global business experience in leading organizational turnarounds, business transformation, M&A, and launching startups. Clients value Chuck for his vast experience, knowledge, and results-driven approach, as well as his ‘get it done’ mentality and passion for building strong teams, client relationships, and helping others succeed.
As an entrepreneur, Chuck has founded and launched multiple companies over the last twenty years, raising over $15M in startup capital. As a corporate executive and consultant, he has managed organizations ranging from five-person startups and spin-off divisions, to 10,000+ employee global operations. As a Sr. Advisor he has led or advised on global M&A and restructuring transactions worth over 9 billion dollars.
Chuck is a co-founder and the previous CEO of WorldWatch Plus–an AI-driven risk management company–and currently sits on the company’s Board of Directors. He is also a co-founder and current Managing Partner of Ideasphere Partners, LLC–an advisory firm that offers contract executive services and delivers expertise and hands-on leadership and execution support in: strategy development, operations streamlining, technology architecture and deployment, turnarounds, outsourcing, corporate alliances, and mergers and acquisitions. His clients include Private Equity and Venture Capital firms, and Corporations across the globe.
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Scott Gordon
Chairman/CEO, Rosenthal Collins Group LLC
Scott Gordon
Chairman/CEO, Rosenthal Collins Group LLC
Under Mr. Gordon’s 15-year leadership, Rosenthal Collins Group, LLC (“RCG”) was one of the nation’s leading independent futures brokerage and clearing firms. He currently is Chairman of XF, LLC where he is assisting the former RCG owners in winding down their operations. As Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) from 1998 to 2002, he guided the exchange through the development and execution of a strategic plan that transformed it from a mutual membership organization to a for-profit stock corporation, the first U.S. financial exchange to take this step. Mr. Gordon previously served as President and Chief Operating Officer of a Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi futures brokerage subsidiary
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Strategic Advisors
Waverly Deutsch
Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth
Waverly Deutsch
Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth
Waverly Deutsch teaches Building the New Venture (a unique course on entrepreneurial execution), and is a full-time coach for the annual New Venture Challenge competition at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business since 2002. In 2015, Deutsch was honored with the Phoenix Faculty award for her contributions to the Booth student community beyond the classroom. Deutsch is an active angel investor and advisor to start ups including Stylisted, PrettyQuick (acquired by Groupon), InterApt, and SwingByte. She served on the board of directors for InContext Solutions, a leading 3D virtual store market research company from 2009 to 2011. She is an advisor to OCA Ventures, a leading technology VC in Chicago, and serves on the board of SmartBet Charities. In her year as managing director of NetFuel Ventures, an internet incubator, Deutsch helped raise seed capital and launch three technology companies before the firm merged with ARCH Development Partners. As executive vice president of marketing and strategy for internet exchange company fob.com, she increased their media visibility by 500 percent. She spent seven years with Forrester Research, helping to grow the company from a 20-person boutique market research firm to a publicly traded, global brand with a market cap of over $600 million and offices worldwide. Deutsch earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985. She received a master’s degree in 1989 and a PhD in theater history in 1992 from Tufts University.
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Doug Monieson
Chairman of the Board, Hyde Park Angels
Doug Monieson
Chairman of the Board, Hyde Park Angels
Douglas is Chairman of the Board of Hyde Park Angels (HPA), the largest and most active angel group in the Midwest. He has board responsibilities for two of HPA’s portfolio companies: UICO, a touch-screen manufacturing company, and Group Gift, a crowd-sourced B2B group gifting site. He also led the successful exit of Gradebeam, which was purchased by Textura in 2011. He serves on the Board of Directors of Modern Asset Group, an alternative investment management firm with an expertise in managed futures. Douglas has been involved in the financial trading community for more than twenty years. He has been an active member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) since 1994, is a founding member of the NASDAQ100 futures pit, and worked closely with the CME Board of Directors and staff to help launch the e-mini NASDAQ contract in 2001. He has served on the CME Group’s Political Action Committee since 2007 and is currently running for election for CME’s Board of Directors. He has made regular appearances as a financial commentator on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, CNNFN, and Canada’s Report on Business TV. Douglas graduated from the University of Michigan in 1987 with a BA in Economics and received his MBA in finance from the University of Chicago in 1989.
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