Advisory Board

Tom Cain, Sail Venture Partners

Chairman of the Advisory Board, Venture Catalyst at ASU

Tom Cain is co-founder and special general partner of Sail Venture Partners. Sail was founded in 2002 as a pioneer in the clean-tech investment sector and continues to be one of the sector's top performers. Tom is a recognized leader in energy investing, clean-tech technologies and information technology, having founded, grown and managed some of the leading organizations in these categories. He currently serves on eight corporate boards, two of which he chairs; has been a director in numerous public and private companies; and has overseen businesses in many countries around the world. Tom serves as a director of Ice Energy, Kokam America, and Townsend Advanced Energy.

Tom was formerly CEO of Distributed Architects International (DAI), a company he founded in Tempe, AZ, while a student at ASU and led for almost 30 years. He grew the organization into a leader in global supply chain, distribution and manufacturing software with its derivatives having offices throughout the world with thousands of employees. He retired as Chairman of the Board for the acquisition corporation when Mapics was acquired by Info Systems in 2001.

Tom is a published author, of "Inside the Minds™ Best Practices for Energy Venture Capital in 2008." He holds a bachelor’s of science degree in mathematics from Arizona State University.

Jon Bayless, Sevin Rosen Funds

Dr. Bayless is a partner at Sevin Rosen Funds, where he has been since 1981. Prior to joining SRF, he was Director of Advanced Systems for Arthur A. Collins, Inc., a research and development company. Previously, he worked with the Defense Communications Agency in Washington, DC, E-Systems in Dallas, TX, and Motorola Government Systems in Scottsdale, AZ. Dr. Bayless served as chairman of both Landmark Graphics Corporation and CIENA Corporation, two public companies funded by SRF. He is currently serving on the boards of AirWalk, Extenet, GENBAND, NetSocket, and Xtera Communications.

Dr. Bayless holds a BSEE from the University of Oklahoma, a MSEE from the University of Alabama, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University.

Tony Corey, Former CEO and President, Rodel, Inc.

In October, 2002 Tony Corey retired as President and CEO of Rodel, Inc. after five years with the upcoming semiconductor company. During his tenure, Rodel witnessed outstanding growth in sales and profits, propelling its valuation from $260 million to over $2 billion during his stewardship.

Rodel is the global leader in Chemical Mechanical Planerization materials (CMP), a key process to make semiconductor chips. The company was fully acquired by Rohm and Haas in 2002. Prior to Rodel, Tony held many positions of increasing responsibilities around the world with Rohm and Haas (a $13 billion company). During his career he worked in the textiles, leather, paper, plastics and coatings industries. His last position at Rohm and Haas was Corporate Vice President and a member of the senior management leadership council.

Tony's academic background includes a B.S. in Biology (American University of Beirut), M.S. in Chemical Engineering (The Ohio State University) and M.B.A. (Widener University). Since retirement from the corporate world, Tony has started and co-founded a number of ventures, including Corey Capital (global equity investments), UrbanLogic (real estate development), Mt Cedar Properties (real estate management) and TradeCom (commodities trading). Tony's community work has focused mainly on education and mentoring young entrepreneurs.

Herb Goronkin, Lux Capital

Herb Goronkin is a Venture Partner with Lux Capital, an investment company focused on early stage companies in the Physical and Life Sciences.  A retired VP of Research at Motorola, Herb's labs there engaged in emerging technologies including magnetic memory (MRAM), DNA chips, microwave devices, quantum devices and integrated circuits.  While at Motorola, Herb received over 65 patents and was lead or co-author of numerous publications. Goronkin was honored as a Dan Noble Fellow, Motorola's highest technical distinction.
 
Herb is a Director at Zettacore, a molecular interface adhesion company.  He serves as observer on the Everspin board, an Arizona company he helped to spin out of Freescale in 2008, and also observes on the Transphorm board, an energy efficiency focused company he helped to spin out of the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2007.  He is one of three Governors of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, joint laboratories of Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, and is a member of the Advisory Board of Canada's National Research Council's Institute for Microstructural Sciences. He received his PhD in physics from Temple University and was inaugurated into its Gallery of Success in 2009.  Goronkin is a Fellow of the IEEE, granted for contributions to compound semiconductor transistor technologies. 

Bevil Hogg, EndoStim, Inc.

Bevil Hogg is CEO of EndoStim, Inc., a medical device startup which has licensed novel neurostimulation technologies from ASU for the treatment of a number of widely prevalent sphincter-related and other disorders.  Hogg is a successful entrepreneur and senior executive with previous experience as founding CEO of several other technology-oriented companies – most recently Stereotaxis, an interventional robotics company, which he took public during his tenure.  Earlier in his career, Hogg was a founder of Trek Bicycle Corp.  Hogg is a graduate of Universite de Paris, Sorbonne, Paris, France.

Michael Hool, Arizona Technology Investor Forum (ATIF)

Michael has been an active investor, advisor, executive, legal counsel and board member in a wide variety of high-growth ventures  (public and private) for 25 years.  Michael is currently an active investor and advisor in a number of portfolio companies in industries ranging from medical device, chemical recycling, and social media companies. He is President of The International Entrepreneur-Arizona, a member of the Board of Directors and Investment Selection Committee of the Arizona Technology Investor Forum, an angel investment group in Arizona. Michael was previously the Chairman of the Arizona Venture Capital Conference, Arizona Angel Investment Conference, and on the Board of Directors of the Arizona Capital Network. Active in capital formation efforts for emerging companies for many years, Michael wrote the fist SEC “no-action” letter for the SBA’s Ace-Net investor matching program in Arizona.

Nety Krishna, Redpoint Ventures

Nety Krishna is a Specialist Partner and the CTO at Redpoint Ventures. He focuses on investment opportunities in Redpoint’s energy, materials and environment practice. His current areas of interest include novel materials, technologies to improve existing infrastructure, energy generation including renewables, system level energy efficiency, reliable and scalable energy storage, carbon mitigation and minimization, novel fuels, water technologies and solid state lighting.

Nety currently serves on the board of Liquid Light and is also involved in Redpoint’s investments in Envia Systems and Intermolecular. Prior to joining Redpoint, he was a senior director in the office of the CTO at Applied Materials. Before joining Applied Materials, Nety worked on high energy physics experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Nety received a M.S. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Particle Physics from Rice University.

Russ Lebovitz, DFJ Mercury Fund

As Venture Advisor to the DFJ Mercury Fund, Dr. Lebovitz is currently the CEO of Marval Biosciences, Inc., and the founder and Chairman of Imagnx, Inc., both DFJ Mercury portfolio companies. Previously, Dr. Lebovitz was President and CEO of C-sixty (acquired by Tego Biosciences) and the subsequent CEO of Tego Biosciences. During the last decade, Dr. Lebovitz has managed global projects for a number of Fortune 100 technology companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, Nextel, Cingular Wireless, Johnson & Johnson, Compaq Computer and JPMorganChase, as well as leading venture capital and investment banking firms. He has helped raise over $100 million for early and intermediate stage pharmaceutical and biomedical device companies.

Prior to his business activities, Dr. Lebovitz worked for over fifteen years as a successful senior scientist and research physician. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, and received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Lebovitz also served on the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and The Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Matthew McCooe, Chart Venture Partners

Matt joined Chart Venture Partners (CVP) at its inception, coming from Columbia University Science and Technology Ventures (STV) where he managed a portfolio of spinout companies and the deployment of STV's highly profitable seed fund. During his tenure at Columbia, eleven portfolio companies went public or were acquired by publicly traded companies. Prior to Columbia, Matt led two startup operations, both of which reached revenues in excess of $125 million and were acquired.

At CVP, Matt focuses on early stage investments in communications, software and robotics. He represents CVP on the Board of RemoteReality and PacStar Communications.

Matt earned an MBA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a BA from Boston College. Matt serves on Columbia’s Private Equity and Venture Capital Advisory Board, and as an SBIR reviewer for the National Science Foundation.

Dennis Merens, Dow Venture Capital

As Managing Director of Dow Venture Capital, the venture capital unit of The Dow Chemical Company, Dennis Merens is well recognized as a global leader in corporate venture capital. His role includes coordinating a multi-functional international effort to identify, assess and exploit potential investment opportunities that optimize both technology and financial objectives.

Dennis joined Dow Sales and Marketing in 1970. He transferred to Latin America in 1975 as chemicals marketing manager and returned to the United States in 1980 as Sales Manager for Functional Products & Systems and then as Group Marketing Director in 1983. In 1985, he was appointed General Sales Manager for Boston and in 1986 Zone Vice President of Sales for Chemicals & Performance Products.

Dennis has completed Venture Capital Investment programs at Harvard and the Venture Capital Institute. He holds a bachelor's of science degree from the University of Wisconsin. He is on the board of Dendritech, Inc., Impact Analytical, Pfenex, Inc., and WaterHealth International, Inc.

Bill Miller, Founder, AutoXray

Bill Miller was the founder and CEO of AutoXray from its beginning in 1994 to its sale in 2004. AutoXray pioneered low cost diagnostic scan tools for automobile computers. The company’s products were selected Popular Mechanics Editor’s choice six out of seven years, and were featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN and Motor Trend television. During that time Mr. Miller was selected as an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and the company received the Spirit of Enterprise Award from the WP Carey School of Business at ASU. Prior to his founding of AutoXray, Mr. Miller worked in the semiconductor industry and in Europe in the transportation industry. He holds a Computer Engineering Degree from The University of Arizona.

Ken Noonan, Advanced Technology Ventures

Ken Noonan is a Venture Partner at Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV), a long-established U.S. venture group with offices in Boston and Palo Alto. ATV focuses on early stage (A and B round) investments in development stage life sciences companies (including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics and research products) as well as clean tech and certain areas of IT/telecom. ATV currently has over $2 billion under management.

Ken remains a Partner in the global life sciences practice at L.E.K. Consulting LLP; a global management consulting firm. From 2001 to 2009 he was Head of its European Life Sciences Practice. He is a co-founder of T/K Associates LLC, a consulting firm providing commercial and transactional support to early stage life science ventures. Ken sits on the Board of Directors of Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Premier Research Group, and OrchidCellmark Inc. In addition, he is on the Board of Directors of ATIF (an angel investing group in Phoenix, AZ) and has been named the co-chairman of the Impact Accelerator at the Biodesign Institute of ASU. He holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Princeton University.

Kent Petzold, Former CEO, Cyclone Commerce, Inc.

From 1998 thru 2001, Mr. Petzold was Chairman and CEO of Cyclone Commerce, Inc., providing supply chain management software, where he led the company’s launch. Mr. Petzold has held positions in several public software companies, including president and CEO of Novadigm, Inc., (NASD:NVDM) which provided digital assets management. He served as a Director of Novadigm until its acquisition by Hewlett Packard in April 2004.

He was SVP and General Manager of the $165 million Systems Software Division of Pansophic Systems, Inc., a NYSE software company which was acquired by Computer Associates, Inc. He also served as president and CEO of privately held Viasoft, Inc.

Mr. Petzold is a director of Xenos Group, Inc. (TSE:XNS), iLinc Communications, Inc. (AMX:ILC), and JRiver, Inc. He is on the advisory boards of Ethix Media, LLC, Jigsaw Health, LLC, Arizona State University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, and the state board of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Mr. Petzold holds a B.A. in Management from the University of Texas.

Pat Sullivan, CEO, Flypaper Studio, Inc.

Pat is widely recognized as a pioneer and visionary in the high-tech industry. He is the founder and former CEO of ACT!®—the best-selling contact management solution used by millions of business professionals around the world. Sullivan was named as one of the “80 Most Influential People in Sales and Marketing History,” among the ranks of Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Jack Welch, Donald Trump and Bill Gates. Sullivan was also honored with the prestigious Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” award not once, but twice. He was first honored for creating and marketing ACT!® and then again for SalesLogix®, the leading mid-market customer relationship management solution. Sullivan founded SalesLogix in 1996 and led its successful IPO in May 1999. SalesLogix was acquired by The Sage Group in 2001. As an active member of the Arizona technology community, Sullivan sits on the boards of a number of emerging growth companies.

Hal Tashman, Chairman, Tech Group Foundation

After having received his MBA from Columbia University in 1968, majoring in corporate finance as a Fulbright scholar, Hal Tashman started his professional career working on Wall Street for a major public accounting firm. Through his professional career, Haldun Tashman helped grow the TechGroup, Inc., a privately-held company, to an annual sales volume of $200 million with 12 manufacturing locations on three continents. Mr. Tashman and his partner sold TechGroup’s North America and European operations to a NYSE company, and went public with the Asian operations in Singapore Stock Exchange in 2005.

Hal was also the founding President of Top Seal and Star Container. He is currently the Chairman of the Tech Group Foundation, as well as Chairman and Founding Member of Turkish Philanthropy Funds. Hal is actively involved in various non-profit organizations including Arizona State University, Columbia University, and the Turkish-American Business Forum.