BRIIA | Mentors | for the founders in our program

Mentors make the difference. While there is a ton of "how to turn your idea into a unicorn" advice, it is hard to always know what is right for you, the founder. Your company and your vision may not follow the same path as those before you. Mentors help you pick out the useful advice and information from the avalanche of feedback and suggestions. They help you see what is important and what can wait. We are honored to have a phenomenal set of mentors ready to help the entrepreneurs in our Accelerator Program!

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Sudhir Aggarwal

Business Strategy
Execution

Sudhir is an financier, private investor, CEO and board member. As CEO of an internet community and commerce site, he lead a valuable exit to a strategic buyer.

Lew Altman

Product/Market Fit
Product Positioning

Lew is Managing Partner of Lew Altman Consulting. A serial entrepreneur, he makes complex technologies easy to digest and compelling to the market.

Murtaza Amiji

Enterprise
Product Mgmt/Mktg

Murtaza is a Product and Marketing leader. Murtaza bootstrapped a startup, launched an AI recommendation engine, and drove $50K in sales within six months.

Mark Anderson

Strategic Partnerships
Exit Advisor

Mark has founded startups, led F500 companies and now, as an investment banker, has great insights into the startup journey.

Aditi Banerjee

Consumer Apps
Minimum Viable Product

Aditi is an entrepreneur with a mix of technical expertise and business acumen. She has launched key consumer-apps and enterprise-platforms for global telecom companies.

Raj Baronia

Product Strategy
Technology Development

Raj is a serial entrepreneur, combining technical expertise with business and management acumen. Specializing in cyber-security, SaaS/cloud-computing, AI/ML and data science.

Kirsten Bay

Product Launches
Cyber Security

Kirsten is a rare combination of leader, learner and cybersecurity expert. On top of that she has hacked several companies into growing, profitable enterprises.

Meg Bear

Go to Market
Operational Scaling

Meg is a disruptive technologist, change agent, innovator, patent holder, thought leader, TEDster, startup advisor and coach. She is endlessly curious and happy to help.

David Beckemeyer

Execution
Funding strategy

David is a pioneering technologist, C-suite executive, inventor, and investor with a track record of high-level impact. He once lost a pair of slacks at the White House.

Paul Bianchi

Human Capital
Pitch Coach

Paul's specialty is people. With broad experience in multiple industries and high-growth, high change companies, he's ready to help you build your team!

Mary Ann Bianco-Pfeiffer

Customer Retention
SaaS Delivery

Mary Ann is a service delivery leader for Cloud SaaS applications. She has an exceptional talent for developing and retaining long-term customer relationships.

Ann Blackburn

Executive Coaching
Business Management

If you want to make sure your company culture doesn't fail, Dr. Blackburn is the one to call. She called the cultural meltdowns at Uber and Zenefits before they happened!

Bett Bollhoefer

SAAS Cost-to-serve
Data-Driven Prod. Mgmt

Bett mentors product managers on profitability of their products. She's proud of her product being bought by the world's most recognizable manufacturing companies.

Devika Chawla

Engineering Leadership
Product Strategy

Devika is an Engineering leader who has built revenue generating & consumer facing products at scale at Yahoo and Netflix. She is all about driving growth and innovation.

Kevin Chew

Minimum Viable Product
Go-to-Market

Want an expert in company exits? Kevin has had four! Despite his many successes, Kevin likes to say that he's "Failed" at every role there is to have at a tech company.

Noha Elfiky

Machine Learning
Analytics

Noha is a data science powerhouse. Her interests include computer vision, machine learning, and geo-localization, and she has a PhD (with honors) to back it up!

Kira Feick

Headcount Strategy
Company Culture

Kira loves helping entrepreneurs build a unique and healthy culture. She's currently working on building the culture at her own HR startup!

Lonnie Finkel

IP Protection
Equity Structuring

Lonnie is a business, finance and IP attorney who has worked with hundreds of technology start-ups. He founded Finkel Law Group to serve tech entrepreneurs.

Muckai Girish

Initial Customers
Strategic Partnerships

Girish is a highly networked business development executive. Girish was instrumental in establishing and growing numerous strategic partnerships.

Shelli Hendricks

Leadership
Presence

Shelli specializes in equipping next generation leaders to learn new strategies, lead with positive impact, and leave a legacy by design.

Lauren Horvath

Supply Chain
Corporate Operations

Laura is a jack of all trades and top SaaS Executive. She single-handedly grounded the entire USAF bomber division (and almost got arrested by a 4 star general!).

Natalie Hughes

Enterprise Product Strategy
Innovation

Natalie is a catalyst for innovation and a serial entrepreneur. Her disruptive technology has been globally vetted by experts at Microsoft, HP, Dell, Infosys and Infor.

Robert Hull

SaaS Strategy
Financial Insights

Rob is an accomplished entrepreneur and CEO. His company, Adaptive Insights, has been on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for six straight years.

Dan Jones

IT & Business Strategy
Team Development

A proven executive leader with diverse experiences in demanding environments, Dan is skilled at communicating complex technical topics in understandable business terms.

Cindy Keefer

Pitch Coach
Change Management

Cindy is a communication specialist who can help you create and deliver tailored presentations. She was an M&A integration leader for teams, processes, data, systems.

Rick Klau

OKRs
Product Management

Rick is a serial entrepreneur turned VC. His video on how Google sets goals has been watched over 700,000 times.

Prabhakar Krishnamurthy

AI/Data Strategy
Platform Strategy

With over 25 years of experience helping businesses succeed, PK brings clear thinking, insights and effective AI/ML strategies to your business problems.

Daniel Lang

Emplyee Benefits
Next-Gen HR

Dan is a seasoned HR and Employee Benefits Expert who has helped hundreds of small and middle-market companies build, scale & manage their workforce infrastructure.

John Lee

Engineering Leadership
Healthcare

John is an engineering mastermind. He's led teams at companies big and small through extensive growth, while solving complex challenges.

Yuet Lee

Clean Tech
Telecom Technologies

Yuet is a master of technologies and mathematics. He has lots of experience helping startups navigate successful partnerships with big companies.

Heidi Lorenzen

SMarTech
Thought Leadership

Heidi is a globally-minded, customer-anchored marketer. She's put startups on the map and accelerated growth for companies of all sizes.

Linda Maduwura

Venture Capital
Financial Analysis

Linda is a VC veteran who has spent years helping VC managers achieve operational excellence. She is passionate about helping others grow and reach their fullest potential.

Pat McClellan

Campaign Design
Strategy Guru

Pat is a writer, developer, media producer, and experiential marketing veteran, helping brands articulate their value prop and connect with consumers.

Peter Meechan

Corporate Development
Value Creation

Peter is an accomplished operations executive, innovator and venture capitalist. He has seen it all, from ground zero to an IPO and a $3.4B exit.

Heidi Melin

Enterprise Marketing
Business Scaling

Heidi is a marketer extraordinaire. She has successfully prepared four companies for growth and successful exits.

Steve Mitzenmacher

Corporate Investors
M&A Optimizer

Steve was part of Big Data 1.0 doing M&A for BI companies, Big Data 2.0 spinning out the Yahoo Hadoop team into Hortonworks, and sees AI / ML as the start of Big Data 3.0

John Moellering

Crossing the Chasm
Product Leadership

John is a Pathfinder. As head of product management, his team built the first 48-port video soft switch taking it to $30M annually and winning the Cisco Pioneer Award.

David Petroni

M&A Transactions
M&A Strategy

David knows how to put companies together and has lead a hat trick of $1.5B transactions. From strategy to integration, David has done it all!

Sherry Platt

Talent Acquisition Strategy
Career Management

Sherry Platt is an astute and experienced Talent Strategist. She excels at helping employers strategically attract and retain top employees.

Jack Porter

artificial intelligence
zero to scale

Before artificial intelligence was taking the world by storm, Jack was quietly building not one, but nine startups with AI at their core.

Mary Jo Potter

Investor
Entrepreneur

Mary Jo is both an accomplished entrepreneur and investor. She successfully sold her first company and now enjoys supporting healthcare entrepreneurs.

Rachel Powers

Entrepreneur
Innovation

Rachel is an experienced innovation executive. She inspires big, bold thinking while creating a positive impact on products/services and businesses.

Wendy Roberts

Risk Management
Operator

Wendy is an operations powerhouse with expertise in risk management. She specializes in scaling fraud detection, abuse prevention, and trust & safety processes.

David Samuelson

Infrastructure Scaling
Data Collection

David knows how to make products and infrastructure - including machine learning algorithms - work at scale. He's a math wizard as well!

Les Schmidt

How to build a company
Investor acquisition

Les is an entrepreneurial cheerleader, strategic thinker, category design guru and finance wiz. If naming a category or knowing what's next has you stymied, talk to Les!

Jim Schreitmueller

Customer Acquisition
GTM Strategy

Jim is a CEO, founder, advisor and serial entrepreneur with multiple successful exits. He's built B2B and B2B2C companies in multiple verticals from the ground up.

Rick Schultz

Sales Leadership
Business Development

Rick is a customer-focused team-builder. He is most proud of his achievements in building long-term, trusted relationships with customers, partners and sales professionals.

Mike Smart

Market Validation
Product Adoption

Mike is a product strategist and a focused problem solver. He is big on community engagement and relentless about achieving market success for his clients.

Justin Smith

Data Science
Analytics

Justin eats Data Science and Analysis for breakfast. He's used his skills to tame the big data universes of advertising and search applications.

Chris Stiles

Enterprise
Product Management

Chris is an experienced disruptor in the network, storage and computing industry. His 25 year path of disruption spans Apple, two startups, Cisco and Pure Storage.

Beatrice Stonebanks

new client acquisition
revenue generation

Beatrice is the revenue expert to consult for capturing a consistent flow of ideal clients: using straightforward communication and a repeatable, streamlined process.

EJ Tavella

Cloud Software Sales
Supply Chain

EJ specializes in strategic supply chain management, particularly in the high-tech and consumer electronics business. He's seen it all, from startup to Fortune 50.

Greg Thompson

Architecting on AWS
Multimedia Distribution

Who you gonna call when your web site or app won’t scale? Greg! He's crafted VoD and AWS cloud solutions for companies of all sizes including nCUBE, Cisco, and more.

Laura Victorino

Business Model
Market Strategy

Laura helps entrepreneurs take new ventures to the next level. She has inspired new generations of entrepreneurs by launching a local high school entrepreneurship program.

Chrissy Vonderach

Critical Questions
Growth Mindset

Chrissy knows about building & growing – it’s rarely only the tech. At PayPal it was ‘the how’; at ask.com it was perception; at Blackhawk it was the technology & the team

David Weisman

Threat Intelligence
Online Payments

David is a enterprise cybersecurity expert. He has protected the data and resources of companies like PayPal and Workday and been an entrepreneur himself.

Eric Woo

Seed Venture Capital
Financial Analysis

Eric is a venture capital fund investor who advises seed/early-stage fund managers and their portfolio companies. He started his career in Mechanical Engineering.

Scott Wornow

Capital Raising
Technology Licensing

Scott is a super-accomplished, not-your-typical-“Wall-Street” lawyer and leader. He’s actually helped start energy management, wireless and legal analytics companies!

Sabina Zafar

Software Architecture
Cloud Storage

Sabina is an accomplished engineer and leader. Her most unusual entrepreneurial endeavor? Her campaign to get elected to the San Ramon City Council!

Alvin Ziegler

Go-to Market Strategy
Business Models

Alvin thrives on optimizing product fit. He advises digital health startups, specializes in sales and transformed the computer systems at Beth Israel Medical Center NY.

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Mentors @ BRIIA