Brilliant & Diverse minds behind LEAD Incubator & Startup Accelerator Cohort 4
LISA Executive Leadership Team from Stanford GSB LEAD
LISA (LEAD Incubator & Startup Accelerator) Executive Leadership team is a diverse and inspired group of Stanford LEAD participants who have been actively building and crafting initiatives supporting entrepreneurs, and also working behind the scenes with the mission of crafting an entrepreneurship ecosystem within wider Stanford Community.
The Executive team for COHORT 4 is enabling LISA to bring together a host of collaborators — external and internal, extensive mentor networks, other LEAD group support and collaborations, Co-founder support, Pitch sessions and other workshop support. The product development of LISA Digital Incubation Platform and COHORT engagement and Accountability partnership is something LISA deeply cares about, and owes the success of these initiatives to this very dedicated Executive team.
LISA Founding Partners Executing Cohort 4 Deepti Pahwa, Edward Mundt, have been particularly focused on getting together a diverse set of skills, expertise, and global experience from within the thriving Stanford LEAD ecosystem that is a breeding ground of innovation mindsets to benefit the diverse profiles of Founders in LISA.
Think big, start small, move fast — LISA leadership believes that this simple rule, which applies to entrepreneurial ventures, also holds true for strategies to enable entrepreneurial ecosystems. The team recruited to execute on COHORT 3 imbibes these values and is at the forefront of strategic direction and design of network that gives LISA founders access to information, training tools, and the right support for shaping their ideas into MVP.
As Deepti Pahwa, Founding Partner spoke about LISA’s vision recently on the COHORT 4 Kick-off -
“The goal is to create equitable access to network & education for entrepreneurs and pair them together with equally diverse facilitation, mentors and leadership teams to transform the entrepreneurial ecosystem together.
In every entrepreneurship hotspot, there are important connectors and influencers who may not be entrepreneurs themselves. We at LISA believe in recalibrating mindsets, expanding skillsets and up-leveling the action-set by way of having these amazing people join our team and curate the best ecosystem imaginable for enabling Entrepreneurship .”
Deeply rooted in Silicon Valley, LISA team connects from West to East Coast, from Northern to Southern Europe and beyond to bring a breadth of diverse experiences, expertise and perspectives across industries and technologies and is committed to creating the best experience for LISA Founders, for the benefit of each other as well as the global start-up community and the greater world.
Nick’s passion is to work with cutting-edge technology and build products and experiences that users love: his goal is to become one of the best designers in the tech industry.
Quoting his own words “ LISA represents the most talented and diverse group of people I worked with. I’m inspired by the team every day and learn a lot from everyone”.
Valerie works in the Swiss watch industry as Managing Director. Her experience spans from team management, to planning and process restructuring. Her passion for working, reinvigorates every day when she sees her team growing through their innovative visions.
Helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals and expand her knowledge with them is what really drives her in LISA journey.
Andres is a Camera and Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning passionate. He leverages his knowledge to develop Camera & Software & Computer Vision enhanced experiences.
What he enjoys the most through the LISA journey is to be a support for fellow LEADers to take their own ideas from concept to MVP.
As a strategy, business development, entrepreneurship and innovation expert, Martina’s passion is to be a source of insight to help people and businesses expand their abilities and possibilities, identify and satisfy unmet customers´ needs opening up new market and investment opportunities.
She finds LISA to be the perfect venue to continue her lifelong learning journey along with Stanford global community, develop and facilitate opportunities for others as well as to act as a change agent to drive improvement and challenge the status quo.
Based in Germany, Nils is an experienced founder and IT expert with a proven track record of working and consulting in various industries such as engineering, information technology and logistics. With his knowledge in IT, business planning, sales, entrepreneurship and especially customer relationship management (CRM), he has successfully built two companies from scratch.
Amit is a strategy, business development, sales, customer experience & software product engineering expert. He strives to undertake ambitious and meaningful projects and ventures, and to mindfully use passion to encourage others to join him on his journey to take them to completion. His approach is to do the right thing by taking the perspective of others, all affected stakeholders, and act in their best interest.
With LISA, he can leverage his learnings and make them structured to be a changemaker and help take ideas to fruition.
Diane is Senior Director of AI Customer Operations / Commercial Executive (Sales & Marketing). She is passionate about tech startups, Diversity & Inclusion, elevating female LEADers and international travel, her husband and toddler :).
Having grown the commercial functions of an AI technology startup from the ground up through to a globally renowned brand and successful exit, with LISA she can help support the development of new ideas, by facilitating mentorship, business services, and funding connections to other young companies.
Zankar is a Software Engineer who loves to solve problems in the most effective manner. She has 20+ years of experience in the tech world, first 10 years with Microsoft and then in the last 10 years she has co-founded 2 software companies. One of these got acquired last year and she is now on her way to disrupt the second one!
She is a lifelong learner, looking forward to being part of LISA and contributing and also learning along with this incredible team of LEADers.
Emmauel is Product Manager with extensive experience within the telecom industry (video/digital TV). He brings a great understanding of product development cycles (hardware, software, cloud, etc..) from user research to prototyping and go to market. He also has entrepreneurial experience from the eyewear market.
He is passionate about innovation and the value it can bring to people: if current solutions are not good enough, Emmanuel knows there is a gap in the market for a better one. For him, LISA is a very powerful catalyst to continue applying LEAD learnings in real-time for immediate impact and generate new opportunities for founders.
Over her 20 plus year career in Financial Markets, FX Sales, Trading and now Compliance for Markets for a bulge bracket firm, Raj had a non linear path — she took some time off trading to raise kids and re-entered the workforce as part of her firm´s Re-Entry program.
Passionate about advancement, promotion and retention of women and underrepresented groups in Finance (she is in her firm´s women’s Employee Resource Group leadership team) — Raj is also a Mentor of Undergrad women at Baruch college in NYC, through Financial women’s association on Careers in Finance as well as a long time mentor to high school boys of color (www.jpmorganchase.com/tfi).
She is interested in new technologies (intersection of markets, regulation and technology) and Financial innovation.
For her, LEAD has been a fantastic experience to collaborate with high energy folks across industries and globally to scaffold entrepreneurs. As a parent of a current Stanford Senior, she believes that life is a marathon not a sprint and hopes to demonstrate that to other LISA members who talk about “work life integration”. She also believes that Entrepreneurship helps underrepresented groups create their own opportunities, instead of waiting to be tapped on their shoulders by others: value creation needs to be learned and accelerators like LISA which have Stanford LEAD’s DNA of “Diverse by Design” do this organically.
LEAD Incubator and Start-ups Accelerator (LISA)
More info on LISA — GSB-LEAD-LISA
Contributed by:
Martina Nicodemo, Deepti Pawha
