Cheryl Cheng, Founder, Vive Collective
Cheryl is the founder of Vive Collective and was most recently a General Partner at BlueRun Ventures, one of Silicon Valley’s premiere VC firms, where she led rounds and worked closely with digital health and wellness companies like Hello Heart (at-home heart health management), gennev (tele-health services for gynecology, primary care, and lifestyle behaviors), and Blue Fever (an online space for Gen Z to increase belonging and resilience). Across other sectors, she has worked with HumanAPI, Waze, Chomp, and Kabbage. Cheryl currently sits on the board of Kiddo, a pediatric remote patient monitoring company and Samacare, a prior authorization platform for specialty medications. She brings a rare combination of finance, marketing, and operational experience to support and grow companies. Her mission to radically improve healthcare began over 15 years ago when she helped launch Health and Wellness initiatives at The Clorox Company. As a former brand manager in new products, she gets hands-on in many critical areas including user research and insights to identify product opportunities, investment white spaces, and user experiences. Cheryl is an advisor to Stanford’s BioDesign program where she teaches go-to-market strategies, and mentors faculty and student teams. She is also a Board Member at the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting families with sick children in their time of need. She has a B.A. from Stanford University and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where she was a Forte Foundation Scholar. Cheryl lives in Menlo Park with her husband Albert and their two children, 14 year-old Connor and 11 year-old Chloe. She enjoys cooking dinner for her friends, visiting new cities, and tennis.
Fern Mandelbaum, Managing Director. Emerson Collective
Fern Mandelbaum is a Managing Director at Emerson Collective, where she leads early-stage investing on the venture team. She is also a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she created and teaches courses such as “Entrepreneurship from Diverse Perspectives,” “POWer–Building the Entrepreneurial Mindset,” and “Equity by Design – Building Diverse and Inclusive Organizations.” Fern was the co-founder of Vista Venture Partners, an early-stage venture firm, and of Skyline Products, a toy invention firm that was acquired by IDEO.
Eric Chen, Seed Stage Tech Investor, OVO Fund
Eric Chen is a seed stage tech investor at OVO Fund who previously co-founded an e-commerce company, and helped launch a real estate investment fund. He invests and works with scrappy, persistent, visionary and high integrity entrepreneurs with a chip on their shoulder to build the next generation of technology companies. Eric received his MBA and BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and teaches Startup Garage at Stanford GSB.
Dr. Rafic Makki, Chief Technologist at Mubadala Capital – Ventures
Dr. Rafic Makki is a technologist and an educator with a deep passion for science and technology. As head technologist at Mubadala Capital – Ventures, he oversees the technology strategy for building the company’s investment portfolio. He has a diverse experience that spans across academia, government and industry. He is a long-time veteran of the semiconductor field, serving in his most recent position as Executive Fellow of GLOBALFOUNDRIES. He began his career in academia, elevating to the rank of tenured Professor of ECE at UNC-Charlotte, and served in administration as Dean of IT at UAE University and VP for Research at Masdar Institute. In government, Rafic served as Head of Strategic Planning of the Abu Dhabi Education Council and senior advisor to the Director General.
Rafic pioneered the iDDT pulse method for testing semiconductor integrated circuits. He has worked on research funded by DARPA, NSF, Intel, IBM, and Carolinas Medical Center, among others, and won several research awards including the 2002 First Citizen Research Scholar Medal and the ALCOA Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Semiconductor Research Corporation and serves on the SemiSynBioconsortium and roadmap executive committee.
Rafic is an avid advocate of individuals with special needs and currently serves as a member of the Community and Legacy Committee of the Special Olympics 2019 World Summer Games.
Jay Rughani, Investing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Jay Rughani is an investing partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he specializes in healthcare technology, with a focus on AI and data products. He is inspired by entrepreneurs using software to accelerate clinical research, enable better care delivery, and increase affordability for patients. Jay helped to lead a16z’s investments in and is partnered with numerous ambitious companies, including Alchemy, Biodock, Freenome, Inductive, Komodo, Midstream, Orchestra, Pearl, Thatch, Thyme, Topography, Turquoise, and Valar.
Prior to joining a16z in 2018, Jay was an early team member at Flatiron Health (acquired by Roche for ~$2B). There, he helped to build some of the company’s first healthcare ML-based data products. He later led numerous commercial partnerships with large biopharma companies, smaller biotechs, and other healthcare organizations. Before Flatiron, he consulted for large healthcare and technology companies around the world at Deloitte, worked at a seed-stage startup called Dealermatch.com (acquired by Cox Enterprises), and co-founded an unsuccessful startup with his college roommate.
Jay graduated from Emory University with a degree in Mathematics & Economics and grew up mostly in Palm Harbor, FL, apart from a 3 year stint in boarding school in London, UK (not Hogwarts, regrettably).