Allison Fox works in Financial Services Corporate Business Development at Microsoft in Seattle Washington. Allison also serves as an Advisor for Fox Ventures, where she utilizes her skill set in finance, operations, and business strategy to consult on current and potential Fox Ventures investments.
Prior to Microsoft, Allison worked in M&A Strategy and Operations for Wells Fargo and Grant Thorton, LLP. Allison graduated from Elon University a B.S. in Statistics and Finance.
K.J. has spent the past 20 years building and guiding the businesses of the world’s top entertainment and sports figures. He serves as Founding Partner of Relentless Management Group and and is Senior Advisor to the President for the Washington Football Team. During this time he has established an expertise in a number of industry sectors including lifestyle, service, consumer products, and hospitality.
K.J. has a strong track record of developing, executing and aligning organizational objectives for successful business transformation. He has simultaneously established a reputation for leveraging his powerful relationships and expertise of building and leading impactful, cross-functional teams focused on outperformance by offering: ability to evaluate a business or investment opportunity through the lens of a black consumer and entrepreneur, and a combination of communications, executive management, operations and leadership skills.
K.J. holds a B.S and an MBA from University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Mike has over 25 years of management experience across several industries and organizations, both large and small. He has built relationships with entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate executives within the pet, beverage, personal care, and healthcare industry in order to develop and launch new business units and consumer brands.
Mike currently serves as Head of New Business Development for Pet Resorts at National Veterinary Associates (a JAB company), where he leads the national expansion of their PetSuites branded pet resort locations. Prior to NVA, he held various leadership roles within Merchandising at Target and became a founding member of Target’s corporate innovation incubator. In addition, Mike served as Senior Director, Women’s Health at UnitedHealth Group and was a Manager in the Healthcare practice at Deloitte Consulting.
Mike has also been a part of several entrepreneurial ventures including becoming a founding investor in a pet product company, Shameless Pets, that created the first nationally distributed upcycled dog treat, serving as an interim COO for a few local startups, and launching his own custom home development company.
Mike earned his undergraduate degree in Finance from Boston University and his MBA from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Joseph Knight is an Executive in Residence in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. He previously spent seven years as the President and CEO of InnAVasc Medical, a medical device company developing novel vascular access treatments for dialysis patients. In 2022, InnAVasc was acquired by W.L. Gore and Associates.
Joe has 20 years of experience in medical device innovation and commercialization. He has been part of the intellectual property development, business, and strategic planning for four different ventures – including iRhythm Technologies (NASDAQ: IRTC; 2022 market cap of $3.5B) and as Founder/CEO of Medici Medical Technologies. Prior to InnAVasc, Joe spent five years at Medtronic in various marketing, business development, and strategy roles. He served as the European Marketing Manager in Switzerland, responsible for ensuring successful launch of four separate technologies related to the CoreValve/Engager product lines within 15+ individual countries in the European Union. In his last role with Medtronic, as the Director of Strategic Marketing, he developed and executed the strategy that led to Medtronic’s $100M acquisition of CardioInsight.
At Duke, Joe is part of the core faculty for the Design Health Program where he teaches multiple courses on medical device innovation. He has also taught marketing at the Fuqua School of Business. Joe served eight years as an infantry soldier in the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of Staff Sergeant and was awarded the Expert Infantryman’s Badge (EIB), among the most prized peacetime decorations. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, an M.S./B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of South Florida and completed Stanford’s Biodesign Innovation Fellowship.
Joe is a co-inventor on numerous patents that have assisted in the care of over 4 million patients. Joe counts his biggest achievement as being the first person in his family to go to college.
Dan Mall is a successful Operator/Investor in several quick-serve food service concepts. He began his employment with Fox Companies in 1998, and in 2001 became an Operating Partner in what would become Fox Companies’ 30+ store multi-state Jimmy John’s franchise. Throughout his career, Dan has applied the core premises of service, simplicity, low overhead, and, most importantly, great people to foster great teams and successful outcomes.
Dan graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a B.A. in Political Science and a B.S. in Environmental Science. He maintains a Firm and Broker’s License with the North Carolina Real Estate Commission.
Shayan Rostam is the Principal of Internet Naming Co., Cofounder of D3 Global, and a specialist in maximizing the value of Top Level Domains. He has developed one of the most impressive track records in the domain industry by launching, operating, consulting for, and selling more than 50 Top Level Domains since 2013.
Shayan was previously the Chief Growth Officer for Uni Naming & Registry (.LINK, .CLICK, .PHOTO, et al), and was one of the first employees at both XYZ (.XYZ, .CARS, .RENT, et al) as their Global Director, and Intercap Registry (.INC, .DEALER, .BOX) as their Chief Registry Officer.
Beyond internet technology, Shayan’s experience also extends into real estate development and mergers & acquisitions. By the age of 24, Shayan had overseen more than 200,000 square feet of office and R&D construction for Fox Development Corporation and the University of Illinois Research Park. Shayan also received a state grant by the Illinois EPA for his sustainable infrastructure proposal. In 2021, Shayan helped prepare a multi-billion dollar technology company to go public.
Catherine Singer is a thought leader with decades of experience leading organizations in data engineering and enterprise-scale platform system development. She served most recently as Senior Vice President of Engineering for Data and Site Leader for Yahoo in Champaign, home to over 200 software developers, architects and data scientists, located on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She also led teams on both coasts and overseas as part of her company-wide, big data organization.
Catherine received her B.S. from MIT and M.S. from Columbia University, both in electrical engineering. She began her engineering career at IBM, where she received her first patent, which was used in IBM optical storage products. A Senior Principal Engineer at Lockheed-Martin, she served as technical lead on several large defense eletro-optics and signal processing programs. Catherine moved into engineering management at Lockheed-Martin as System Engineering Section Manager for Algorithms and Signal Processing.
Moving to Champaign, she was responsible for the Bluetooth stack in all Motorola devices when it was an emerging mobile technology. She played a leadership role in transitioning the Champaign team from Motorola to Yahoo, creating the Champaign site 15 years ago. Experienced in leading through change, Catherine’s team expanded their role to not only be the center of big data for Yahoo, but to also leverage their Yahoo expertise to take on Verizon big data systems and data science opportunities as well upon acquisition by Verizon. On subsequent acquisition by Apollo, she led the organization as it pivoted from largely on-premises co-located private cloud systems to a hybrid public-cloud / private colo strategy.
Linda Jing is the President and CEO of Genective, an agricultural
biotechnology company based in Champaign, Illinois. Genective is a
wholly owned subsidiary of Groupe Limagrain, the world’s fourth-largest
seed company. She is the first female and first Asian CEO in Genective’s
history. Genective develops, deregulates, and commercializes transgenic
traits for corn, soy, and cotton, with a focus on next-generation
insect-resistant technologies.
Prior to Genective, Linda spent over a decade at Monsanto (now Bayer
Crop Science) in senior global roles across corporate affairs, R&D strategy
and operations, and supply chain management, leading large-scale
transformations and supporting board-level ESG governance. She also
serves as a member for the NYSE Board Advisory Council, Extraordinary
Women on Boards (EWOB), and YPO. She holds an MBA from
Northwestern University, a Master’s degree in Economics from Fudan
University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from
Soochow University.
