Chris Brady Jr. ’05 is an investor and operator with a passion for entrepreneurship, and Co-Founder of Accelerate Yale & Yale Angels. His venture career began over 18 years ago as part of Chart Venture Partners (“CVP”) founding team, an $80m fund investing in emerging technology at the intersection of defense and commercial applications. While at CVP he Co-Founded Flyby Media, a mobile AR developer at the forefront of computer vision and real-world localization, joining the management team until its sale to Apple. Returning to CVP, Chris developed an expertise in structuring deals across the capital stack while liquidating the remaining 7 assets over 2 years and generating 65% of the fund’s total returns. He was retained by a secondary fund to manage 3 of CVP’s acquired assets, going on to realize a 11x MOIC in 5 years. He has seeded various public and private investment strategies across multiple asset classes, while actively syndicating rounds in early stage companies and working closely with the founders. Chris is also Co-Founder of Hawaii Sandalwood, a reforestation effort on the Big Island of Hawaii that is pioneering a sustainable agricultural model.

Jo Ilfeld, PhD ‘96 is an executive leadership coach, Forbes.com author and CEO and founder of Incite To Leadership, a premier Bay-Area leadership coaching and consulting company. Incite To Leadership has worked with well-known brands and companies throughout the Bay Area and the world including eBay, The SF Giants, Genentech, Clorox, and Gilead as well as high-growth start-ups and non-profits. Jo began as a small business entrepreneur who grew her first business into a million-dollar company. Inspired by her own leadership journey, Jo uses her experience to help other company leaders align their executive teams for outsize results. Jo is a graduate of Yale College and holds a PhD in Business from UC Berkeley.

Grace Hsieh '07 is a marketing and operations advisor to senior leadership teams across the tech, consumer, financial services, healthcare, education, luxury, and tourism sectors. Educated at Yale and Wharton, Grace is a Board Member of the Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance (YANA) and a Co-Founder of Accelerate Yale and Yale Angels. She has had 4 solo piano performances at Carnegie Hall.

Ishan Sinha ‘14 is the head of consumer and media investing at Point72 Private Investments, the venture and growth equity arm of Point72 Ventures. Prior to his work as a venture capitalist, he worked as a public markets investor at Point72 and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. He is an active angel investor across consumer, fintech, and deep tech as well as an LP in several leading emerging venture funds. Outside of work, Ishan teaches a popular introductory venture capital seminar at Yale College.

Frances Pollock is a composer by trade and the CEO of Midnight Oil Collective—a venture studio that incubates, accelerates, and invests in art and entertainment. She writes primarily for the stage and currently has operas and musical theater performed all over the country. Recently her work could be seen at San Francisco Symphony, Opera Grand Rapids, Greenville Light Opera, Kaufman Center, Chicago Lyric, Seattle Opera, Chautauqua, Opera Omaha, Aspen Music Festival, PROTOTYPE, and others.

Eric Rubenstein ’03 is Managing Partner at New Climate Ventures (“NCV”). Launched to tackle climate change with a holistic approach, NCV invests in innovative early-stage startups broadly across the carbon removal, reduction and avoidance ecosystems. NCV officially launched in October 2021, and has invested in companies that span the areas of climate tech, recycling, alternative materials, and energy transition, among other emissions avoiding technologies. Prior to founding New Climate Ventures, Eric held investment, fundamental strategy, and trading roles at Citigroup and Louis Dreyfus in their commodities and energy trading divisions respectively. A psychology major with a focus on behavioral neuroscience, Eric graduated Yale University with a Bachelor’s degree. After graduating Yale, Eric received his MBA from Temple University with a focus on global business and entrepreneurship.

Lisa Brand ‘92 is a growth strategist in the tech sector, helping startups and enterprises bring new products to market and build user adoption habits that fuel customer lifetime value. She has done transformative growth work as a product marketing and storytelling leader at Disney, Autodesk, and PopSugar, and has focused most recently on cultivating female entrepreneurs as Head of Digital Growth at Vista and as CMO of Brit Morin’s Selfmade. Lisa graduated from Yale College and studied screenwriting as a graduate fellow at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Michael Lewittes ‘89 is a media industry expert, entrepreneur, and investor, with a track record for scaling businesses.  During his 30-year career, he has held leadership positions at Hearst, News Corp., and NBC. In 2009, Michael founded Gossip Cop, the first and only website to fact-check entertainment news. Gossip Cop was acquired by a private equity-backed digital publisher.

Ellen Su ‘13 is the Chief Product Officer at Wellinks, Inc., formerly known as Convexity Scientific, Inc. As the former CEO and Co-Founder of the startup Wellinks, which was acquired by Convexity Scientific, Ellen has raised funding, directed product, led design, and formed critical business relationships. At the core, she is an operations and product person who focuses on empowering creative teams to deliver user-critical features. She is a member of the leadership teams of Accelerate Yale and Yale Angels.

Adam Brenner ‘05 is a Partner at DLA Piper and Co-Founder of Accelerate Yale & Yale Angels. He represents private equity funds, technology companies and venture capital funds based in the U.S. and abroad – on their financings and other corporate transactions. Adam particularly enjoys advising companies and lead investors on strategic company growth, especially national security-related technology companies. He also has extensive experience working with emerging growth companies and investors on structuring transactions around international trade matters.

Sam Hendel ’03 is a Co-Founder of Chord Music Partners, the world's largest pure play music rights catalog, and Co-Founder of Accelerate Yale & Yale Angels. Chord is the natural extension of Sam’s accomplished background as an investor and entrepreneur with a passion for music, building a portfolio of music rights representing works from iconic artists such as The Weeknd, David Guetta, OneRepublic, Kid Cudi, Diplo, and Fleetwood Mac. Sam is also the Founder of JKBX ("Jukebox"), which is building a scaled platform to democratize music assets through fractional ownership. He Co-Founded Dataminr, the leading real-time AI company for event and risk detection with his two Yale roommates. In addition, he is an experienced professional in the Investment Management industry and served as President and Portfolio Manager of Levin Easterly Partners, the value investing firm, specializing in Arbitrage, Event-Driven, and Value investing across all sectors.

Elle Pak ‘15 is an investor and startup operator with previous strategy and operations focused roles at Purpose Venture Group, DoorDash, and HelloFresh. She also serves as a member of the Korean American Community Foundation’s Associate Board. Elle studied Economics at Yale and holds an MPA from Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs. 

Tevin Mickens YC‘18, a Yale alum with a BA in Computing & the Arts, is a senior machine learning product manager at eBay and former product manager at Twitter, who also enjoys oil painting, documentary filmmaking, and calisthenics in his spare time.

Jonathan Goldberg, MBA ‘21 is the Director of HHX, the innovation division of Howard Hughes. In this role, Jonathan leads the operational and strategic execution of the company’s core innovation initiatives, including the use of emerging technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence. Jonathan is a two-time startup founder, a volunteer venture investor with Y Startup Index, and served as a portfolio manager for the accelerator program at Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY).

Waverly Swinton '04 is a product, strategy, and marketing leader who has worked in leading technology companies including Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Samsung. As an angel investor, she participated in two rounds of the Seattle Angel Conference and is the Fund Organizer for Seattle Angel Conference #25. She has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, an MA in International Affairs from Georgetown University, and a BA from Yale College. She is a member of the Yale Angels and Governance Committees.

Kayla Wooley ‘21 Is the Founder and CEO of Nurse Ranger and the Founder of StaffOnTap. She is a serial entrepreneur in senior care technology and the third generation in her family business of healthcare facilities. Kayla is a graduate of Boston College, has an MPH from the Yale School of Public Health, and holds an MBA from Cornell. Kayla combines her expertise in senior care, educational learnings, and passion for public health innovation to develop and grow healthcare startups that improve the quality of care for elders.

Wendy Maldonado D’Amico ’93 works at the Yale Alumni Association (YAA) on #50WomenAtYale150, a celebration commemorating the dual milestones of coeducation at the university. She holds a BA in English from Yale University, an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. She serves as a member of the YAA Board of Governors, as well as a Director of Accelerate Yale and Yale Angels.