Chip’s investment interests and experience broadly cover companies and technologies in the information technology sector. He is also an investment partner in XFactor Ventures, a Flybridge community fund focused on investing in female founders.

Before joining the firm in May 2002, Chip was a General Partner with Greylock Partners, a leading venture capital firm he joined in 1994. While at Greylock, Chip led or participated in numerous successful investments in the enterprise information technology field.

Prior to Greylock, he was with Company Assistance Limited, an investment and consulting firm in Warsaw Poland; and Bain and Company, an international management consulting firm. Chip received a BA with honors from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and a Ford Scholar.

Leslie Feinzaig is Founder & CEO of the Female Founders Alliance, a network of founders, investors, partners and champions that collaborate to help women and non-binary startup leaders succeed. FFA offers programming, community, incubation, deal flow and investment opportunities, with a mission to increase the number of successful member founders 20 times over in 10 years or less. Leslie’s background is in technology and strategy consulting, with a BSc from the London School of Economics and an MBA from Harvard Business School (with a full scholarship). Leslie was named one of Forbes Magazine’s Most Powerful Women from Central America & the Caribbean, Seattle Magazine’s Most Influential People, and Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. She’s a frequent speaker and published author. She was born and raised in San Jose, Costa Rica, and now lives in Seattle with her husband and their two daughters.

Ann Leamon is the Chief Operating Officer and a Co-founding Partner of Bella Private Markets, a boutique consulting firm that provides actionable insights for groups involved in private capital markets. Previously, she was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard Business School, where she worked with Josh Lerner and Felda Hardymon to redesign and create the material for the Venture Capital and Private Equity class, one of the most over-subscribed offerings in the second-year curriculum. During the same time, Ann served as Director of Communications for Bessemer Venture Partners, a top-tier global venture capital and growth equity investment firm. In this position, she attended the firm’s Investment Committee meetings over a decade, which gave her a thorough applied understanding of the venture capitalists’ perspective. At HBS, she also co-founded and ran the Center for Case Development, designing its offerings and teaching HBS’s case writers their craft. Ann started her career as a forecaster, first in the electric power industry and then for L.L. Bean, the catalog retailer, and had previous experience as a pastry chef and bicycle mechanic.

With an MA in Economics from University of Montana and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars, Ann tries to strike a balance between left- and right-brain thinking. She has judged pitch fests for the Maine Center for Enterprise Development and published poems in such journals as The Lyric and The Barefoot Muse. She has co-authored more than 125 pieces of teaching material for Harvard Business School and, with Josh Lerner and Felda Hardymon, three editions of Venture Capital and Private Equity: A Casebook, along with the textbook, Venture Capital, Private Equity, and the Financing of Entrepreneurship (Wiley, 2012). She bicycles, knits, and writes in Gloucester Massachusetts, the country’s oldest fishing port, with her supportive husband and a squirrel-crazed golden retriever.

Aaron Martin is executive vice president, chief digital officer of Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH) and managing general partner of Providence Ventures (PV). Providence St. Joseph Health is a not-for-profit health system that includes Providence Health & Services and St. Joseph Health. Both organizations have served the Western U.S. for more than a century and together have 111,000 caregivers (employees) who serve 50 hospitals, 829 clinics, and hundreds of programs and services. Martin is responsible for the digital, web, mobile and online marketing channels for PSJH. His team is also responsible for driving innovative programs across PSJH that increase convenience, lower cost and improve quality. Martin is also responsible for early stage/venture technology and medical device investments for PV’s $150 million fund. He serves as an observer/board member on the boards of PV portfolio companies AVIA and Kyruus.

Prior to PHS, Martin worked for Amazon, McKinsey & Company, and was an executive/founder of two early-stage technology companies funded by New Enterprise Associates and Mayfield.

While at Amazon, Martin was general manager of CreateSpace, Amazon’s self-publishing and print-on-demand business. CreateSpace gives authors the ability to publish their book on Amazon for free globally. Martin went on to lead the Kindle North American Trade business, helping major publishing partners like Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Harper Collins transition their businesses to e-books on Kindle.

Miriam Huntley is the CTO and a Co-Founder of Day Zero Diagnostics, a healthcare startup spun out of Harvard University to develop a genomic sequencing-based rapid diagnostic for bacterial infections. As CTO of the company, Dr. Huntley leads the machine learning, computational biology, and software engineering development, and her work at the startup has earned her recognition as a TedMed Hive Innovator and as one of MedTech Boston 40 under 40 Healthcare Innovators. She earned her BSc from MIT in Physics and her PhD in Applied Math at Harvard University, where she developed data analysis methods and theoretical models for problems in biology

Melissa Fensterstock is CEO of Landsdowne Labs, a spin out from the Langer Lab at MIT.  Previously she ran corporate development for a small, publicly traded biotech company as well as ran a consumer product start up. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge, and a BA in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins. She lives in Fairfield County, CT with her husband and two children.

Anna Palmer is passionate about the intersection of profit and purpose. Currently, Anna is co-founder and CEO of Dough, an innovative platform to discover and buy female founded products. She also is co-founder and investing partner at XFactor Ventures, a seed stage venture fund backing the next wave of billion dollar female entrepreneurs.  Prior to Dough and XFactor, Anna was co-founder and CEO of Fashion Project, the industry leader in online designer clothing donation, Anna led the double bottom line company to process over 350,000 items, grow to 60+ employees, power national giving programs for Simon Properties, Zappos, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and more, and distribute funds to over 2000 organizations in 36 countries. Following the Fashion Project Community’s acquisition by Union & Fifth in 2016, Anna joined as SVP of Marketing & Strategy, growing monthly revenue by over 300% and leading the focus on profitabilty.

Anna has been featured discussing Fashion Project, entrepreneurship, and double bottom line business models in Forbes, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, InStyle Magazine, CNBC SquakBox, and as a keynote speaker on Profit + Purpose at MCON, Sustainatopia, and more.

Prior to founding Fashion Project, Anna focused on Social Entrepreneurship at Harvard Law School, taking classes in Venture Finance and Social Enterprise and working on a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors, including a double impact education company that went on to be a semi-finalist in the Dell Social Innovation Challenge.

Anna is featured in the book Counter Mentors, currently available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Natalya is considered one of the top leaders in the emerging field of small satellite propulsion. Natalya worked with her Co-founder to invent a new form of propulsion engine that made use of a liquid ion propulsion technology for small satellites that is safer to handle, cheaper to produce, and smaller in terms of mass and volume while she earned her doctorate in space propulsion at MIT in 2014.

In 2017, Natalya introduced a diversity program for hiring consisting of targeted recruitment, community outreach, co-op and internships, and community college outreach to augment its workforce with women and minorities that have been underrepresented in the industry. Over the past 12 months, 55% of Accion’s new hires were women.

Natalya is passionate about giving back to the community and mentoring those in her industry. She is one of the first mentors for the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship, where she is mentoring a female aerospace student from Purdue University. By teaching the fundamentals of leadership and entrepreneurship, Natalya is also paving the way for a new generation of entrepreneurs by working as an official mentor at Youth CITIES, a Boston based nonprofit that empowers middle and high school students to innovate and drive change in their community.

As an early stage investor in ventures led by female entrepreneurs & gender-diverse teams I bring “peripheral vision” on emerging consumer & technology trends and customer engagement practices. A former co-founder of private equity firm Lineage Capital, my previous private equity experience combined with my current role as a venture capitalist ensure a well-rounded perspective on successful business models, operational and market issues and consumer trends all in the context of a company’s capital structure and value proposition. My passion is helping to drive value creation and innovation. In a world where “relevance is everything” and customers are looking to be delighted, I enjoy thinking about how a company’s unique value proposition can be leveraged to achieve this.

*Co-founder of Victress Capital (venture)
*Co-founder of Lineage Capital (private equity)
*Heritage Partners, Seidler Capital
*CPA (lapsed)
*Experience includes structuring private equity transactions, raising debt and equity, strategy setting and board of director participation

Jason Kraus is the founder of startup consulting firm Prepare4VC as well as venture partner with EQx Fund. His passion for business and knowledge, accrued over the years, has made Jason a sought-after authority for entrepreneurs and innovators. To help others who share his passion, Jason is actively involved in StartupGrind and NextGen Summit, two notable startup communities developed to aid entrepreneurs in their endeavors. His hope is to help new founders get a strong foothold in their industry in order to increase their chances of success.

Maia brings insight and deep experience to her role as Converge Founder & General Partner, leveraging her 25 years investing in and financing B2B enterprise tech companies. From her days launching BancBoston Venture’s west coast office in Palo Alto, Maia has spent 17 years in venture investing in software application, infrastructure, Internet, and data-enabling start-ups. She has developed industry leading expertise based on her involvement with over 50 M&A transactions, 17 IPOs, 22 board and observer roles.

Maia’s investments and involvements include OnDisplay (IPO), Verstata (IPO), Docent (IPO), Iowa Telecom (IPO), InQuira (acquired by Oracle), Watchfire (acquired by IBM), and WebCT (acquired by Blackboard). Maia headed BancBoston Ventures’ $340M portfolio, served as an MD of Shott Capital’s $2.7B in LP commitments to venture capital funds, and underwrote over $2.5B in structured debt facilities to finance numerous acquisitions for her technology company clients.

Maia mobilized Converge’s robust venture partner network to align these skilled executives with our entrepreneurs. This powerful network, when called-upon, helps our entrepreneurs achieve their goals faster and accelerate their companies’ growth.

A trustee and alumna of Wellesley College, Maia currently serves as the Vice Chairman at the New England Venture Capital Association and is passionate about supporting initiatives that super-charge the entrepreneurial climate.

Maia understands that the player on the field is the CEO, not the VC, and owes her success to the meaningful relationships she’s built with entrepreneurs over time.

Deb Kemper is a partner at Golden Seeds Venture Fund, focused on investing in early stage enterprise B2B and medtech companies. She formerly led the Boston Forum of Golden Seeds, a national angel investor group. Prior to launching Golden Seeds Venture Fund, she built a portfolio of over two dozen early stage investments via Libra Global Partners, LLC.

Previously, Deb was a consultant with McKinsey & Company where she served clients in the energy, utility, electronics, and healthcare sectors. Her functional experience spans manufacturing, product development, operations and strategy. She has provided leadership support to organizations in China, Peru and the United States.

Deb was the founding organizer for TEDxShanghaiWomen in 2012, which was the first TEDxWomen event in mainland China. She speaks at various events on women in leadership and early stage venture investing.

Deb earned her MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College where she was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Cornell University where she graduated With Distinction and was a member of the Varsity Women’s Crew. She repatriated to the United States in 2013, after living in Peru and China for 8 years.

Kyle is Vice President of Market Strategy at OpenView, where he partners with executive teams in OpenView’s portfolio to accelerate top-line growth through pricing and packaging, go-to-market execution and product led growth. He also launched OpenView’s Expansion SaaS benchmarking initiative, now in its third year. Before that Kyle was a Director at Simon-Kucher & Partners, the global marketing and strategy consulting firm known as the world leader in pricing. Over the course of six years he led consulting teams on strategy engagements with market leaders in SaaS and digital subscription businesses.