Introducing: SVB Trek Class of 2020
Every January, Silicon Valley Bank invites a select group of university students from around the world to come to Silicon Valley for SVB Trek. Over three days, the cohort is introduced to the people leading our ecosystem — founders, investors, and industry leaders that we refer to as “guides” — through an immersive learning experience featuring intimate fireside chats, curated dinners, and hands-on workshops. Our goal is to help the students create and maintain relationships with world-class peers and mentors. Our hope is that these relationships will serve as the foundation for their networks as they become founders, investors, and industry leaders themselves.
Here’s a sneak peek at just a few of this year’s guides:
- Alfred Chuang — Chairman, Magnet Systems
- Andre Charoo — VP Strategic Development, Hired + Founder/Managing Partner, Maple VC
- Avichal Garg — Managing Partner & Co-founder, Electric Capital
- Bert Kaufman — Head of Corporate & Regulatory Affairs, Zoox
- Bilal Zuberi — Partner, Lux Capital
- Dave Sabow — Head of Technology & Healthcare Banking, SVB
- Ellen Ayoub — Senior VP, Frontier Tech, SVB
- Joshua Browder — Founder, DoNotPay (2016 Trek Alum)
- Will Bondurant — CFO, Castlight Health
- Claire Lee — Head of Startup Banking, SVB
- Christine Hong — Founder & CEO, apothecary.ai (2019 Trek Alum)
- Conrad Burke — VP of New Ventures, ISF Incubator
- Courtney McClintock — Marketing Communications, SVB
- Frank Chien — CEO & Co-Founder, PrizePool
- Joe Woo — Co-Founder & CTO, PrizePool
- Jake Mendel — VP Startup Banking, SVB
- Kamir Kothari — Director, Startup Banking, SVB
- Lisa Wehden — Investor, Bloomberg Beta
- Lewis Hower — Managing Director, Startup Banking, SVB
- Minn Kim — Investor, Bloomberg Beta
- Priya Rajan — Managing Director, SVB Global Gateway
- Raymond G. Nasr — Lecturer in Management, Stanford GSB
- Ryan Choi — Head of Work at a Startup, Y Combinator
- Stuart Coulson — Adjunct Professor, Stanford GSB & d.school
- Shruti Gandhi — Managing Partner, Array Ventures
- Shruti Shah — Entrepreneur in Residence, SVB
- Tuan Pham — Managing Director, VC Emerging Manager Practice, SVB
- Ulili Onovakpuri — Partner, Kapor Capital
We work side-by-side with leading universities from around the world to build a cohort of students with diverse academic, professional, and personal experiences with a unified desire to become the next generation of innovators. While exposure to the guides is an incredible experience, it’s our belief that the peer-to-peer relationships fostered during Trek have the most impact — Trek alum have gone on to become co-founders, clients, and investors in each other’s companies.
This year’s cohort stats at glance: 25 students, from 20 schools and 5 countries from a broad range of programs (Undergrad, MBA, PhD, and Masters) and areas of study (Biomedical Engineering, Business Administration, Biophotonics, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Clinical Medicine, Economics, Education, Electrical Engineering, Finance, Health Information Science, Health Economics, Information Systems, Law, Marketing, Mechatronics, Software Engineering, and more)!
So, without further ado — introducing the 2020 SVB Trek Cohort in their own words:
Abigail Kohler — Brown University
Abigail Kohler is the Co-Founder and CEO of ResusciTech, a venture that aims to create innovative solutions for emergency medicine and is currently developing and testing a wearable CPR feedback technology.
Abigail is a senior studying biomedical engineering at Brown University. During her time as an undergrad she’s worked on many projects including 3D printing prosthetics, building a motorized plow for farmers in Gambia, and creating educational games and augmented reality simulations.
Ali Roghani — Virginia Tech
Originally from Blacksburg, VA, Ali Roghani is the Founder and President of ThermaSENSE. ThermaSENSE is an engineering technology company working to commercialize Ali’s patent-pending inventions. One of these inventions allows for non-invasive INTERNAL temperature measurement of objects. This technology, referred to as AccuTemp, has a variety of applications in industries including healthcare, industrial processes, and agriculture. Ali has earned Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Business Administration from Virginia Tech and is currently finishing his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the same institution. In his free time, Ali enjoys watching Shark Tank, eating pizza, and thinking of new applications for the technology he has developed.
Alyiah Ellsworth — Howard University
I am a senior, Marketing major at the illustrious Howard University. I graduated high school with an associates degree in only 3 years; I will be graduating from Howard University with a bachelors in Spring 2020 at the age of 20; I’ve studied abroad twice; and I’ve won two entrepreneurial pitch competitions. I have overcome many obstacles in life that have matured me mentally, physically, and spiritually. I love to travel and I embrace and advocate for diversity in all forms. My ultimate goal is to positively impact and inspire young people of color around the world. 2019 has taught me that it is okay to take risks and fail, to explore new and different things, and to own my individuality and add value to every environment in my own unique way. Three words that best describe me are Creative, Catalyst, & Believer. I have always wanted to create my own, whether it be as an entrepreneur or carving a new path, or an innovator repaving a path that has become outdated and worn. I find true bliss where problem-solving and creativity collide.
Amanda Deng — Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Amanda has held roles across several venture/startup realted firms including: Partner at Rough Draft Ventures. MIT Ambassador at Lightspeed. Prev. interned at Microsoft, Karuna Health, Greylock Partners. 2018 HackMIT Organizer, Innovation Chair at MIT Society of Women Engineers
Benjamin Omonira — Texas A&M University
Senior College student currently earning a Bachelor’s Degree focused in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University. Founded a less-lethal ammunition company with a demonstrated history of working in the public safety industry
Corbin McElhanney — University of Waterloo
Corbin is a third-year Software Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. For the past two years, he has volunteered as Co-Director of Hack the North, one of the biggest student hackathons in the world. In the summer of 2019, Corbin was selected as one of roughly 50 students from across North America to participate in the Kleiner Perkins Fellows program, where he interned with cybersecurity startup Shape Security. Prior to Shape Security, Corbin was an intern at Y Combinator-backed Focal Systems, where he assisted in the development of cutting-edge retail automation solutions. In high school, Corbin joined and eventually led the engineering team for a startup called Releaf, playing a pivotal role in earning Releaf a place in Y Combinator.
Throughout his academic career, Corbin has consistently maintained a standard of excellence in school. Corbin won the C.D. Howe National Engineering Scholarship in late 2017, a prestigious scholarship awarded to 1 of over 65,000 male engineering undergraduates in Canada. He has earned a place on the Dean’s Honours List in each of his undergraduate semesters and was the valedictorian of his high school class.
Declan Goncalves — University of Waterloo
I’m a fourth-year Software Engineering student at the University of Waterloo with a passion for software development, breakthrough technology, healthcare, entrepreneurship, and improving the world; and I aspire to develop a career integrating them all.
In 2018, I was the youngest of 30 recipients of the Canadian Developer 30 Under 30 award. In my sophomore year of University, I was named Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Canada Champion, and around the same time I also placed first at Harvard’s HackHarvard hackathon.
I’m one of the Co-Founder of Stride’s platform that helps rehabilitation professionals deliver better, more economical care to their patients with the help of A.I. As CEO, I’ve been responsible for leading our team (4 engineers, 1 designer, and 1 neurosurgeon) by defining the vision for the product, mapping that vision into actionable objectives, and coordinating the execution of our strategy. After taking some time off from school to pursue working on Stride full-time, I realized that there’s no other career I would be satisfied with other than entrepreneurship and I am excited to dedicate my life to it.
Deniz Dogruer — University of California, Berkeley
Deniz has a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and is currently working toward her Ph.D. in Engineering Education at the University of California, Berkeley. The decision to merge her passion for engineering and education was quite deliberate, but she stumbled upon her passion for entrepreneurship in 2017 when she co-founded Squishy Robotics, a startup developing rapidly deployable mobile sensor robots for disaster rescue, military missions and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. As Chief Operating Officer of Squishy Robotics, she has gained experience in business development and the Lean Startup Methodology through her active participation in programs such as the Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator and the NSF I-Corps program. She describes herself as a mechanical engineer by education, an educator at heart, and an entrepreneur by surprise.
Eduardo Veronese Ransolin — Columbia University
Eduardo Veronese is a MBA candidate and VC Fellow at Columbia focusing on proptech. He was most recently a product lead at Creditas, a fintech startup focused on asset-backed loans in Brazil. Before that he was a digital consultant at McKinsey and a director at his family business, a real estate development and construction firm. Eduardo holds a bachelor degree in Civil Engineering and is passionate about architecture photography.
Erykah Gooch — Indiana University
My name is Erykah Gooch and I am a junior at the Kelley School of Business studying Information Systems and Marketing. I am from Bloomington, Indiana and I am incredibly passionate about using technology to better the lives of African Americans in my community. My extracurricular activities include the Black Student Union, Kelley Peer Coaching program, and my on-campus job in which I feed fruit flies for research.
Francisco Valencia — Tecnológico de Monterrey
I am very curious and always looking forward to learn new things. I like to read on topics such as technology, entrepreneurship, leadership and consciousness. I am interested on the health tech industry and how humanity will be able to augment their physiological functions in the next decade.
Han Wang — Cornell University
Hi I’m Han! I’m currently a sophomore studying Information Science and Business at Cornell University. I was born in Xinxiang, China and grew up in Vancouver, Canada where I spent most of my childhood programming and competitive snowboarding. I am a product manager at the Cornell Design & Tech Initiative where we develop community-focused consumer software. Outside of school, I love playing the guitar and writing recursive javascript functions. Last year, I co-founded FoodFul, a venture-backed agri-tech company that modernizes dairy herd management using RFIDD sensors and AI. We are an ERA accelerator company and backed by the National Science Foundation.
Fun fact: I know over 100 cow jokes.
Inna Thalmann — University of Oxford
Inna is a PhD candidate and Cumberland Lodge Scholar based at the Health Economics Research Centre at the University of Oxford. Her research investigates the degree and determinants of suboptimal cardiovascular medication use for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The aim is to support novel policies for treatment amelioration that are needed to address the high burden and associated costs of CVD.
In 2019 Inna co-founded Neurolytic Healthcare Ltd, a digital health start-up that aims to deliver precision medicine for neurological disorders to improve patient quality of life and help clinicians optimise diagnostic and prescription decisions. The start-up was selected as one of top 10 finalists in the Panacea Stars Accelerator Programme 2019.
Prior to this, Inna worked as a Public Policy Consultant at LSE Health, where she was involved in the evaluation of the Austrian social insurance system. Inna holds an MSc in International Health Policy and Health Economics from the London School of Economics and a BA (Hons) in International Economics with a Minor in International Law from the American University of Paris.
Joyce Hsieh — Northeastern University
Hi! I’m Joyce and I am a creator. I founded my first company, Silk & Honey, in 2013 which has generated over $2m in sales. I am also a YouTube Google partner and I create weekly videos on lifestyle, beauty, and entrepreneurship. In 2017, I joined the Select, a talent management agency, and work with influential brands to produce exclusive content and promote messages and products across transnational, multi-platform channels. My specialties lie in startups, social media marketing, video production, branding strategy, and consumer research, but I am happiest when helping others realize their full potential and then amplifying it when needed!
Kate Fullen — Trinity College Dublin
My name is Kate Fullen and I’m a final year student of Law and Business at Trinity College Dublin. Innovation and entrepreneurship have shaped my time as a student at Trinity; I am the current president of the Trinity Entrepreneurial Society and have formerly held the position of Dragon’s Den Ambassador and Speakers’ Series Coordinator.
Following my second year of studies, I was selected for an internship at Ireland’s leading law firm; Arthur Cox, where I worked in the innovation and technology law department. I was then offered a training contract with the firm beginning in the year 2020.
In my third year of studies, I completed an exchange programme at the University of Sydney. During this time I worked on a project with Airbnb Sydney in collaboration with the University, examining their new experiences platform, and was selected as to join the One180 Degrees Consulting team which gave me the opportunity to work with a large local charity by helping them to enhance their approach to raising corporate funding used to support their community initiatives. I carried this consulting experience forward upon return to Trinity where I lead a team of the Irish Student Consulting Group.
King Alandy Dy — Stanford University
King is interested in Product Strategy for Enterprise Machine Learning products. He’s doing an individualized engineering major at Stanford which combines Product Design and Computer Science. Previously, he worked as an ML engineer (Shopee, SEA’s Amazon), ML researcher (Stanford) and PM in an ML team (Intuit).
Currently, he is working on an AI RPA startup for freight document processing and has received money from Bain Capital Ventures.
Laura Mena — Miami University
Laura Mena is a Senior, Marketing & Entrepreneurship student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In 2014, Laura co-founded CleatGuard, an early-stage consumer goods startup founded and funded through the nation-wide IncubatorEDU program. Her team was responsible for bringing a product concept through a rigorous development process which later led to an approved utility patent from the USPTO. On campus, she is the Managing Director of RedHawk Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in startups founded by university students or alumni. Additionally, she co-founded Miami’s Social Impact Fund, one of the first undergraduate-level funds focused on impact investing & generating socially-conscious returns. During her Junior year, Laura also participated in Miami’s Venture Capital Immersion Program and led Miami’s student team to place first regionally and in the top 3 nationally at the 2019 Venture Capital Investment Competition hosted by UNC Chapel Hill. Following graduation, Laura will be joining Kroger’s big data arm, 84.51, as a Customer Strategy & Activation Consultant.
Lucia Deschamps — Tecnológico de Monterrey
Passionate about social entrepreneurship and exponential growth. I am currently working in Beek, an audiobooks startup, and the first Mexican Startup that managed to enter YCombinator. At Beek, I am in charge of the content acquisition and Beek’s Originals area. I also founded a social impact brand called LUKA, we generate a positive impact on marginalized communities of Mexican women. The goal of our brand is to digitize and make baking services available to Mexican communities . My second project is based on the environmental impact, I created a mobile app that connects users within a student community who have a similar commute to promote car sharing. The goal is to reduce traffic congestion and pollution. My life goal is to create a social startup that allows me to change the life of millions of people who live in poverty. GESS Munich is the social entrepreneurship experience which has taught me the most, where we won the Katzy Award by developing a prototype that reduces cigarette butts contamination in the world.
Lucious McDaniel IV — The University of Texas at Austin
Lucious is currently in the Business Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin, pursuing a degree in Management Information Systems. Outside of school, he is the founder of Phly.co, a fundraising management platform that helps nonprofits connect seamlessly with student donors on college campuses. Additionally, Lucious is the COO of SmartLens.ai, a computer vision platform that helps companies unlock amazing insights by automatically tagging and captioning their images with human-level accuracy. He is also passionate about venture capital and supporting other founders in the Austin entrepreneurship ecosystem. Lucious currently leads Deal Sourcing for Genesis, the university’s student-led, alumni-backed venture fund.
When he isn’t reading about the latest trends in technology and entrepreneurship, you can find Lucious enjoying a cheeseburger or kayaking around downtown Austin.
Miracle Olatunji — Northeastern University
Miracle Olatunji is a sophomore at Northeastern University, an entrepreneur, and author of Purpose: How To Live and Lead With Impact. In high school, she founded OpportuniMe, an award-winning education organization which connected high school students to summer learning opportunities to help them develop their life and leadership skills.
At Northeastern, Miracle is a finance major with a passion for entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation. She is the Director of Innovation at Thrive, the financial literacy center at Northeastern. Miracle and her team empower their fellow students through financial literacy programs and support student-led entrepreneurial ventures in personal finance and financial technology. Miracle is also the Vice President of Access & Opportunity for the Women In Finance Initiative.
She’s been honored as a Young Global Leadership Scholar and her work has been featured in Forbes, Thrive Global, Technical.ly, BostInno, and other leading publications.
Last summer, she studied abroad in Denmark and did a freshman internship program at Morgan Stanley. This summer, she’s working as a sophomore summer analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York.
Nicholas Wong — Harvard University
Nicholas Wong is a tinkerer with a passion for cybersecurity and living machines. In his free time, you’ll find him working at a lab bench growing cells, building out his cybersecurity company (42eof LLC), or designing new machines to mess with. Looking to the future, he hopes to play a major role in venture capital and politics.
Peter Jianrui Liu — University of Oxford/University of Toronto
Peter is a DPhil in Clinical Medicine Candidate at the University of Oxford, supervised by Profs Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Jane McKeating, and an MD Candidate at the University of Toronto. As a clinician-scientist in training, he has over seven years of cancer research experience and conducted medical research across four continents. He served as President of the Oxford University Scientific Society and is currently Executive Director of the health innovation think tank BRIGHT International. He has interned at the World Health Organization where he was elected President of the WHO Intern Board.
His clinical and scientific experiences have identified early and accessible cancer diagnosis as key for treating the deadliest cancers, and founded Oxford Cancer Analytics to apply cutting-edge deep machine learning technology for early cancer detection and treatment. His team was Overall Winner of the University of Oxford-wide All-Innovate Competition among over 100 teams.
Pratik Bhat — University of California, Berkeley
Managing Director of Free Ventures, a non-profit startup accelerator at Cal for student-founded startups. Previously interned as a PM at Palo Alto Networks and on the corporate venture teams at Dell and SK Hynix
Roy Stillwell — University of Notre Dame
I’m currently working on a PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, focusing in biophotonics. I’m building a handheld imaging device using fd-DOS technology (which uses laser light) called NearWave primarily for breast cancer applications, though it has potential in brain imaging, neonatal care, muscle imagine, among others. I previously worked as a Senior Systems Architect for a local municipality designing city wide network infrastructure, as well as coding a number of internal applications. I’ve been interested in starting companies for a while now, and am excited to get started on my first using the NearWave technology.
Sai Saraswathy Menon — University of Southern California
Born in a small town in India and traveling to Oman before I turned 1 to spend the next 22 years of my life there and the next 5 years in the US, it’s safe to assume that I am an amalgamation of various cultures and my identity cannot be associated to a place. I have often been told that my name, Sai Saraswathy Menon, is misleading to my personality because people often expect a traditional small town girl, which I clearly am not but there are a lot of traditional values within me imbibed by my parents. My parents have been in Oman for over 30 years and have established a company with over 200 employees. They started the company when I was 2 years old and needless to say, watching them build the company ground up has been more fruitful than any other experience would be.
When I was in fourth grade I had decided that I would one day go to the US to do my Masters in Engineering. Growing up around engineers , inspired and attracted me towards it. In high school, I developed an affinity towards Computer Science and I decided that I wanted to delve deeper into the field which led me to choose my education at Wichita State and now University of Southern California.
