This webinar will focus on the journeys of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or People of Color) in entrepreneurship. Activate panelists will share their experience through the application and selection process as well as their perspective as minority founders in the Activate fellowship.
Panelists:
Andee Wallace (Robigo, Cohort 2022): As co-founder and CEO of Robigo, Andee Wallace is redesigning crop treatments to create a more sustainable food system. A winner of the Wave Summit’s Emerging Women Founders Award, Wallace has a bachelor's degree in bioengineering from Stanford and a Ph.D. in bioengineering from MIT, where she was a Ford Fellow and Sloan Scholar. Wallace has a proven track record of applying synthetic biology to develop sustainably produced materials for the apparel, energy, and medical industries, and business experience co-running a mission-driven apparel brand.
Juniyali Nauriyal (Photonect Interconnect Solutions, Cohort 2023): Juniyali Nauriyal is co-founder and CEO of Photonect Interconnect Solutions. Previously, she was a Ph.D. student at the University of Rochester, where she worked on developing a novel technique to connect optical fibers to photonic chips using laser adhesion–one of the biggest challenges in the industry, as 80 percent of a device's cost is in packaging and testing. She received her master’s degree from the University of Rochester.
Jose LaSalle (florrent Energy, Cohort 2023): Jose LaSalle is the co-founder and CEO of florrent. Before that, he worked as product manager and lead engineer at Ventacity Systems. He earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a research focus on electrochemistry. LaSalle's goal is to commercialize solutions that contribute to the well-being of people and the planet, and he envisions his work supporting the transition to a renewable, resilient, and equitable energy economy.
Hector Andrade (Lucidean, Cohort 2023): Hector Andrade is the co-founder of Lucidean. Andrade obtained his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from UC Santa Barbara. Before this, he was employed at Intel's Silicon Photonics Products Division. Andrade’s research centers on creating loss-tolerant fiber optic interconnects to enable energy-efficient next-generation data centers and artificial intelligence and machine learning networks.
The Activate Fellowship transforms scientists and engineers into hard-tech founders. The two-year experience provides early-stage science entrepreneurs with funding, technical resources, and unparalleled support from a network of scientists, engineers, technologists, and fellow entrepreneurs.
Applications open on Sept. 19! For more information about the fellowship and this year's application process and to sign up for application updates, visit https://www.activate.org/apply.