Meet Our New Partners!
2019 marks the 7th year of operation for Dorm Room Fund. Every year, several of our partners graduate from undergrad or MBA programs, and subsequently DRF, going on to do great things in tech and beyond.
After a successful call for new partner applications in late 2018, we’re ecstatic to announce our new partners from our HQ Team, and investment teams across Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, and the Bay Area. Read on below to learn more about them!
Bay Area
Amber Yang
Amber is a sophomore at Stanford studying physics and computer science. While at Stanford, Amber founded SeerTracking, an early stage startup developing machine learning algorithms for tracking and mapping space debris as a service for private space companies. For her work, she was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 and won the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
Prior to joining Dorm Room Fund, she worked on the Advanced Sensors team at MIT Lincoln Labs. On campus, she is a Business Development lead for the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES), and she is particularly excited about early stage deep-tech and financial tech startups. In her spare time, Amber can be found writing long-form journalism or exploring art museums.
David Mackanic
David is an Accel Innovation Scholar at Stanford, and was previously the President of the Stanford InSITE Fellowship, an organization that brings MBAs and engineers together to work with local startups and VCs. He is currently a Chemical Engineering Ph.D. Candidate at Stanford, where he researches the intersection of electrochemical energy storage and polymer science. Specifically, David aims to develop robust, flexible, and stretchable battery materials for applications in wearable electronics and soft robotics. He is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Chevron Stanford Graduate Fellowship. Prior to graduate school, David received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A in Chemistry from Virginia Tech.
Eric Liu
Eric is a first year MBA student at Stanford, where he’s incubating his next company. He’s interested in socially impactful companies that can scale massively in areas such as future of work and healthcare. Previously Eric started Bayes Impact, a Y Combinator and Gates Foundation-backed nonprofit that works with governments and nonprofits to improve social services with data science. He was also Head of Growth at Atrium, a legal tech company funded by A16Z, General Catalyst, and First Round, and a venture capitalist at Thomvest Ventures. Eric is Forbes 30 under 30 in Social Entrepreneurship. He went to UC Berkeley undergrad and enjoys R&B music and classical piano.
JeanClaude White
JeanClaude is an undergrad at UC Berkeley studying Political Economy with a concentration in international trade. This year he spent 6 months in Miami with Citigroup in their Latin America Corporate and Investment Bank, where he worked on business management, supporting strategy initiatives for 23 countries. JeanClaude is passionate about transforming communities through economic development and access to new opportunities. He founded Bold Venture Partners, an organization which connects underrepresented student founders to resources necessary for rapid scaling. This summer JeanClaude will be with JP Morgan IB in New York. He loves to play soccer, people watch, eat breakfast at anytime of the day and master new accents.
Justine Humenansky
Justine began her career as a professional ballet dancer, performing with companies including the Joffrey Ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. After her dance career, she went on to become an equity research analyst at Barclays, covering the Consumer Internet and Telecom Services / Infrastructure sectors. During her time at Barclays, she completed all three levels of the CFA program. She then worked in the Growth Strategy division of Equinix, a data center infrastructure company. Justine is now pursuing her MBA at Berkeley-Haas where, in addition to being a Dorm Room Fund Partner, she is a Consultant with Blockchain at Berkeley and a Haas Venture Fellow.
Kenta Yaegashi
Kenta is a junior at Stanford University and grew up in Russia, Switzerland, the U.S. and Japan. In the past, he has worked in investment banking and private equity in the U.S. and Japan and is interested in B2B, fintech, logistics, and gaming verticals. Before college, Kenta was a competitive classical violinist and now spends his free time DJing and producing music.
Linus Lee
Linus is a freshman at Berkeley studying Computer Science. He’s passionate about growing entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Midwest, and building and supporting companies that are making education and entrepreneurship accessible. At Cal, Linus is a director at Cal Hacks, the largest collegiate hackathon in the world, and teaches courses on web design and development. Prior to Berkeley, Linus was a software engineer at Spensa Technologies, a recently acquired precision agriculture startup in Indiana, and a board member of The Anvil, Purdue University’s student-run startup incubator. In his spare time, Linus is an improv pianist and dabbles in his dream of hacking together a real-life Iron Man suit in his basement.
Sarah Guzick
Sarah is a first-year MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Prior to the GSB, Sarah was an Associate Intern with G2VP, a venture and growth equity fund focused on digitization. She previously managed financial and technical diligence of energy infrastructure projects at Tesla. Sarah received her BA from Yale University, where she played on the tennis team. In her time off, she enjoys hiking and camping, flag football, and exploring new restaurants around the Bay Area.
Boston
Akshay Kirtikar
Akshay is a first-year MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Prior to Sloan, Akshay was an early employee at PatientPing where he helped scale the digital health startup across the country. He also has experience consulting for Fortune 500 companies while at Oliver Wyman, and building technology for the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. Akshay received his bachelor’s degree in Engineering and Biochemistry from Dartmouth College. Born in Mumbai and raised in Singapore, Akshay enjoys playing squash, homebrewing, and listening to independent music.
Anna Kazlauskas
Anna is a senior at MIT studying computer science and economics. She previously started Iambiq Tech, a YC-backed company that came out of automating the interns’ jobs of sorting documents while she was interning at the World Bank. She has also done research at the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, and worked as a software engineer at a financial inclusion startup. In her spare time, Anna goes dumpster diving for electronics parts and mines Ethereum.
Claire Smilow
Claire is a first year MBA at Harvard Business School. Just before HBS, Claire worked at BoxGroup, a seed stage venture fund in New York, and Skillshare, an online learning platform. At Skillshare she worked on everything from teacher acquisition & retention, to growing a customer experience team, to launching enterprise sales. She received a BA in English from Yale College and in addition to meeting early stage founders, loves to read fiction.
Garros Li
Garros is an Investment Partner at the Dorm Room Fund and currently pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School. On a part-time basis, he serves as a Venture Partner at Pioneer Fund, a venture capital fund for Y Combinator Alumni to invest in Y Combinator companies. Prior to HBS, he served five years as Co-Founder/President of Edusight, an analytics and digital portfolio product that impacted over 300,000 K-12 students across 40 countries. Edusight raised venture capital funding from Imagine K12, the education vertical within Y Combinator. In his free time, Garros enjoys writing jokes and performing stand-up comedy.
Mariel Rosic
Mariel is a neuroengineering student at Brown University, passionately curious about brains, embodiment, and human-centered impactful technologies/systems. She believe that, thanks to technologies like brain-machine interfaces and the expansion of what it means to be human, we are capable of driving our own evolution… and she wants to be a force in that revolution. Mariel is currently researching neural pathways and mechanisms of pain targeted by spinal cord stimulation devices. She is creating a suite of perspective-shifting AR/VR experiences, diving into experience design, voraciously learning more about human cognition/ perception/ consciousness/ interaction, reading every book she finds, making more time for serendipity, learning the drums and the violin, and meeting new people whenever she can. She is a leader of STEAM, a meditation community leader, MC/leader of Providence Salon, and a lover of deep sea creatures.
Sara Du
Sara is a freshman at Harvard studying CS. Previously she interned at Sway Ventures, focusing on sourcing B2B SaaS startups, and at several fintech startups as a software developer. At Harvard she organizes the Harvard China Forum Pitch Competition and directs HackHarvard. When she’s free she enjoys playing poker, watching short films, and trying interesting food in new cities.
Stephanie MacConnell
Stephanie is an Investment Partner for Dorm Room Fund Boston and is pursuing her MBA at MIT Sloan. She is a regular FinTech contributor for Forbes and has worked as a pre-MBA VC at Anthemis, as Program Director at Empire Startups, and as an Implementation Consultant at Epic (the healthcare one, not the gaming one.) At Sloan, she is exploring innovation and analytics, along with applications for blockchain technology in healthcare. In her free time, Stephanie spends too much time travel planning.
Steve Flanagan
Steve is a junior studying computer science at Northeastern University. Steve is extremely passionate about technology that empowers individuals, including peer to peer technology, social media, and software that democratises existing economic and social institutions. Prior to Dorm Room Fund, Steve founded and grew Sublimity, a software development firm specialising in blockchain development and research. Through this pursuit, Steve was repeatedly frustrated by clients that refused to pay him for completed work — which lead to Bountium, the solution for distributing work orders through smart contracts. Steve is currently building a community at bountium.org while testing the product’s early usability with local printing companies. In his free time, Steve competes on Northeastern’s Cross Country and track teams, falls into Wikipedia rabbit holes, and listens to as much jazz as he can.
New York
Alex Chen
Alex is a first-year MBA candidate at the Yale School of Management. Prior to school, Alex worked in economic development helping to manage the capitalization, origination, and investment process for several social impact funds investing into low-income communities around the US. Most recently, he worked at MUFG helping to manage its public finance portfolio. Alex is passionate in exploring the intersection between innovation and social impact. In his free time, Alex enjoys golfing, backpacking, and attending live music events.
Cindy Zhang
Cindy studies Information Science at Cornell University. During college, Cindy has founded a few startups and side projects, from connecting students to internships in China to helping college students practice public speaking with a VR game. Before Cornell, she founded and ran a nonprofit for 3000 girls to promote gender equality. In her spare time, she loves pitching startup ideas to friends, binge reading books on politics, and running 10K in every new city she visits.
Daniel Lee
Daniel is a sophomore at Yale studying Computer Science and Statistics. Previously, Daniel worked in trading at Optiver and data science/engineering at Carbon, and will be a KPCB (Kleiner Perkins) Engineering Fellow this summer. On campus, Daniel is part of the Yale Student Investment Group and Sandbox, an incubator. In his free time, Daniel loves backpacking (he leads Freshman Outdoor Orientation Trips (FOOT) at Yale, and has backpacked parts of the AT and the Negev Desert), and is an avid tennis and chess player. Fun fact about Daniel: he has a minor planet named after him!
Haywood L. Perry III
A bridge builder, dot connector, ecosystem creator, and diversity & inclusion evangelist. Formerly @ Aspen Institute, Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, White House Office of Social Innovation, JPMorgan Chase + community development stints in South Africa & India
Spencer Yen
Spencer is a junior at Columbia studying computer science, where he’s spending most of his time exploring other departments. He’s interested in thinking about the future of healthcare, food and cuisine, and tech’s sociological impact. As a Bay Area native, he grew up surrounded by the startup ethos and built iOS apps that have been featured by Apple. He previously worked at Snackpass (DRF startup!), DoorDash, Zynga, and Ever. Outside of class and work, he spends his time playing basketball and volleyball, cooking Asian food, and exploring the outdoors (especially on a skate/snow/surf/board).
Sri Bhamidipati
Sri is a first-year MBA at Columbia Business School (CBS) where he is a Venture Fellow, an MBA Associate at Bowery Capital, and a former pre-MBA intern at Schematic Ventures. Prior to joining CBS and pursuing his interests in tech investing, Sri helped lead corporate development and strategic planning efforts at Sprinklr to scale a high-growth startup into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise software company servicing many of the world’s largest brands. Additionally, Sri founded a strategic advisory firm to help privately funded tech companies manage their financing and growth needs in digitally emerging industries such as security, education, and manufacturing. Once having entrepreneurial aspirations as a student, Sri is committed to Dorm Room Fund’s mission to fund and support highly-motivated student founders and their ideas, particularly those in high-impact sectors and geographies.
Philadelphia
Abhinav Karale
Abhinav is a senior at UPenn studying Finance and Computer Science and pursuing a masters in Data Science. He is an ML and AI enthusiast and is also passionate about investing. He previously did quantitative research at Tudor Investment Corporation and built a software product for the lending industry. He also worked on the nuclear fusion engineering team at Tri Alpha Technologies. You can often find him working on a multitude of side projects in the software and AI space. In his free time, Abhinav enjoys watching soccer, reading, or playing his sitar.
Adam Eldefrawy
Adam is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying Computer Science. He grew up in Southern California and spent one year living abroad in Mumbai. Previously, he was a product development intern at 8i in Playa Vista. He is especially excited about the augmented reality industry and the future of media. Adam loves traveling and exploring new places in unconventional ways. In his free time, he enjoys going to the beach, playing soccer, and taking photos.
Bridget Labe
Bridget is a first year MBA candidate at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to graduate school, Bridget was the chief of staff to both the CFO and director of early pipeline projects at X (formerly Google[x]). She has also worked in real estate partnerships for Google Fiber and advertising sales at Google. On campus, Bridget is a member of the Dean’s MBA Advisory Council and the data lead for the Wharton People Analytics Conference. Bridget holds a BBA with high distinction from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
Brittany Walker
Brittany is an Investment Partner with Dorm Room Fund and a first-year MBA student at Wharton. She began her career at Deloitte Digital before transitioning to an operations role at Uber, where she was responsible for analyzing pricing and incentives. Brittany also interned at Lewis & Clark Ventures, a venture capital firm based in St. Louis, MO, prior to beginning her MBA. At Wharton, she is one of two Philadelphia co-leads for StartU, a media platform focused on student entrepreneurs. Outside of school, Brittany is focused on learning arm balances and inversions and completing her Stephen Starr restaurant bucket list.
Ryan Morgan
Ryan Morgan is first-year MBA at Wharton. Prior to Wharton, he was a senior associate at DFJ Growth, a silicon valley based venture capital firm. While at DFJ, he worked on their investments in Unity (AR/VR software), Katerra (construction), and Ring (IoT doorbell), as well as worked with several of their portfolio companies including Formlabs. He studied finance, management, and Russian language at Upenn. He is an avid hiker and spent a month this summer in California National Parks and two months backpacking through the Balkans (Slovenia > Albania > Bulgaria > Ukraine).
Toni Oloko
Toni is an undergraduate student at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a background in startups and tech, having started (and sold) PracticeGigs, a platform for athletes to book training hours with great players, and does Special Projects at goPuff, a delivery service for convenience items. His experience in venture capital and finance stems from internships at investment firms like Bradley, Foster & Sargent, and Daintree Advisors. Most recently he has spearheaded community building at Accomplice VC. In his free time, he enjoys reading and playing tennis.
Platform
Casey Chow
Casey is a senior at Princeton University studying Computer Science, and has been involved on campus as the Lead Developer for HackPrinceton. Casey has done internships at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the Rutgers Wireless Information Networking Laboratory, Google, and Lyft. He’s interested in the intersection of technology and public policy and will be working at Affinity next fall. In his free time, Casey enjoys travelling, most recently to Spain, which helps add to his postcard collection.
Phillip Hui-Bon-Hoa
Phillip is a sophomore at Boston College studying computer science and American history. Phillip has a passion for building teams and empowering peers to achieve their maximum potential. As a senior in high school, Phillip began working on a project with a friend — this turned into Publist.ai. After raising a seed, Phillip worked on Publist for 1.5 years before parting ways to go back to school. Simultaneously, Phillip was the third hire at Cyclops.io, a video conferencing tool. Currently, Phillip is working on Abacus Growth with Trevor. He loves to cook, build companies, watch the Spurs #COYS, and enjoy the fruit of life.
Trevor Sookraj
Trevor is a senior at Western University (Huron College) studying political science. He has a passion for technology, having spent 2 summers interning at Shopify Plus in sales and business operations respectively, and worked on marketing for Turnstyle Solutions (acquired by Yelp) and #paid. Most recently, he took a year off school to intern on the Growth team at Clearbit in San Francisco, focusing on self-serve revenue. Personally, Trevor is a big soccer fan (Go Spurs!), alpine skier, and recently picked up squash.
Vinai Rachakonda
Vinai is a Platform Engineer at Dorm Room Fund. He is currently a junior studying Computer Science and Business at the University of Pennsylvania. This past summer he worked at SpaceX where he got the opportunity to get a glancing look at Elon Musk while building the flight software systems that power the Dragon 2. Prior to SpaceX, he had the awesome opportunity of developing the next phase of web application technology at Contrast Security. On campus, Vinai attempts to use his little athletic abilities by playing intramural basketball and softball. He’s originally from Maryland and is a passionate fan of all D.C. sports teams.
