Promise Phelon
Current role: Founding Partner, Sueño Growth Partners and Business Mentor, Defy Ventures
Experience: Promise Phelon is no stranger to the entrepreneur journey after founding three of her own ventures, including her current investment firm. Phelon got her start at BEA Systems, an enterprise infrastructure software company that was acquired by Oracle. There, she worked up to Director of Product during her three-year tenure and has gone on to lead software startups JazzHR and TapFluence. She is currently a business mentor for early-stage venture firm Defy Ventures.
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Sakina Arsiwala
Current role: Head of Growth, Nextdoor
Experience: Sakina Arsiwala has helped monetize some of the world's most popular products for some of the biggest names in consumer tech. Arsiwala moved to San Francisco from Mumbai to get her Masters in Computer Science from San Francisco State University and worked as a software engineer at Altavista and Yahoo before landing a product lead role at Google. She cofounded Campfire Labs, a social networking startup that was acquired by Groupon in 2011, where she remained as Head of Social and Growth for the deals website. She has been leading Growth at local social network Nextdoor since 2016.
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Ellie Mertz
Current role: VP of Finance, Airbnb
Experience: Stanford Business School alumna Ellie Mertz has led the finance divisions of video streaming powerhouse Netflix and more recently vacation rental startup Airbnb, which is expected to IPO by sometime next year. Mertz has been leading Airbnb's financial division as VP of Finance since January after a brief stint as interim CFO. Before joining Airbnb, Mertz worked her way up from senior manager of financial planning to VP of Finance and Investor relations at Netflix. She started her career at Thomas Weisel Partners as a financial analyst in 1999.
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Nisha Ahluwalia
Current role: Member, Bowery Capital Revenue Council and Marketing Faculty Chair, Heavybit Industries
Experience: Nisha Ahluwalia has cut her teeth at some of the biggest enterprise companies in Silicon Valley. She has held marketing roles at conferencing software maker WebEx, enterprise software giant Cisco, and enterprise communications provider RingCentral before landing at developer management tool PagerDuty as Chief Marketing Officer in 2013. She has been advising startups in Bowery Capital's portfolio since 2015, where she focuses on early-stage enterprise software companies needing to generate revenue.
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Cheryl Chavez
Current role: Chief Product Officer, Engagio and Fellow, Sapphire Ventures
Experience: Cheryl Chavez had built an impressive career in enterprise marketing software even before graduating from Stanford Business School in 2016. She spent the early years of her career as a Product Manager for enterprise software giant Oracle, customer support management software maker Blue Pumpkin, online infrastructure provider Verisign, and client relationship management software maker Nextance. She helped take Marketo, a marketing software provider, private during the lead up to a planned IPO in 2017 and has been leading the product division at marketing software tool Engagio since September 2018.
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Dawn Callahan
Current role: Chief Marketing Officer, Boingo Wireless
Experience: Dawn Callahan knows exactly what it takes to run marketing for a public company, having held senior leadership roles over the past two decades at Time Warner and Boingo Wireless. She started at Boingo Wireless in 2007 as VP of Marketing, and has worked up to the C-suite during her 12-year tenure. Prior to joining Boingo, Callahan led sales and marketing for telecom giant Time Warner for the Digital TV, Internet, and Phone divisions. Callahan helped take Boingo Wireless public in 2011, and has overseen just about every division of sales, marketing, public relations, and customer service during her time with the organization.
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