Fostering Student Innovation

Operating Board

• Fellow selection and mentoring
• Early stage investment
• Access to industry networks

Robert Bettigole, Managing Partner, Elm Street Ventures
Rob Bettigole is a Yale alum and the founder and Managing Partner of Elm Street Ventures. Bettigole has broad experience as an entrepreneur and as a venture capitalist. His venture capital experience was gained as a partner at Rothschild Inc. and Investor AB, where his investments included Maxim Integrated Products, Gensia Pharmaceuticals, and Microgenics Corporation. Subsequently, he helped found Surety Technologies, Inc., a spin out from Bellcore, and Alexion (NASDAQ: ALXN), with researchers from the Yale Medical School. Before founding Elm Street, Bettigole was president of a family business, which he successfully developed and sold. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer and holds several U.S. and foreign patents. 

Elon S. Boms, Founder and Managing Director, Launch Capital LLC
Elon Boms venture capital experience includes structuring bio-tech, consumer products and software development deals; he also has significant finance, consulting and marketing experience. Most recently, Boms was a managing consultant at Fidelity Investments where he worked primarily on strategy initiatives for financial investments in emerging markets. Prior to his work with Fidelity, Boms worked in Corporate Finance for Citigroup. He began his career as a brand manager at Georgia Pacific Company’s Dixie Foodservice division, where he assumed responsibility for $25M in capital investments and engineered a complete profit turnaround for the paper cup business.

Victor R. Budnick, Managing Director, Ironwood Capital

Victor has more than 25 years of experience in high technology venture capital investment, internal corporate venturing and mergers and acquisitions. He was YEI's inaugural Lead Venture Mentor (2010-2011) and currently serves as a managing director at Ironwood Capital in Avon, CT and is a partner and member of the investment committee of the Ironwood Equity Fund. For more than ten years, he was the President and Executive Director of Connecticut Innovations, the State of Connecticut's investor in emerging technology companies and a national model for public investment in the health care and technology sectors, achieving returns commensurate with the most successful private sector peers. He has built and maintained deep and long-standing relationships in the technology and venture communities. Victor received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and is a graduate of both Harvard Law School and the Yale School of Management.

Bob Casey, COO and Cofounder, YouRenew
Bob Casey is the COO and cofounder of YouRenew, an electronics recycling company.  A Yale alumnus, he was a YEI Summer Fellow in one of the first classes, in 2008, when he launched the company (then called TwigTek).  Today, YouRenew has offices at 25 Science Park that house 15 employees.  The company recently achieved their first profitable quarter and has over 30 Fortune 500 clients for their enterprise recycling program.

Susan Froshauer, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Susan Froshauer previous served as Rib-X's CEO. Under her leadership, the company has raised more than $148 million in private equity and grown a pipeline of one Phase 3 (delafloxacin) and one Phase 2 (radezolid) clinical stage programs and an antibiotic drug discovery process to sustain the continual pipeline build. Dr. Froshauer is the recipient of the Pfizer Central Research Award and the Connecticut Technology Council's Women of Innovation 2006 Award for Entrepreneurial Innovation and Leadership. She was honored in 2008 by the DNA EpiCenter in New London, CT as a Barbara McClintock Scholar and by the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame as a member of the New Century of Women in Science. Dr. Froshauer serves on the board of CURE and on the University of Connecticut R & D Board. She has also served on Connecticut's Technology Transfer and Commercialization Advisory Board of the Governor's Competitiveness Council.

Sean Glass, Managing Director, Top Floor Capital
Sean Glass is a Yale alum and serial entrepreneur. Glass co-founded HigherOne, an online financial services company focused on serving the higher education market, as well as the Yale Entrepreneurial Society, the undergraduate student organization. Glass continues to work with Yale and other entrepreneurs through angel investing and mentorship. He also maintains a blog at thoughtsintime.com.

Andrew Greenawalt, President, Gnostic Ventures
Andy Greenawalt is a serial entrepreneur in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market, frequent speaker and technology advocate. Greenawalt currently serves as the President of Gnostic Ventures, providing venture consulting, due diligence services and an incubation platform for SaaS businesses. He is also the CEO of Continuity Engine as well as serving as the entrepreneur partner with the CTech accelerator in New Haven. Prior to Continuity Engine, Greenawalt founded & CTO of Perimeter eSecurity, an Inc. 500 information security company, that services more than 2,500 banks and credit unions.

Miles Lasater, COO, Higher One
Miles Lasater is a Yale alum and co-founder of HigherOne. He has been a member of the invention team at Walker Digital, where he worked on intellectual property for companies such as Priceline and Retail DNA, and has worked in Silicon Valley as a computer consultant. During college, he was Rookie of the Year at Flying Colors Painting where he managed a residential painting franchise. Active in the New Haven community, Lasater is a member of the Port Authority of New Haven and Yale's Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility. He founded the Yale Entrepreneurial Society, where he also serves on the board of directors. He is also the creator of Cluefest, an annual city-wide scavenger hunt.

Shana Schneider, VP and CMO of JusttheRightBook.com

Schneider was previously the Deputy Director of YEI helping to establish it as a full time department at Yale University. Her marketing and communications experience was broadened as the Director of Economic Development for the Yale Office of New Haven and State Affairs and a board member of the Downtown Merchant Associations. Prior to her work at Yale, Schneider worked in the television and media industry as a co-founder and producer for Agape Productions, a startup entertainment company, and TV Guide, where she worked on shows that aired on FOX, VH1, and Food Network. She is also the co-founder of the New Haven Young Professionals Association and a Yale Alum.

Bill Schnoor, Partner, Goodwin Procter
Bill Schnoor is a Yale alum and Goodwin Procter's co-chair of the Technology Companies Group and co-chair of its Clean Technologies Practice; he concentrates in the areas of business and securities law, private equity and acquisitions. Schnoor has over 24 years of experience in representing start-up, private and public companies in a wide range of industries. He has worked with numerous companies from their initial financing through initial public offerings or acquisitions, and has advised numerous public companies and their boards of directors. Schnoor works with companies across a broad range of industries, including alternative energy and other clean technologies; e-commerce and other internet-based businesses; enterprise software; life sciences; and healthcare information technology.

Leonora Valvo - Founder and CEO, etouches
Leonora Valvo is the founder and CEO of etouches, a web-based software-as-a-service enterprise solution that addresses all aspects of the event lifecycle.  A lifelong entrepreneur, Leonora has launched four successful companies.  etouches started out 12 years ago as a self-funded, independent meeting planning company, but has since transitioned into a full-fledged software company offering a suite of integrated event management and marketing tools designed to implement and support every phase of the event lifecycle.  It closed a round of venture funding last year led by Greycroft Partners II that included investors such as Connecticut Innovations and Cava Capital.

William Wiesler, Ph. D., Director of New Ventures, Office of Cooperative Research
Bill Wiesler focuses on new ventures in the medical and life sciences area, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and diagnostics. He is also a founder and board member of Carigent Therapeutics, a nanotechnology-based drug delivery company, and Great Basin Scientific, a molecular diagnostics company. Wiesler also serves on the board of BioRelix, Inc., an antibiotics company based upon discoveries at Yale. Previously he played a leading role in the formation of Applied Spine Technologies, a company that has raised $47 million in venture capital. Prior to joining Yale's OCR, Wiesler was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company where he advised pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on a range of strategic and business development issues. Prior to McKinsey, Dr. Wiesler was with Radius Ventures, a startup and early-stage venture capital firm focused on the health and life sciences industry.