Entrepreneurship Symposium & Innovation Pitch Competition Speakers and Judges 2022

CEO & Co-Founder, StreamClub

Lan is the co-founder & CEO of Stream Club, acquired by leading video developer platform Mux, where he currently runs the Labs team focused on early-stage product discovery and prototyping. In a previous life, Lan raised millions in venture capital, eaten McDonalds in 23 countries, written for the Golden Gate Xpress, and founded the first SF Hacks. Lan studied journalism and political science at SF State.

Founder & CEO, Wachira Wines, KARIBU, and SOKO Distributors

Being born and raised in Kenya afforded Dr. Chris Wachira a uniquely global perspective in leadership. She is passionate about minority equity and access and uses her diversity of knowledge and experience to take a disruptive approach to industries by creating pipelines for minorities. Dr. Wachira develops bold solutions through strategic planning, strong analytics, and often a healthy dose of resourcefulness as reflected in the multiple businesses that she’s founded. The Wachira Group (comprised of Wachira Wines, KARIBU Wine Lounge, and SOKO Distributors) is passionate about equitable access to resources and markets as well as sustainable agribusiness to protect our shared planet.

Dr. Wachira’s focus in the beverage industry is on generating opportunities for minorities to enter the industry or gain market share for their products.

In healthcare, she envisions systems in which every patient has equitable access to innovative care. Dr. Wachira chooses to focus on population-level factors that impact health outcomes and drive inequity. She utilizes Improvement Science to identify health policy gaps and develop innovative evidence-based interventions through partnerships that facilitate equity.

In addition to founding the Wachira Group, Dr. Chris Wachira is a Fellow for the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, and the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Clinical Excellence – Africa, a nonprofit dedicated to improving health care delivery. Dr. Wachira earned her bachelor’s in nursing from San Francisco State, followed by a master of public administration (MPA). She went on to earn a doctor of nursing practice at the University of San Francisco.

Co-founder, Señor Sisig

Evan Kidera grew up in San Francisco. As he got older, he helped out at his dad’s sushi restaurant, but Evan wasn’t just interested in learning how to make rainbow rolls. “I was interested in the whole process. I wanted to know both the business and the creative side of running a company,” Evan says, “I always had a passion for food and business but where I found the most value was in creating experiences for people and making them smile.”

By 2007, he began to wonder why San Francisco didn’t have a thriving street food scene. By 2009, when Twitter and other social media platforms were suddenly a force, Evan saw street food as a national phenomenon. “I knew it was time for SF to start its own movement,” Evan says. “And I knew the city would embrace food trucks and street food because I feel like this is the culinary melting pot of the world.” Sure that Filipino food captured something unique about the culture of San Francisco, Evan called his old friend Gil Payumo with the idea to start Señor Sisig.

Evan double-majored in Asian-American Studies and Business Administration at SF State, where he later returned to get an MBA

Founder, Vegan Mob

The mission of Vegan Mob is to provide nutritious and healthy food with plant-based ingredients. Our passion is to help surrounding communities by empowering them with food they love and enjoy, while also supporting a healthy life-style.

Toriano Gordon is a dedicated father and husband from San Francisco’s Fillmore District. After dedicating a decade of his life to helping at-risk and formerly incarcerated youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, he decided to pursue his lifelong passion of cooking. Toriano experienced a huge shift in his health and well-being after adopting a plant-based diet and he now feels compelled to share this with others. His menu is comprised of traditional family soul food recipes and barbecue fusion.

Co-Founder & Operating Partner, SF Hacks, Swift Labs, MAGIC Fund

Matt is a co-founder and current operating partner for MAGIC Fund, an early-stage (pre-seed or seed-stage) accelerator and micro-venture capital firm focused on fintech, healthcare, and the emerging markets of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. The fund does not just provide monetary support to its portfolio companies but also prides itself on the hands-on support, operational skills, and mentorship that it gives to company founders. To date, MAGIC Fund has made 132 investments, including 20 diversity investments, with a total of six exits.

Director, Strategic Initiatives & Sr. Program Manager, Union Bank

Bruno is currently the Managing Director and Market Executive for the Northern California and Pacific Northwest Regions for Union Bank in the Business Banking Group.  As the senior executive for the region, he leads teams of Business Development Officers and Relationship Managers to serve the financial needs of their business banking customers.  In addition to leading these teams of banking professionals, he is also the Strategic Initiatives and Analytics leader for the segment.

A proponent of using technology and data-based analytics to connect with customers and increase customer satisfaction & efficiency, he has worked on a number revenue increasing initiatives and re-engineering programs at all levels of the organization.

A 30-year veteran of the banking industry, he started his career with Wells Fargo Bank working in the business banking, retail, and commercial groups of the bank leading both regional and national teams in sites across the country.

As a native San Franciscan and active in the community, Bruno supports several nonprofit organizations and serves on the board of the Child Abuse Prevention Council of Contra Costa County.  He additionally serves on the Union Bank Northern California/Central Valley Foundation Committee which identifies non-profits for the bank and team members in the region to support.

He graduated from the University of San Francisco with both a BA and MBA and the National Association of Credit Management (NACM) Certified Credit Executive program at Dartmouth College.

Angel Investor & Founder, NKH Group

Nancy Hayes has been an active angel investor since 2014 and has a portfolio of more than 25 companies.  She serves as a mentor to entrepreneurs, with a particular focus on women entrepreneurs and founders of color, by providing feedback on strategy, advising them on presenting to investors and providing introductions where appropriate.  Nancy is a frequent guest speaker, panelist, and judge at pitch events.  She also provides training for those who are considering becoming angel/venture investors.

Nancy was a senior executive of the IBM Corporation for almost 20 years and then served as CEO of two social services nonprofit organizations, the STARBRIGHT Foundation and WISE Senior Services.  She became the Dean of the College of Business at SF State in 2005 and then was Vice President of Finance/CFO and Chief Administrative Officer of SF State from 2011 to 2013. Nancy was cofounder in 2013 of a rewards-based crowdfunding site for women with small businesses called MoolaHoop and then transitioned to angel investing.  Nancy served as a Managing Director of the Golden Seeds angel group Silicon Valley chapter for 3 years.

Nancy has an MBA from the University of Chicago and lives in San Francisco.

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/nancyhayes2

Vice President of Product Development ApplyBoard

Arjang Parsa is the VP of Product and Engineering at ApplyBoard. Arjang brings a ton of experience with him, having worked at Amazon Web Services as the Head of Global Go-to-Market for five years (Grew the business at the rate of 150%+ year-over-year to $1.5B revenue), was the Head of Global Cloud Engineering \ Solutions Architecture at Microsoft and was the General Manager of HP Canada Enterprise (CRM Solutions).

Arjang is a world-class executive technology leader with expertise in building and optimizing multi-national, mission critical programs and business transformation in high growth environments. He is a skilled strategist who transforms strategic plans and business values into workable technical solutions, benchmarks and high performing cross functional global teams. An effective communicator and public speaker with a unique gift to move audiences and create exceptional stakeholder relationships internally, while building trusted results driven relationships externally. Arjang also enjoys woodworking in his free time (arjangdesign.com), and mentoring peers and microentrepreneurs through a non-profit (Uchelo.org) he founded in 2020

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjangparsa/

Leads the Scouting and Trends Team, State Farm Ventures

Aaron Chan leads the Scouting and Trends team, as part of State Farm Ventures. He is responsible for identifying technology trends that could impact insurance and for identifying startups that could serve as potential investments for State Farm. He has ten years of experience evaluating the impact of autonomous vehicles on the insurance industry, vehicle telematics and leveraging solutions from startups at State Farm.

CEO, BoxLunch, Her Universe & Hot Topic

Steve Vranes has served as the CEO at Hot Topic Inc since June 2016. Prior to becoming CEO, Mr. Vranes was named President of Hot Topic in April 2016. Prior to serving as President, Mr. Vranes held a variety of management roles within the company, including Senior Vice President of Planning and Allocation. Before joining Hot Topic in October 2012, Mr. Vranes served as Director of Planning at Gymboree until July 2009. At Gymboree, Mr. Vranes was responsible for planning and cross-functional strategy development, partnering with marketing, merchandising, e-commerce and store organizations. Mr. Vranes received his MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a BA in Economics from San Francisco State University.

Assistant Director, Lam Family College of Business Student Success Center

Born and raised in Oakland, California, Lupe is a proud SF State alumnus of the Criminal Justice program and has been working at the Lam Family College of Business for 17 years.

Lupe spends most of her free time with her husband and two children. When not with her kids, she loves to pamper herself and make amazing cocktails!