UTRF Extends a Special Thank You to Our TVC Judging Panel
Ken Woody, InnovaMemphis: Mr. Ken Woody is a the President, Chief Executive Officer, Partner, General Partner, and Executive Director at Innova Memphis Inc. Mr. Woody leads a dedicated staff focused on finding, funding and growing startup technology businesses in Tennessee to help them achieve commercial success. Mr. Woody is mentoring the management teams. He provides strategic guidance when the portfolio companies are faced with the difficult decisions that startups frequently encounter. He
Grady Vanderhoofven, Meritus Ventures: Mr. Vanderhoofven is the Executive Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of Eclipse Management, LLC, the General Partner of Meritus Ventures, L.P. He is one of two Fund Managers for Meritus Ventures, which makes equity investments in rural central and southern Appalachia. (www.meritusventures.com)
Mr. Vanderhoofven is also the Executive Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of Southern Appalachian Management Company, LLC, the General Partner of the Southern Appalachian Fund, L.P. He is the Assistant Manager of the Southern Appalachian Fund, which makes equity investments in low income areas in southern Appalachia. (www.southappfund.com)
Mr. Vanderhoofven currently is a member of the Boards of Directors for Tricycle, Aldis, SemiSouth, and Arkansas Automatic Sprinklers, and he is a former member of the Boards of Directors of Protein Discovery, Eonstreams, ThinOptX, Metatomix, Walden Technology Source, Tarallax Wireless, and NuMarkets. Mr. Vanderhoofven is also a Board observer for Smart Furniture and Zipit Wireless.
Mr. Vanderhoofven previously worked for ten years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). While at ORNL, he worked as a materials engineer and in business development. As a commercialization manager, he led the group responsible for identification and commercialization of intellectual property developed in an R&D organization with an annual budget exceeding $300 million. While at ORNL, he negotiated more than 50 license agreements and more than 125 commercial research and development agreements with national and international companies ranging from new company start-ups to Fortune 500 corporations. Mr. Vanderhoofven led ORNL in the creation of twelve start-up companies founded to commercialize products/services based on technology developed at ORNL.
Mr. Vanderhoofven is a member of the Tennessee Capital Formation Board and was previously a member of the Board of Directors of the East Tennessee Technology Council. He won the American Museum of Science and Energy Tribute to Tennessee Technology Award in 1998 and the Federal Laboratory Consortium Excellence in Technology Transfer Award in 2001 and again in 2004 for his role in creating and capitalizing start-up companies to commercialize technology developed at ORNL. He was an invited co-author of an article entitled A Vision for the Future of Rural Developmental Venture Capital for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in December 2006. In September 2012, he accepted an invitation to serve on the Yale University School of Engineering & Applied Science Leadership Council.
Mr. Vanderhoofven has both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Yale University, and he has completed an Executive Education Program in private equity and corporate governance at Harvard Business School.
Brian Laden, TriStar Technology Ventures:
Dr. Laden co-founded TriStar Technology Ventures in 2009. Through his role at TriStar, he serves on the Board of Directors for Molecular Sensing, NuSirt Biopharma and Diagnovus (exited), the Advisory Board for Cumberland Emerging Technologies and holds an observer seat on the Boards of TVA, BioStable and GenomOncology. Prior to the founding of TriStar, Dr. Laden served as the Assistant Director in the Office of Technology Transfer and Enterprise Development at Vanderbilt University. That role involved leading various technology transfer functions for Vanderbilt, which included identifying, protecting, marketing and licensing promising new technologies to companies of all stages and sizes, as well as developing collaborative, sponsored R&D and material transfer relationships with industry. He also participated in the office’s venture investment and company formation activities. Since beginning as the Chancellor Fund in 2000, Vanderbilt invested a substantial amount of capital into 30 different Vanderbilt-related companies.
Before moving into technology transfer, Dr. Laden was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt, where his work focused on structure-function studies of the cytochromes P450. He holds a doctorate in Toxicology from the University of Kentucky, a master’s degree in Environmental and Industrial Health from the University of Michigan and an undergraduate degree in biology from Penn State University.
Tim Wilson focuses on early-stage technology investments and currently represents Artiman on the Boards of Crossbar Semiconductor, Kaybus, Mossey Creek Technology and Prysm. Tim’s previous investments include InvenSense (NYSE: INVN), Five9 (NASDAQ: FIVN). Teknovus (acq by Broadcom), Schoolfeed (acq by United Online) and Ario Data (acq by Xyratek).
From 2001 to 2011, Tim worked as a General Partner at Partech International. Between 1997 and 2001, he served as the Chief Marketing Officer for Digital Island (NASDAQ: ISLD, acq by Cable & Wireless), a Partech portfolio company.
Tim’s past business experience also includes his work as a General Manager at Lucent Technologies. While General Manager, he led the international voice communications product management team with P&L responsibility for product lines that generated over $2 billion in annual sales.
Tim graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Bowdoin College. His Bachelor of Arts degree is in Physics. Following this, he completed his MBA from Duke University.