Brett Guidry

IT Operations Strategies, IT Consulting

Brett is a high performing leader in the IT space with a special talent for building and leading talented tech teams, finding cost savings through process improvements and vendor negotiations, and managing tech stacks efficiently.

Axel Strombergsson

Product Development, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality Management Systems, Regulatory Affairs, Clinical Studies, Commercialization, Business Growth & Strategies, Fundraising, Exit Strategies

Axel has spent over 20 years in the medical device industry, and through those years, been involved in multiple startups throughout all stages of product realization and business growth.

He earned his Master’s in engineering in Sweden, where he joined the first startup as the lead engineer on both product and equipment design. Following the expansion of a startup company into the United States, he relocated to Atlanta, GA in 2011.

Since then, he spent a few years at the Vanderbilt University Tech Transfer office working on helping with the development and commercialization of medical technologies. Thereafter, he has been with an additional four medical device startups helping to build these businesses and in bringing various technologies into commercial distribution.

Cheryl Bowie

Dimensional Branding

Cheryl Bowie is the Founder/President/Creative Strategist at Right Angle, a group of creative writers and designers. Cheryl and her team have developed some of the best-known brands in Acadiana – the City of Lafayette, Lafayette Parish School System, Van Eaton & Romero (now Latter & Blum) — and one of the first banking websites in the state.

Known for inventing Dimensional Branding®, Cheryl creates identities for businesses from a three-dimensional perspective, looking at the point of contact, point of sale, and point of delivery with visual, verbal, cultural, and environmental messaging.

Many of Cheryl’s long-term clients have been acquired by larger corporations and recent start-ups with Right Angle’s Dimensional Branding® have already been approached with buy-out offers.

Noah Bergeron

Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, Partnership for Sponsored Research Investments

Noah Bergeron is the Associate Director of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Office of Innovation Management (OIM), and supports Technology Transfer associated with the University and its industry partners.

Before taking this role, Noah served in a program management capacity for the Pentagon’s Rapid Innovation Fund (RIF) program. In addition to his various Research & Development roles with the US Navy and Shell International Exploration and Production, Noah has served in Industrial Manufacturing Sales & Support, and has visited numerous Louisiana plants. He’s conducted experiments on offshore drilling rigs, and is a co-inventor of multiple advanced weapons discoveries.

Noah is an ardent advocate of commercialization as an appropriate outcome of research, and encourages partnership of companies of all sizes and experiences with University researchers.

Michael Schaefer

Financial Accounting & Modeling

Michael Schaefer is currently a senior manager with Boulay PLLP. Michael has been involved in assisting companies of a variety of sizes and in a variety of industries with financial accounting, valuation, transaction services, and financial modeling for 15 years.

Parker Smith

Intellectual Property Law & Technology Transactions

Parker is a New Orleans based attorney & founder of CoreServe Legal, a Louisiana law firm dedicated to providing cutting-edge legal solutions for modern dealmakers. His practice focuses on intellectual property and information technology transactions and includes counseling clients on related data security and privacy matters as well as general commercial issues.

Parker currently serves as the Chair of the Technology Law Committee of the New Orleans Bar Association and is active in a variety of other professional organizations. Before starting CoreServe Legal, Parker honed his transactional skills as an in-house attorney for a regional health system and an associate attorney at a mid-sized law firm. He received his J.D. and Graduate Diploma in Comparative Law from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University, where he served as Managing Editor of the Louisiana Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. He also earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science and a B.S. in Economics from Tulane University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa.

Matthew Delcambre

Technical Sales Strategies, Building High Performance Teams

Matthew is an accomplished technology executive focused on driving organizational results. He has repeated success in forming and incubating technical teams aimed at leveraging technology solutions to solve business challenges and drive for competitive advantage.

Joshua Bendickson

Strategic Planning, Timing & Time Management

Josh Bendickson earned his Ph.D. in Strategic Management from Louisiana State University and is currently a Professor at the University of Louisiana. Josh’s research interests include entrepreneurship ecosystems as well as issues pertaining to strategic management. Josh teaches courses related to entrepreneurship, innovation, and strategic management to undergraduate and graduate students at the B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration.

He also serves on the board of directors at Opportunity Machine, a locally based start-up incubator where he offers mentoring on strategic planning. Nationally, Josh remains active with the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

Bob Miller

Innovation, Start-ups, Software Development, High Tech Operations, Patents

With 30 years at high technology companies including multiple startups, Bob who is a patented inventor, has served in senior positions throughout his career including Founder, Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice President, and Chief Operating Officer. These industries included Software Development, Internet Service providers, Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, Engineering Geographic Information Systems, Aerospace Satellite, On-Demand Delivery, and Managed Security Service Providers. Bob has lived and worked in Chicago, Silicon Valley California, and Silicon Bayou Louisiana.

Whitney Savoie

Marketing, Growth, Leadership & Culture

Boundless energy and optimism are at the heart of everything Whitney does in her current role as Vice President of Marketing at FlyGuys. With a decade of experience in grassroots marketing, customer acquisition, and brand development, Whitney has a knack for developing unique strategies that propel companies forward.

Previously, Whitney led the go-to-market strategy for Waitr, a primary contributor to the company going from a privately held start-up to a publicly-traded commodity on Nasdaq. The company sold for $308 million in late 2018.

Tom Cox

Growth Strategy

Tom has been involved in launching and helping to start businesses for 25 years. He is the currently President, & CEO of Golfballs.com, a business he co-founded in 1995, and notably was one the first ecommerce businesses in golf. Golfballs.com has been named by Inc Magazine to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in America eight (8) times. With years of firsthand experience & success as an entrepreneur himself, Tom considers himself an advocate, advisor, and fan of startups and their founders.

Ryan Ramkehelawan

R&D and Regulatory Affairs, Business Strategy & Commercialization

Ryan is a serial startup founder turned venture development professional. After taking two medical device startups through FDA , market entrance and to scale, he joined Start Co. as VP of Venture Development. There he oversees investment opportunities for internal and corporate accelerators as well as teach lean startup principles and act as an executive coach to new startup CEO’s.

In addition to his venture development career, he is an experienced medical device executive with over 15 years of clinical experience. His business and clinical accomplishments allowed him to become a founding member of the Forbes Technology Council and a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council. He has also received recognition as Top 40 Under 40 by the Memphis Business Journal in 2014 and The National Vascular Recognition Award for the longest saphenous vein recovery without surgical error in the nation.