Mark Graffagnini

Legal, Terms, Investment Vehicles, Structuring Deals

Mark’s professional life has revolved around technology and venture capital for more than 15 years. As a securities attorney, he has served as lead counsel on well over 1 billion dollars worth of seed, VC and exit deals, including one of the largest public exits for a non-Silicon Valley company in 2018. He is a Partner at Callais Capital Management, LLC, where he helps lead the investment team. He has dealt with sourcing, vetting and structuring deals in the venture capital portfolio. He is also the Managing Partner and Founder of Cara Stone, LLP, a law firm focused on venture capital, M&A, private equity, public offerings and select high stakes litigation.

Through this, he is the creator of the nationwide venture and angel capital database at vc.carastone.com, which attempts to help policy-makers and companies navigate the world of investment deals in their local markets.

He is an invaluable resource on matters relating to building viable capital markets for angel and venture deals, helping companies raise money and scale and how to successfully build ecosystems.

Harold Callais

Raising Investment Capital, Investment Vehicles, Structuring Deal Terms

Harold J. Callais II, “Hal” is a Managing Partner and the Chief Investment Officer of Callais Capital Management. He oversees all investment activity, portfolio management, and directly engages with portfolio companies to deliver value to their management teams. Hal has sourced, analyzed, negotiated, and closed over $138 million in direct transactions.

Hal serves on the Board for numerous portfolio companies, advisory boards, and investment committees. Hal is the Treasurer for the Board of Trustees of Bayou Community Academy, a member of the Committee of 100 for Economic Development in Louisiana and is a member of the Steering Committee for Nicholls State University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Previously, Hal was Vice President of the Nicholls State University Alumni Federation, a Director for the Lafourche Parish Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Lafourche Program, and was an inaugural member of the Emerging Leader’s Council for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.

Hal received his BS in Finance at Nicholls State University and holds the FINRA Series 65. Hal was awarded ACG Louisiana’s 2016 Young Dealmaker of the Year and was included on Silicon Bayou’s 100 most influential and active people in tech and entrepreneurship in Louisiana for 2016, 2017 and 2018, and is a frequent panelist on industry matters and pitch competitions across LA and MS. Hal and his wife Kristen live in Thibodaux, LA with their five children.

Joby John

Business models and strategy, process design, operations, marketing.

With extensive academic and professional experience spanning over 15 countries, Dr. Joby John is a renowned authority on business models, process design, operations, and marketing. Former Chair of the Marketing Department at Bentley University, Dr. John spearheaded the design of its nationally ranked MBA program and launched innovative initiatives such as the Center for Marketing Technology. He has authored numerous works, including textbooks and articles published by the American Marketing Association, and his current research focuses on emerging business models, disruptions, and online influencer and social media marketing. Dr. John is a small business investor, advisor and mentor for startups as well as small and medium-sized businesses.

Laurel Hess

Marketing, Startup Fundraising, Scaling into New Markets

Laurel is a marketer by trade, entrepreneur by necessity. She founded hampr, an on-demand laundry platform, to aid in her quest to vanquish the mental load carried by families across the country – starting with the most hated chore. She has defied all female-founder stats by fundraising 7 figures to date and surpassed millions in revenue in less than 3 years. She has been described as “politely persistent” and “will literally run through a wall to make things work.” At hampr, she has grown her team to more than 20 team members and scaled into more than 12 states.

In her past life, she founded and ran a profitable digital marketing agency – double the team in size. She was previously the Sales and Marketing Manager at the Superdome and New Orleans Arena where she opened two new venues, Champions Square and club XLIV, overseeing event marketing and developing rental structures and proposals for corporate + convention events.

Alex Lanclos

App & Software Development / Engineering

Alex graduated from the University of Louisana at Lafayette with his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 2014, and has since had a wide variety of work experience. He worked on embedded systems at Johnson Space Center, developing fintech applications, developing mobile applications both natively and cross platform. At Waitr, he became a technical lead/manager for a small group of engineers and eventually wound up managing all front end developers there. He’s had the pleasure of working for the last 6 years at the startups Swimply, Wavelength, and Waitr.

He is currently a full stack software engineer at Skylight, and uses his experience as an ever growing engineer who will continue to grow both technically and as a leader to help mentor startup founders.

Lauren Bercier

E-Commerce, Rapid Startup Growth

Lauren Bercier is the co-founder & CEO of the industry changing startup called Something Borrowed Blooms – a Rent & Return Floral Boutique. Lauren has led her team to modernize how brides plan & pay for their wedding flowers, creating a new market category & demonstrating success with fast-growth startup.

Greg Palmer

Various revenue models and strategies. Sales, CRM, Process Improvement. Strategy, Organizational Structure & Leadership.

Greg’s experience has been punctuated by executing highly-successful strategic initiatives and providing strong executive leadership which has led to explosive business growth at top-tier organizations. He has recently been focused on directing companywide transformation and improvement at Golfballs.com

Lori Carter

Finance and Accounting professional skilled in financial reporting, FP&A, accounting, and enterprise-wide analytics. Proficient in transformation and improvement of operational and financial processes.

Lori is a highly skilled financial professional with more than 20 years’ experience as an accountant, financial analyst, business manager, controller, and company Executive Director. Lori spent three years in public accounting before joining the team at Stuller, Inc., a manufacturing partner partner to the retail luxury and jewelry industry. Beginning as a staff financial analyst, Lori rose through the organization to eventually become Executive Director and Financial Controller in 2018. She spent four years in this position with growing levels of responsibility including oversight of a team of approximately 40 spanning Financial Reporting, FP&A, Receivables, Collections, and Treasury Management. In 2023, Lori joined a boutique consulting firm VGraham, LLC based in Baton Rouge, LA and is currently leading the Lafayette location. Her breadth and depth of financial, operational, and systems knowledge drives her passion to help businesses establish and achieve their growth goals.

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.

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.