Alexa Binns is a Partner on Jesse Draper's team at Halogen Ventures where they invest in consumer technology startups with female founders. Previously Alexa was at Maven Ventures, another seed stage venture fund focused on consumer tech. Alexa is a marketer by training: she launched the Cheeky brand with Target, as well as two national public health campaigns with MTV, Walgreens, and the NBA. She wrote her master’s thesis on how to build a brand on YouTube, was nominated for a Mashable Award with Foursquare, and helped sell the Twitch influencer marketing platform NoScope. 

 Alexa graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford with a degree in public health and has her MBA from UCLA Anderson. She's an angel investor in Chubbies, Flex, Mented, Sana Benefits, Chipper Cash, among others.

Andy Tsao is a Managing Director and leads SVB’s Global Gateway, which assists innovation companies in the emerging markets with their US and international market expansion. He brings more than 20 years of experience banking dynamic companies in technology industries worldwide.

In his roles, Tsao manages SVB’s relationships with venture capital and private equity firms outside the U.S., and also helps emerging market companies as they seek U.S. market entry and U.S. companies as they seek to expand abroad. In both capacities, Tsao provides these firms with strategic advice and banking services, including debt financing, based on a deep understanding of their needs.

Previously, Tsao led and helped found SVB’s U.K.-based operation, SVB Financial Group UK Ltd, which was established in 2004. For six years, he was responsible for building senior debt relationships with high-growth technology, life sciences and clean technology companies in the U.K. and Europe. Tsao routinely speaks about technology and venture financing at conferences such as events held by the European Venture Capital Association, Super Return, BayBrazil, and Latin American Venture Capital Association. Tsao is a TiE Silicon Valley Charter Member and Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA) Silicon Valley Co-President and Charter Member, and serves on the West Coast Advisory Board for Colgate University.

While based in London, Tsao founded and moderated SVB Financial Group UK’s Venture Capital Advisory Board, was a two-time European Tech Tour Selection Committee member, and served on Think London’s North American Task Force and the Advisory Board for Astia U.K.

Before endeavoring to open the U.K. office for SVB Financial Group, Tsao was a Senior Vice President in Silicon Valley Bank’s Boston office, where he served as a technology lender and senior relationship manager focused on New England’s technology industry.

Prior to joining Silicon Valley Bank in 1997, Tsao was a technology lender at BankBoston, and BayBank in Burlington, Mass. He began his banking career with USTrust in Boston in 1988. Tsao earned a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and an MBA from Boston University.

Carol is one of Australia’s most dynamic business and community leaders with a diverse career across property, the arts, finance, investment, entrepreneurship, government and health.

Carol has been recognised for her leadership via a range of honours including her 2019 appointment as an Officer of the Order of Australia, named one of Australia’s most influential women in the Australian Financial Review, Westpac’s Inaugural 100 Women of Influence Awards and inducted into the Victorian Women’s Honour Roll. 

Throughout her career Carol has been a passionate advocate for women in leadership, particularly in business, politics and the media. As Chair of the Trawalla Foundation [part of the Trawalla Group, established by Carol and Alan Schwartz to manage the family investments] and the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia, she has catalysed a range of practical solutions, including the Pathways to Politics Program for Women, the Panel Pledge, and the Women for Media database. Carol is also the Founding Chair of Our Community, a member of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Women’s Leadership Board, and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership Advisory Board, Kings College.

Kara is the Founder and Managing Partner of Tiger Financial Group, a leading boutique financial services firm empowering Australian growth companies into global markets. Tiger’s recent deal highlights include (but are not limited to) ‘unicorns’ such as Tritium, a world leader in the future of mobility, and advisory for HR tech leader, CultureAmp. She has also led some of the market’s best-performing fintech deals, such as Indebted, a leader in debt collection services for the buy now, pay later sector.

Kara she spent a decade on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, including with Goldman Sachs Capital Partners’ $20.0 billion private equity fund.

Kara remains committed to the future of education and diversity in tech given her leadership roles on the Board of SBE Australia (Springboard Enterprises), on Princeton University’s Alumni Schools Committee, and as a mentor at Startmate (a leading accelerator founded by Blackbird Ventures).

Kara is based in Sydney with her young family.

Kate Vale is Co-Founder &  General Partner at ALIAVIA Ventures, a fund she founded in 2020 with Marisa Warren, a fellow Australian living in California. An active angel investor and executive, Kate has held leadership positions with organizations including Google, YouTube, Spotify & Epidemic Sound.  In her position as Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand with Spotify, Kate was hired as the first regional employee and managed all aspects of the business across Australia and New Zealand, and key to setting up the Asian operations in 2013. Kate was instrumental in driving music streaming in Australia to reach the position of No. 1 revenue source for record labels in the country. 

As Country Manager for Google Australia & New Zealand, Kate established the Australian and New Zealand offices, and grew revenues from zero to $500 million USD over a six-year period. She served as a founding member of the IAB Australian Board.

Marisa has more than 20 years experience in tech as a VC investor, advisor and operator working for companies like SAP, Microsoft and Workday. As Co-Founder and General Partner of ALIAVIA Ventures, Founder and Chair of ELEVACAO, Marisa invests in and advises enterprise and consumer tech startups and scale-ups across the U.S. and Australia. Investments include; HowToo, Wakefully, Vurbl and Switchbackr.

Marisa left big corporate in 2015 to pursue her passion for early-stage businesses. Whilst living in New York, Marisa founded ELEVACAO a global pre-accelerator for women tech founders. Fast forward to today and ELEVACAO has empowered 165 women across the U.S. and Australia, who have raised $80m+ and produced 3 Exits.

In 2020, Marisa and Kate Vale founded ALIAVIA Ventures, a California based firm focused on early stage venture capital investing in U.S. and Australian based female founders building world-changing enterprise and consumer tech businesses. 

Melissa Widner is the CEO of Lighter Capital, the pioneer and leader in revenue based financing for tech start ups and scales ups. Seattle based Lighter Capital is backed by NAB and Silicon Valley Bank as well as US based VCs.   Previously Melissa was the Managing Director of NAB Ventures, the VC arm of the National Australia Bank and a General Partner at Seattle based SeaPoint Ventures.  She was the founder and CEO of 7Software, a Silicon Valley based enterprise software company acquired by Concur (Nasdaq: CNQR, acquired by SAP).  She was also the CEO of Northwest Industrial Supply.  Under her leadership, both companies generated over a 10X return to investors. 

 
She is the co-founder and Chairperson of Sydney based Heads Over Heels, an organization that supports women entrepreneurs running companies with high growth potential. Melissa served as a lecturer at the University of Washington's Graduate School of Business where she taught courses on venture capital and entrepreneurship. She was previously on the board of the AIC (AVCAL) and has served on the boards of several venture backed technology companies in both the US and Australia. Melissa holds a Master's degree from Stanford University and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Washington.

Petra heads up HealthTech investments on behalf of the Minderoo Foundation and Tattarang. Petra’s experience spans international markets and technology sectors including Medical technologies, Biopharmaceuticals and Agrifoodtech. She started her career in the US, initially working for the Swedish government’s foreign services and later heading up the first US subsidiary of a European Contract Research Organisation, Clinical Data Care. She later moved to Germany where she worked for the Australian Trade Commission as the Head of the Europe Health and Life Sciences Team.

In 2005, Petra moved to Australia where she spent a number of years as the Managing Director of Swiss Biopharmacetucial company Octaparma, securing a $200mill+ tender contract with the Australian government for the supply of plasma derived products from Europe to Australia. She later moved into the world of high growth start-ups as the CEO of Australia’s first deep tech incubator, Cicada Innovations. In this role Petra introduced new vehicles for commercialisation of science based innovation resulting in a giant leap in IP and venture creation. During this time, Petra was also the Managing Director of Bizcaptial, building Australia’s, at the time, largest and most diverse investment portfolio of deep-tech start-ups.

Sophie McNaught is a Director for Silicon Valley Bank’s Corporate Relationship Management Group. Sophie is responsible for SVB’s relationships with the Venture Capital, Corporate Development and Innovation divisions of Fortune 500 financial services companies and has been instrumental in building SVB’s corporate venture capital advisory practice.

Sophie was formerly a Senior Fintech Strategist for SVB’s Payments Strategy team, working on strategic fintech initiatives across the bank -- leveraging the bank’s infrastructure and banking network to bring innovative solutions to market with emerging fintech companies. She was also responsible for SVB’s portfolio of early stage fintech investments through SVB’s accelerator program.

Prior to SVB, Sophie was a Corporate Attorney at King & Wood Mallesons in Hong Kong and Australia, specializing in Financial Services M&A and Financial Regulation.

Sophie graduated with honors from Bond University, Australia, where she earned a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce, with a major in Accounting.

Sophie is native to Australia and currently lives in San Francisco.

Stonly is co-founder of Urban Us, the leading early stage investor for startups upgrading cities for climate. Ranked top early stage fund in climatetech in North America by Climate50, Urban Us’ first two funds are ranked in the top 15% for financial performance. The Urban Us platform includes: the Urban Us community, a resource for urbantech focused founders, investors, partners and customers; URBAN-X, funded by MINI, is a program that supports early stage teams with company building and fundraising with seed and series A graduation rates exceeding benchmark programs such as YCombinator; Urban Us affiliates include Perl Street which helps finance hardware startups; and Urban Gateway which supports startups in business development in Asia. The Urban Us portfolio includes nearly 90 investments, many in NYC but spanning the globe, such as Bowery Farming, One Concern, Cove Tool, Future Motion, Blocpower, Near Space Labs, Seamlessdocs (acquired by Kofile), Evolve Energy (acquired by Octopus Energy), Versatile, Toggle, and Revivn. Before Urban Us, the operating team had three exits as operators and managed investments at First Round Capital, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup. 

Besides building Urban Us, Stonly has been a tech entrepreneur and built and taught courses at the University of Chicago and lectured the Urban Us business case study at Harvard Business School. 

Zeb has been an entrepreneur and venture capitalist since the early 1990s. He has founded or backed dozens of young companies over his twenty-five year career in the technology, clean energy, media and financial services sectors. Though a California native, his focus has consistently bridged Australia and the U.S.

Before starting King River, Zeb co-founded Angeleno Group, a clean energy focused venture capital firm, and with his partners led the firm’s growth to over US$500M AUM. His investments at Angeleno include multiple IPO and M&A exits in both the U.S. and Australia, and include companies such as TPI Composites, GT Solar, Telogis, Click Energy, New Forests, Stem, and Soraa. Prior to Angeleno, Zeb worked in corporate venture capital at News Corp in the 1990s focusing on start-up and early stage software investments in Australia, New Zealand and China.

Zeb has also been both an entrepreneur and an active participant in civic life. He has served on the board of The Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute for Public Affairs (founded by his grandfather, two term California Governor Pat Brown), was on the California Finance Committee for the Obama for America 2008 Presidential campaign as well as California Governor Jerry Brown’s 2010 Gubernatorial campaign. 

Zeb received a B.A. in Government and Economics from Bowdoin College.