Vetted Cross-Functional Collaboration Professionals

Luciano Barrios

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Principal Hardware & Systems Architect specializing in edge AI and biometrics

Buenos Aires, Argentina25y exp

“Career startup operator now building a self-funded venture in home, professional, and industrial automation plus physical access control. Brings hands-on early-stage hardware/platform development experience along with investor-facing fundraising support, including technical presentations and introducing new ventures to existing funding relationships.”

Michael Hopkin

Screened ReferencesModerate rec.

Executive product leader specializing in AI platforms and SaaS

Portland, OR21y exp

“Senior product leader with experience rebuilding products and organizations in healthcare, research administration, public safety, and K-12 education. Stands out for building a product team from zero at Plexus and shipping an award-winning platform in 8 months, while also bringing strong human-centered AI judgment from ML compliance products at Cayuse and education strategy work at Imagine Learning.”

Crystal Marcus-Kanesaka

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Senior Product Designer specializing in onboarding, activation, and product-led growth

20y exp

“Seasoned product strategist and UX-led product leader with ~20 years across education, cybersecurity, Web3, martech, media, and public/private sector work. She combines hands-on AI-enabled product building with large-scale team leadership, including launching zero-to-one cybersecurity learning products, scaling Braintrust programs from 2,500 to 58,000 users, and improving onboarding experiences that helped double ARR to $400M. Her background in underserved K-12 communities and blended learning makes her especially compelling for human-centered AI and educational equity roles.”

Preethi Bandari

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Mid-level Full-Stack Developer specializing in scalable web applications

Memphis, TN5y exp

“Developer who uses AI tools pragmatically to accelerate coding while keeping full ownership of system design and decision-making. Emphasizes rigorous review, testing, and alignment with architecture, security, and performance standards, and stays current on AI through both industry sources and hands-on experimentation.”

“Built a production AI-native internal onboarding feature that reduced manual product setup effort by combining barcode API data, product photos, structured LLM outputs, and a polished real-time camera UI. Demonstrates hands-on experience across the full stack of LLM systems: prompt/schema design, multimodal inputs, backend orchestration with SQS and vector retrieval, and production reliability through evals, telemetry, and drift monitoring.”

brendan center

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Director-level performance marketing leader specializing in paid media and growth acquisition

Largo, FL14y exp

“Digital Marketing Director with 15+ years in marketing and 6 years at National Safety Commission, personally owning strategy, execution, and accountability for roughly $1.8M-$2M in monthly paid media spend across search and social. Particularly notable for adapting large-scale PPC programs to AI-driven changes in Google Ads, restructuring campaigns and pricing/messaging strategy to drive an 8% ROAS lift and 10-12% sales growth.”

“Product leader with experience driving a major international digital platform overhaul at ESPN, unifying fragmented sports properties and delivering a 30% retention lift. More recently, they have been building a human-centered AI mental health product focused on provider-guided follow-up, and they bring a personal, long-standing commitment to educational equity through tutoring and community math programs.”

Sharon Harrison

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive CMO specializing in SaaS GTM, brand, demand, and product marketing

Baltimore, MD22y exp

“Operator with 20 years working alongside founders and 7 years in regulated SaaS, especially higher education/edtech. Currently serves as CMO across five ElevenX Capital portfolio companies and leads Campus Consortium Foundation's incubator efforts, bringing hands-on experience in AI go-to-market, venture formation, and building trust-first SaaS motions in compliance-heavy markets.”

“Operations/program leader with experience supporting CEOs and scaling organizations through rapid expansion and multi-team initiatives. Implemented RACI + Asana-based execution systems and built board/KPI reporting cadences that improved executive decision speed and visibility across departments. Has worked across startups and in a foundation environment in C-suite-adjacent roles.”

“Product engineer/designer with founder mindset who shipped a blockchain-enabled investor group/governance platform using Next.js (App Router), TypeScript, Prisma/Postgres, and Temporal. Emphasizes auth-centric onboarding (SSO + embedded wallet) to make dApp UX feel more like SaaS, and brings strong reliability practices (idempotent retries, reconciliation) plus experience demoing to investors and operating in seed-stage teams (ex-Vouched).”

“Startup product designer with a CS background who operates at the intersection of UX, product strategy, and implementation. They have owned 0-to-1 design systems, led a research-backed pivot of Fluffle from a solo job tracker to a multiplayer productivity app, and specialize in trust-building UX for AI-native products while working closely enough with engineers to influence production quality.”

Briggs Clinard

Screened ReferencesModerate rec.

Mid-level Product Designer specializing in UX/UI for sports data and analytics

Brooklyn, NY5y exp

“Product Designer 2 with strong end-to-end ownership on Opta Graphics, a self-service platform for sports content creators. They combined client research, design systems rigor, and analytics-based iteration to launch core workflows like open canvas, brand kits, and a consolidated asset library, contributing to customer win-backs and new client onboarding.”

Kris Wen

Screened ReferencesModerate rec.

Mid-level Software Engineer specializing in AdTech and AI-enabled web engineering

San Francisco Bay Area, CA4y exp

“Software engineer at American Express who built a zero-to-one first-party cookie tracking architecture as the industry moved away from third-party cookies, combining frontend, backend, CI/CD, and AI-assisted QA automation. Particularly strong in developer tooling and workflow automation, with measurable impact including 70% less manual QA, 8+ critical errors caught pre-production, and PR cycles reduced from 48 hours to under 8.”

“Unity generalist and lead engineer with shipped Meta Quest VR experience, including leading the refactor of BoxVR into FitXR (subscription multi-studio fitness app) and running the core tech team. Also built and shipped a mobile wingsuit game (Wingsuit Pro) with one artist that reached #1 in Sports in 8 regions, demonstrating strong gameplay iteration and performance optimization expertise.”

Phanindra Satya Tharun Gunturi

Screened

Mid-level DevOps/SRE Engineer specializing in cloud CI/CD, IaC, and Kubernetes

Nashville, TN5y exp

“Infrastructure engineer with deep production IBM Power/AIX experience (AIX 7.2/7.3, HMC, dual VIOS, PowerHA) supporting ~25–30 LPARs and handling live DLPAR tuning, HA failovers, and Power7→Power9 migrations. Also builds modern cloud delivery platforms—Azure DevOps CI/CD deploying Dockerized microservices to Kubernetes with Terraform-managed AWS infrastructure, strong controls around secrets, drift, and safe rollouts.”

Shane Weinstock

Screened

Senior Data Scientist & Product Analytics Leader specializing in ML and experimentation

Austin, TX17y exp

“Aspiring founder with ~15 years of experience across varied backgrounds, motivated by frustration with slow, change-resistant large organizations and a desire to bring innovative ideas to market. Familiar with how venture capital/accelerators function (though not directly worked in them) and expresses strong willingness to take entrepreneurial risks.”

“Repeat founder/operator who has raised over $1M across three companies and has hands-on experience advising fundraising, including helping a biotech company secure a $500K+ accelerator round through IndieBio. Brings a strong point of view on early-stage investing, founder quality, and startup traction metrics, with a clear intention to build or lead a company rather than join one long-term.”

“Aspiring founder with moderate familiarity with the VC and startup studio ecosystem, motivated by the ability to solve problems according to their own vision. Particularly interested in building in home services and mental health/counseling, and expresses strong commitment to entrepreneurship.”