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Vetted Mentorship Professionals
Pre-screened and vetted.
Mark Thomas
Director-level software architect specializing in cloud, distributed systems, and healthcare IT
“Startup veteran with experience at seven companies since 2004 and direct exposure to Birmingham's Innovation Depot accelerator through three different startups. Has worked closely with investment teams on MVPs and pitch decks and brings a pragmatic lens to evaluating ventures through need, margins, burn rate, cash position, and sales growth strategy.”
Jennie Ocken
Director-level product leader specializing in enterprise SaaS platforms
“Senior product leader with a standout track record in large-scale platform transformation at CHR, where they unified fragmented logistics products into a single customer platform serving ~200,000 users. Combines executive-level product strategy, UX transformation, AI/ML workflow integration, and people leadership, with measurable outcomes including 9,000 customer migrations, 13% CX improvement, and $2M in annual cost savings.”
Reza Mawardana
Mid-level Software QA Engineer specializing in Insurance and HRIS, transitioning to SDET
“QA-minded candidate with unusually deep, self-driven experimentation in game mechanics (RNG and EXP optimization) using emulators and save-state methodology, translating that same rigor into production release verification and bug triage practices. Has experience in embedded QA and proactively proposed a centralized QA model with sharing sessions to improve coverage during absences; uses AI tools to speed up Jira documentation and test case creation.”
Jon Gantvoort
Senior Sales Development & Talent Leader specializing in outbound pipeline and team coaching
“Senior/Team Lead SDR at Rippling with top performance (President’s Club FY2025), credited with sourcing the largest closed-won deal in company history and generating $7.95M pipeline / $2.45M closed-won. Previously spent ~8 years in full-cycle recruiting across internal (Hyatt) and agency (Randstad, Kforce) including tech/finance, known for data-driven stakeholder management and persistence on difficult searches (e.g., hard-to-fill Linux Engineer role resulting in offer and later FTE conversion).”
Lavrenti DeLavrenti
Director-level Technology Leader specializing in cloud-native platforms, AI/ML, and SaaS
“Engineering leader (Director/VP level) who has repeatedly aligned product and engineering through ROI-driven quarterly roadmaps and strong stakeholder communication, including board presentations. Built a parallel cloud team to migrate an on-prem product to the cloud, credited with delivering $9M ARR, and led a Python monolith-to-serverless event-driven microservices transformation. Currently manages distributed teams across Mexico, India, and the US using pod-based structures, clear KPIs, and a supportive accountability culture.”
Doris Lin
Executive product leader specializing in human-centered AI, EdTech, and digital transformation
“Product and design leader who has built 0-to-1 products across proptech and healthtech, including founding GoodFences and creating an explainable AI architectural review engine for HOAs. Combines deep user research, strong AI product judgment, and team-building experience, with a personal connection to educational equity as an immigrant and parent in the public school system.”
TejaSree Chiluveru
Mid-level Software Engineer specializing in FinTech and cloud-native microservices
“Built and launched an internal AI troubleshooting assistant focused on safe, retrieval-first root cause analysis for enterprise systems, with strong attention to monitoring, fallback behavior, and post-launch iteration. Also owns full-stack product work across React and Java/Spring Boot, including high-volume financial operations workflows, and reports measurable LLM improvements such as ~30-40% latency reduction.”
Guillermo Salas
Executive software engineering leader specializing in AI-augmented Healthcare SaaS platforms
“VP-level software engineering leader in a private-equity-backed company, overseeing a 50+ person org through aggressive growth and operational efficiency goals. Particularly strong in building the operating system around engineering—product-to-engineering governance, AI-augmented SDLC practices, ADRs, and feature-flag-driven delivery—to reduce ambiguity, dependency on institutional knowledge, and cycle time.”
Christopher Lopez
Senior HR & DEI leader specializing in workforce culture transformation
“Talent acquisition leader and former COO who has led distributed recruiting teams (up to 20) and specializes in executive search and C-suite talent intake. Has driven enterprise recruiting transformations (talent intake overhaul, ATS implementation, workforce culture change) and delivered high-impact leadership hires including deputy commissioners for a prison system while scaling organizational leadership structures internationally.”
Danilo Plazas
Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer specializing in Frontend (React/JavaScript)
“Frontend-focused engineer with full-stack experience who modernized a legacy HR platform (CoffeeScript/Marionette) by migrating key UIs to React/Redux and adding TypeScript for robustness. Built an internal client monitoring tool end-to-end with a microservices-oriented approach and strong testing practices (Jest/Selenium), and also led a major GraphQL v1→v2 migration delivered incrementally over ~6 weeks while optimizing Django/MySQL/DynamoDB performance.”
Colin Johnson
Mid-level Growth Marketing Leader specializing in paid media activation and optimization
“Performance marketer focused on high-spend acquisition, having personally owned a ~$500K/month budget driving small business credit card applications for a large US banking client. Experienced running cross-channel programs (Google/Bing search plus LinkedIn/Reddit prospecting) with rigorous experimentation (Drafts & Experiments, bid strategy and match-type tests) and long-horizon measurement to validate sustainable CPA and conversion-rate improvements.”
Sahithi Reddy
Mid-level Machine Learning Engineer specializing in LLM-powered products
“Verizon engineer who productionized an LLM-based personalization capability for a customer-facing digital platform, owning the path from success metrics through scalable APIs, A/B validation, and post-launch monitoring (latency/accuracy/drift). Experienced in diagnosing and fixing real-time LLM/RAG workflow issues under peak load, and in enabling adoption via tailored technical demos/workshops and sales support materials.”
Austin Patten
Senior Unity Engineer specializing in mobile games and interactive apps
“Lead engineer at PeopleFun who owned a data-driven limited-time event system for Wordscapes Search, using Addressables and asset bundles to ship new live content without app updates. Their work was tied to improved retention and stronger player engagement, and they also bring pragmatic AI-assisted development practices plus early VR/Meta Quest prototyping experience.”
Joseph Selby
Senior Product Leader specializing in EdTech and digital assessment
“Edtech product leader with deep experience across Pearson, SMART, and Promethean, spanning legacy platform modernization, classroom engagement tools, and early AI in education. Particularly compelling for roles at the intersection of product, pedagogy, and human-centered AI: they rebuilt SMART's 29-year-old Notebook platform and have repeatedly designed products around real teacher and student needs.”
Maxwell Crystal
Executive B2B sales leader specializing in Enterprise SaaS and ABM
“7+ years at Madison Logic with a clear progression from top-performing enterprise AE to team lead to sales manager. Built the team from scratch to 7 reps against a $12M annual quota, delivered 115% of goal, and combines hands-on coaching, data-driven sales process design, and executive-level forecasting with private equity stakeholders.”
Tuukka Luolamo
Executive Technology Leader (CTO) specializing in AI, cloud, and distributed platforms
“Engineering leader who stays hands-on in high-leverage technical areas (architecture, scalability, reliability) while operating at an executive level. Led StagePilot’s shift from a tightly coupled legacy system to a cloud-native, event-driven real-time platform proven at 1M+ concurrent users, and previously scaled multiple SRE teams at McGraw-Hill with SLOs, on-call, and blameless ops practices.”
Kyle Wilson
Senior Technical Lead specializing in accessible, scalable web applications
“Frontend lead who shipped an enterprise social feed, insights dashboard, and a net-new communications platform using React + TypeScript. Known for building scalable quality practices with QA (including automated test suite alignment), introducing RTK Query org-wide, and managing phased, feature-flagged rollouts while coordinating closely with product/design and senior engineering stakeholders.”
Ryan Jones
Director-level athlete advisor and development leader in collegiate athletics
“Sports business professional with experience advising professional tennis coaches on commercial deals, appearances, and contract structure, with adjacent exposure to college athletics through Duke Men's Basketball. Stands out for balancing athlete/coach schedule uncertainty with partner assurance, using contingency-based agreements and transparent expectation-setting to win trust and drive successful activations.”
Brent Cook
Director-level product leader specializing in AI-powered search and discovery
“Former high school teacher turned product leader with deep experience in EdTech, scholarly search/discovery, and mobile content platforms. They’ve led complex end-to-end launches, including a direct-to-consumer app storefront delivered on a 7-month timeline and AI-powered research discovery features for a 5-billion-record search platform, while bringing a strong human-centered, accessibility-first perspective to AI products.”
Jessell Bassett
Executive technology leader specializing in cloud, engineering operations, and SaaS platforms
“Senior technology executive and CISO with hands-on engineering leadership in healthcare, spanning WordPress platform operations, CI/CD transformation, compliance, and AI adoption. Notably led a migration for 1,200 client sites that cut launch times from weeks to days and built an AI-created production application that eliminated $250K in annual spend, while emphasizing human oversight and secure delivery.”
Nikhil Mehta
Director of Network Operations specializing in telecom, cloud networking, and service deployments
“Operations/project leader with hands-on experience driving an end-to-end transition of legacy customers from on-prem to cloud, including customer communication, structured execution planning, and operational handover. Also improved field operations productivity by selecting and implementing a field management tool that automated work orders and replaced spreadsheet/email workflows with mobile app-driven data flows.”
Yaw Prempeh
Director-level Performance Marketing Leader specializing in paid social and Google demand platforms
“Performance marketer managing high-spend ecommerce and lead-gen accounts across Meta and Google, including $120K in 3 weeks for a women’s fashion peak sale where they drove 13x blended ROAS vs a 6x target (Oct 2025). Experienced in full-funnel conversion setups (PMax, RSA, Advantage+, DPA), audience segmentation for incremental acquisition, and creative testing/refresh to combat ad fatigue; also ran creative messaging tests at Scholastic focused on teacher lead conversion.”
Raymond Wilson
Senior Unix/AIX & Linux Systems Engineer specializing in enterprise infrastructure and HA/DR
“UNIX/IBM Power administrator with ~20 years of experience across AIX, Solaris, and Linux, including HMC/LPAR provisioning, NIM-based builds, and PowerHA (IBM Spectrum System Mirror) clustering with validated failover as part of rolling patching. Has led cross-team infrastructure work (network/storage/DB/SAP), built SOPs used by junior admins, and automated SLES patching and .GOV-aligned hardening checks; also supported an AWS re-platform migration that later reverted to on-prem ESXi due to cost.”
Wilson Harron
Director-level AI/ML & Computer Vision Engineer specializing in robotics and multimodal AI
“Candidate is not currently pursuing entrepreneurship (no business plan and no capital raised) and is not familiar with the VC/accelerator landscape. They show pragmatic, problem-first thinking about evaluating startup ideas—prioritizing real customer pain points and the quality of the founding team—and are open to working for others rather than founding "at all costs."”