STAFF
Jessica Lawrence is the first Managing Director of the NY Tech Meetup, where she has worked since April 2011 to expand the capacity of the 26,000-member non-profit organization while also managing its day-to-day operations on a full-time basis.
Prior to her work with NY Tech Meetup, Jessica was the CEO for Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council, a non-profit serving 10,000 girls and 5,000 volunteers in Southern California. Jessica is also a columnist for The Press-Enterprise and speaks and writes frequently about organizational culture, the application of psychology and neuroscience to work, the New York startup community, and non-profit management. Jessica can be reached at jessica (at) nytm (dot) org
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dawn Barber is the NY Tech Meetup co-founder and former co-organizer. Dawn has extensive experience in planning and organizing groups and events in and around the New York technology community, having been deeply involved in NYNMA, and also having helped plan the Personal Democracy Forum over the past four years.
Thatcher Bell is a Principal at DFJ Gotham Ventures. He works closely with DFJ Gotham portfolio companies Altruik, Fynanz, Solvate, Worktopia, ExpoTV, and Lumeta. Thatcher’s background includes venture investing, operating and consulting roles with software, Internet, and financial services companies.
Anil Dash is an entrepreneur, technologist and writer known for starting Dashes.com in 1999 as one of the earliest and most influential blogs on the Internet, earning him acknowledgement as a “blogging pioneer” by the New Yorker. Beyond his publishing as a blogger, Dash works as the founding director of Expert Labs, as the co-founder and managing director of Activate, and as an advisor to several prominent startups and non-profit organizations.
Brandon Diamond is a Database Kernel Engineer at 10gen and Founder & Root at NYHacker.
Adam Dinow Adam Dinow is a partner in the New York office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Adam represents clients at all stages of their life cycle, from incorporation to exit, with an emphasis on working with entrepreneurs and fast-paced, rapid-growth enterprises. He has worked closely with many of the most exciting technology companies in a diverse range of critical transactions, including seed, angel and VC financings; IPOs; and mergers and acquisitions. He also advises clients in complex corporate governance matters and strategic transactions. In addition, Adam has extensive experience representing venture capital funds, angel investors, and investment banks.
Esther Dyson is a long-time catalyst of start-ups in information technology in the US and other markets, including Russia. Since selling her company, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in 2004, she has taken on newer challenges in private aviation and space as well as in health care. Her IT investments have included Flickr and del.icio.us, and Medstory, as well as Meetup Inc., Eventful.com, Boxbe and Voxiva.
Scott Heiferman is the founder and first Organizer of the NY Tech Meetup, as well as the CEO and co-founder of Meetup.com. Prior to Meetup.com, Scott co-founded Fotolog and i-traffic.
Evan Korth is a Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science at NYU. Co-founder of hackNY, Coach of NYU International Collegiate Programming Contest Team, Faculty Advisor to NYU chapter of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Faculty Advisor to tech@NYU, Founder/Author of Musicomputation, Inaugural member ofComputer Science Mentor Program, Developed and designed curriculum for the classComputers and Society
David Lerner is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who manages Columbia University’s portfolio of more than sixty spin-off companies, helps launch approximately ten to twelve new start-ups each year and administrates Columbia Tech Ventures Seed Fund. Prior to joining Columbia, he spent over a decade founding, operating, and funding companies in the healthcare, internet and media sectors. His personal blog, www.davidblerner.com, explores the worlds of angel/venture investing, entrepreneurship and university spin-offs.
Andrew Rasiej, Board Chair, is the Founder of Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference and website covering the intersection of politics and technology; as well as techPresident, a group blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign. He has served as an advisor to Senators and Congressman and political candidates on the use of Information Technology for campaign and policy purposes since 1999 and is currently a member of the board of PopTech. Andrew serves as the Chairman of the NY Tech Meetup Board of Directors.
David S. Rose has been described by Crain’s New York Business as “the father of angel investing in New York”, and by Red Herring Magazine as the “patriarch of Silicon Alley”. David is well known in the technology community for his mentoring of high-potential entrepreneurs, and is a regular speaker at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, NYU and Pace business schools. As the founder and Chairman of New York Angels, one of the world’s most active and professional angel investment groups, he has led first round investments in a wide range of exciting, high growth companies.
Jeff Stewart is a serial entrepreneur. Over the last ten years he has started over a half dozen companies that employ over six hundred people. One of them, Mimeo.com, is a Deloitte Fast 50 Technology company that has made the Inc. 500 twice in the last three years.
Nate Westheimer is the Executive Director of the NY Tech Meetup, and started his term in January of 2009. Nate currently serves as co-founder of Picturelife, Inc., is an Advisor to Flybridge Capital Partners, Advisor to Ohours.org, and Board member for the People for the American Way. Formerly he was the EVP Product & Technology at AnyClip, Entrepreneur in Residence at Rose Tech Ventures, and co-founder of BricaBox.com.