NY Tech Meetup

dawn barber
dawn barber is the Chair of the NY Tech Meetup Board. She is also 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.

Alain Benzaken
Alain Benzaken is Vice President of Technology for TheLadders.com. He has extensive experience in online consumer website technologies, most notably in leading large web development teams and building highly scalable systems. Prior to TheLadders.com, Benzaken was CTO at Ground Travel Technology Team, Inc. (GT3) where he led efforts to build a national ground transportation reservations system.

Adam Dinow
Adam Dinow is a partner in the New York office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Adam’s practice entails the representation of privately and publicly held emerging growth companies, venture capital funds, and leading investment banks, with a particular focus on private placements and venture financings, mergers and acquisitions, and public offerings of equity securities. Adam also has participated in hostile-takeover defenses, as well as private equity and leveraged-buyout transactions.

Esther Dyson
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
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.

Jed Katz
Jed Katz is a Managing Director at DFJ Gotham. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Worktopia and Drop.io, and is a Board Observer on ExpoTV and Searchandise. One of the pioneers of Internet commerce, Jed has spent his 15-year career developing, advising and investing in early-stage technology ventures.

David Lerner
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.

Franklin Madison
Franklin Madison, Jr. joined ITAC in 1999 and is now the organization’s Technology Program Technology Program Director. He is responsible for the strategic development and implementation of new programs to assist high-tech firms in NYC and managing the FastTrac Programs.

Charlie O’Donnell
Charlie O’Donnell is the founder of nextNY — a community organization for young technology professionals — as well as the founder and CEO of Path101, a career advice website. He is also an adjunct professor at Forham, where he teaches classes on entrepreneurship, as well as the organizer of Dodgball 2.0, a sports team for NY technologists.

Andrew Rasiej
Andrew Rasiej 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.

David S. Rose
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
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
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 and EVP Product & Technology at AnyClip, is an Advisor to Flybridge Capital Partners, and serves on the Technology & Social Media Committee for the People for the American Way. Formerly he was the Entrepreneur in Residence at Rose Tech Ventures, and prior to that he founded BricaBox.com.