Philly Tech Week 2018

Nicole Pumphrey has dedicated her career to fostering cultural understanding and promoting inclusion through education and workforce development. Nicole joined the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians as director of strategic partnerships in 2014, where she leads the organization’s external engagement strategy, building collaborations and advocating for the valuable contributions of immigrants to the region’s social stability and economic prosperity.

Brett Topche is the co-founder and Managing Director of Red & Blue Ventures, where he makes seed and early stage investments in technology companies from the University of Pennsylvania ecosystem. He has spent much of his career primarily focusing on investments in ecommerce, digital media, mobile applications, marketing technologies and B2B software. Prior to co-founding Red & Blue, he spent more than nine years at MentorTech Ventures, which had a similar focus. He represents Red & Blue on the Board of AptDeco and as an observer at Burrow. He has also served or observed on a number of other startup Boards, including Wanderfly (acquired by TripAdvisor), Cloudmine, PayPerks, goTenna, Curalate, Quad Learning, SeniorHomes.com (acquired by Bankrate) and TicketLeap (acquired by Patron Technology).

Prior to joining MentorTech, Brett was a member of the Fund Investments Team at Hamilton Lane Advisors, a fund-of-funds manager and private equity investment consultant. In this capacity, he evaluated private equity funds across a broad spectrum of stages and strategies on behalf of both discretionary and non-discretionary clients. During his time at Hamilton Lane, Brett reviewed more than 100 funds, including venture capital, mezzanine, buyout and real estate funds. Based in part on reports he drafted, more than $1 billion was invested into these funds.

Prior to working for Hamilton Lane, Brett spent more than four years as an Associate with NJTC Venture Fund, where he focused on investments in early-stage companies in the software, Internet and communications sectors. His responsibilities included deal flow generation, initial company reviews, performing due diligence on potential investments, participating in deal structuring, reviewing legal documentation and working with companies post-investment, occasionally as an Observer on Boards of Directors.

Brett is a magna cum laude graduate of the Wharton School, with a B.S. in Economics, with concentrations in Finance and Legal Studies and a Political Science minor from the College and Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Cat McManus has had a lifelong interest in differential educational opportunities and issues of equity. She spent nine years in college admissions at Princeton and Penn, where she ran a partnership with a nonprofit focused on increasing access for low-income students, led staff training, and contributed to the Access Team. Her research interests include college access, educational equity, social impact and strategic organizational partnerships. While on Penn GSE’s Academic Innovation team, she focused on communications and social media, community building, and cheerleading the edtech and social impact startup community. She received her doctorate from Penn in Educational Leadership and her AB from Dartmouth College in Anthropology.

A practicing philosopher and social activist, Ryan has worked on campaigns for human rights, education reform, and technology education access. Before becoming the Director of Partnerships for REC Philly, Ryan started his own software company, Sandbox, that helped schools make their STEAM learning centers accessible and inclusive.

Felecia Hatcher is a White House Award winning entrepreneur, badass business rainmaker, bestselling author, globally sought-after speaker, media darling, mother, and Founder of Code Fever and BlackTechWeek. Breathe… She is also the rather awesome former Chief Popsicle at Feverish Pops, a gourmet ice pop boutique and manufacturing brand with a Fortune 500 client roster that would make your head spin prior to becoming an entrepreneur Felecia was a marketing executive working for big brands like Nintendo, Sony, Mckee Foods and the NBA.
For the past decade, Felecia has dedicated her life to inspiring a new generation of leaders to do epic shit, through her conversational talks on Entrepreneurship, Tech Innovation, Funding and Personal Branding. As the founder of Code Fever and Black Tech Week, Felecia Hatcher is on a mission to rid our communities of innovation deserts by working with community leaders and government to create inclusive and diverse startup ecosystems. Felecia has spearheaded the inclusive innovation and startup movement within the Miami Startup ecosystem focused on getting marginalized groups to become major players in the innovation economy. Hatcher has been featured on Inc, Forbes, MSNBC, The NBC Today Show, The Cooking Channel, Essence Magazine, Entrepreneur, Inc, BET, Black Enterprise, and the Miami Herald. Globally sought-after speaker, media darling, and mother Felecia Hatcher is a White House award Winning entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Code Fever and Author of the books "How to Start a Business on a Ramen Noodle Budget" "Focused" PopPreneurs and "The C Student's Guide to Scholarships-A Creative Guide to finding scholarships when your grades suck and your parents are broke." She is also the rather awesome former Chief Popsicle at Feverish Pops, a gourmet popsicle boutique and manufacturing brand with a Fortune 500 client roster that would make your head spin that she ran for 7 years..

Karina was born in Riga, Latvia and moved to San Francisco in 1988. She is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, adviser, and educator. She spent more than a decade in Silicon Valley in senior positions helping companies grow globally. She also launched three ventures of her own, including WorldUpstart, a consulting practice focused on providing mentorship and advice on best innovation practices to institutions around the world and helping international companies enter US market. In addition, she worked as a Digital Enterprise Portfolio Manager at the University of Pennsylvania PCI Ventures where she managed a portfolio of 19 companies and launched and ran AppItUP, a digital accelerator for mobile apps. She is now a Director of Business Incubation and Accelerator Programs at the University City Science Center where she’s developing and strengthening incubation and commercialization programs for startups and entrepreneurs across the business lifecycle. . She frequently gives seminars and webinars on a range of topics that may be helpful to startups including "Pretotyping," based on the work of Alberto Savoia and Jeremy Clarke.  In addition, her translations of Russian poetry has been published in World Literature Today and Common Knowledge, as well as other publications.

As Director of Innovation at Independence Blue Cross, Michelle uses Design Thinking to help internal and external customers creatively solve challenging business issues. She is also an Assistant Professor at Temple University, where she teaches creativity and innovation in the Fox School of Business, and is the Associate Director of the Flinders project, leading an initiative to develop the innovation curriculum at Flinders University in South Australia. She loves helping people realize their creative potential and develop new ideas. She has her bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and her master’s in Writing Studies from St. Joseph’s University, and will begin her Ph.D. in Creativity & Innovation this summer at University of the Arts.

When she’s not drawing flip charts and ideating, Michelle spends her time in South Philadelphia with her husband and three amazing boys, who do their best to exhaust her tireless energy.

Karissa is the Manager of People Operations at Azavea. She provides a large portion of the administrative support that keeps the company running. Karissa manages the hiring process, provides daily accounting support, assists with marketing, and much more.

Karissa came to Philadelphia in 2009 to study Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2013, she graduated with a degree in Fine Arts instead, and took a job managing facilities projects at Drexel University. During her time at the University of Pennsylvania, Karissa developed a love for technology and also worked for four summers with Penn Hospitality Services supporting conferences and events.

Outside of work, Karissa loves to bake sweet things, read, and play fetch with her cat. She is also a prolific PC gamer and has played most MMOs on the market.