Tony Verutti is the CEO of Betterguards Technology, a German sports-tech company whose adaptive ankle brace uses a micro-hydraulic piston that stays loose during play and locks in a split second when the ankle rolls, then releases. A lifelong athlete who tore his ACL four times and grew up in a physical therapist's household, he took the top job in April 2023 and pushed the product into the NBA, NFL, NCAA and Olympic teams, backed by the NBA's Launchpad program. His pitch: athletes shouldn't trade mobility for protection, and gear should be built on science, not tradition.
Jeff Kahn is the co-founder and CEO of Rise Science, the company behind the RISE energy-management app. A Northwestern-trained engineer who turned his own student exhaustion into a research program, Kahn co-published early work on how technology can improve sleep behavior and ran what the company calls the largest study of sleep's impact on real-world job performance across the NFL and Fortune 500 sales teams. He and co-founder Leon Sasson were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and RISE has surpassed 1 million downloads.