Eric Hunter is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of World Market (Cost Plus World Market), the specialty retail chain known for globally sourced furniture, home decor, artisanal foods, and international gifts. Based in Alameda, California, Hunter joined World Market in May 2021 as Chief Commercial Officer, was elevated to President in June 2022, and became CEO in July 2023. He brings deep retail marketing expertise from executive roles at Pier 1 Imports, JCPenney, Kellwood Company, and Ascena Retail Group's plus-size division (Lane Bryant, Cacique, Catherines). Under his leadership, World Market has pursued digital transformation, flexible payment solutions, and continued its mission of delivering unique, globally inspired products across nearly 250 stores and online.
Ashwin Cheriyan is the CEO and co-founder of Thistle, a San Francisco-based plant-forward meal delivery company he built from a cold-pressed juice pop-up in 2013 into a nationwide subscription service delivering over 20 million meals. A self-described 'recovering corporate lawyer,' he traded a career at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett doing billion-dollar M&A deals for the chance to fix how Americans eat — driven by his parents' experiences as physicians watching patients suffer from diet-related chronic disease. Thistle, which he runs alongside his wife and co-founder Shiri Avnery, has raised over $20 million and now serves the West and East Coasts with chef-designed, nutritionist-approved meals that are gluten-free and dairy-free by default.
Calyx (formerly BioInspira) is a Berkeley-based agtech company that combines AI-powered computer vision with proprietary phage-based biosensors to help poultry farmers monitor flock weight, environmental conditions, and gas levels in real time. Founded in 2014 by UC Berkeley bioengineering alumni, the company's platform integrates overhead cameras, multi-gas sensors, and cloud analytics to give broiler producers continuous, data-driven visibility into flock health and harvest timing — with 98.4% accuracy in predicting chicken weight across more than 17 million validated birds.
Michael Boese is the CEO of Specright, the first cloud-based Specification Data Management platform, appointed in April 2025. A seasoned enterprise software executive with 25+ years across Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Taleo, and multiple startup CEO roles, Boese brings a track record of scaling B2B SaaS companies through operational discipline and product innovation. Under his leadership, Specright is accelerating its mission to digitize product specifications across global supply chains, with $42M in total funding, $22.4M ARR, and ambitions to infuse AI across its platform to help manufacturers, retailers, and brands make better, more sustainable products.
Dan Hoskins is the President & CEO of Sundia Corporation and its parent entity GT Brands, a plant-based snacking company headquartered in Orinda, California. A veteran of the food and beverage industry with 25+ years of experience, Hoskins helped turn Sundia from a fresh watermelon branding startup into one of the fastest-growing plant-based snacking brands in the US, distributing preservative-free True Fruit refrigerated cups and True Chia products to more than 6,000 grocery and convenience stores across the US and Canada. Before Sundia, he built his chops scaling Odwalla's national distribution and managing e-commerce at Hello Direct. An English Lit grad and former varsity swimmer and rower at UC Berkeley, Hoskins brings a rare blend of operational discipline and consumer intuition to a category he has helped define.