Papa Gino's is a New England pizzeria chain known for its thin-crust pizza, pasta, and subs. Founded in East Boston in 1961 by Italian immigrant Michael Valerio and his wife Helen as a by-the-slice shop called Piece O' Pizza, it grew into a regional institution across Massachusetts and neighboring states. After a 2018 bankruptcy that shrank the chain dramatically, it was bought by Wynnchurch Capital and now operates roughly 78-79 locations, leaning on its New England roots and a 2026 partnership with Patriots quarterback Drake Maye to win back fans.
Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals is a Waltham, Massachusetts biotech founded in 2016 to discover the next generation of drugs for brain disorders. Led by neurobiologist and former Eli Lilly and Sunovion executive Tom Large, the company designs novel, CNS-focused 'privileged chemotypes' and pairs them with systems-neurobiology behavioral assays and AI to hunt first-in-class small molecules for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and treatment-resistant depression. Its work runs through partnerships with phenotypic-screening firm PsychoGenics and AI drug-design company Exscientia.
Regenacy Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing oral, isoform-selective histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors to restore normal protein function. Spun out in 2016 from the assets of Acetylon Pharmaceuticals after Celgene's acquisition, Regenacy's lead drug ricolinostat (ACY-1215) is a selective HDAC6 inhibitor in clinical development for painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy and other peripheral neuropathies, with an additional portfolio of HDAC1,2 inhibitors targeting blood diseases and cognitive disorders.
Russell Beckerman is a biotech entrepreneur and Co-Founder & CEO of Overture Therapeutics, a Cambridge-based company engineering precision antibody medicines targeting obesity and metabolic dysfunction. He previously co-founded 82VS, a venture studio embedded within Alloy Therapeutics that has launched nine drug companies since 2020. His work sits at the intersection of cutting-edge antibody biology, company creation, and the conviction that the next generation of obesity drugs will be antibodies - not peptides.
Jackie Walsh is a Senior Vice President of Media at Microsoft, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Operating within one of the world's largest technology companies - with $281 billion in annual revenue and 228,000 employees - she leads at the intersection of enterprise technology and media. Her role places her inside Microsoft's vast ecosystem spanning cloud infrastructure, AI services, productivity tools, and advertising platforms including Microsoft Advertising, MSN, and Xbox media properties.
Lydia Smyers is Vice President of Customer and Partner Solutions for U.S. Telco, Media, and Gaming at Microsoft, leading a team of more than 400 professionals serving the top 200 enterprises in those sectors. Based in Massachusetts, she has spent over a decade at Microsoft in roles spanning U.S. Education, Americas Northeast, and now the converging industries of telco, media, and gaming. Before Microsoft she held senior executive roles at Oracle, Red Hat, and Ernst & Young, building a career defined by large-scale partnerships, channel strategy, and technology-driven transformation. She was named to CRN's Top 100 Women of the Channel five consecutive years and spoke at MWC Barcelona 2026 on AI and its societal implications.
Scott Morello is VP of HR Business Insights for Activision Blizzard King at Microsoft, a role he stepped into in October 2023 after building the people analytics function at Activision Blizzard. Before corporate life, he was a marine ecologist - his PhD from UMass Boston studied species interactions in Gulf of Maine intertidal zones. That pivot from counting mussels to measuring workforces defines his unusual edge: he brings the precision of population ecology to questions about how organizations actually behave.
Robert 'Bob' Donahue is a veteran technology and fintech executive who led Authorize.Net Holdings as President and CEO from 2004 to 2007, steering the company through its landmark $565 million acquisition by CyberSource Corporation - one of the defining deals in digital payments history. After joining CyberSource's board post-acquisition, he went on to serve as an independent director at NETSCOUT Systems and Sycamore Networks. With a career spanning senior executive roles at Manufacturers Services Ltd., Stratus Computer, and Celestica, Donahue has been a consistent presence at the intersection of technology infrastructure and financial services for over two decades.
Owen Frivold is the CEO of Cleartelligence, a modern data and AI consulting firm headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts. A Stanford-educated co-founder of Hero Digital, Frivold brings 14+ years of experience shaping customer experience and digital transformation for brands like Apple, Sephora, Airbnb, and Lucid Motors. After founding Winter Sun LLC as a boutique strategy advisory, he joined Cleartelligence as President in April 2024 - when the company acquired Winter Sun - and was elevated to CEO in April 2025. He is known for turning complex data problems into actionable intelligence and driving enterprise AI readiness across financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, and retail.
Eric Paley is a serial entrepreneur turned seed-stage venture capitalist who co-founded Founder Collective in 2008, building it into one of the world's highest-performing seed funds with investments in Uber, The Trade Desk, Airtable, and 20+ unicorns. Before VC, he co-founded Brontes Technologies — a 3D dental imaging startup spun out of MIT — and sold it to 3M for $95 million in 2006. A perennial Forbes Midas List honoree (ranked as high as #9 globally and the world's top-ranked seed investor), he became known for his unusually candid critiques of venture capital excess. In June 2025, he left Founder Collective to serve as Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development under Governor Maura Healey, overseeing a 700-person agency focused on housing affordability, business competitiveness, and the AI innovation economy.