north-america
(7)
Edward Pilkington
Across three decades, five regions and a cabinet of familiar labels, Edward Pilkington learned that durable brands need both a fixed identity and the nerve to move with culture.
Paul McKnight
Paul McKnight runs the North American arm of John Paul, the Paris-born concierge group that quietly answers the phone when private-jet calendars implode and Michelin reservations vanish. A career CFO turned chief executive, he is the operations spine behind a 600-concierge global network serving luxury brands and their highest-spending customers.
Andre Bliznyuk
Andre Bliznyuk is a General Partner at Runa Capital, where he leads North American investments in software for regulated industries: fintech, edtech, and digital health. Before VC, he spent a decade in capital markets at Goldman Sachs and UBS, running 20+ IPOs. He has backed Brainly, Mambu, Lendio, Smava, and Zopa, with exits at Cloudflare, Goldman Sachs, and Colt Telecom.
Joseph Ros
Joseph Ros is US Partner and General Manager at Entrepreneurs First (EF), the global talent-first investor that backs exceptional individuals before they have a co-founder or company. An EF alum himself - he founded edtech startup HowCloud during EF's third London cohort - Ros joined the team in late 2017, led expansion into Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangalore, deployed over $20M via EF's Seed SPV, and now runs EF's North American operations from San Francisco, identifying and investing in the country's most ambitious founders from day zero.
Paul Weinstein
Paul Weinstein is the Founder, General Partner, and COO of Azure Capital Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm he founded in 2000 with over $750 million under management across 8 funds and more than 200 investments. A former top-ranked Wall Street equity research analyst covering data communications at firms including Credit Suisse First Boston and Deutsche Bank, Paul transitioned from sell-side analyst to VC investor and has backed transformative technology companies including Docker, VMware, Salesforce (via Prediction.io), and Calix. He focuses on early and mid-stage ventures in cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, AI, and communications technology across North America.
Freddie Heygate
Freddie Heygate is CEO, North America at Just After Midnight, a London-founded managed cloud services and 24/7 digital support company now part of the Ultima group. After spending five years building JAM's Asia-Pacific operations from Singapore, he relocated to Austin, Texas in January 2024 to lead the company's US expansion. With a background spanning digital consultancy, marketing, and business development at agencies including Reading Room and The Drum, Freddie brings over a decade of cross-continental experience helping global brands like Ford, Abbott, and Vodafone keep their digital infrastructure running around the clock.
Timo Korpela
Timo Korpela is CEO of Haltian Inc. and VP of Sales for North America at Haltian, the Finnish IoT pioneer behind the Thingsee sensor platform and the 'Empathic Building' concept. Raised under the Northern Lights in Finnish Lapland and educated at Helsinki University of Technology, he bridges the precision of Nordic engineering with the deal-making culture of Silicon Valley. Operating from Palo Alto, he drives Haltian's North American growth - a market that accounts for roughly a third of the company's revenue - while negotiating global partnerships with Cisco, Microsoft, and healthcare systems across three continents.