plano-texas
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David Arreaga
David Arreaga is the co-founder and CEO of Ares Materials, a Plano, Texas deep-tech company building AI-designed optical polymers for flexible and foldable electronics. A materials scientist with a Ph.D. from UT Dallas, he turned doctoral research on polymer substrates into a company whose Pylux cover-window and adhesive materials target the next generation of foldable displays. Ares pairs high-throughput experimentation with machine learning to shorten materials development from decades to years, and closed the first trench of a $12M Series B round in 2025.
Ed Wolff
Ed Wolff is the CEO and board member of Aerwave, a Dallas-based company that builds and operates managed Wi-Fi networks for multifamily apartment communities. A multifamily-industry veteran with more than 25 years in real estate and technology, he joined Aerwave in 2024 as president and chief revenue officer before stepping into the CEO role, and has led the company through a Series B raise, expansion across dozens of U.S. markets, and recognition as a Broadband Communities Multifamily Partner of the Year. Wolff's earlier career spans senior roles at LeaseLock, RealPage, Cortland, Pinnacle, and Place Properties.
Kathy Wallace
Kathy Wallace is the CEO of LifeCare Hospital of Plano, part of LifeCare Hospitals of North Texas. A registered nurse with roughly 35 years in healthcare and about 18 of them at LifeCare, she rose through clinical and executive roles into the corner office. She is one of an all-female group of CEOs, all trained in critical care, who lead LifeCare's North Texas long-term acute care hospitals. Her focus is on early-intervention and mobilization protocols that shorten recovery times for the most fragile, critically ill patients while cutting readmissions.
Milind Borkar
Milind Borkar is the founder and CEO of Illuma, a Plano, Texas company that uses passive voice biometrics and synthetic-voice detection to authenticate callers and stop phone-channel fraud at credit unions and community banks. He holds a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech, is named on 21 patents, and spent a decade at Texas Instruments launching more than 50 products before founding Illuma in 2016.
Ron Gaver
Ron Gaver is the co-founder and CEO of Tapcheck, a Plano, Texas fintech that lets hourly workers pull earned wages before payday. He runs the company with his wife Kayling Gaver, having spent 14 years operating a real estate development firm before pivoting to payroll technology in 2019. Under his leadership Tapcheck has moved more than $1 billion in early wages across roughly 12,000 employer locations and raised $225 million in equity and debt in April 2025.
Jaqui Rice Gold
Jaqui Rice Gold is the co-founder and CEO of G.O.A.T. Fuel, a health-forward sports energy drink she launched in January 2020 with her father, NFL Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, and her husband Trevion Gold. Built as the first Black-owned energy drink to lean on cordyceps mushrooms instead of sugar and synthetic stimulants, the brand grew from a pandemic-era direct-to-consumer scramble into a nationally distributed product in tens of thousands of retail doors, with sponsorship deals spanning the Los Angeles Lakers and the WNBA's Chicago Sky.
Craig Peus
Craig R. Peus is the CEO of illuno, a Plano, Texas technology company building the first purpose-built staffing marketplace for off-duty law enforcement officers. Backed by Mark Cuban Companies, illuno lets businesses hire certified, on-duty-grade police officers through an app in minutes, while handling compliance, insurance, and payments and giving departments visibility into officer moonlighting. Peus brings a wide-ranging executive resume - a Stanford biology degree, leadership roles in energy midstream (Gravity Midstream), agtech (Tree3), and capital advisory (Blossom Street Capital) - to a sector he argues is two decades behind on technology.
Ken McDonald
Ken McDonald is the CEO of Leonardo247, a Plano, Texas proptech company whose proactive operations and maintenance software runs across more than 2 million rental units. A Stanford MBA and Dartmouth math-and-economics grad, he has spent 25-plus years turning small online businesses into large ones - scaling LifePics from a few thousand users to 12 million, helping push TeamSnap past 15 million users as Chief Growth Officer, and running dozens of SaaS and payments products as Chief Product Officer at Togetherwork. He co-wrote 'How to Acquire Your First Million Customers' and now applies an operator-first view of AI to the unglamorous world of apartment maintenance.