TORL BioTherapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in Culver City, California developing antibody-based cancer therapies, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and monoclonal antibodies. Built on discoveries from the UCLA laboratory of Dennis Slamon - the scientist behind Herceptin and Ibrance - TORL is advancing a pipeline against novel cancer targets such as Claudin 6, Claudin 18.2, CDH17, and DLK1. Its lead program, TORL-1-23 (ixotatug vedotin), a CLDN6-targeted ADC, is in pivotal trials for platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. The company has raised over $450 million across multiple rounds, including a $96 million Series C in October 2025.
Sherry A. William is the founder and managing attorney of Pacific Ivy Law Group, a Los Angeles-area corporate boutique that pairs Big-Law rigor with what she calls emotional IQ. Harvard Law educated and trained at three top-tier firms in New York and Los Angeles plus a stint in Tokyo, she negotiates deals for companies, individuals, governments, and financial institutions worldwide. Raised by an immigrant single mother in the Egyptian American community, she is fluent in Arabic, licensed to practice law in California and New York, holds real estate broker licenses in both states, and leads the Harvard Law School Association of Los Angeles and the League of Egyptian American Professionals.
Stephanie Aubrey is VP of People and Chief of Staff to the CEO at Alation, the Redwood City data intelligence company. A UCLA-trained mathematician turned people leader, she sits at the seam where strategy meets headcount, holding the pen on both org design and executive priorities.
Alejandro Guerrero is the Co-Founder and General Partner of Act One Ventures, a Los Angeles micro-VC firm that backs pre-seed and seed companies across vertical SaaS, fintech, compliance, and AI-native enterprise software. A first-generation Mexican-American and former two-time founder, he authored the Diversity Rider, a clause now adopted by hundreds of funds that obligates lead investors to make space on cap tables for underrepresented co-investors. Act One closed a $73M Fund III in 2024 - roughly 3x its prior fund.
Ashley Caldwell is Partner and General Counsel at Sapphire Ventures, the Menlo Park venture capital firm with more than $11B in AUM across its Ventures, Partners, and Sport platforms. She runs legal across all three strategies — deal execution, governance, regulatory, exits — for a firm that backs growth-stage technology companies globally. A former Kirkland & Ellis private equity associate and Bluevine in-house counsel, she joined Sapphire in 2019, was elevated to General Counsel in 2021, and now wears the Partner title too.
Stuart Peterson is the Founder and Managing General Partner of ARTIS Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm he launched in 2001 that coined and trademarked the term 'TechBio.' A 2017 Forbes Midas List honoree, Peterson led early-stage investments in YouTube (acquired by Google) and StemCentrx (acquired by AbbVie for $10.2 billion - the largest-ever venture-backed life sciences acquisition), and has since focused ARTIS at the convergence of computer science and life science, closing a $200 million TechBio II Fund in December 2023 to back next-generation health and medicine companies deploying AI, machine learning, and deep learning to transform human health.
Daniel Perez is a veteran electronics manufacturing executive with over 35 years of industry leadership. He co-founded OnCore Manufacturing Services, served as EVP at Solectron Corporation where revenues grew from $250M to over $12B, and joined Clover Wireless in April 2017 as CEO and Executive Chairman. He architected the acquisition of Teleplan in 2019 and led the subsequent rebrand to Reconext in 2020 - creating a global aftermarket lifecycle services company serving manufacturers, retailers, data centers, and enterprises across consumer electronics, mobile devices, and enterprise equipment. Perez holds an MBA and BA in Political Science from UCLA and serves on the boards of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and The Tech Interactive.
Neschae Fernando is the CEO of Zone24x7, a 22-year-old technology engineering company headquartered in San Jose, California, with a major hub in Sri Lanka. With a dual background in electrical engineering (MS and BS from UCLA) and enterprise IT delivery at Cisco, Fernando leads a 270-person team that sits at a rare intersection: companies capable of integrating hardware and software end-to-end. Under his leadership since June 2022, Zone24x7 has won seven industry awards in 2025 alone, including Gold at NBQSA and the IoT Technology of the Year Award, while expanding its AI, RFID, and cognitive vision platforms across 50+ enterprise clients globally.
Don Vaughn, Ph.D. is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ampa Health, a Palo Alto-based neurotechnology company building FDA-cleared portable TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) devices that compress 36 days of depression treatment into a single day. A Stanford-educated physicist turned UCLA neuroscientist, Vaughn has built a career at the intersection of brain science, machine learning, and accessibility - detoured, notably, through a DJ career that landed him a #28 iTunes Dance chart hit featuring Nick Lachey. His TEDx talk on neurohacking has surpassed one million views. Ampa raised an oversubscribed $8.5M pre-A round in October 2025, achieved FDA clearance for its Ampa One device in February 2025, and is targeting 5,000 patient remissions by end of 2026 - with a long-term audacious goal of a billion remissions in ten years.
Lia Haberman is a creator economy strategist, educator, and the author of ICYMI — a weekly newsletter read by 45,000+ marketers, brand social teams, and creators. Teaching social media and influencer marketing at UCLA Extension since 2018, she built her reputation as an independent, no-nonsense analyst who helps brands and creators navigate a landscape that reinvents itself every six months. With clients ranging from Google to Disney and a Threads following that dwarfs her Instagram audience, she practices what she preaches.