2023 Women’s Entrepreneurship Symposium, part two: Finding mentors and opportunities

Megan Aanstoos is a Licensing and New Ventures Manager for Kentucky Commercialization Ventures. In this role, Megan is responsible for outreach and education on matters related to commercialization, along with assessing, managing, and licensing intellectual property developed at partner institutions of Kentucky Commercialization Ventures. In addition, Megan is also actively involved in launching start-up companies and fostering collaborations between partner institutions and third-party collaborators. Megan is a strong advocate for inclusive innovation, equity, accessibility, and bringing awareness of different needs to light, so people can form closer, stronger connections and improve communication and social engagement. 

Caroline Crisafulli is Director of Entrepreneurial Education in the Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship at The Ohio State University. She is responsible for leading the Keenan Center’s efforts to provide university-wide entrepreneurial education and early commercialization training.  

Crisafulli brings a particular passion for broadening participation in technology transfer, patenting, and entrepreneurial pursuits.  She leads REACH for Commercialization, an evidence-based program that increases the representation and success of women innovators in academia.  

Prior to joining Ohio State University, Crisafulli was a Co-Founder and Vice President of Operations for Minimally Invasive Devices, Inc., a venture backed medical device startup. Her experience includes product development from concept to commercialization; quality and regulatory affairs; global sales and marketing; raising angel and venture capital funding; and human resource management.

Crisafulli earned a Bachelor of Science in Genetics and Development from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and is listed on seven U.S. patents.  

Latonya Garth earned both a bachelor’s degree in Communication and a master’s degree in Higher Education from Michigan State University. These educational achievements prepared her to pursue her varied interests, which are all aligned with her passion for serving others. She is an author, an entrepreneur, a mentor and a motivational speaker.

In 2010, she founded The Imagine Mentoring Program of Michigan. This non-profit works to increase self-esteem in young people and equip them with the tools they need to make a positive impact in their communities. Her experiences as a mentor and life coach led her to write two inspirational books, with more in development. Ms. Garth is also the owner of a multi-purpose event venue. When not in use by clients, she opens the space to host mentoring sessions and community programs, and to serve as a small business incubator. Leveraging her experience as a business owner, she advises other entrepreneurs looking to take their companies to the next level. Latonya leverages her many relationships in the areas of business, education, and community development to improve the lives of others.

As president of the Broadcom Foundation, Paula Golden initiates innovative partnerships with nonprofits, universities, and non-government organizations (NGOs) to advocate digital-literacy as a 21st century skill essential for creating the diverse workforce contemplated in the 2022 Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act and closing the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education gap for women and under represented groups. Broadcom Foundation programs inspire middle schoolers to learn coding as an essential tool to solve community problems they care about. 

Paula is a leader in the National STEM Funders Network and STEM Education Ecosystem Initiative. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English and Education from Wellesley College and her Juris Doctor cum laude from New England School of Law, where she served as Assistant Dean and Instructor of Law. Paula’s contributions to non-profit thought leadership are widely recognized and include awards and accolades from the University of California at Irvine, Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN), and the Women in Defense (WID).

Ines Hernandez is driven by her passion and commitment to building inclusive, resilient, and thriving communities. She has over 20 years of experience building cross-sector consensus that led to community and economic development solutions, new policies, and action with demonstrable results. She thrives in navigating intersecting issues, including financial inclusion, small business development, workforce development, affordable housing, climate policy, public health, and equity. As a public relations professional, Ines also understands the business, political, and grassroots landscapes and how issues are communicated in the media, through the political process, and in the public dialogue. 

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently appointed Ines as the first-ever Counselor for Equity.  In this newly created role, Ines will work across the Department’s 13 bureaus to institutionalize equity across all workstreams and advise senior leadership on policy design and implementation strategies that help advance the equity agenda within the Department’s programs and strategic initiatives.  

Most recently, Ines served as the inaugural Senior Economic Development Fellow for StartUP FIU, where she helped connect Florida International University to opportunities that foster entrepreneurship and build inclusive prosperity by leveraging its role as an anchor institution and innovation hub. In her prior role as SVP in Community Investment and Development at Citi, Ines was responsible for leading the bank’s regional commitment to economic inclusion and leveraging philanthropy, business solutions, and relationship expertise to launch and scale transformative programs with high social impact. During her tenure as Principal of Civica Consulting Group Inc., Ines advised municipalities, nonprofit, industries, and philanthropies on how to use data to advance community and economic development initiatives. As the lead consultant for The Social Compact (Washington, D.C) and Emerging Markets, Inc. (Los Angeles, California), Ines used research data to demonstrate the untapped market potential of low-income neighborhoods and encouraged major financial institutions and supermarkets to serve these areas.  

Kavya Kopparapu is a research engineer at DeepMind, an artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory, where she works on engineering and research projects related to language models. She has a patent on a precision medicine platform for glioblastoma, with another on the way for an AI system to summarize user-generated videos, and her research has been featured by Forbes, Tech Crunch, Refinery 29, and IEEE Spectrum. Kavya was named as one of Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential Teens, a WebMD Health Hero, Glamour Magazine's College Woman of the Year, and a U.S. Presidential Scholar for her work in healthcare AI.

In 2015, Kavya founded GirlsComputingLeague (GCL), a nonprofit organization which works to provide an accessible emerging technology education to low-income students and young women across the world. GCL has grown to include chapters in 20 states and seven different countries, and includes a successful scholarship program matching talented college students to teach low-income students across the world. Kavya is a recent graduate of Harvard University, where she received her bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Healthcare Innovation and a Master of Science in Computer Science in 2022.

Mihri Ozkan is a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). Mihri is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and the Frontier National Academy of Engineering. She is the Climate Action Champion and Changemaker Professor of the University of California and was selected as one of the Remarkable Women of UCR. 

Mihri completed her graduate studies at Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego. She integrated her concerns about climate justice and environmental improvement into her research. Over twenty years, her research group developed innovative solutions for lithium-ion battery technologies using sustainable and waste materials with green solutions and low power processing to achieve a low carbon footprint in manufacturing.

Mihri's creative nature has resulted in 47 granted and 10 active patents. She has published more than 340 scientific publications. She was recently the lead organizer for the Climate Change Mitigation Technologies Symposium at the 2022 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting & Exhibit. She also guest edited an issue of the MRS Bulletin titled “Materials for Carbon Capture Technologies," and she led the "Voices" piece on direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide together with presidents of National Academies and DAC company leaders. She has given numerous worldwide keynote presentations about climate change, decarbonization, carbon capture, electrification of transportation, and renewable energy storage technologies.

Dr. D Sangeeta recently left the corporate world after more than two decades to launch a tech-startup, “Gotara,” which provides reimagined career advice and targeted upskilling to women in STEM. She developed a passion for advancing women in STEM during her time working in male-dominated industries like aviation, energy, and tech. Gotara provides nano-learning opportunities based on the latest research and insights from influential STEM leaders, to be able to close the gender gap in STEM and give women much-needed equity.

Previously, Sangeeta was an executive at Amazon, GE and Nielsen in a variety of roles in research, technology, product, marketing, operations, quality, diversity, and mergers and acquisitions departments. She has experience in both starting a company from scratch and turning around underperforming organizations. She has a Ph.D. in Materials Chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. 

Vaishali Udupa is the Commissioner for Patents of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As Commissioner for Patents, Ms. Udupa manages and leads the Patents organization as its chief operating officer. She oversees the agency’s 10,000 Patents employees, including more than 9,000 patent examiners responsible for fostering the country’s innovation system by providing patent protections to inventors. 

Prior to joining the USPTO, Ms. Udupa was already a nationally recognized leader in intellectual property (IP), with over twenty years of experience in strategic IP advisement and complex litigation. 

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Bridget Weston is the CEO of the SCORE Association, where she provides executive leadership and works directly and collaboratively with the Board of Directors to establish the vision and direction of SCORE. In her 10 years with the organization, she has developed an in-depth understanding of the needs and challenges of our volunteers and has established significant relationships on the Hill. Through her unwavering commitment and passion for SCORE’s success, Ms. Weston motivates, directs, and provides guidance to SCORE’s staff, its 300+ chapters, and over 10,000 volunteers.

During her 10 years at SCORE, Ms. Weston has been involved in every aspect of the organization. Not only has she led the Marketing & Communications team, but she has been the change management leader for both Centralized Accounting and Engage, has overseen the Help Desk after the former Vice President of Technology departed, and has been integrally involved in nearly every major foundation partner project. Additionally, she has served as a member of the Futures task force that created SCORE’s Vision for 2025 and was a leader on the FY2020 tactical plan for SCORE.

She has publicly represented SCORE on numerous occasions, including testifying in front of the House Small Business Committee and appearing on MSNBC’s “Your Business.” Ms. Weston earned her Master of Business Administration from Temple University and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sean Wilkerson works in the Office of Innovation Outreach at the USPTO creating intellectual property (IP) awareness programs and managing outreach services to independent inventors, small businesses, entrepreneurs, makers, and universities. Wilkerson previously worked as an outreach coordinator for the programs leading up to the opening of the USPTO’s Silicon Valley and Texas Regional Offices. He also spent a year as part of the New York engagement team that developed the 2015 Future of Urban Innovation Startups Summit in coordination with Columbia University and the USPTO.

From 2011–2013, he served as the program manager of the inaugural Select USA Summit, developing the program, structure, and outreach efforts of a U.S. government-wide program housed in the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. As an education program analyst in the Global Intellectual Property Academy from 2008–2011, he managed international programs focused on providing IP training related to enforcement of patents, trademarks, and copyrights and the U.S. patent and trademark system. Prior to working for the federal government, he served as the Director of Events for the National Association of Homebuilders in Washington, D.C. and as the Ideas Exchange Manager for Accenture in Reston, Virginia.