Standard poodles have “owned” me for many years. I live to serve their every need.
Our first poodle, Sabrina, came from a 52 acre farm in the Annapolis Valley in gorgeous Nova Scotia. We were blessed to have this intuitive, highly intelligent family member for sixteen and a half years.
Gabrielle, my 5th grade daughter at the time, and son Alex who was in 6th grade, carefully and cleverly engineered the case for ensuring our first ever dog be a standard poodle. They exhaustively researched breed intelligence, intuition, athleticism, and whether the dog tends to be affectionate and hypoallergenic. The rest is history.
To honor Sabrina’s legacy, the family went back to her first home in Nova Scotia to meet her grandniece, Jazmine, whose affection knows no bounds. Together we took the boat back to Maine, then on to Boston.
As you may have guessed, the name Jazzas (pronounced jah-ZASS) is a combination of Jazmine and Sabrina, to honor the special relationship we had with Sabrina and that continues today with Jazmine.
Jazmine walks me every day for five miles — I don’t walk her. She draws me to her, and I often end up chasing after her. Like her great aunt Sabrina, she loves the beach and water. Her joie de vivre fills me with a deep joy that never fails to motivate me to walk the distance.
These two special family members have been an ongoing source of inspiration, in particular my joy inspiring innovation startups through expertise and capital — I provide angel funds to promising startups, invest for impact, provide consulting services and encourage a more diverse, inclusive startup ecosystem.
I also consult and advise mid- to large size firms, and founders in building and scaling their young organizations.
“My love of seeing promising technologies, especially those that impact and have passionate innovative teams, are what drives me to invest, mentor and consult to the next generation of founders.”
While my career has taken a few twists and turns through technology, biotech and more recently foodtech, I’ve always had a dogged focus on three core business principles: company growth, global expansion, and empathy. In my experience, a healthy business will thrive when built on trusted relationships and teams of people who work harmoniously together towards a common goal.
I have been a senior executive and leader in Silicon Valley and the Boston biotech sector, where I developed a reputation for driving domestic and international organizational growth through innovation, global market expansion and building robust cross-cultural teams.
Throughout my career I’ve improved organizational performance by positioning and evaluating companies for acquisition. My biggest achievement: grew the multi-product company I led with angel funds, expanded in over 100 countries, and sold it to a two billion dollar publicly-held firm.
I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, so entrepreneurship is in my blood. My first entrepreneurial venture at age 19 was to develop and lead a high-profile sailing program. Now I’m paying it forward through angel investing and mentoring early stage companies in life sciences, diagnostics, software/IT, ed tech, clean technology, food/beverage/ag, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and food related technologies, and impact investing.
If you’re a founder pursuing funding, go to Launchpad Ventures and Branch Venture Group, the two angel groups I invest primarily through. Be sure to review the investment criteria and processes.
Many investments closest to my heart are in the impact category. My other investments go to companies whose products make a difference in areas I care deeply about. Three I want to highlight:
Torigen: I initially invested in Torigen with both my head and heart while my standard poodle Sabrina developed cancer. Unfortunately, her condition was too far along for Torigen's treatments.
Torigen uses a dog's own tumor cells to create personalized immunotherapy. It’s highly effective, kind to animals, easy to administer and a fraction of the cost of chemotherapy and radiation.
Torigen was named the 2018 Animal Health Innovation at the Kansas City Animal Health Investment Forum. And Founder and CEO, Ashley Kalinaukas, was recently named to the “30 under 30 in Science” by Forbes Magazine.
Waku: On the impact beverage side, Waku is an herbal infusion beverage made from herbs and flowers sourced from the Andes mountains of Ecuador. CEO Juan Giraldo, who hails from Ecuador, leads the company in bringing this traditional Andes drink to North America.
The company’s impact is to help rural farmers earn a living in Ecuador by cutting out the person in the middle, and pay rural farmers fair trade prices. Waku's recipe is based on an ancestral recipe created in the Ecuadorian Andes centuries ago. Traditionally, people drink it daily with a meal because of its digestive benefits and anti-inflammatory properties.
QSM Diagnostics: QSM Diagnostics has developed a point-of-care diagnostic for rapid identification of bacterial infections in dogs. Their first product diagnoses ear infections in minutes. This speed to diagnosis is a huge benefit to dogs, their families and the veterinarians who serve them. QSM is developing additional rapid diagnostics tests for the veterinary market based on the same platform technology.
Despite their reputation as polished, highly sophisticated dogs, standard poodles love to romp in water and swim. Our poodle Sabrina was no exception; her grandniece Jazmine also flings herself into water the moment she sees it. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve visited the vet due to swimming-related ear infections. Like people and dogs who are frequent swimmers, swimming and water immersion leads to ear infections. In fact, it's the number one cause of visits to the vet. It's why I love this technology.
QSM was awarded a National Science Foundation grant, and was awarded the 2019 TechConnect National Innovation Award.
I sit on the QSM board.