Blake Modersitski joined Pelion as the Managing Partner in 2002, and has led the firm through 4 successful funds. Blake is focused on backing entrepreneurs building unique and disruptive technology. Blake has led investments in Redhat, Riverbed, Fusion.io, Integral Ad Science, DOMO, enCommerce, Soasta, and Metacloud.

Prior to joining Pelion, Blake was Managing Director for Novell Ventures and VP of Strategic Business Development. He directed Novell’s venture strategy including both its direct investments in companies and indirect investments in venture capital funds. During this time, he served on the boards of several public and private companies as well as the advisory boards of several venture capital firms.

Prior to managing Novell’s venture capital organization, Blake held a number of sales, marketing, product management, global channel sales development and business development positions within Novell and Word Perfect. Blake has a B.A. in Economics from Brigham Young University.

Ms. Claybrook recently retired after 30 years with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. As a National Bank Examiner, she worked in community and regional banks across the western United States. She held several leadership positions during her career including, Examiner in Charge of a regional institution, Assistant Deputy Comptroller and Associate Deputy Comptroller for both the Western and South-Southeast Districts. She served as President of an agency wide employee network group and was actively involved in employee training initiatives. She received the Comptrollers Award for her efforts in Diversity and Inclusion and has been recognized for her leadership skills. Ms. Claybrook spent the last 18 months of her career as the co-lead for an agency wide initiative to develop a framework for risk based supervision processes to ensure the right resources were consistently deployed to the areas of highest risk within the banking system.  She currently serves on the board of the Sam Houston State University School of Banking and is an active mentor for students from middle school to college. 

Joseph Fuller is a Professor of Management Practice in General Management and co-leads the school’s initiative, Managing the Future of Work. He currently teaches the General Management Processes and Action course in the second year of the MBA program and formerly headed The Entrepreneurial Manager course in the program’s first year. A 1981 graduate of the school, Joe was a founder and first employee of the global consulting firm, Monitor Group, now Monitor-Deloitte. He served as the Chief Executive Officer of its commercial consulting operations until 2006 and remained a Senior Advisor to the firm until its acquisition by Deloitte in 2012.

During his three decades in consulting, Joseph worked with senior executives and policymakers on a wide variety of issues related to corporate strategy and national competitiveness. He has particularly deep experience in industries with a heavy reliance on technology, such as life sciences, ICT and the defense and aerospace industries. He is currently researching the evolution of the role of the CEOs and the C-suite in public companies.

Ziggy Liaqat is an executive with 20+ years of experience, and a proven track record of creating world class teams, driving change, and supercharging performance across across global organizations. Recent corporate experiences include, Managing Director of Edexcel, COO for Pearson North America and Global COO for Pearson.

In February 2019, Ziggy founded Lucidity LLC. Lucidity has a coaching practice where the focus is on talent development, executive coaching, organizational effectiveness and leadership development for leaders of start-ups to executives in Fortune 500 companies. The start-up practice uses his executive and coaching experience to help leaders of start-ups to super-charge the growth of their business through advising on strategy, go to market and operational excellence. He is also a firm believer that founders should understand why leadership style, purpose and culture are the fabric upon which a thriving business is built.

Ziggy is also an angel investor and sits on the board of a number of start-ups and a VC while he is also Chair of the advisory board at PIE. Most recently he helped set up the Education practice at Ridge-Lane partners, a DC based advisory firm. He is passionate about helping brilliant people do impactful work that has a positive effect in the world.

He has an MBA from the University of Westminster and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Leadership program.

Donavan is a venture capitalist, experienced entrepreneur and community organizer. Donavan currently serves as Managing Director for Startup Capital Ventures x SBI Fund, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage (Seed to Series A) technology software companies in FinTech, Enterprise & SaaS and Deep Tech. Donavan serves on the boards of SCV portfolio companies Hobnob, Shifted Energy and is a board observer with Breinify.

Prior to joining SCV, Donavan co-founded Adama Materials, a venture-capital backed materials science company. Donavan served as the company’s first CEO and president.  Donavan co-founded Asio Corporation, a software development consulting firm, specializing in software and systems engineering and community building strategies for government, foundations, and nonprofits.

In 2015, Donavan co-founded the Purple Maiʻa Foundation, a 501(c)(3) EdTech non-profit organization focused on empowering high opportunity youth in underserved Hawaiʻi communities. Under Donavan’s leadership, Purple Maiʻa has rapidly grown to become a keystone organization in Hawaiʻi’s innovation ecosystem.  Donavan is a licensed attorney and a product of the Hawaiʻi public educational system. He holds a BA, JD and MBA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.