Our members

Dr. Amy Kruse leads Satori Neuro, a new venture fund focused on mental health, neurotechnology, and human flourishing. Amy leverages her decades of experience as a neuroscientist and her prior roles as an operator and a government program manager to discover transformational companies addressing the largest mental health, brain health, and wellness challenges and opportunities. Prior to Satori Neuro, Amy was a General Partner at Prime Movers Lab, where she led the fund’s early-stage life sciences investments in human augmentation and longevity. She previously served as the Chief Scientific Officer of Optios and as the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cubic Global Defense. Early in her career, Amy served as a government civilian program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where she created and oversaw the Agency’s first performance-oriented neuroscience programs.

Dr. Ariane Tom is Founding Partner of Kaleida Capital, an early-stage VC firm focused on AI and neurotechnology. Throughout her academic career at Stanford, Ariane spearheaded interdisciplinary research programs in neural interfaces with applications in brain-mapping, prosthetics, drug delivery, and neuromodulation. She is a published co-author in top-tier research journals Science Magazine and Nature Portfolio with Karl Deisseroth, Zhenan Bao, and Sergiu Pasca. As a VC, she has invested in and served as a Board Observer for companies spanning neuroimaging, cancer diagnostics, drug discovery, and immunotherapy. Ariane holds a B.S. in Materials Science &

Engineering, an M.S. in Bioengineering, and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering, all from Stanford University. 

Ben Heywood is a General Partner at SkyRiver Ventures, focusing on early-stage deep tech and digital health. He previously served as the Global Chief Privacy Officer at iCarbonX, a Shenzhen-based digital biology company. He co-founded PatientsLikeMe, where he was President and Chief Privacy Officer. A father to three daughters, he is married and lives in Newton, MA. Ben has explored various technologies and industries during their early stages of digital transformation, including 3D printing, brain implants, Hollywood, health, and biology.

Serial entrepreneur and currently Co-founder and CBO at Modality.AI, a digital clinical lab test startup in San Francisco. Previously David co-founded a successful technology distribution company in Sydney in 1985, representing companies such as Adobe and SuperMac. He moved to San Francisco in ‘94 to launch an internet venture, exiting to a public company in ‘99. Since then he's helped start two non-profit organizations and is an early angel in 20 companies including PatientsLikeMe, Calm, The Mighty, Meru Health, Sana, Cognixion and Modality.AI. Also active on AngelList with over 100 syndicate investments.

David Maltz is a seasoned medical device developer and entrepreneur, and is currently Founding Head of Product at Humanity Neurotech. He is also the Founder and Managing Partner of Intervalent, an independent advisory and consulting practice that specializes in product and business strategy for consumer-facing medtech and digital health companies. He's previously held senior roles at Novartis, Nektar Therapeutics, and Game Ready.

He focuses his advisory and investment efforts on founder-led and mission-driven pre-seed and seed stage digital diagnostics, therapeutics, and digitally-enabled services companies. In addition to an early investment in Humanity Neurotech, his portfolio includes Aidar Health, Circadia Technology, Cognixion, Modality.AI, NextSense, and Sana Health.

Diana Saville is the Co-founder and President of BrainMind, a community of top brain scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, and academic leaders collaborating to accelerate impactful innovation in brain science. She is also scientific co-founder and Research Director for New Frontier Bio, a biotech company focused on natural compounds, and cofounder and President of Entrepreneur of Your Own Life (EYOL), a STEM entrepreneurship work-study program for college students. Diana sits on the advisory boards of the OneMind Accelerator, Brain Futures, Reverberation, and RegenMed Systems. Formerly the Chief Innovation Officer for the Angiogenesis Foundation, Diana is an expert in creative communication and visualization of scientific concepts. She organizes international expert summits on topics in medicine and technology.

Esther Dyson is an investor, journalist, author, philanthropist and founder of Wellville, a 10-year nonprofit project devoted to helping five small US communities foster resilience and equity (2015-2024). Her next project will be to write a book about what she has learned over the past 10 years, including the importance of long-term thinking, describing education and health(care) as collective investments rather than government spending, the importance of training people to be human (rather than focusing too much on AIs), and other ways to improve the world by re-examining our assumptions. 

Broadly, Esther is a leading angel investor focused on health (care), open government, digital technology, biotechnology, and outer space.  Overall, she is fascinated by new business models, new technologies and new markets (both economically and politically). She is an active board member for a variety of startups and nonprofits. Her investments/exits include companies like 23andMe, Airship Ventures, Evernote, Flourish Labs, Neurogeneces, Square, and more. From September 2008 to March 2009, she lived in Star City outside Moscow, Russia, training as a backup cosmonaut. 

Frank is an entrepreneur and investor specializing in life sciences. He works as an investor with Global Asset Capital, focusing on mental health, brain health, and neurotech. He is also the founder and CEO of Mayaa Ventures, an advisory firm dedicated to the life sciences industry.

Frank's professional journey includes serving as a Member of the Executive Leadership and Vice President of Investments & Venture Management at atai Life Sciences (NASDAQ: ATAI) and holding various board positions in companies developing mental health therapeutics, neurotech, and drug delivery technologies. He has also been Senior Vice President of Strategy & Business Development at Deutsche Handelsbank AG and co-founded the tech startup 99chairs, where he served as Co-CEO. His earlier career includes experiences at McKinsey & Company, UnternehmerTUM, and Siemens. 

Jeff Eggers is Co-founder and Managing Partner at Rsquared Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focused on technologies that contribute to national resilience. In his previous career, Jeff co-authored the best-selling book “Leaders: Myth and Reality” and was the Executive Director of the McChrystal Group Leadership Institute, where he led research and client training on the behavioral science of organizational performance. Previously in public service, Jeff served as a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and worked at the White House in 2006-2007 and again from 2010 through early 2015. Jeff also served in the military, retiring from the U.S. Navy in 2013.

Kheli is a current master’s student at Stanford University, studying Symbolic Systems (with a concentration in Neuroscience) and Management Science and Engineering (with a concentration in Technology and Engineering Management). She is passionate about leveraging emerging neurotechnologies for human good and is actively involved in research in the area. At Braingels, Kheli acts as Assistant to the Founder and is in charge of the group’s admin and strategic development. 

Nichol Bradford is a futurist, investor, and thought leader dedicated to unlocking human potential through the integration of AI and transformative technologies. As a global advocate for human-centered innovation, Nichol's work spans over 20 years at the forefront of technology, leadership, and organizational transformation.

She is the Executive-in-Residence for AI + HI at the Society for Human Resource Management and Co-Founder and Partner of Niremia Collective, a venture fund focused on human potential technologies. Nichol also co-founded TransformativeTech.org, the largest global ecosystem focused on advancing tech innovation for human flourishing.

Previously, she held senior executive roles at leading companies such as Epic Games, Activision-Blizzard, Vivendi Games, and Disney. Nichol holds an MBA from The Wharton School, serves as faculty at Singularity University, and is a Trustee at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

Nichol's unique approach blends psychology, neuroscience, and organizational transformation to guide individuals and companies through the AI era, fostering environments of growth, resilience, and innovation. Through her thought leadership, Nichol is shaping the future of work, leadership, and technology to ensure human progress in an increasingly digital world.

Rob Goldman is an entrepreneur, data scientist, and angel investor passionate about the role that brain data will play in shaping our collective future. 

As an entrepreneur, Rob played a pivotal role in the creation of two groundbreaking companies. The first, Shopping.com, was an early pioneer in the e-commerce industry. Rob harnessed the power of data to revolutionize online shopping. The second company, Thready, focused on social media analytics, leveraging data in the social graph to help people understand themselves. These innovative approaches to data caught the attention of industry giants, leading to the acquisition of Shopping.com by eBay in 2005 and Thready by Facebook in 2012, where Rob led the Ads product and engineering teams from 2016-2019.

Driven by a conviction that data is fundamental to progress, Rob is a driving force behind The Legibility Project. This initiative explores how new forms of data, particularly in the neurotech space, can illuminate previously unmeasurable aspects of human experience, leading to greater self-awareness and a more harmonious relationship with ourselves and the world around us.

Rob is also an early BrainMind member, and is a strong supporter of its mission to help connect founders, scientists and investors interested in brain science to each other in ways that can help them learn and grow.

Sanem Alkan, known as Sam, is a distinguished advisor renowned for her dedication to fostering the growth of emerging ventures and family-owned businesses. With a career spanning diverse sectors including investment management, technology, and philanthropy, Sam specializes in strategic growth and sustainable development.

Currently serving as Senior Impact Advisor to Sobrato Philanthropies Executive Committee member, donor and impact advisor, Sheri Sobrato, Sam offers strategic counsel and hands-on support in impact investing and philanthropic grantmaking. Her key initiatives involve evaluating new funding opportunities and building funder partnerships, with a particular focus on accelerating ventures in critical, funding-constrained areas such as rare pediatric disease care and youth mental wellness.

Sarah Meyohas is an artist & investor. Her practice provides an intelligible visual language to articulate the systems and complex operations that increasingly govern our world. Her work has been collected and exhibited at major institutions such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the New Museum in New York. She is represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery as well as the United Talent Agency for her work in film. In 2015, she created Bitchcoin, a cryptocurrency backed by her physical artwork, which predated the launch of Ethereum and is the first tokenization of physical art on a blockchain. Similarly, her project Stock Performance (2016) emphasized the individual’s gesture on a market akin to more recent meme-stock trends. Her 2017 project Cloud of Petals involved training a Generative Adversarial Network on a dataset of 100,000 physical rose petals to generate endless, new, and unique petals, both in video installations and virtual reality experiences. Her recent work explores holography and plotters to create pieces that delve into the mechanics of perception and texture. In addition to her artistic endeavors, Meyohas invests in companies that align with her moral and aesthetic values. Her areas of focus include human enhancement, cryptographic infrastructure, and deep-tech broadly defined, encompassing robotics, AI, and biotech. She currently invests through Bluebirds Capital and has previously served as a special partner at Pascal Capital and a venture partner at Spark Capital. Meyohas's practice embodies the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk—a German term meaning a "total work of art"—seamlessly integrating art, technology, and finance. 

Dr. Sean White is the CEO of Inflection AI, where he leads the creation of world-class AI models with groundbreaking emotional intelligence. He cofounded Braingels and serves as a board member for and advises transformative organizations like Earth Species Project, The Tech Interactive, Wave.io, and Open Mind AI. He is also an active angel investor.

Sean’s work at the leading edge of technology innovation across three decades has included roles as Mozilla’s Chief R&D Officer, founder of Nokia's Interaction Ecologies Group, cofounder of BrightSky Labs, CTO of WhoWhere, VP of Technology at Lycos, and researcher at Interval Research Corporation. Dr. White earned his B.S. and M.S. at Stanford University and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. Sean is a 2009 Tech for Global Good Laureate and a 2024 inductee to the Augmented World Expo XR Hall of Fame for his invention of situated visualization.

Tom Gruber is a product designer, entrepreneur, and AI graybeard who uses technology to help people live better lives. He led the team that designed the Siri virtual assistant, and then led the Advanced Development Group at Apple for 8 years. Previously, he led design and technology for pioneering companies in Collective Knowledge Systems and Collaborative Knowledge Management, which harvest the collective contributions of people working together on line. His research in Artificial Intelligence, particularly ontology engineering, helped lay the foundation for the Semantic Web. 

Tom promotes the philosophy of Humanistic AI, which he presented in a popular TED talk. He was a founding board member of the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society and supports the Center for Humane Technology. He advises companies and non-profit organizations that use technology to have a positive impact on humanity. Tom serves as Impact Advisor and board member for several promising companies.