Gilles Attia - Director - A partner with DLA Piper, Mr. Attia concentrates his practice on securities compliance and corporate governance advice to public companies and the representation of high-growth companies, investors, and financial institutions infinancing and technology transactions. Mr. Attia has led most of the significant public offerings and acquisition transactions in the central valley of California of the past 20 years. He has counseled most of the Sacramento region's leading technology and life science companies from startup through later rounds of financing and in liquidity transactions including initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions. In 2005, Mr. Attia was named a Northern California Super Lawyer as the result of a joint research project conducted by Law & Politics and San Francisco magazines.
John Finegan - Director - John founded Beck Ag in 1997 and is currently the CEO of this 40-person marketing services firm. The company serves the agricultural industry and specializes in the use of word of mouth marketing. He is also immediate past-president and current Board member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Sacramento Chapter, and is an owner and Board member of MTI Information Technologies, a database marketing organization. John has a BS degree from Penn State and has completed the University of Chicago's Marketing Management Curriculum and Northwestern University's Kellogg Management Institute. John is currently on the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Superior California and The Positive Coaching Alliance. He was also a key early supporter of the Resource Area for Teaching, RAFT’s establishment in the Sacramento region. John is currently Board Chair of the San Juan Education Foundation, which he was instrumental in founding and is serving his third term as Board President for Churchill’s IB Parent Organization. In his spare time he has coached baseball and currently coaches a U14 girls Select soccer team, the CA Rush Frenzy, the 2007 NorCal Association Cup champions.
Peter Gardner - Director - Peter brings 12 years of professional venture investing to Wavepoint and has extensive experience raising capital, managing investment portfolios, structuring financings, and building management teams. He has served on the boards of 11 early-stage, venture-backed technology companies. Prior to Wavepoint Peter was a general partner at Allegis Capital, a $515 million venture capital firm located in Palo Alto, CA. During Peter's tenure at Allegis the firm increased its capital under management seven-fold. Prior to Allegis, Peter was a vice president at Technology Funding, Inc., a $315 million venture capital firm. Before entering the venture capital industry Peter was a project leader at Weston Solutions, a national environmental engineering and consulting company. He began his career in lab positions at Genetics Institute and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Peter has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and bachelor’s degrees in both Biology and Environmental Science from Tufts University.
Jon Gregory - Director - Jon Gregory co-founded the Golden Capital Network in September 1999 and has served as President and CEO of the organization since its inception. In this capacity, Jon is responsible for management and program development. Companies featured at Golden Capital Network events have gone on to raise over $1 billion in angel or venture capital investments. Jon has a Journalism Degree with a Political Science minor from California State University, Chico. His work has been recognized on numerous occasions by leading statewide and national industry trade associations, including the National Association of Development Organizations Innovation Awards in 1986, 1988 and 1995, the California Association for Local Economic Development Grand Prize award in 1999, and Awards of Excellence in 1996 for work related to the location of Swift Transportation Company’s west coast relay station and in 2002 for Golden Capital Network’s new Economic Acceleration Program. Jon currently sits on the Board of Directors of the California Association for Local Economic Development, the Executive Committee of the Sacramento Regional Technology Alliance, and the Board of the Butte County Economic Development Corporation. Jon started his career within the Inspector General’s Office of the 32nd Army Air Defense Command in Germany.
Mark Lau - Director - For the past three years, Mark Lau has run one of the six technology lending teams for Silicon Valley Bank in the Bay Area. Focusing primarily on venture-backed software and services companies, Mark provides specialized debt financing, commercial banking products, venture capital assistance, international financing and products, and M&A advisory services for his clients. Before coming to SVB, Mark worked at GATX Ventures, a unit of GATX Capital, that provided venture debt financing to start-up technology and life science companies across the US and Canada. Prior to GATX Ventures, Mark was a management consultant with KPMG's Financial Services practice in San Francisco. Mark is a graduate from San Diego State University.