OUR MENTORS
Catalina Catana
Head of Accelerator Program
ThinkZone
Catalina Catana is leading the accelerator program at ThinkZone Ventures and helping entrepreneurs apply Design Thinking principles and mindset to building their ventures. She is a creative strategist and learning designer passionate about education, future of work and social innovation and entrepreneurship.
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Catalina is also exploring the social innovation and sustainability fields in the region and co-founding WETHNK, a social innovation organization aimed to build the next generation of leaders who are fundamentally different in terms of how they think and act.
Ameeta Soni is the President of Altek Consulting and Investment Committee of Maroon Venture Partners Fund. In her consulting practice, Ameeta drives revenues and profits for technology and digital health companies by developing and executing winning strategies, often serving as an interim chief marketing officer. She excels in leveraging customer insight, digital marketing, and analytics to rapidly build the pipeline and acquire customers. Ameeta also serves on the investment committee of the Maroon Venture Partners Fund and is a board observer/advisor for several of its portfolio companies.
Ameeta Soni
President of Altek Consulting and Investment Committee
Maroon Venture Partners Fund
Danny Hwang
Founder & CEO
Point Avenue
Danny Hwang is the Founder & CEO of Point Avenue. Based in Vietnam, Point Avenue is a private education technology company offering K-12 educational services and admissions consulting across Southeast Asia. He started out at West Point, after which he served as an Army Ranger for six years, including two tours in Iraq and over 25 months overseas. After his military service, he co-founded New Pathway Education & Technology Group with his older brother, Sam, in Shanghai, China, which was acquired in 2014 by CVC Capital Partners. He currently serves as the Chairman of Ignite, a professional services company that specializes in human capital development, and CEO of Odyssey, a joint venture company developing AI technology. Danny's hobbies include traveling the world with his wife, Honda, racing in ultra-marathons and Ironman competitions, reading, spending time with his family, and advising fellow entrepreneurs and startups.
Bobby Liu is a founding partner of Med247 – an offline-to-online (O2O) healthcare platform where customers can book an appointment and consult online with Professional doctors. He is also a founding partner of TFI Ventures – one of the most successful accelerator programs in Vietnam as well as across Southeast Asia.
Mr. Liu has worked in six different countries on supporting ecosystems and startups. He successfully initiated Hub.IT, a co-working space and incubator, and assisted the Vietnamese government in building the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. With a strong passion for shaping the startup community, he devotes a lot of his time to mentoring startups and helping them achieve their goals.
Bobby Liu
Founding Partner
Med247
Tri "Dennis" Doan
Senior Investment Manager
VinaCapital Ventures
Tri Doan is a seasoned investment specialist who is passionate to join force and support founders to build companies. He works toward being a trusted contact connecting entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers with leading corporations, financial institutions, and private investors. He is a part of founding team members of VinaCapital Ventures, a Senior Investment Manager. They manage Principal Investments within Technology space and the Group’s strategic alliance projects with key industry players.
Mr. Doan also played vital roles in capital markets and other advisory works, i.e., M&A, equity/ debt financing, business restructuring, and strategic direction.
Abhi Adhikari is the Founder of Workership, a data-driven platform that enables worker organizations and unions to engage their members by providing real-time feedback and analytics. Mr. Adhikari graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard Kennedy School with a joint MBA/MPA degree. Before founding Workership, Mr. Adhikari also a founding partner of Ideagrad, a startup incubator for young entrepreneurs in Central Asia, served as a Kiva Fellow, and worked as an Associate at BlackRock in New York.
Abhi Adhikari
Founder
Workership
Tuyet Vu
Chief of Staff to CEO
Lazada Vietnam
Nataliya Langburd Wright
Doctoral Student in Strategy
Harvard Business School
Tuyet Vu is the Chief of Staff to CEO at Lazada Vietnam. Ms. Vu holds an environmental engineering degree from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. Ms. Vu excelled as a Program Analyst for Clinton Climate Initiative in Hanoi, Vietnam and many years of experience at Boston Consulting Groups (BCG).
Nataliya Langburd Wright is a doctoral student in the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School specializing in international digital economy and entrepreneurship issues. Ms. Wright has assessed and advised on governance, cyber/technology, trade, and energy issues at the World Bank and the Council of Economic Advisors at the White House. She also has co-founded and served as an advisor for startups and social enterprises in the U.S. and Europe. Ms. Wright completed her B.A. in Economics and Global Affairs at Yale University.
Khanh Tran
Managing Partner
Touchstone Ventures
Khanh Tran is the founding Managing Partner of Touchstone Ventures, a South East Asia socially-responsible venture capital fund with a strong focus in Vietnam. Prior to that, he was the Founding Partner of VinaCapital Ventures. Before VinaCapital, Mr. Tran held executive positions at regional start-ups Grab and GoBear after his stints at Goldman Sachs in its London and Singapore offices.
Khanh Tran aims to create value by empowering talented visionaries to transform their ideas into real businesses. He set his sights on playing a role in building a financial ecosystem in Vietnam and the region that will enable future generations to be free to learn, discover, innovate, and have resources available to them to help transform their ideas into viable businesses.
Tiffany Le is an Investor at New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and brings years of experience working with stakeholders across the healthcare spectrum, including pharma, Medtech, provider and payer.
Ms. Le is investing in Medtech deals at New Enterprise Associates and is also conducting research at MIT on genomics in precision medicine and synthetic biology and is particularly interested in using AI and technology to improve patient care and reduce inefficiencies. She began her career at LEK Consulting, where she helped life sciences and healthcare clients tackle major strategic decisions, including R&D/pipeline optimization, M&A, pricing strategies, and international expansion. Ms. Le also spent time working in London and was on externship to Amgen in their Customer Experience and Innovation group. Before joining KPV, she had venture stints at GE Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners in the healthcare and life sciences sectors. Ms. Le obtained a BA from UCLA and MBA from Harvard Business School.
Tiffany Le
Healthcare Investor
New Enterprise Associates
Tu Ngo
Co-founder & Chairwoman
YOLA
Tu Ngo is a well-known leader among Vietnamese youth. After graduating from Stanford University, she came back to Vietnam to co-found YOLA, a premier education group in Vietnam whose mission is to change lives through education and where she's now serving as Chairwoman. She's also the founding General Partner at Touchstone Ventures, a Southeast Asia VC fund with focus in Vietnam and a socially-responsible investment philosophy.
Tu is a passionate builder for positive impacts and unlocking human potential. As a member of the inaugural cohort of the Obama Foundation’s Leaders: Asia-Pacific Program, she wants to lessen the inequality gap through technology, entrepreneurship and values-based leadership transformation in the region. Her hobbies include traveling, writing, gardening, music and most recently, cooking.
Mr. Tran Tri Dung is a Program Manager in the Hanoi & Central Region of the Swiss Entrepreneurship Program. Mr. Tran's responsible for managing Swiss EP supports Partner Organizations and contributes to the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem.
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The Swiss Entrepreneurship Program (Swiss EP) aims to promote entrepreneurial activities, enhancing the readiness of innovative entrepreneurs to start/grow their business and facilitate a supportive ecosystem. The program is financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and implemented by a consortium of Swisscontact and J.E. Austin from 2015-2019 in six selected countries (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Peru, Serbia, and Vietnam).
Dung T. Tran
Program Manager in Hanoi & Central Region
Swiss Entrepreneurship Program