Build and Launch Accelerator Demo Day Program

Jonathan Ellis is the Founder and Managing Director of Sandalphon Capital. Prior to founding Sandalphon in 2016, Jonathan was a Senior Vice President in Macquarie’s Principal Finance Group group where he was responsible for sourcing, executing and managing investments in a wide range of industries and asset classes including technology, specialty finance, healthcare and real estate. Jonathan was a member of Macquarie Capital’s Restructuring Advisory and Special Situations group until 2009 where he was involved in private equity and debt investing, and restructuring advisory engagements. Prior to moving to Chicago in 2007, he was a member of Macquarie Capital’s Diversified Industrials Group in London and focused on private equity investments in a variety of industries.

Jonathan is also on the Board of Social Venture Partners Chicago, a non-profit group comprised of engaged philanthropists that invest time, expertise and money in innovative nonprofits that have the potential to make meaningful and sustainable improvements within the Chicagoland community, as well as a member of Union League Club of Chicago and the Economic Club of Chicago. Jonathan earned a BSc (Hons) in International Management from the University of Manchester in 2006, and a Master of Finance degree from INSEAD in 2011.

Donna F. Zarcone is an experienced CEO and board director with a focus on innovation and growth to deliver significant value creation. She currently serves on four corporate boards, CDW, Cigna, The Duchossois Group, and Quinnox, and previously served on the board of The Jones Group. Donna also serves on the National Board of the Smithsonian Institution and the advisory board of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago. Recently, Donna was named as a commissioner to serve on the NACD Future of the American Boardroom Initiative to re-examine the role of the board beyond its ongoing commitment to shareholders.

Donna is the recently retired president and CEO of the Economic Club of Chicago. She previously served as the president of Harley-Davidson Financial Services, Inc. and under her leadership the company grew from $1 billion to over $6 billion in loans under management. While at Harley-Davidson, she oversaw the creation of Eaglemark Savings Bank and served as its board chairman. Early in her career, Donna served as the CFO of two successful entrepreneurial startups in technology leasing and financial services that were subsequently sold to strategic investors. She remains an active angel investor in early stage ventures.

Donna holds a MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Bachelors Degree in Accounting from Illinois State University. She is a NACD Certified Board Director, is credentialed in ESG, holds the CERT Certificate in CyberSecurity Oversight from Carnegie Mellon University, is qualified as an Audit Committee Financial Expert, and is also a CPA.

Jackie is a partner with Chicago Ventures and heads up their Austin presence. She focuses on vertical SaaS and marketplaces.

Prior to joining Chicago Ventures, Jackie was a principal at Hyde Park Venture Partners, working with portfolio companies such as RoadSync, Podchaser, Fixer, FactoryFix, and PartySlate. Before that, she worked at Silver Spring Networks (now Itron), an IoT company for critical infrastructure, driving development and pilot projects for emerging smart city technology. She began her career as a consultant at Accenture in the Business & Technology practice, focused on ERP (enterprise resource planning) software and SaaS enablement projects.

She is also a member of the board of directors for Chicago:Blend, Starting Block Madison, and Venture Atlanta. She is also a coach at the Polsky Center.

Jackie holds a BS with honors in general engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA with honors from Chicago Booth.

Phil is the Managing Director at TechNexus Venture Collaborative. Phil is a serial entrepreneur with deep roots in both corporate innovation and new venture commercialization.  At TechNexus, Phil is focused on audio and media investments supporting areas of strategic interest to TechNexus corporate partners. Phil’s career started at Microsoft where he worked to bring multimedia capabilities to mobile and embedded devices powered by Windows, including devices used in automotive, point-of-sale, home theatre, and mobile use cases. After Microsoft, he became a founder and an operator of early-stage technology companies. Phil founded, grew, and sold ProOnGo Expense — an innovator in the Intuit Quickbooks ecosystem that later became a part of The Neat Company in a 2013 acquisition.  Post-acquisition, Phil served as Chief Innovation Officer at Neat, where he helped to commercialize Neat’s innovations in partnership with HP. Later, Phil led RIVS / interviewstream, an early-mover in audio/video remote job interviewing. As RIVS / interviewstream grew towards three million completed interviews and enjoyed two appearances on the Inc 5000, the company joined the Clovis Point Capital portfolio via acquisition. Phil earned a BS from Perdue University in computer sciences and an MBA from Chicago Booth.

Kenyata Martin started his career in Cincinnati where he spent 11 years at Procter & Gamble in progressive product development and marketing roles on brands including Product Manager for the Tampax business, where he has a patent on Tampax Pearl and led the product re-design for base Tampax. On Crest, Kenyata developed and executed the strategy for African American Marketing, where he introduced the first advertising campaign with notable African American dentist Dr. Maria Ashley. He also had two successful stints on the Old Spice business, where he led the product qualification of the body spray re-stage and later played a significant global leadership role on the now famous brand reinvention of Old Spice.

After leaving Procter & Gamble, Kenyata served as Head of Marketing Strategy for Shell Oil, where he was responsible for increasing the marketing capability within the Lubricants’ organization as well as delivering scaled marketing strategies that have direct to consumer impact on both the B2C and B2B businesses. Most recently, Kenyata served as the Director of Innovation for The Nestlé Pizza and Snacking Division, where he was responsible for delivering a new product and innovation pipeline and building a leading-edge competitive capability for the $3 billion group of well-known brands that include DiGiorno, California Pizza Kitchen, and Hot Pockets.

Kenyata earned Bachelor of Science degrees in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from Morehouse College and Georgia Tech and his Masters’ of Business Administration at the University of Chicago.

CJ is an entrepreneur and business leader with experience in all company stages, from founding/early startups to late-stage growth companies and steady-state corporations. He co-founded Snapsheet after leading the pivot of BodyShopBids from a consumer brand into a B2B innovator at the forefront of the Insurtech revolution, raising over $100M and scaling the business to over 400 employees with over 100 insurance customers. He conceived the Snapsheet app, the first photo-based mobile app for claims, an innovation that has become industry standard.

CJ then led the stealth development and launch of Snapsheet Cloud, a SaaS platform which enables fully automated claims from FNOL to digital payment, in partnership with multiple corporates, including Zurich Insurance, Key Bank, and JPMorgan Chase.  CJ architected and led Snapsheet’s expansion beyond the US, into Canada and multiple countries in Europe.

CJ is an avid angel investor and advisor, focusing on unique GTM methodologies, corporate strategic partnerships, business development and fundraising advice. He is passionate about using technology to enable more automation for humans. In addition to his day-to-day activities at Snapsheet, CJ is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an advisor at the Creative Destruction Lab in Wisconsin and Duality (the nations first quantum startup accelerator), an advisor to the OCA Ventures EDGE fund, and he currently serves on the board of directors of the department of physics and optical engineering at Rose-Hulman.

CJ holds a bachelor’s degree in optical engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.