You’re invited to join Bethesda Green on Thursday, June 11th, for an engaging, virtual event to celebrate the entrepreneurs of our Innovation Lab.
When: Thursday, June 11, 2020, 3-6pm ET
Where: Register here!
You’ll hear from some of the region’s top business and political leaders, and have an opportunity to connect directly with our entrepreneurs who are developing innovative solutions to help us reduce our collective environmental footprint and strengthen our food supply chains.
Keynote Speaker
Marc Elrich, County Executive of Montgomery County
Business Panel
Business Panel: Jolene Gurevich, fund manager of the Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund, will facilitate an exciting conversation with Bethesda-local Jigar Shah, co-founder and president of Generate Capital, Mark Walsh, former head of the Office of Innovation and Investment at the United States Small Business Administration, and Allyson Redpath, the Director of Entrepreneurship and Small Business at the Maryland Department of Commerce. They’ll discuss how businesses pivot when markets change, the impact the pandemic will have on the future of entrepreneurship, and how entrepreneurs can take steps to avoid likely hurdles. Registered attendees will have an opportunity to submit questions ahead of the panel.
Meet the Innovation Lab Entrepreneurs!
Participating companies will briefly introduce themselves during the event, and be provided with their own private virtual conference rooms to engage directly with members of the community. Additionally, each company will submit a 5-minute video presentation, which will be sent out to registered attendees ahead of the event. A list of our portfolio companies can be found here.
Agenda
- 3:00pm: Welcome
- 3:15pm: Keynote Speaker: Marc Elrich, County Executive of Montgomery County
- 3:30pm: Business Panel: Facilitator: Jolene Gurevich. Panelists: Allyson Redpath, Jigar Shah, and Mark Walsh
- 4:20pm: Overview of Innovation Lab programming and introduction of entrepreneurs
- 4:55pm: Networking in individual Zoom rooms
- 6:00pm: Event ends (networking may continue longer in individual zoom rooms.)
Speaker Bios
Marc Elrich is the County Executive of Montgomery County. He previously served three terms (12 years) on the Montgomery County Council as an at-large member, being first elected in 2006. He served as a Councilmember on the Takoma Park City Council from 1987-2006. For 17 years, he was a teacher at Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Takoma Park.
Allyson Redpath is the Director of Entrepreneurship and Small Business at the Maryland Department of Commerce. In this role, she directs and manages the agency’s involvement in the early-stage ecosystem with the goal of encouraging and supporting new business formation and growth. Her background includes extensive experience in capital raising, mergers and acquisitions, and financial analysis and valuation, and she served as a director of investment banking at Schroders and Citigroup. Allyson founded Citrine Angels, an angel investor network, in order to improve access to capital for female-founded startups by facilitating and encouraging participation in early-stage investing in the Washington, DC metropolitan region.
Jigar Shah is the Co-Founder of Generate Capital, an investment and operating platform that builds, owns, operates, and finances infrastructure assets involving the world’s critical resources: energy, water, agriculture and basic materials. Generate’s team has decades of collective experience financing billions of dollars of sustainable infrastructure. Jigar Shah is best known as the Founder of SunEdison, where he pioneered “no money down solar” and unlocked a multi-billion-dollar solar market, creating the largest solar services company worldwide. Jigar is a senior advisor for Bethesda Green’s Innovation Lab.
Mark Walsh was once introduced as “Someone who connects the Dots: dot.com, dot.edu, dot.org and dot.gov.” Mark served as the Head of the Office of Innovation and Investment at the United States Small Business Administration during the final years of the Obama administration, and has a rich background that includes organizations that changed the marketplaces they were in, including HBO, AOL, Blackboard, and VerticalNet. Mark also served as the Chief Technology Advisor for the Democratic National Committee and then the head of Internet Strategy for John Kerry’s presidential campaign.
Jolene Gurevich (Panel Facilitator) is the Manager of the Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund (CBSCF) and the Mtech Ventures Incubator at the University of Maryland. In her dual role, she oversees a $500K yearly allocation from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to invest in promising clean-tech startups. She also supports faculty and graduate students at the University of Maryland who are commercializing deep-science technology. Prior to joining the Mtech Ventures team, Jolene was an early employee at Allovue, a SaaS startup in Baltimore. There she held several roles including finance, operations and account management. As a 2014 Venture for America Fellow, Jolene moved to Baltimore to build a more inclusive future through entrepreneurship and has been in Maryland ever since.
