"What's Your Pitch?": Innovations Competition: Western Regional Preliminary

Steve is the founder of Capitola Cap LLC. He is an active mentor and angel investor to small businesses that have potential to scale and have great lifestyle products/premium positions.He was CEO Asia of Bausch & Lomb managing annual revenues of over a billion dollars. Steve was CEO Asia of Bass Plc which owns one of the largest international hotel groups in the world with over 3,000 hotels in 95 countries including Inter-Continental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, and Staybridge Suites. In addition to the hotel business Bass Plc also operates a brewing and soft drink business with brands like Pepsi, 7Up and 3,000+ restaurants and bars.

Linus is a serial entrepreneur with expertise in technology and medical devices. He most recently co-founded a company called Embrace, a social enterprise that develops and distributes a low-cost infant incubator for developing countries. Unlike traditional incubators that cost up to $20,000, the Embrace Infant Warmer costs about 1% of this price and works without a constant supply of electricity. He has spent the last five years living in India and China scaling the company, which has now helped over 150,000 babies in 11 different countries.

Prior to Embrace, Linus founded several software companies in the mobile and social networking space — the last one resulting in an acquisition by Zynga. Linus has also worked in the corporate sector as a Program Manager at Microsoft, a database researcher at IBM, and on the investment team at Andreessen Horowitz.

Linus graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley, an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Dianna Tremblay is the Chief Program Officer at ICA. She is responsible for scaling the impact of the ICA's programs and cultivating the support and capital ecosystem necessary for entrepreneurs to scale their businesses. With expertise in program design and implementation, small business support, accessing capital, and ecosystem building, Dianna strives to use these skills to increase equitable access to capital, coaching, and networks for entrepreneurs of color. Leading ICA’s program work, Dianna continues to explore, test, and build programs that ultimately prepare companies to become more resilient and investment-ready. Dianna currently serves on the boards of Naturally Bay Area and Progeny Coffee.

Prior to joining ICA, Dianna's professional experience included sales, corporate relationship management, and business development roles in e-commerce and textbook publishing. Dianna received a MBA from the Lorry I. Lokey School of Business and Public Policy at Mills College and a Bachelor’s in English from California State University, East Bay.

Prior to joining Closed Loop Partners, Zach was an Associate with the Private Wealth Management office at Morgan Stanley for two years. Before his time with Morgan Stanley, Zach spent 10 years in the U.S. Army Special Operations as a Psychological Operations Specialist. He spent most of his time working in Southeast Asia with the U.S. Department of State and local partners.

Zach earned a bachelor’s degree from Post University, majoring in Marketing, and an MBA from North Carolina State University, focusing on corporate finance. He is currently pursuing an MS in Sustainability Management at Columbia University.