The Advisory Board

Randy Churchill has served as Director of Business Development of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Southern California technology practice for the past four years. In that capacity, Churchill identifies and assists promising emerging technology companies, as well as manages the Firm’s relationships with the local venture capital community, university technology transfer and entrepreneurial faculty, and other professionals serving the technology industry. Churchill also oversees PwC’s quarterly Southern California MoneyTree Survey that tracks venture capital investment activity in the region. For over 20 years, Randy has assisted entrepreneurs in several capacities, including: Director of Client Development of financialprinter.com, a venture-backed start-up offering IPO documentation services; corporate securities attorney at both Latham & Watkins and Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison; and Vice President of Commercial Lending at Comerica Bank.

Richard Koffler
Koffler Ventures LLC

Richard Koffler is CEO of Koffler Ventures LLC, a firm that makes angel investments and provides mentoring and turnaround consulting services to information technology companies. His background spans 20 years of successfully launching and nurturing entrepreneurial information technology ventures with a focus on enterprise software. Prior to founding Koffler Ventures he was president of a healthcare information systems company that was acquired in 1998. Richard is a member of the executive committee of the Los Angeles network of the Tech Coast Angels. He is also very involved with the Software Council, including having been its executive director and currently serving on its board of directors. He holds computer science and engineering degrees from MIT and UC Berkeley.

Mark Lieberman is Manager, Regional Economic Development for the Community Development Commission of Los Angeles County. Mr. Lieberman responsibilities include the Business and Technology Incubator programs, loan programs and enterprise zones. Mr. Lieberman is a founder and co-chair of Los Angeles County Technology Week, a series of events that promote technology in Los Angeles County. Mark continues in his capacity as the Administrator of the world class Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County (BTC). Prior to joining the BTC, he was CEO of Ibis Associates, a strategy and organization change consulting company (www.ibisgroup.com). Previously, he served as Vice President and Chief Operations Officer for New Alliance Corporation. He also served as an International Banker with the Israel Discount Bank of New York. Mark also teaches Technical Entrepreneurship at USC and Strategy, and Management Fundamentals in the Master of Arts in Organization Management at Antioch University. He is concluding his doctoral dissertation entitled, "A Computer Based Learning Tool for Strategy and Strategic Thinking." Mr. Lieberman holds an MBA from the Presidential/Key Executive Program at Pepperdine University. Mark a member of the Pasadena Angels and the Tech Coast Angels. He is an active member in Professionals Network Group (PNG), and serves on the Executive Committee of the Pasadena group.

Richard Morganstern
Tech Coast Angels

Richard Morganstern is a member of the Board of Governors and is the current president of the Tech Coast Angels, the largest seed round technology investment group in Southern California. He has extensive experience and expertise in law, business, and finance. Mr. Morganstern was the Founding and Managing Partner of a Beverly Hills intellectual property and business litigation law firm. Later, he was the Founder and Chairman of a NASD-licensed investment banking firm that specialized in arranging funding, principally from foreign sources, for domestic early stage technology companies. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Bars of California, New York, U.S. Patent Office, U.S. Supreme Court, and various Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal. He currently mentors and invests in early stage technology companies.

Dr.Kevin Scanlon has thirty years of experience and expertise enhancing the relationships in the Life Science Community. Currently, he is mentoring and supporting entrepreneurs through the venture capital community as a member of the Pasadena Angels and the Tech Coast Angels of Los Angeles. Dr. Scanlon's background includes: academic medicine, President of the International Society of Cancer Gene Therapy, pharmaceutical industry management and a faculty educator for graduate students combining science and business. During his unique career, he has facilitated scientific concepts through the pharmaceutical pipeline into medical products. Also, he has authored over 115 original scientific articles, has seven US issued patents, was a lead investigator on government and foundation grants and has been a member of federal grant review committees. As a Pharmaceutical Industry-Vice President, he was responsible for the international cancer program for the US, Europe and Asia. As an educator for graduate students, he was involved in combining business and science courses to enhance the understanding of the Biotechnology Industry. He has been a panel judge for MBA Business plan competitions and guest lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Programs of several national and international universities. Through his company International BioScience, he has been consulting for international governments in Europe and Asia that are developing Centers of Excellence in Bioscience.

Brad Weirick
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLC

Bradford P. Weirick is a partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in its Los Angeles office. He is Co-Chairman of the firm's Emerging Technologies Practice Group and a member of the firm's Corporations Department, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, private equity investment transactions and public and private securities offerings. Mr. Weirick has substantial experience advising both acquirors/investors and target companies (both public and private) in connection
with the negotiation of mergers and acquisitions, strategic transactions and financing transactions. Mr. Weirick joined the firm in 1986 after earning his law degree from the University of California (Boalt Hall). He is a co-author of Securities in the Electronic Age - A Practical Guide to the Law and Regulation, published in 2000 by Glasser LegalWorks, and he has written various articles on current developments in corporate and securities law.

Jon Weisner is a business and technology executive with over 10 years of experience in digital media, entertainment technology, education, medical, and telecommunications markets. Weisner is engaged as a Solution Specialist at Microsoft Corporation for their Media & Entertainment vertical. The group is responsible for delivering enterprise business solutions to film, broadcast, music, publishing and advertising corporations globally. As an entrepreneur, Weisner has been involved in developing next generation visual communications services for the telecommunications industry. Weisner also worked at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Founded by Steven Spielberg, the Foundation is dedicated to collecting and archiving interviews of Holocaust survivors all over the world. Weisner managed the Information Technology department of the Foundation while constructing the connectivity between remote offices, repositories, and a digital library.

As Executive Director of the USC Engineering Technology Transfer Center (ETTC), Ken Dozier is responsible for the management of academic, federal, and commercial intellectual property portfolios. The ETTC gained national recognition when it received the 1999 Justin Morrill Award from the Technology Transfer Society for Innovation. Prior to his position at USC, Dozier was the California Director of Advanced Competitive Technologies from 1995 to 1997, and from 1990 to 1995 was the Director of Research at the School of Engineering and Technology at Cal State Los Angeles, where he also taught many electrical engineering courses. He was also the President and CEO of Interactive Machines, Inc. in Westlake Village, California from 1984 to 1989.

Gerald Loeb received a B.A. (’69) and M.D. (’72) from Johns Hopkins University and did one year of surgical residency at the University of Arizona before joining the Laboratory of Neural Control at the National Institutes of Health (1973-1988). He was Professor of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada (1988-1999) and is now Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Medical Device Development Facility of the A.E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Dr. Loeb was one of the original developers of the cochlear implant to restore hearing to the deaf and was Chief Scientist for Advanced Bionics Corp. (1994-1999), manufacturers of the Clarion? cochlear implant. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, holder of 38 issued US patents and author of over 200 scientific papers. Most of Dr. Loeb’s current research is directed toward neural prosthetics to reanimate paralyzed muscles and limbs using a new technology that he and his collaborators developed called BIONs®. This work is supported by an NIH Bioengineering Research Partnership and as one of the testbeds in the NSF Engineering Research Center on Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems, for which Dr. Loeb is deputy director. These clinical applications build on his long-standing basic research into the properties and natural activities of muscles, motoneurons, proprioceptors and spinal reflexes.

Photos by Michele A.H. Smith Photography