Our Mentors
At HER Digital Incubator, all of our founders are paired with our amazing mentors who all have experience in startups/venture capital and the expertise needed to create a successful pitch deck. Part of HER’s magic is that founders have ongoing access to their mentors throughout and after the incubator for any guidance they might need. We pride ourselves on our all-women community and support system.
If you are interested in joining us a Mentor please fill out this form.
Alexandra Aitchison
Founding member | National Director of Business Development | Partner to Execs Seeking & Cultivating Top Admin Talent of Tack Advisors
Alex fundamentally leads life based on three principles:
Encourage curiosity. Exemplify compassion. Exude moxie.
Alex has spent over a decade building teams and companies primarily in the Bay Area and is a recent transplant to Austin, Texas. In the spring of 2020 she launched a company along with her former colleagues, Tack Advisors, with the objective to provide unparalleled career development training, management consulting and recruitment for administrative professionals at some of the world’s best companies.
She is dedicated to being the ultimate resource to teams building in complex and rapidly changing environments.
Katie Demo
CEO and Co-Founder of Brass | IG: @brassclothing
As CEO of Brass, Katie has worked to develop a customer-centric brand strategy differentiated by community and connection. Prior to starting Brass, Katie worked at a high-growth ecommerce shoe and accessories retailer in Boston. It was there where Katie learned to love brand building and storytelling in the digital space. She is a an outdoor enthusiast dedicated to developing a green thumb.
Priyanka Gandhi
Advisor | Investor
Priyanka Gandhi is a finance professional with experience across private equity and corporate finance. She is currently the director of corporate development at Foresight Mental Health. Prior to joining Foresight, she was a Vice President on the Growth investing team at Sixth Street Partners where she focused on healthcare and tech-enabled businesses. Before this, she worked with Falcon Investment Advisors, a middle-market private equity fund, and HSBC within their investment bank. Priyanka holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Emory University, where she majored in Finance and Accounting and completed a second major in Spanish. Priyanka serves as an officer for the Global Community Charter School, a volunteer crisis counselor, and an advisor to a number of early-stage startups across the healthcare and consumer sectors.
Izabel Arnold
CEO and Co-Founder of Arnie | LinkedIn | Instagram: @izabelsf
Eliza Arnold
COO and Co-Founder of Arnie | LinkedIn | Instagram: @eliza.do.little
Eliza is the COO and Co-Founder of Arnie, an automated portfolio builder for the ethical investor. Before entering the world of sustainable finance she lived in blissful ignorance as a creative director and writer, creating campaigns for some of the biggest companies in the world. Her work won her awards from Cannes Lions, the Shortys, and Brandweek. Then while working on a social impact campaign she found out her investments were supporting companies she was opposed to, and well, here we are.
She is now committed to bringing the values of conscious consumerism and investing to everyone, using the power of shareholding to shift the focus to stakeholders.
Melissa Sanvictores, CPA, MBA
Founder of MSV Financial Services, LLC
Melissa provides financial and strategic advisory services to emerging and high-growth businesses looking to successfully scale their financial practices and effectively improve their operational processes. Throughout her 20+ year career, she has worked in public accounting and at various start-ups, holding senior management roles where she’s had to wear many hats to streamline processes, cut costs and simplify complicated financials for leaders, which has led to increased bottom lines and/or successful fundraising rounds.
In her career, she most recently led finance and accounting teams at Thrive Global and Vroom, and has a passion for working with female founders to help them succeed.
Michelle Zitz Basso
Michelle is a strategy & operations professional with experience driving multi-million dollar growth by launching emerging revenue opportunities and new incubator businesses across global markets. Over her 15+ year career, Michelle has worked at leading media brands including WarnerMedia, The Economist, and Martha Stewart Living.
As a volunteer, Michelle is passionate about community development. She serves as co-lead of New York Public Library’s ESL program and as a committee member with the Junior League of Greenwich and Kids In Crisis.
Melissa Dusenberry
Founder, Creative Director of All The Brilliants | Instagram: AllTheBrilliants
Melissa Dusenberry is the founder of All The Brilliants – an e-commerce community of women who create thoughtfully designed jewelry that is discerning and distinctly unique. Her creative curiosity, love for jewelry, interest in cultural history, and commitment to social impact are the sparks behind the brand. As a supporter of women and an advocate for knowing where your jewelry “ingredients” come from, she believes jewelry can be a reflection of what is of meaning and value to us.
Laura Thompson
Entrepreneur In Residence at Brown University | LinkedIn
Laura is obsessed with helping diverse founders build radical innovations to solve hard problems. Laura was previously an early product lead at GoogleX where she worked on science fiction-sounding technologies like self-driving cars, smart contact lenses, and delivery drones. She’s now an angel investor and advisor to a number of mission-driven startups in the fintech, edtech and pet spaces. Laura also leads personal finance workshops to help women and young professionals build wealth while pursuing careers and lives they love. Laura splits her time between San Francisco and Puerto Rico and is an enthusiastic but thoroughly mediocre surfer.
Kim Patel
MBA Candidate at Harvard Business School | LinkedIn
As a first-generation American Indian woman who made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for media and considered an “Indian-American Trailblazer” for my work within the Asian American community, I have found my passion as a community advocate for women and people of color in business. I support future leaders and game-changers in realizing their own “American” dreams by offering my expertise in strategy, finance, operations and venture capital.
Outside of work I serve on the Board of Women in Innovation (WIN) an organization committed to improving the networking and success of women in tech and innovation across industries, and Brave House, a non-profit focused on providing legal and community benefits to young immigrant women. I am an avid runner, amateur cook and photographer.
Elizabeth Sandler
Workplace Investor | LinkedIn
Elizabeth Sandler is the Founder of workplace investment advisory firm Echo Juliette, LLC and subsidiary Juliette Works, its platform for helping companies and individual women close the gender leadership gap. Her mission is to build a new generation of leaders who are more mindful of people, the planet and purpose.
She has 25-years of experience in Financial Services most recently as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies and spent the majority of her career at Deutsche Bank in London and New York where she was COO for Global Risk, Structured Finance and Commercial Real Estate. Earlier in her career she worked at AXA, Prudential Financial and Kearney in their Financial Institutions consulting group.
Elizabeth has an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Duke University and an MBA from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania, where she currently sits on the Graduate School Executive Board. She is on the Board of Directors at essensys (LON:ESYS), Franklin Square Capital (NYSE:FSK) and Scholars of Finance, a 501(c)(3).
A believer in lifelong learning, Elizabeth is also a qualified teacher of mindfulness, a certified Executive Coach and a Society of Human Resource Management Senior Certified Practitioner (SHRM-SCP).
Crystal Slattery
Prior to her current role as President of Tanya Taylor, Crystal previously worked as President of the contemporary division at Jaya Apparel Group, overseeing the Cinq à Sept and Likely divisions. And before that, she was President of Elizabeth and James Apparel.
Holly Liu
Investor / Co-founder @Kabam | LinkedIn
Holly Liu founded the venture backed mobile gaming company, Kabam in 2006 with UC Berkeley alumni. Her work has contributed to record revenue growth for Kabam year over year from $0 to $400MM annually, that led Kabam into the unicorn club in 2014. She led the design for Kabam’s award-winning “Kingdoms of Camelot” franchise, which has grossed over $250 million in less than four years. She was also the founding mobile designer for extension Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, which was the top grossing app on iOS in 2012.
She was Chief Development Officer in charge of developing Kabam internationally through key relationships – starting with China. Among other things, she continues to develop global cultural initiatives within Kabam.
Prior to that she was Kabam’s Chief of Staff and oversaw HR, leading corporate culture and talent experience for over 1500 employees (including contractors) at Kabam globally. Holly oversaw the team responsible for recruiting and retaining top talent, and has grown the Kabam staff 500% in three years.
Holly is a consummate entrepreneur, executive, and startup mentor. She is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, and has named in Fortune and Forbes as a leading woman in gaming and entrepreneurship.
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