Rich Lunak is an experienced entrepreneur who helped lead a three-person, local start-up, Automated Healthcare, to a $65 million acquisition by McKesson Corporation, the nation’s 16th largest company. Rich was a key executive during the company’s earliest stages, helped raise $13 million in financing, oversaw the commercialization of multiple products, managed the company through rapid growth in sales and employees, and created a smooth transition when acquired by McKesson. As Group President, McKesson Automation, Rich led five autonomous business units which created and maintained nearly 500 local engineering and manufacturing jobs and employs more than 1,600 nationally. He was responsible for acquiring new technologies and the design, development and rollout of numerous robotic, automated and software products that are installed in leading healthcare providers across the country and around the world.

A technologist as well as an entrepreneur, Rich Lunak received a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon, a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh, and holds several U.S. patents. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, the Technology Collaborative (previously the Pittsburgh Robotics Initiative), and serves on the Carnegie Mellon School of Engineering Advisory Board.

For over ten years, Jessica has advised early-stage and emerging growth businesses as an investment banker, outside general counsel and business/investment counsel, and institutional venture capital investor with an emphasis on the financial, technology and life sciences sectors. She has served as an advisor to, and as an executive/entrepreneur-in-residence with, both institutional investors and with early-stage and emerging growth businesses on matters such as strategic planning, business development, securities regulatory compliance, financing strategy, business combinations and joint ventures, corporate partnering, facilitation and mediation, and human capital.<br><br>Prior to founding her own firm, Ms. Lee had served as a partner at the financial and business law firm of Santone, Sweat & Passarello, LLP; and, prior to that position, as an associate in the Business and Finance Law Department of Titus & McConomy, LLP (formerly Cindrich & Titus). Jessica holds a J.D. from the Duke University School of Law, and a B.A. from Duke University, both in Durham, NC.; has been trained as a facilitator and mediator of management team and business matters through the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) Business Mediation Training Program; is a member of the American Bar Association licensed to practice in Pennsylvania and before the U.S. Tax Court; and holds the following investment advisory and investment banking National Association of Securities Dealers licenses: Series 7, 24, 63, and 65.

Mona McGraw is President and Co-Founder of NuRelm, Inc. NuRelm is a profitable 4-year old Internet software and E-business solutions firm headquartered in Uniontown, PA. NuRelm is an Innovation Works portfolio company that has also received investments from the CL Fund, Endeavor Capital Management, and Fay-Penn Economic Development Council.

Mona holds an M.S. in Business Administration and two undergraduate degrees in Marketing and English. Prior to founding NuRelm, she held management and business development positions at Kaiser Permanente and IDX. Mona was recently appointed by Governor Rendell to serve on the PA Workforce Investment Board. She also serves on the Pittsburgh-based Tech Action GroupBoard of Directors, an advocacy group made up of Pittsburgh area CEOs of rapid growth technology firms.

Gautam Gandhi along with Steve Fleck are the co-founders of ClearCount Medical Solutions. My vision in graduate school was to become an entrepreneur that would also make a social impact. When we first heard about the problem of retained surgical sponges and instruments, we were both appalled. My partner and I got together and thought there must be a better way for nurses to track these items than the current system of manual counting. Conceptualized in an entrepreneurship course project, ClearCount became a funded company soon after graduation.

Gautam Gandhi and Steve Fleck are both recipients of the Roseman - Canfield Entrepreneur of the Year from the Tepper School of Business. Gautam Gandhi has a worked previously for Microsoft, Fidelity Investments and also has a B.S. in Information Decision Systems and Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University. Steve holds a degree in Applied Physics and Bioengineering from Cornell University and has worked for CardiacAssist and Boehringer Laboratories.

Michael Kobold was born in Frankfurt, Germany into a family of entrepreneurs. Despite strong doubts from school officials, he graduated with exemplary marks from Frankfurt International School, having completed the rigorous International Baccalaureate (IB) Program. He attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he graduated after just three years with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics.

Mr. Kobold is an avid entrepreneur, having launched more than a dozen ventures. His first company was a not-for-profit organization that sells candy to students in an effort to raise funds for extra-curricular school activities. The successful operation of this company, CSFRC, was taken over by Frankfurt International School. For two years he worked as an assistant driving instructor at an elite driving school in Germany, specializing in anti-terrorism tactical driving. He also founded Kobold Watch Company, which manufactures wristwatches for professional use. The company‚s products are regarded by the international watch press as being among the world‚s top ten in their class and rival those of Rolex, Breitling, Omega, and IWC.

A frontrunner in the industry‚s technological advancements, the Kobold Watch Company was the first and only watch company to sell its products factory direct via the Internet. The website was also a pioneer in launching its three-dimensional technology and virtual assistant, Chloe.

Ian graduated from MIT in 1996 with a Bachelor and Masters Degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Jessica B. Lee, local advisor to early-stage and emerging growth businesses and founder of the weekly Entrepreneurial Thursdays program in Pittsburgh, will introduce Eslick and field questions from the audience after his keynote address.

Eslick and two fellow MIT alumni founded Silicon Spice, Inc., a communications company commercializing technology based on work done for a school project. The company’s innovations drove a shift in the telecommunications market by delivering radical improvements in the economics of large-scale, carrier-class packet voice transport. After raising over $90 million in capital, his 120-person corporation was acquired by Broadcom Corporation in 2000 for $1.2 billion.

Today, Eslick is a research affiliate of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab working on a research program that aims to dramatically increase the effective intelligence of the human-computer interface as well as deepen our understanding of human cognition.

Joey oversees all online marketing, book production, and fulfillment and is the glue that holds College Prowler together. Joey has excellent intuition which guides him and makes him an amazing business man who is constantly wearing more than one hat. Joey has a rare blend of culture, education and experience. Joey is the ultimate at understanding a problem and dissecting it in order to find the most optimal strategy and then is able to teach and guide everyone around him. He holds a BS from Carnegie Mellon and is from Manhattan.