If you are are committed to founding an innovation-driven venture later in your career and want to stay connected to Duke and region to learn about emerging and high-potential opportunities, then the Fuqua Entrepreneur Leadership Network (ELN) might be the perfect opportunity for you. The ELN is an elite group of Fuqua alumni and current students in their final year who are committed to founding or leading an innovation-driven startup.
Katie Carr (Fuqua ’21, Health Sector Managment) has spent her career at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship, and consumer health. Prior to Duke, Katie worked in management consulting, where she focused on the implementation of enterprise technologies in the health care and consumer products space. She has used her time at Fuqua to pivot into digital health particularly around consumer oriented devices, spending the past year working as a Product Manager at AliveCor focused on the consumer application experience. At Fuqua, Katie serves as a CEI Fellow, Margolis Scholar, and on the leadership team for Fuqua’s Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club (EVCC). She’s also been a part of Duke’s New Venture Fellow program, working on the commercialization of a new medical device technology and is actively working on her own consumer health product, vell.
Akinwole Garrett (Aki) is an accomplished senior strategy and business development executive with over fifteen years of data driven business development and management experience within the digital media and technology industries. He is a strategic thinker and deal closer with a proven track record of prospecting and developing new revenue opportunities.
Aki is currently Director of Global Strategic Alliances for the Telecommunications vertical at Lenovo, one of the world’s leading original equipment manufacturers. Prior to Lenovo, Aki was the Founder and Managing Director of Accelerate Consulting, a boutique digital media and technology consulting firm that offered a variety of advisory services for strategic growth to companies between series A and series C funding rounds. Prior to Accelerate, Aki spent three years as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Publisher Partnerships at SHE Media (formerly SheKnows Media), where he was a member of the senior management team that took SheKnows through an exit, when it was acquired by Penske Media in March 2018. Aki has held business development management positions at both CBS Local and ABC News, where he was instrumental in creating new strategies and products for both companies including, most notably, ABC News’ video distribution platform and CBS Local’s podcast network – Radio.com (formerly Play.it).
Aki holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a BSBA in Finance & Accounting from The Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. He sits on the Fuqua Minority Alumni Advisory Board at Duke University and is a member of the Investment Committee of Durham, NC based Resilient Ventures. Aki also serves on the advisory board of two minority-owned startups. He and his family currently reside in Apex, NC.
Ben was an investment banking analyst at Lazard Frères, focusing on structuring and implementing bulge-bracket generalist M&A deals. Ben then worked as a venture capital associate at Sandbox Industries where he was primarily responsible for sourcing and completing diligence on Series A and Series B food/agriculture technology startups. Ben has accepted a full time offer on the Strategy & Partnerships team at Clara Foods, a growth-stage startup in the foodtech industry. Ben played 4 years of varsity tennis while receiving his BBA from the College of William and Mary and will graduate with an MBA from Duke Fuqua’s School of Business in 2021.
As a triple Dukie, I have been an active leader in the arts community at Duke. While an undergraduate, I served as president of all 84 arts groups, and was the sole student member of the President’s Arts Planning Executive Committee, responsible for crafting Duke’s decade-long strategic framework for advancing the arts at Duke. Currently, I serve on the University Union Board Member, where I advise the greater Duke’s University Union Executive Committee on operations and budgeting, and am also on the board of the President’s Arts Advisory Committee.
Post-undergrad, I co-founded a natural-based skincare company aimed at making natural skincare products more affordable and accessible. At Fuqua, I am pursuing a double concentration in entrepreneurship and marketing, with a focus in product development. In the future, I plan on combining my passions of health, wellness, and sustainability to help create sustainably produced CPGs that are good for both people and our planet. I am excited to work with members of the ELN, so we can learn from each other and leverage our strengths as a team to become greater forces for good.
Aubrey Howard
Gavin Jocius is an executive with over nineteen years of experience in information technology, ecommerce and digital marketing having worked in education, as well as public and private companies. Gavin is currently the Founder & Principal of River Wise Ventures which invests in innovative start-ups.
Prior to founding River Wise, Gavin was the Executive Vice President of the Art division for Circle Graphics, managing three leading online retailers of custom and licensed works of art with combined annual sales of over $80 million. Prior roles include the Director of Information Technology and Web Services at Duke University Alumni Affairs and the Global Marketing Director at lulu.com, an online publisher in Raleigh, North Carolina. There he helped authors sell and promote their books electronically and in print format with distribution to the iBookstore, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
Gavin lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and two daughters and holds Master of Arts and Master of Business Administration degrees from Duke University.
Nick is currently the VP of Partnerships at Pulsetera, a venture-backed startup bringing “last mile healthcare” services to the home on a national scale, where he leads business development, technology licensing, and strategy. Prior to joining Pulsetera, Nick was a senior director at Labcorp, where he was responsible for strategic partnerships, licensing, and equity investments through Labcorp ventures. At Labcorp, Nick led and executed dozens of strategic transactions related to novel technologies and high growth initiatives, positioning Labcorp to address multi-billion dollar market opportunities across the diagnostics and drug development business segments. Nick has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with high distinction from the University of Virginia, and an M.B.A. from Duke University. While at Duke, he co-founded Encapsio, a startup focused on commercializing a novel drug delivery technology licensed from Duke’s biomedical engineering department. Nick enjoys the outdoors, mountain biking, surfing, and loves spending time with his wife, Sarah, and family.
Joseph Knight is an adjunct professor at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering and the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative (IEI), where he teaches Design in Healthcare. Joe has also taught marketing at the Fuqua School of Business.
Joe is the president and CEO of InnAVasc Medical, an early-stage medical device company developing novel vascular access treatments for dialysis patients. He has 18 years of experience in medical device innovation and commercialization. He has been part of the intellectual property development, as well as the business and strategy planning for four different new ventures, including iRhythm Technologies that had an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2016, has helped 3 million patients, and a $5B market cap. Joe spent five years at Medtronic in marketing, business development, and strategy roles. In his last role with Medtronic, as the Director of Strategic Marketing, Joe developed and executed the strategy that led to Medtronic’s $100M acquisition of CardioInsight.
Joe was born in Tampa, Florida and now lives in Durham. He served eight years as an infantry soldier in the U.S. Army, reached the rank of Staff Sergeant and was awarded the Expert Infantryman’s Badge (EIB), among the most prized peacetime decorations. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, an M.B.A. from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and an M.S./B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of South Florida. Joe counts his biggest achievement as being the first person in his family to go to college.
Brooke Hartley Moy has a strong affinity for Duke and Durham, having grown up in the Triangle, earned her undergrad degree from Duke, and graduated (virtually) in 2020 from Fuqua. Prior to business school, she worked in customer success and business development for Salesforce and Slack, living in 4 different cities along the way. She’s currently based in the Bay Area, managing strategic partnerships for Google and Android. When she’s not working, she’s watching Australian Rules Football, visiting California wine country, or doting on her pug, Peanut.
Patrick has experience spanning investment management, strategy consulting, and entrepreneurship. Before starting his MBA, he co-founded an impact investing company to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Ghana. At Fuqua, his focus has been on enhancing his entrepreneurial skills, leveraging on the school’s vast resources to start a digital analytics platform that seeks to improve the efficiency of the home rental market in Sub-Saharan Africa.
He loves watching soccer, especially his ‘beloved’ Arsenal FC.
Carter currently serves as the Head of Growth at Syntegra, an early-stage company leveraging advanced machine learning to create high fidelity synthetic patient healthcare data, where he leads all commercial activities including sales, marketing, and partnerships. Prior to Syntegra Carter led Strategic Partnerships at Aetion, a venture backed analytics platform expanding and improving the use of Real World Evidence to answer what treatment works best, for whom, and when. At Aetion Carter built Aetion’s data partnership network, accelerating the adoption of Aetion’s platform and further accelerating the creation of evidence from data. In addition to Syntegra and Aetion, Carter has worked at Epic Systems, where he led the development and implementation of a new product for inpatient pharmacy inventory management. Janssen Pharmaceuticals where he helped design data-based patient targeting and engagement tools, and in Venture Capital working both with Flare Capital Partners and Symphony AI. Carter attended Duke University both for his Bachelor Degree and M.B.A. and is passionate about helping accelerate entrepreneurship within the greater Duke community, working in the past on projects such as co-founding the New Venture Fellows program.