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Astia Team
About Us FAQ Board of Trustees Advisory Board Investor Advisory Council Astia Partners The Astia staff is dedicated to nothing less than the complete success of our companies.Astia Team Sharon Vosmek, CEO Follow me on Twitter Sharon Vosmek has been CEO of Astia since June 2007 having served as its COO since August 2004 and community member since 2002. Her life and career are best described as a series of serendipitous events that have led to great opportunity and adventure. Her diverse experience lends itself to the many constituents of Astia. Sharon has been instrumental in building the community that is Astia – the advisors, the sponsors, the thought-leaders, and the entrepreneurs we serve. Sharon has a Masters in International Public Affairs from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a Bachelors in Political Science from Arizona State University. Prior to Astia, Sharon’s career included SJ Vosmek & Associates, a consulting firm focused on organizational change and growth that included PG&E and PacBell as clients. Prior to consulting, Sharon worked in management at American Express and in the office of United States Senator Dennis Deconcini. Sharon currently serves on the Board of Directors for the YMCA of San Francisco, on the Advisory Board of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs & Executives, and as co-chair of the Entrepreneurial Alliance for the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). In the recent past she has served on the boards of the Level Playing Field Institute, Food First: The Institute for Food & Development Policy, and Global Exchange.  Clara Dellenbach, Intern Clara is an undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in Cognitive Science. She is a member of the Cal Dance Team and an active volunteer for many organzations. Clara has served as an Astia Intern for the past 3 years.  Evie Mulberry, Vice President, Europe With over 5 years as a UK attorney, Evie adds an international dimension to the Astia team. With a background in finance and corporate law, Evie has advised companies at all stages of growth in relation to their financing needs, from start-up corporate loans to syndicated multi-bank loans. In addition to 5 ½ years with Osborne Clarke, Evie also spent a secondment at a leading UK investment bank gaining valuable insight into corporate risk profiles. At Astia, Evie is now serving entrepreneurs at a much earlier stage in their growth cycle with an eye on the criteria for a successful exit. As the majority of transactions, on which Evie has worked, included an international aspect, Evie is well aware of the success of the global entrepreneur and in this role is dedicated in supporting entrepreneurs throughout the globe.  Katie Nittler, COO Katie is the COO at ASTIA, a global non-profit committed to building women leaders and accelerating the funding and growth of high-potential, high-growth, women-led start-ups. Katie joined Astia in mid 2009 to initially lead the showcase Astia Silicon Valley Program. In December 2009 she was promoted to COO with additional responsibilities for global programs, marketing and building Astia client management programs. With over 20 years experience in marketing & business development for high tech companies (Fortune 500 and venture funded start ups) including HP, PeopleSoft, Convoy/NEON, Commerce One, Portal and Oracle and not-for-profit organizations including NFCO and Lancashire University Katie has been repeatedly recognized as an outstanding contributor. In 2000 she was recognized as one of the top 100 influential people in B2B.
Katie is helping with Astia’s expansion across the globe by combining her passion for global alliances and growth in women.  Jennifer Hill, Vice President, New York Jennifer Hill is an attorney specializing in venture finance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate law and licensing, previously at Fenwick & West LLP. Currently, she is a Vice President at Astia, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicating to fostering the full participation of women in entrepreneurship by accelerating the funding and growth of high-potential high-growth women-led start-up companies. Ms. Hill launched Astia`s New York City operations and is responsible for the strategy, development and operations. Prior to pursuing career in law, Ms. Hill worked as the director of Strategic Alliances for an Austin-based enterprise software company and the U.S. manager of Business Development for an international publicly traded UK-based e-commerce company. She is fluent in Spanish, and holds a J.D. cum laude from the Northwestern University School of Law, an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and an AB in International Relations from Stanford University.
 Laura A. Smoliar, Ph.D., Entrepreneur in Residence Laura Smoliar works with Astia as Entrepreneur in Residence, focusing on client evangelism. She interviews executive teams to capture their stories for case studies, white papers, articles and other information sources. She also works with Peppertree Engineering, providing strategic and business development counsel for high-technology companies. Dr. Smoliar is well equipped for her role at Astia. She became acquainted with the organization in 2005 when she was forming her own company. While participating in Astia’s programs and presenting at venture conferences , she launched Mobius Photonics, a company that produces commercial fiber lasers. As Chairman and CEO of Mobius Photonics, Laura Smoliar built a corporate team, established key customer relationships in Europe and Asia, successfully raised angel and strategic financing from the U.S. and Japan, and established a strong intellectual property (IP) position based on the company’s unique breakthrough light technology. In July 2009, she resigned from Mobius Photonics to pursue other interests, including her new role at Astia. Laura Smoliar’s expertise covers diverse hardware-technology companies. Beginning her career in data storage at Seagate Technology, she later worked on MEMS-based laser displays at Silicon Light Machines (acquired by Cypress Semiconductor), and then migrated to solid-state lasers at Lightwave Electronics (acquired by JDSU). She has extensive experience partnering with Japanese companies such as Sony, Hitachi, Disco, and Panasonic, and she has lived and worked in both Taiwan and Germany. Laura holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where she worked with Yuan T. Lee (1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) and an A.B. Summa Cum Laude from Columbia University, both in Chemistry. She is a past member of the Council and Executive Board of the American Physical Society (http://www.aps.org). Since 1997, she has served as a mentor with the Association of Women in Science (http://www.awis.org) Palo Alto Chapter.  Ruchi Khemka, Vice President, India Ruchi has over 9 years of experience across an IT organisation, a non-profit-organisation and is a true entrepreneur at heart. She started her career as a Sales & Distribution coordinator with Microsoft India in 1999 and moved up to take up the role of Events Manager - India for them. In November 2003, Ruchi realised that setting up her own entrepreneurial venture was much more fulfilling and started her entrepreneurial journey by setting up a ‘plus size fashion garment store’ in India. However, despite aspirations to scale-up, in June 2006 she moved on from her enterprise and joined TiE – The Indus Entrepreneurs, as the Associate Director, Mumbai Chapter. In January 2008, she moved to London with her marriage with Ashish and took up the role of Chapter Manager, TiE London. At TiE, Ruchi was responsible for structuring regular programs on diverse aspects & challenges of entrepreneurship, to educate, inspire, mentor & connect entrepreneurs. Ruchi is based in Mumbai, India (since August 2009) and looks forward to manifest her entrepreneurial passion and orientation by meaningfully and proactively adding value to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. She is ready to lead the Astia India strategy and implementation upon funding of the market. Since May she has been working closely with the Astia team to map the India market plans and to secure funding.  Mark Moore, Director of Operations & Finance As a finance and operations professional with over 15 years experience in the high-technology industry, Mark brings a different skills set to the Astia team. He started his career working with the Peace Corps where he chaired a program focused on integrating third-world women into the economic development process. Having worked his way through Finance, he shifted to focus on sales and alliances operations for the past 10 years. Prior to Astia, Mark held operational positions with Charles Schwab, Vitria, Commerce One, New Era of Networks and Convoy. Mark’s background and contribution will greatly support Astia as it continues to scale globally and expanding its community and program offerings.  Eileen Puklin Faucher, PhD, Life Sciences Intern Dr. Faucher joined Astia in 2009. Before joining Astia, Dr. Faucher worked as a Fellow with Columbia University’s Office of Technology Ventures and as an analyst for Lux Capital Management. In these roles, she assessed the commercial viability of new technologies in the life sciences. Dr. Faucher holds an A.B. degree in Religion from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Washington. The majority of her doctoral work was conducted at the ËTH in Zürich, Switzerland. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Faucher held the position of Project Manager and Systems Engineer at a privately-held start-up software company called the Redtop Company, LLC. In that role, she worked closely with senior management to redesign tools for tracking product production and optimizing workflow. Before entering graduate studies in the life sciences, Dr. Faucher helped to characterize and commercialize pressure-sensitive phosphorescent paint for use on aerodynamic surfaces and enjoyed overseeing the use of this paint in wind tunnel tests at NASA-Ames Research Center. In addition to her work with Astia, Dr. Faucher is a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University, where she applies the predictions that she derived as a graduate student to guide her protein binding experiments. She has run 4 marathons and is an author on 5 articles in the scientific literature, primarily in the field of protein dynamics.  Carolyn Simnett Branco, Business Development Intern  Avanti Paranjpye, NYC Portfolio Management Intern  Stephanie Palmeri, Portfolio Manager, Intern Stephanie Palmeri is a first year MBA candidate at Columbia Business School. In addition to her work with Astia, she is actively involved within New York City’s entrepreneur community. Through her fellowship with InSITE, Stephanie supports high technology start-ups in the development of their business plans and their pursuit of venture capital and angel investments. She also managed and moderated an interactive panel “Starting Your Start-up: From Dream to Reality” featuring women entrepreneurs at the 2010 Columbia Women in Business Conference. Previously, Stephanie was a Senior Consultant with mktg’s start-up Marketing Applications & Consulting Group. In addition to identifying and implementing strategies and technical solutions to help global clients optimize their marketing content supply chains, she also worked on the internal development of product road map for a SaaS enterprise sales and marketing tool. As Marketing Development Manager at Clinique, Stephanie led new product and promotional marketing programs for alternative distribution channels. Her professional career began at Accenture, where she consulted Capital Market and Financial Service clients on market data assessment and automation projects that reduced data costs without sacrificing content and speed. Stephanie holds a BSBA magna cum laude from Villanova University in Marketing and Management Information Systems.  Stella Y. Xu, Market Analyst Stella is currently an Assistant Vice President at RREEF, the alternative investment division of Deutsche Bank. Specifically, she covers global private equity and infrastructure investment research. Prior to Deutsche Bank, she was an analyst at Spring Mountain Capital LP in New York. Before that, she was as a management consultant at Booz & Company, formerly known as the commercial strategy division of Booz Allen Hamilton. Stella holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from Barnard College, Columbia University and was a Visiting Student at Oxford University from 2003-2004. While at Oxford, Stella was a board member of the Oxford Entrepreneurs society and launched a student-run enterprise with guidance from the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Saïd Business School. |