Board of Directors
His experience includes application development, R&D, cloud architecture, product management, team / culture building, GTM, fundraising and partnerships/integrations within startups and enterprises in the Retail, Payments/FinTech, Media and Geo/GIS spaces. In the last 10 years, Rafa has been a strategic advisor for several early stage startups while also mentoring 60+ founders and supporting multiple accelerators including Y Combinator, Acceleprise (forum) and Techstars. He's also a part of 3 Day Startup Board of Directors, an angel investor, a DEI Champion and an instructor for Code Next where he has been coaching black and latino students in NYC since 2020.
Currently, Lesley is the inaugural Director for the newly launched Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (KS WELI) at The University of Texas at Austin. As the Director of KS WELI, Lesley supports curricular and co-curricular efforts to equip, build community, and empower women and creatives often underrepresented in entrepreneurship. In this position, Lesley actively works to confront the gaps and obstacles women face by creating a community focused on diversity, inclusivity, and empowerment. The goal of the KS WELI is to redefine leadership and entrepreneurship. She currently teaches the FA310 Entrepreneurial LeadHERship course focused on guiding student leaders on a journey to discover their values, strengths, and authentic leadership style through a gender-informed perspective. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership from Colorado State University. Her dissertation is focused on gender-aware approaches to teaching entrepreneurship education.
She has spent significant time in her career working to impact gender and racial equity to enhance diversity and inclusion. She is a second time founder, her first company being a fintech product that brought banking services to virtual currencies. Sheffie is a graduate of Thomas Edison State University with a degree in Sociology and is currently pursuing her MBA at Georgia Southern University. Sheffie has been named the Top 10 under 40 and a Top CEO by the Mississippi Business Journal and the Cloud Solution of the Year by Women In Cloud.
Prior to Notley, Ben worked for management consultancy, West Monroe Partners out of their Dallas office where he focused on software implementations and improving customer experiences for Fortune 500 clients. he also spent time at Next Ventures, a VC fund focused on the growing health and wellness space.
Prior to Notley, Ben worked for management consultancy, West Monroe Partners out of their Dallas office where he focused on software implementations and improving customer experiences for Fortune 500 clients. he also spent time at Next Ventures, a VC fund focused on the growing health and wellness space.