Serial entrepreneur Bill Malkes was appointed Chief Executive Officer of NellOne Therapeutics in April 2020. He previously co-founded and led GRIDSMART Technologies Inc, a global intelligent transportation solutions business, which was sold for $87 million in 2019. Under Malkes’ leadership, the business grew to be the second largest in its space, and expanded to 22 countries around the world. Prior to GRIDSMART, Malkes held a number of senior leadership and advisory roles in technology and healthcare businesses including Health Care Solutions, ASIC International, Tradewind Technologies and Learning Technology Systems.

A servant leader at heart and builder of all things, Bill strives to leave things bigger and better than when he found them. To learn more about our CEO, visit billmalkes.com.

Eric Dobson is proven leader, serial entrepreneur, and the Chief Executive Officer of the Angel Capital Group.  The last 26 years have been spent working in a variety of venues from government to private sector, the last 15 in start-up technology ventures. The founder of three companies, help found six, and lead investments in 24 more. Navigator Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010 and in 2011, was awarded the Pinnacle Innovator of the Year by the Innovation Valley Technology Council and Knoxville Chamber of Commerce.

Chris Ayala is a Managing Director at Drum Capital and is a member of the Investment Committee. His responsibilities include the sourcing, underwriting and monitoring of investments across the Drum institutional funds. Chris has nearly two decades of experience as an investor and entrepreneur.

Prior to joining Drum, Chris served as CEO of Vertisense Inc., an early stage venture capital-backed company in New York, New York providing CPG and B2B solutions for health & safety compliance. Prior to that, Chris served as VP, Operations of ALK Technologies, Inc. offering enterprise software in the Transportation & Logistics industry. Earlier, Chris served as VP, General Counsel for Native American Resource Partners LLC, a private equity sponsored investment firm in Calgary, Alberta. Chris began his career as a corporate attorney at the firms ReedSmith LLP and Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP focusing on M&A and Business Transactions for some of the leading private equity firms in the world. Chris graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and received his Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law.

Jonathan Mills Patrick is a Product executive at a $12B publicly-traded fintech company where he leads the teams managing the largest product build in the company’s 45+ year history. As a former C-level banking executive, 3x founder, and investor, he has been involved in over $800M in fundraising (both debt and equity) and $300M in product launches. His product innovation agency, GTMCatalysts.com, helps companies attract capital and build better products, with a focus on go-to-market (GTM) strategies.

Dr. Ben Jordan is an experienced technical leader with over 20 years of experience in Manufacturing, Engineering, Operations Management, Research, and Design. Dr. Jordan began his career in the nuclear industry with Centrus upon graduating from the University of Tennessee, where he earned a Master of Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration. 

During his nuclear career, Dr. Jordan has welcomed steadily increasing technical, leadership, and business responsibility. In his first leadership role, Dr. Jordan led the manufacturing organization that built and delivered the necessary hardware to allow the first US technology uranium enrichment centrifuge to be operated in over 20 years. Dr. Jordan’s next technical leadership opportunity allowed him to serve as an authorized design authority for the American Centrifuge machines during his tenure as the Design Engineering and Analysis Manager for the American Centrifuge Program.

Dr. Jordan’s most challenging role has been as the Facility Operations Manager where he was responsible for the K-1600 Demonstration Facility. In this role Dr. Jordan was responsible for the demonstration and testing of prototype centrifuge machines. His team consisted of over 100 employees ranging from engineers to laborers. The facility and personnel that Dr. Jordan led operated 24/7 under a Department of Energy auditable safety analysis for UF6 testing operations. The K-1600 Demonstration Facility performed high consequence testing of centrifuge machines and was itself quite complex including UF6 process gas feed and withdrawal systems, process gas piping and valving, a range of high vacuum systems, tempered water systems and backups, tiered redundant compressed air and electrical generation systems, mass spectrometry equipment, as well as high speed data acquisition and control systems. Dr. Jordan’s leadership and technical background was well-suited for this role. It was in this role where Dr. Jordan first observed the impact of the reliance on mass spectrometry equipment for assay measurement which influenced his future PhD research.

Dr. Jordan had obtained knowledge and exposure to the business considerations affecting Centrus and this segued into his current role as the Business Development Manager for Centrus. The business development role permitted Dr. Jordan to leverage the industry experience he had gained, with his business and entrepreneurial background to look for new opportunities for Centrus. In addition, this role provided the opportunity for Dr. Jordan to obtain a nuclear engineering PhD. 

Andrew is a Founding Partner at GrowthX and a co-founder of GrowthX Academy. Andrew manages the day-to-day operations and communications at GrowthX Capital and leads the Investment Committee. His varied background as founder, funder, operator, advisor and technology attorney in the United States and Asia Pacific allows him to help entrepreneurs and companies from inception through exit.

Before co-founding GrowthX, Andrew was a Managing Director at BrightTALK in San Francisco, a Managing Director at Thomson Reuters in Singapore, served as Publisher of Reuters News in Hong Kong (after co-founding the financial news business for Thomson that led to the acquisition of Reuters), and served as early technology counsel for companies in Silicon Valley and New York City, including DoubleClick, Salesforce and Guidespark.

Andrew is a Kauffman Fellow, Board Member of Venture for America, Board Member of the Nashville Children’s Theatre, and a mentor at Galvanize, Alchemist Accelerator, Matter, Dynamo, and Vanderbilt’s Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

Dave Seeman is a Nashville native and co-owner at Fractal Hardware, a product development agency based in his hometown. Dave earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, during which time he worked at Duke Energy and became passionate about renewable energy. Dave’s familiarity with startups began later when he founded a web startup in Knoxville, a process to which he credits learning some quintessential lessons about starting companies, particularly in the Southeast. After that, he returned to design engineering at URS, where he worked in material handling for the Uranium Processing Facility at Oak Ridge. Since then he has played a key role in developing products related to security, outdoor gear, surgery, law enforcement, and more. Outside of his day job, Dave is also a productivity and automation geek, novice programmer, and musician.

Robbin Russell began his career with Signal Energy, LLC in 2005 with the startup of the company which was then Signal Wind Energy, LLC. He is currently the Vice President of Construction. He is responsible for the construction of all projects from contract through final completion and the warranty period.

Prior to joining Signal Energy, Robbin was a project manager at several companies doing everything from apartment rehabs to installing diesel power plants in developing countries and radioactive waste cleanup at Oak Ridge. He has developed and/or built projects in Haiti, Honduras, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Burundi and Nepal. Prior to his project management experience Robbin was a Senior Reactor Operator at TVA’s Sequoyah Nuclear Plant and proudly served nine years as a nuclear trained Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy.

Robbin received his undergraduate degree in Naval Architecture from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD in 1984 and his Master of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga in 1998. In addition, he also received his Professional Engineering license in 1996.

Robbin has been happily married to his wife, Donna, for thirty-three years. They are both natives of West Tennessee and now reside in Chattanooga. Robbin and Donna actively serve in their church, community and around the world. When time permits, Robbin enjoys biking and swimming and pursues his passion of flying as an instrument rated private pilot.

Lynn Youngs serves as the Executive Director of the UT Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. A University of Tennessee College of Business Administration faculty member since 1993, Lynn’s passions include instructing, coaching, and mentoring students in the field of entrepreneurship. He has held multiple, executive-level positions in early-stage technology and healthcare organizations, as well as in publicly traded manufacturing and retail businesses.

Ron Thompson joined Atom Power in 2020 as Senior Vice President of Business Development with more than four decades of experience in the electrical industry. Growing up, Ron was mentored by family members who owned and operated several profitable businesses focused on the electrical contracting industry. Learning the business from the field to the back office was a key driver for the passion that naturally occurred in him for everything electrical.

Prior to joining Atom, Ron oversaw Business Development for Innovation, Emerging Markets and Technology for Eaton Corporation’s electrical sector, a Fortune 500 company. During that time, Ron was known as a risk taker and innovation stimulator, helping to incubate ideas and bring them to life across various industry sectors — healthcare, higher education, telecommunications, marine, electric utility, renewable energy, data center, and electric transportation. Even in an industry that can be risk averse, Ron knows how to motivate teams and get results through experimentation and stimulating “intrapreneurship.”

Ron was an early believer in the transformational technology that Atom Power developed with its solid-state circuit breaker and also led Eaton’s efforts in investing in Atom.

With six patents awarded, three successful startups to his name, numerous product launches, an array of collaborative partnership agreements, and many years of entrepreneurial leadership for a Fortune 500, Ron’s knowledge, know-how, and passion for this industry makes him a key player in helping bring Atom Power to the market, advancing their solid-state circuit breakers and helping develop software defined power distribution systems into the future.

Trent Primm is a Managing Partner at Primm Consulting LLC. His areas of expertise include program planning and analyses for nuclear engineering including reactor physics, radiation source term estimation, radiation transport and shielding, criticality safety, research reactor fuel manufacturing and performance, and economic evaluations. Trent is also an adjunct faculty member (Physics) to Pellissippi State Technical Community College.