CEO, Mobile Comply

Elaina Farnsworth’s expertise in mobile technologies began almost a decade ago, by creating text messaging programs to aid first responders in emergency situations. Thereafter, she worked in education to bring about technical literacy for teachers and their students. Her talent for teaching complicated technical concepts to all levels of executives allows her to help organizations create mobile strategies to take advantage of the paradigm shift revolutionizing business today. She passionately advocates the power of mobile to improve the way business and education is conducted.

Elaina was granted the L. Brooks Patterson Elite 40 under 40 award in 2013 and also received the Crain's Detroit Business 40 under 40 award in 2014. She serves on the advisory board of Oakland University INCubator, as well as the Board of Directors of the Mobile Technology Trade Association of Michigan (MTAM) http://www.gomobilemichigan.org, a nonprofit catalyst in building cohesion among all segments of Michigan’s mobile technology industry.

In April 2012, Elaina was appointed Director of Global Communications for the International Connected Vehicle Trade Association (http://www.connectedvehicle.org). CVTA’s Board includes multinational companies from 16 industry sectors, such as Intel, Cisco, Sprint, Motorola, Agero, Delphi, Road America, Booz Allen, Hughes Telematics, Nokia, Magneti Marelli, and Dykema Gossett, among others.

Market Launch Manager, Zipcar

As Market Launch Manager at Zipcar, Jessica is tasked with working with a variety of partners to bring Zipcar’s car sharing model into new cities in North America. Since joining the Zipcar team in 2008, Jessica has led brand efforts in Seattle as Marketing Manager, run parking operations in the San Francisco Bay Area, and served as key contributor in the definition and rollout of multiple public-private car sharing programs throughout California and Texas.

In her current role, Jessica acts as a lead strategic team member in the launch of Zipcar’s North American metropolitan markets and also heads its rapidly growing airport segment. Her work in 2013 as project manager for Zipcar’s Detroit expansion initially brought her to SE Michigan, and she is now proud to call the Motor City home.

CEO, Zagster

Tim co-founded Zagster in 2007, after being inspired by the launch of the Velib’ bike sharing service in Paris. He merged his background in corporate IT at a Fortune 500 company with his passion for biking to create a company that now leverages technology to make bikes accessible to hundreds of thousands of Americans in more than 30 cities in more than 20 states. Zagster is the leading provider of turnkey, hosted bike share services to corporations (General Motors, Quicken Loans, DTE Energy, Samsung); Universities (Duke, Yale, Princeton, Santa Clara); hotels (Hyatt Regency, Four Seasons); and real estate (Related, Domain Companies, Novare Group, Irvine Companies). Tim holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Legal Studies from Drexel University, where he received the Young Alumni Entrepreneur Award. He has never owned car and prefers bicycling and riding public transportation everywhere he can.

Managing Director, Techstars Mobility

Ted Serbinski is an entrepreneur and early stage investor leading the startup renaissance in Detroit. He is the Managing Director of Techstars Mobility, driven by Detroit. Previously he was a Partner and founding team member of Detroit Venture Partners. Ted has co-led investments in 24 companies over the past 3 years, with 13 of those headquartered in Detroit. Before moving to Detroit from San Francisco, Ted was a co-founder and CTO of ParentsClick. With the 4th largest social network and the largest blog network for moms online, Lifetime Television acquired ParentsClick in 2008. Ted graduated from Cornell in 2004, with a B.S. in Computer Engineering. Ted resides in Metro Detroit with his beautiful wife and son.

Founder & CEO, Detroit Aircraft

Jon is an electronics entrepreneur and private pilot with over 1,000 hours of flight time. He is the founder of both Detroit Aircraft and Nextronix Inc., a PCB design, fabrication, and contract assembly company. Jon has developed several automotive multi-band Intelligent Transportation System Antennae in partnership with Motorola and Wieson Technologies. He is also the founder of Detroit Air Racing Inc., and facilitated the 2008 Detroit Red Bull Air Races, resulting in over $100 million in economic impact over three years for both Detroit and Windsor Ontario. In 2013, Jon established a contract manufacturing and distribution relationship Lockheed Martin to assemble and distribute the Indago sUAS VTOL for military, civil and commercial applications. In 2014, Jon established a partnership with the Detroit Fire Department to integrate unmanned aircraft systems into DFD's new Fire Training Academy and field operations. Detroit Aircraft officially represents the City of Detroit to the Federal Aviation Administration for Detroit's UAS integration and FAA Certificate of Authorization (CoA). Detroit Aircraft is now leading a proposal to establish Detroit City Airport into gateway for Next Generation Air and Ground mobility research, development, manufacturing and testing. Detroit Aircraft converted the 19,000 SF main passenger terminal into air/ground mobility innovation center. Detroit Aircraft is engaged with leading international automotive companies to establish an Urban, autonomous vehicle test site in Detroit. Customers include major automotive, defense and communications OEMs, US civili agencies, as well as agriculture, infrastructure and mapping entities.

Founder and Partner, Fontinalis Partners

Chris is a Founder and Partner of Fontinalis, where he is responsible for a wide range of critical processes ranging from deal sourcing and execution to corporate operations and business strategy. Chris also acts as a business development executive on behalf of Fontinalis’ portfolio companies.

Prior to Fontinalis, Chris worked at Ford Motor Company in Sustainable Business Development and Treasury, where he conducted financial and strategic analysis. Previously, Chris served in the U.S. Army as a Communications Officer in Iraq where he was responsible for data communication systems and organizational change management. Before joining the military, Chris worked as an Investment Banking Analyst at UBS in San Francisco and New York within its Technology and Energy groups. He was responsible for due diligence, financial analysis and execution on a broad range of transactions.

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of one of Fontinalis’ portfolio companies, LocoMobi, and is the Chairman of Read to a Child, a national children’s literacy and mentoring nonprofit that inspires adults to read aloud to children regularly, increasing their chances to lead healthy, productive lives. Additionally, he serves as a Board Observer of five of Fontinalis’ portfolio companies: Life360, Masabi, ParkMe, SQLstream, and Zagster. He is also a member of the Global Cleantech 100 expert panel and a former member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Personal Transportation Systems.

Chris earned his Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Yale School of Management with a concentration in strategy. While at Yale, he served on the Honor Committee and graduated with distinction in former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s seminar on Faith and Globalization. Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in both Economics and International Relations from Michigan State University. Chris is a staunch advocate of urban redevelopment and the revitalization of the City of Detroit.

George Lynch is Vice President of Automotive Business Development at Pandora, where he is focused on all OEM vehicle manufacturers and their audio suppliers. George has more than 30 years of experience in the automotive, radio and consumer electronics arenas and has relationships with all major automakers and many of the biggest names in automotive audio.

For both consumers and advertisers, the automobile is an important listening venue, as more than 50 percent of all radio listening occurs in the car. To George, driving and listening to music go hand-in-hand, and at Pandora he is focused upon applying his insights into the latest radio technologies, combined with how consumers interact within their vehicles, to take Pandora’s personalized radio experience on the road.

Before Pandora, George spent 11 years at Sirius/XM Satellite Radio, where he held the positions of Vice President, Automotive Partnerships and Director, OEM Accounts. Before Sirius/XM, George spent time at Panasonic Automotive Electronics Company, Aisin World Corporation of America and United Technologies Automotive Group.

CEO and Founder, Tome

Ross serves as director of business development and alliances for GM’s Global Connected Customer Experience group, where he is responsible for leading the group’s partner relations strategy and business development. Greg oversees relationships with local Michigan companies as well as companies around the globe.

Previously, Ross was director of business extensions for OnStar, leading efforts to develop new business ventures, which build on OnStar’s strong brand and well-established reputation for customer service.

Ross has been with OnStar since 2001, where he began as Director of Subscriber Relationship Marketing, with responsibility for growing and retaining OnStar’s base of over 7 million subscribers.

Ross came to OnStar from General Motors’ core automotive business, where he held several leadership positions in product marketing, sales, and product development. He served as Brand Manager at the GMC Division and led product planning projects in both North America and Europe. He was also fortunate to be a part of some of GM’s most innovative projects in the 1980’s and 1990’s, including product planning and development for GM’s EV1 Electric Vehicle program.

Ross is a Michigan native and a graduate of the University of Michigan with an Undergraduate degree in Economics and a Masters in Business Administration degree.

Amy Haimerl is the entrepreneurship editor at Crain’s Detroit Business, reporting on the intersection of economic development and small business growth. She comes to Detroit by way of Brooklyn and Denver. She is a Knight Wallace Fellow and the former personal finance editor for CNNMoney.

Matt is a Senior Editor at TechCrunch.

Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch.

His passions include emails, run-on sentences and following through with action items developed during a conference call.

Paula Sorrell is Vice President of Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Venture Capital for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and has been with MEDC for three and a half years. She oversees programs to support Michigan’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, including university research and tech transfer, technology service providers, business incubators, seed funding programs, portfolio investments and venture matching investments. With a focus on leveraging private funding into early technology development, overall portfolio achieves a 35:1 leverage. Prior to MEDC, she was VP/CMO at seven early to mid-stage technology companies, focused on bringing new technologies to market. All start-ups resulted in successful sale of the company, or are still a going concern; four were university tech transfer spin-outs. Paula’s past activities in economic development include being a national trainer to economic development centers, universities, and consultants for early stage commercialization strategies and supporting eco-systems. She was the co-developer of screening tool used by several entrepreneurial support and investment organizations to evaluate commercialization potential in early stage companies. Paula has been a technology business evaluator for investment portfolio companies, business incubator tenants, National Lab managers for the U.S. Department of Energy, and for a membership group of 1300 international investors. She holds a bachelor degree in marketing and an MBA from Central Michigan University.

Tim Nixon is the chief technology officer of Global Connected Customer Experience, a business unit of General Motors Company. He was named to the position in October 2012. In his role, Nixon leads the incubation and development of new technologies, platforms, and services supporting connected products for GM vehicles globally, including the 4G LTE OnStar platform. He also leads the development of vehicle-connected app ecosystems.

In his prior role, he was the global functional leader of infotainment and OnStar Engineering within GM’s Global Product Development team, responsible for vehicle cockpit electrical products, including Cadillac CUE, Chevrolet MyLink, and Buick/GMC/Opel IntelliLink radios, instrument clusters, switches, displays, acoustics, embedded OnStar connectivity and rear seat entertainment across GM’s six regional engineering centers.

Nixon began his career in 1984 as a design engineer of various cockpit-based automotive products with Nartron Corporation. In 1986 he joined Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, where he was a design engineer for electronic instrument clusters and display products. In 1992 he was named supervisor of Ford’s newly established Voice Recognition development team. Nixon went on to an international assignment at Ford’s Markham, Ontario electronics facility where he was the area manager of the airbag electronics manufacturing operations. He joined OnStar in 1997 where he held positions in quality and vehicle hardware and technology development.

In 1999, Nixon returned to Ford where he was assigned as the site director of the Wingcast Telematics venture created between Ford and Qualcomm, where he was responsible for the venture’s Michigan operations. In 2002, he assumed responsibility for Ford’s Infotainment, Cockpit Electronics Systems, and Technology Development activities, where he led the advanced development and launch support of various products including in-vehicle navigation, satellite radio, rear seat entertainment, and the 1st Generation Ford Sync connectivity platform. Nixon rejoined General Motors in 2007 where he worked in several technical leadership positions, and appointed to lead OnStar’s Engineering, Systems and Network Operations team in 2009.

Nixon holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering technology from Ohio Institute of Technology.

Nixon has been awarded five patents and has several pending.

Nixon is active in a variety of non-profit organizations and currently sits on the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) board of directors. Nixon previously served for nine years as a Trustee on the Behavioral Health Board of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.