Eclectic Convergence 2025

Josh co-founded Lux Capital to support scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time in order to lead us into a brighter future. The more ambitious the project, the better—like, say, creating matter from light.

Josh is a Director at Aera Therapeutics, Cajal Neuroscience, Eikon Therapeutics, Impulse Labs, Kallyope, Osmo, Variant Bio, and helped lead the firm’s investments in Anduril, Echodyne, Planet, Hadrian, Osmo and Resilience. He is a founding investor and board member with Bill Gates in Kymeta, making cutting-edge antennas for high-speed global satellite and space communications. Josh is a Westinghouse semi-finalist and published scientist. He previously worked in investment banking at Salomon Smith Barney and in capital markets at Merrill Lynch. In 2008 Josh co-founded and funded Kurion, a contrarian bet in the unlikely business of using advanced robotics and state-of-the-art engineering and chemistry to clean up nuclear waste. It was an unmet, inevitable need with no solution in sight. The company was among the first responders to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. In February 2016, Veolia acquired Kurion for nearly $400 million—34 times Lux’s total investment.

Josh is a columnist with Forbes and Editor for the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report. He has been invited to The White House and Capitol Hill to advise on nanotechnology and emerging technologies, and a lecturer at MIT, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia and NYU. He is a term member at The Council on Foreign Relations, a Trustee at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chairman of Coney Island Prep charter school, where he grew up in Brooklyn. He graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Economics and Finance.

Lauren Taylor Wolfe is co-founder and Managing Partner of Impactive Capital, a $3 Billion active impact investing firm.  Impactive Capital helps companies allocate capital effectively and ethically to drive more sustainable, profitable and valuable businesses over the long run.  Prior to founding Impactive Capital, from 2007 to 2017, Lauren was a Managing Director at an investment firm, Blue Harbour Group, where she led investments in the technology, consumer and business and healthcare services industries.  Prior to joining Blue Harbour in 2007, Lauren was a Portfolio Manager at SIAR Capital, where she invested in small capitalization public companies and private companies.

Lauren received an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University.  Lauren has been active on various public and private boards including, $4 Billion TEV Envestnet Inc [NYSE: ENV], $10 Billion TEV HD Supply [Nasdaq: HDS], 30% Club Steering Committee, an Angel Member of 100 Women in Finance.

Javed Singha is an entrepreneur, and was the Co-founder & President of Fieldwire, a jobsite management platform for construction teams, which he sold to the Hilti Group for $300m+.

Before Fieldwire, Javed worked as a Product Manager at two startups, was the Chief of Staff to the President of Ubisoft and was a consultant prior to grad school. Javed received a MEng from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MBA from Cornell University.

He currently advises multiple startups, serves as the Chairman of the Board of SewerAI, is an Advisory Board member of Hilti, and previously served as a Board Member and Director of Technology of Cornell NorCal.

Marissa is the General Manager of Recreation at DaySmart, where she leads the Sawyer, TeamUp, and Dash brands. She is responsible for driving growth and innovation across DaySmart’s SMB SaaS portfolio, which empowers recreation and fitness businesses to streamline scheduling, payments, and communications. Marissa oversees sales, marketing, product, and operations, and is a member of the company’s Executive Team.

Prior to DaySmart, Marissa was the founding CEO of two technology companies through successful acquisitions: Sawyer, a SaaS platform serving the $50B children’s extracurricular education market, and Go Try It On, an iOS app that helped users answer the age-old question, “What should I wear?”

She has raised millions in venture capital, served as Chairman of the Board, and continues to invest in and advise early-stage startups. Marissa is passionate about building exceptional teams and products in businesses that make a meaningful impact.

She lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband and three young children.

Chris Kirby is a trained chef and the Founder & CEO of Ithaca Hummus, the #1 premium hummus brand in America.

In 2013, Chris stepped away from a rising career in the restaurant industry with a simple but ambitious idea: make hummus that tastes as fresh as it’s meant to. Armed with a food processor and a folding table, he began selling homemade lemon garlic hummus at the Ithaca Farmers Market—made only with real, fresh ingredients and crafted to taste like it came straight from a chef’s kitchen.

What started as a weekend market stand has grown into a national brand, now sold in over 10,000 stores including Walmart, Target, Kroger, Costco, and Whole Foods. Chris has led Ithaca Hummus in carving out a new space in the category—bringing cold-crafted, fresh-tasting hummus to the mainstream and raising the bar for flavor and quality.

Chris’s journey from chef to entrepreneur is a story of reinvention, grit, and relentless focus on product quality. His mission is simple but powerful: to challenge the status quo, both in food and in life—and to help people taste outside their comfort zone.

Erica Belsky is a clinical psychologist, mom of three, and Co-founder of Good Inside,  a next-generation parenting company and movement. Erica received her BA in Psychology from Cornell University, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University. Upon receiving her PhD, Erica spent several years working with people suffering from substance use disorder and related underlying mental health issues at The Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai and the Freedom Institute.

In 2020, Erica and fellow psychologist, Dr. Becky Kennedy, joined forces to create Good Inside. As Chief Operating Officer, Erica has been instrumental in growing Good Inside from a thriving social media community into a multimedia powerhouse and pioneering startup. Under her leadership, the company has expanded its reach to millions of parents worldwide with a #1 New York Times bestselling book, a chart-topping podcast, and the launch of a cutting-edge digital subscription product.

Scott Belsky is a Partner at A24, an independent film, television, music, and publishing studio based in New York City, and the founder of A24 Labs. He is a product, storytelling, and design obsessive.

Previously, Scott served as Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Chief Strategy Officer and EVP of Design & Emerging Products. Scott’s passion is to make the creative world more productive, connected, and adaptive to new technologies. He founded Behance, the leading online platform for over 55 million professionals in the creative industry to showcase and discover creative work and develop their careers, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012.

Scott serves on the Board of Directors for Atlassian, and has supported many startups over years as a product advisor and investor including Pinterest, Uber, Good Inside, Ramp, as well as several other startups in the early stages.

Scott is the author of Implications, a widely-read industry newsletter sent to tens of thousands of product leaders, investors, designers, and other leaders every month. He also authored the international bestselling books Making Ideas Happen (Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books, Apr, 2010), and The Messy Middle (Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books, Oct, 2018).

Scott serves on the board of the Museum of Modern Art and the entrepreneurship program at Cornell University.

Greg Morrisett is the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech and a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. As Dean, he has overall responsibility for the campus, including the academic quality and direction of the Cornell Tech degree programs and research. Working with both internal and external stakeholders, he is developing approaches for working with companies, nonprofits, government agencies and early stage investors, as well as overseeing the faculty recruitment and entrepreneurial initiatives of the campus.

Prior to joining Cornell Tech, Morrisett was Dean of Computing and Information Science (CIS) at Cornell University from 2015-2019. Previously, he held the Allen B. Cutting chair in Computer Science at Harvard University from 2004-2015 where he also served as Associate Dean for Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Before Harvard, Morrisett spent eight years on the faculty of Cornell’s Computer Science Department. Morrisett’s research focuses on the application of programming language technology for building secure, reliable, and high-performance software systems.  He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Richmond and both his Master’s and Doctorate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.