Brian Meshkin, Managing Partner, Profound Ventures (Moderator)

Brian Meshkin is an award-winning executive and entrepreneur that currently leads social impact investment group Profound Ventures and strategic consulting firm, Stratyss Advisors. At Profound, Brian has led investments into a portfolio of device, diagnostic and digital health companies where they have helped raise over $150M into those ventures. With Stratyss, the team advises a group of clients on fundraising and data strategies, commercial plans, and clinical development who are bringing novel biologic, pharmaceutical, device, diagnostic and digital technologies to market to addressed unmet needs. Previously, Brian was the founder and CEO of Proove Biosciences, the leading precision pain medicine company. Proove was one of the fastest growing technology companies in North America – ranked in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (#69) and the Inc. 500 (#323). Brian led Proove for over 7 years, employed over 270, and achieved over $28M in annual revenue as it built the world’s largest clinical-genetic biobank in chronic pain and won awards from leading medical societies for its pioneering research in pain genetics. For these achievements, Brian was the 2016 Emerging Technology Company CEO of the Year Award Winner of the OCTANe High Tech Awards (HTA, a two-time finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Orange County, and a 2016 Excellence in Entrepreneurship Winner from the OC Business Journal.

Brian’s social entrepreneurship began as an award-winning youth activist growing up in Maryland. At 13 years of age following the tragic death of a friend in front of his home, he led the lobbying effort to pass the nation’s first bicycle helmet law for children. Following this tragedy, he worked with the National Safe Kids Campaign (now called Safe Kids Worldwide), along with many others to advocate for similar efforts across the nation. For Brian’s efforts to save lives, the Baltimore Sun chose him as one of five “Earthly Angels. Previous to founding Proove, Brian founded nutritional genetics firm, Salugen (acquired by Sherbrooke Equity), was a Team Leader at the e.Lilly venture fund – a division of Eli Lilly & Company, former manager of digital health at Johnson & Johnson for the company’s largest product and helped direct new products and marketing for Prometheus Laboratories (acquired by Nestle Health Sciences).

In 2010, Brian became the youngest ever-elected school board member for one of the nation’s leading school systems in Howard County, Maryland where he was elected by his colleagues to serve as Vice-Chairman, and pioneered efforts to create a digital education policy, sustainability policy, introduce lean six-sigma processes to reduce costs, and other innovations. Brian is an active volunteer in his community, church, and his kids’ schools. According to ResearchGate, Brian is among the top 15% in the world as a published researcher of peer-reviewed scientific papers and several book chapters. He routinely speaks on entrepreneurship, innovation, and precision medicine at various conferences across North America. Brian earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland at College Park.

Joshua Barney, Member, Barrington Angels

Joshua Barney is a California and Illinois licensed attorney. He has served as general counsel and financial advisor for the U. S. operations of several foreign corporations including LSIS USA (formerly LG), Kawasaki Trading and Kia Corporation. His legal background includes corporate joint ventures, merger and acquisitions, corporate start-ups, and trade secret litigation. He has been a co-founder of several technology and biotech companies. He currently manages two angel funds, Barrington Angels and SISU Funds. He holds degrees from CSU Chico, University of California, Davis, and Columbia University, NY.