Management

Danica Elliott was Jim Koehr’s project partner for the creation of Sorin Capital Funds as an independent study project at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business in 2013.

Danica is an expert in brand strategy and managing marketing operations. She accrued 15 years’ experience running a marketing consulting company that provided solutions for growing businesses at all stages.

In past positions she has managed the work of programmers, designers, copywriters and developers for more than 80 different brands.

In her role as Senior Account Supervisor at Anthology Marketing Group, Danica directed all day-to-day account work for Hawaiian Airlines, the largest brand in the state of Hawaii.

Danica earned a BFA from State University of New York and an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business. She lives in Berkeley, CA with her husband and two young children.

Dr. Robert S. Harris was Jim Koehr’s faculty Advisor for the creation of Sorin Capital Funds as an independent study project at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business in 2013.

Robert S. Harris is the C. Stewart Sheppard Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business in Charlottesville, Virginia (USA). Bob has served as Darden’s dean and prior to that, as chief learning officer and vice president of United Technologies Corporation. A graduate of Davidson College (summa cum laude), Bob received his Ph. D. (Economics) from Princeton University and has served on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School), University of North Carolina (Kenan Flagler School) and as a visitor at London Business School and Oxford University (Said School of Business).

Bob’s research has focused on corporate finance, private equity, financial markets, mergers and acquisitions. Dr. Harris has been widely published in leading academic and practitioner journals in finance and economics and received both research and teaching awards. In addition to teaching undergraduate, graduate and executive audiences, he has authored financial textbooks, computer tutorials and dozens of business cases and teaching notes.

Dr. Harris has been an active consultant and adviser to corporations, government agencies and has held a range of offices in professional societies. He is currently a trustee of Financial Management Association International, Chair of the Board of the Williamsburg Investment Trust and heads the advisory board of the Private Equity Research Consortium.

Joe Carlin was part of the leadership team that took Argon ST from a start-up to a public company and subsequently to its acquisition by Boeing.

After the Boeing acquisition, Joe served as an operational Vice President, a role from which he retired. After a career as an engineer, entrepreneur and corporate executive, he began to apply his gifts and energy to early stage companies and nonprofit organizations.

Joe is the founder and principal of several holding and investment companies which focus on early stage investing and mentoring. In this role, he serves formally on multiple Board of Directors and Advisors, informally mentoring organizational leaders. Joe is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Veda Data Solutions and the Board of Advisors for Beltway Brewery and Sorin Capital Funds..

Joe holds Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Maryland, a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and an MBA from Georgetown University. In addition, he completed advanced study work in innovation management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Joe lives in Virginia with his wife and their daughter.

Mark Brostowski has over 30 years of experience in the Investment business. He is currently the Principal of Virian Capital LLC. Mark actively consults with Jim Koehr in all of his investment decisions on deals with the IrishAngels.

Mark is an active angel investor. He is a member of IrishAngels and Arten Capital. He is currently invested in many start-up companies. He is actively involved with several of these companies by assisting in generating new business, strategic planning, and financial reporting and accounting systems management.

Previously, Mark was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Regiment Capital Advisors, LP. Mark was one of the few members of Regiment when it began operations in 1999. Regiment was a multibillion dollar credit hedge fund that specialized in high yield and distressed corporate securities. In addition to portfolio management, Mark also took an active role as a member of many restructuring committees for companies going through the restructuring process.

Mark also established a direct lending and origination business that had approximately three billion dollars under management and was subsequently sold to Trust Company of the West.

From 1997 to 1999, Mark was a Managing Director in the High Yield Group of Bancboston Securities, Inc. He was directly responsible for managing the High Yield Trading Desk and was an Executive Committee member of the High Yield business.

Mark began his investment career in 1987 at Salomon Brothers Inc. After completing the training program, he became an analyst in High Yield Research. He subsequently became a Director and senior member of the High Yield Trading Desk where he traded high yield debt securities and bank loans, distressed debt securities and bank loans, and trade claims.

Mark holds a BS from Michigan State University and a MBA from the University of Notre Dame. He is a Director of IVS BULK PTE LTD, a Singapore based shipping company. He is a Director of Mad River Distillers, a Vermont based distilling company. He served as a member of the Board of Hill House in Boston, Massachusetts, and as a member of the Board of Teddy Ebersol Red Sox Field Foundation, Boston, Massachusetts.

Mark lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife Maribeth, who is a partner in Lewis Interiors, a Boston based interior design firm. They have two children, Ginger and Ian.

Dan Fallon has more than 30 years of experience motivating and mentoring people and organizations to improve performance – ranging from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups.  Dan brings a pragmatic perspective to helping people navigate issues and opportunities.  He helps teams debate, decide, and do, while course correcting along the way.

Dan has invested in 15 start-ups as well as served in an operating role in one of his portfolio companies.  He is an active angel investor, serving on the Investment Committee of IrishAngels in Chicago, IL.

Previously, Dan was at Accenture for 23 years, leading transformative programs for clients as well as establishing and managing Accenture’s Global ERP Delivery Centers.  He also was a founding executive of Accenture’s technology outsourcing practice.  Subsequently, as CIO/CTO at two Fortune 250 companies, Dan learned firsthand the critical interaction among strategy, investment, business operations, and innovation.  As the President & COO of a private manufacturing company, Dan learned how to manage, profitably grow, and exit a business while helping people achieve more than otherwise expected.

Dan enjoys helping people and companies improve.  He particularly champions the cause of a diverse workplace in which ideas flourish, mistakes are learning moments, collaboration is key, and people are treated equitably.

Frank co-founded and is currently Managing Partner of New Dominion Angels, an angel group which has invested in more than twenty start-up companies in the mid-Atlantic region since 2008, primarily in the consumer products and information technology industries.

He is also an accomplished entrepreneur having founded four businesses since 1995.  Two continue in operation. Another was merged into a larger competitor, and Frank became the Chairman of the Board of the merged company.  Frank was a member of the senior management team of a local company that raised $10,000,000 of venture capital to fund its growth in 2002.  That company subsequently went public and celebrated its tenth year as a public company in November 2017.  Frank continues to serve as a board member of that company.  Other boards he has served on include Mom Made Foods, ARCSys, Synoptos, and Analytic Advantage, Inc.

Frank is also a certified leadership Coach who works with leaders and leadership teams to build leadership capacity within their organizations. His experience tells him that leadership capacity is among the scarcest resources in most organizations today. The job of leaders has never been more difficult, nor has the pressure ever been higher to produce superior results in a healthy, sustainable way.

Frank most often works with clients in times of great change whether the catalyst for change is a promotion, a new assignment, creating a new organization or re-tooling an existing organization toward a new mission.  In addition to working with clients undergoing externally driven change, he also works frequently with leader-clients who, while doing well by the standards of their organization, have a strong internal drive to develop and grow.  Often these are mid-career or senior people who are seeking to move their personal talent and capacities to the next level.  His clients are likely to describe his coaching style as gently irreverent as he provides equal measures of support and challenge to them.

His practice includes 1-on-1 coaching, organization development consulting, and leadership training/development.  He has done this work with hundreds of individual clients in dozens of organizations in the for-profit, not-for-profit and government sectors over the past twenty plus years.

Prior to beginning his leadership development work, Frank retired from the United States Marine Corps (1989) and Central Intelligence Agency (1995).

Frank is an adjunct faculty member in Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership where he has taught in the Training Specialist, Organization Development, Change Management, Leadership Coaching, and Transformational Leadership Certificate Programs since 1997.

Frank is a graduate of Davidson College (Bachelors in Economics and Business Administration) and The George Washington University (Masters in Business Financial Management).  He has also been awarded two graduate certificates by Georgetown University (Organization Development and Financial Planning).  He was designated a Master Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation from 2005 through 2015.

Patrick is an experienced senior operating executive with over 15 years of successfully building and managing sales, marketing, customer success & product management organizations in the technology sector.

Having worked for both private and publicly traded companies, as well as on-premise and SaaS software companies, gives Patrick a broad set of skills to assist with company and go-to-market strategy and execution to address demand in growth markets.  His unique blend of having led sales, marketing, customer success and product management organizations gives Patrick distinctive experience in all go-to-market operations for a high growth technology company.

Over the past four years, Patrick has been active in the angel and venture capital investment community with 17 investments in 13 technology companies, and he has served as an advisor to CEO, CROs and CMOs in his investment portfolio.  He actively advises on investment decisions for Sorin Angel Capital on IrishAngel deals.

Patrick is a “Double-Domer”, with two degrees from the University of Notre Dame.  In 2000, he earned a B.S. in Structural Engineering and an MBA in Finance.  Patrick lives with his wife and four children in Houston, TX.

Tres is a regular part of the due diligence team for Sorin Angel Capital investments.

Tres is currently working as an independent communications (i.e. radios, not public relations) and systems integration consultant. Since retiring from the U.S. Navy as Navy SEAL with numerous combat tours, Tres has provided communications and Electro-Optical solutions for a variety of commercial and government customers.

He holds degrees from Norfolk State, Naval Post Graduate School, and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Tres is also a member of New Dominion Angels and contributes regularly to the group’s due diligence teams.

Tim Sutherland is Founder, Chairman and CEO of Middleburg Capital Development. Previously, Mr. Sutherland was the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Pace Global Energy Services, LLC (Pace Global), a leading global energy consulting and management firm that was established in 1976. In December 2011, Siemens Industries acquired Pace Global.

While serving as CEO, Pace Global maintained long-term relationships in the United States and abroad, supporting clients in the manufacturing, material processing, financial and infrastructure development sectors. Over 40 percent of the organization’s clients were Fortune 500 enterprises, and the average term length of Pace Global’s client relationships was approximately eight years. Mr. Sutherland has client advisory experience in Europe, Russia, the United States, the Middle East, China and Latin America. He has conducted seminars on capital deployment and risk mitigation strategies for senior executives, and has been active on both domestic and international industry panels and boards.

Mr. Sutherland holds a BA from Knox College and an MBA from New York University. Mr. Sutherland is a member of the Board of Trustees at the University of Notre Dame and serves as Chairman of the Finance Committee. He was elected a Fellow of the University in 2014. He is also a member of Notre Dame’s Innovation Park Private Sector Advisory Network. He serves as a Board member for many of the companies where MCD has made capital investments, including SCP, Ionic Liquid Solutions, Trion and Inovateus. Mr. Sutherland served on the Board of Directors at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Delaware. He served as the Chair of The Hill School Board of Directors in Middleburg, Virginia for nine years and currently serves as an Emeritus member of the School Board. Mr. Sutherland was named the 2013 Alumnus of the Year at Creighton Preparatory School in Omaha, Nebraska.

Mr. Sutherland lives in Middleburg, Virginia with Martha Sutherland, his wife of over 40 years. They have two grown children, Cristin Wipfler (ND ’02) and David Sutherland (ND ’07, ’10). The Sutherland family boasts two grandchildren, Liam Wipfler and Olivia Wipfler.