Investment Committee

Bob Place ‘75

Managing Director, Clean Energy Venture Group

Bob is a senior business executive and entrepreneur specializing in creating and building viable new businesses. He is currently focused on renewable energy and clean tech opportunities with a particular emphasis on early stage investment and mentoring.

His entrepreneurial skills have been demonstrated with over 27 years of successful development and construction of new power plants, acquisition of operating companies and the startup of many companies in the power and climate arenas. He has joint ventured with over 15 different utility, private equity and equipment manufacturers in new business opportunities and created over $7 billion in new capital investments.

Troy Henikoff ‘86

Managing Director, MATH Venture Partners

Troy is a seasoned entrepreneur who has built multiple successful technology-based businesses from the ground-up over a 30+ year period. With one foot firmly rooted in technology and the other firmly rooted in business he seamlessly bridges the divide between business and technology to create profitable organizations quickly. Troy excels in situations where innovation and creativity are required to solve real business problems. Troy is currently a Managing Director at MATH Venture Partners.

Specialties: Creating order out of chaos and taking companies from early stage through profitability.

Laura Thompson '09

Former Investor at Google Ventures

Laura previously worked on moonshots at Google X and has lived in San Francisco via London, Rhode Island, Costa Rica, Wisconsin, San Francisco and, originally, Evanston, Illinois. She graduated from Brown University and landed in Product Marketing at Google first in San Francisco and later in Europe. She ispassionate about innovation, circus arts, real estate, entrepreneurship, and kite surfing, but is mostly focused on "sucking the marrow out of life."

Scott Friend '87

Managing Director, Bain Capital Ventures

Scott joined Bain Capital Ventures in 2006 after selling the company he co-founded, ProfitLogic, to Oracle. ProfitLogic was the leader of retail analytics and price optimization solutions. Scott’s areas of investment interest are in disruptive new consumer products and services, retail related technologies, and data and analytics focused application software.

Jane Dietze

Chief Investment Officer, Brown University Investment Office

Jane is an alternative investment manager with nearly three decades of investing and managing operations on a global basis. She has superior management and leadership skills honed from starting and building her own company, managing large, culturally diverse teams, and running a publicly-traded software company. Jane also has over 25 years of public and private board of director experience. She currently the CIO at Brown University.