Danielle Capalino is an investor, founder, and systems-builder working at the intersection of science, finance, and innovation. Trained in brain and cognitive science at MIT and public health at Johns Hopkins, she has spent her career moving between the lab and the cap table: running her family foundation for over a decade, angel investing through MIT Alumni Angels and, with I-Lab Angels, backing deep-tech and health-tech companies emerging from universities.
 

That vantage point, seeing the same gap from the grantmaker's side and the investor's side, led her to co-found Neta, a philanthropic asset manager pioneering GrantVestments™: a new asset class that deploys capital into breakthrough research, mission-aligned startups, and funds, with returns recycling back into future giving. The best solutions kept falling through the cracks, too risky for philanthropy, too early for venture capital, so she and co-founder Alon Lederman built the structure that catches them.
 

A frequent speaker on venture philanthropy and the third wave of philanthropy, Danielle serves on the MIT Visiting Committee for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the MIT Corporation Development Committee, the Board of JDC and the Board of Advisors at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

Alon Lederman is an investor, operator, and deal architect with thirty years in the financial markets, most of them spent designing the structures that move capital where it's needed. Over two decades at Credit Suisse, he rose to Managing Director and Head of Latin America, a business he ran for over a decade. Trained as a mechanical engineer at the University of São Paulo, he holds an MBA from MIT Sloan, where he was a Siebel Scholar.
 

Alongside that career, he has spent two decades as an angel investor and advisor to early-stage technology companies, investing through university-affiliated networks including MIT and Technion. That's where his two careers converged: watching breakthrough companies fall outside capital structures, he co-founded Neta, the philanthropic asset manager pioneering GrantVestments™, where he designs the structures themselves, built for flexibility not just on what a company is worth, but on what it delivers to the world.
 

Alon is on the board of several non-profit organizations and volunteers regularly at The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. 

Liz Walsh is a marketing and communications operator with 20 years of experience across media, technology, and venture capital. Her perspective is shaped by work across five continents, including co-founding Nigeria’s first digital accelerator that connected founders with capital, customers, and operating support; advising 350+ early-stage companies as Resident CMO at ERA, and transforming the Under 30 franchise into a global ecosystem. She then co-developed a new investment platform to connect breakthrough science companies with capital at a deep-tech venture fund. Liz is drawn to new models and systems that deliver both impact and returns while accelerating solutions to our biggest challenges.