Gavin Christensen
As Managing Director of Kickstart Seed Fund, Gavin is responsible for all aspects of managing the firm in addition to leading due diligence and investment decisions in conjunction with Kickstart's Investment Committee. In addition to Kickstart, Gavin heads vSpring's New Mexico office where he is focused on funding companies in New Mexico's technology-rich ecosystem.

Gavin joined vSpring as an associate, left to attend the Kellogg School of Management, and rejoined vSpring as a Principal. Gavin's efforts have had a significant impact on vSpring's firm strategy and on the success of many of vSpring's Fund I and II companies. During business school, Gavin worked as a Vertical Strategy Associate for Google's direct sales organization. Gavin also worked as a consultant in Monitor Group's Boston office where he advised clients on a range of strategic, operational, and organizational improvements. Gavin began his career at Fidelity Investments as an investments representative.

Gavin received a Masters of Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management and a B.S. in Economics (with Honors), cum laude, from Brigham Young University. Gavin currently serves on the boards Intelisum, Symbiot, and nanoMR.


Sally Corning
Ms. Corning is a Partner and Co-Founder of Sun Mountain Capital, a Santa Fe , New Mexico based private equity firm. She has over 20 years experience in evaluating investment opportunities, conducting due diligence, structuring transactions and raising equity and debt capital in both the public and private markets. Prior to joining Sun Mountain, Ms. Corning was a Principal in a family company, Corning Enterprises, where she invested in private equity opportunities primarily in real estate and oil and gas. Prior to Corning Enterprises, Ms. Corning worked for 13 years at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York in the Firm’s Private Placement Group. In this role, she led the evaluation of numerous companies and fund sponsors and structured, marketed and executed over 40 private placements of debt and equity capital. Ms. Corning is currently on the Board of Directors for the New Mexico Venture Capital Association and holds an observer role on the Board of Directors for Sun Mountain’s portfolio company Sundrop Fuels. Ms. Corning has an MBA in Finance from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a BSBA in Finance from Georgetown University.

Caroline Popper, MD MPH
Dr. Popper is the founder and President of Popper and Company, a boutique life sciences consulting and M&A firm with offices in Florida, Maryland and Canada. She has 20 years of hands-on biotech/life sciences operating experience. An internist and pathologist, she combines this perspective with that gained from managing a wide spectrum of life sciences businesses in diagnostics, devices and drug discovery. Her business management experience in both Fortune 500 and start-up settings and extensive track record creating strategic and business partnerships in biotechnology, is key to the service she provides to her firms clients.

In a 10-year career at Becton Dickinson (BD NYSE), Dr. Popper’s global responsibilities included clinical affairs, marketing, strategy, and business development. She was the founding General Manager of BDGene; a start-up focused, with its partner Millennium Pharmaceuticals, on development of novel cancer diagnostics. From 2000 to 2002, she was the Chief Business Officer for MDS Proteomics, a drug discovery company with operations in the US, Canada and Europe.

Popper and Company provides strategic consulting as well as hands on management to a wide variety of venture-backed as well as public life science firms. She has been involved in the start-up of 9 companies in the past 36 months. She serves on the Board of several venture-backed life science companies.

Dr. Popper received her MD from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and her MPH from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore). She was a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in Health Care Finance. She completed her residencies in Internal Medicine and in Pathology at Johns Hopkins.

Waneta C. Tuttle, Ph.D., M.B.A
Dr. Tuttle is the owner and CEO of Southwest Medical Ventures (SMV), a life sciences venture development and advisory services company. SMV is the managing member of Puente Partners, LLC, which founded nanoMR. Through SMV she previously was the founding CEO of Indigo Medical, (now owned by Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon Endosurgery), Patient Technologies, PhDx Systems and Exagen Diagnostics, Inc.

From 2004 until its sale to Eisai Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in January of 2008, Dr. Tuttle served as a Director of NASDAQ listed MGI Pharma, Inc., an oncology and acute care focused biopharmaceutical company. She is a Director of Health Care Service Corporation, a mutual legal reserve company operating Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. She is as a Director of PhDx Systems and is a Member of the Corporation at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratories in Boston.

Prior to founding SMV in 1992, Dr. Tuttle held positions of increasing responsibility over 23 years at the Lovelace Medical Foundation in Albuquerque. Dr. Tuttle began her career at the Foundation as a research scientist, then served for many years as its Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. She was also a member of the management committee for the integrated health care delivery system at Lovelace and served on the Boards of Directors for several of the Lovelace organizationsDr. Tuttle’s Ph.D. is in biology with a concentration in physiology. She also holds an M.B.A. from the R.O. Anderson Schools of Management at the University of New Mexico where she serves on its National Advisory Board. She has been inducted into the Anderson Schools Hall of Fame.



Richard Fuentes (Board Observer)
As Global Life Science Investment Director for Dow Chemical's Venture Capital group, Richard is responsible for all aspects of the due diligence process and leads or co-leads investments in diagnostics, medical devices and therapeutic startup companies. Richard has led or co-led Dow's investments in Biolex, DNA Research Innovations (acquired by Invitrogen), HandyLab, Mirabilis Medica, Oxford Immunotec, nanoMR, Noxxon Pharma AG, Santhera (Graffinity) and Veralight. In addition to nanoMR, he serves as an observer on the boards of HandyLab, Mirabilis Medica, Veralight and Sorbent Therapeutics, a Dow Chemical spin-out.

Richard received a B.S. in Chemistry from University of Texas - Pan American and a Ph.D in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Texas - Austin. After a post-doctoral assignment in the Michigan State University Department of Biochemistry, he started at Dow Chemical in 1977 and has served in a variety of technical and leadership R&D and business roles. He has been with Dow Venture Capital since 1999 with a focus on life science investments since 2001.

Victor Esch, President & CEO
Dr. Esch has successfully led product development in diverse organizations, from venture funded start-ups, to large integrated programs with more than 100 engineers and $100MM budgets. His diverse practical technical experience spans many disciplines, from interventional neuro catheters to free-space laser communication, and he has made significant contributions in these diverse areas. He has 23 issued patents, and more than 20 applications in prosecution. He received his Ph.D. in Optical Sciences in 1990.

Dr. Esch was Director of Research and Development at Indigo Medical, responsible for all product development. Indigo was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 1996. Following this he was CTO of EndoVasix, a company that produced an ischemic stroke treatment system. Endovasix was eventually acquired by W.L. Gore. Dr. Esch is a co-founder of PowerVision, a company successfully developing an accommodating intra-ocular lens to treat presbyopia. Dr. Esch’s design innovations have been honored by R&D 100 and Photonics Circle of Excellence.