SoCal's Top Startup Incubator EvoNexus Bolsters Executive Leadership Team Naming Marco Thompson President and Dr. George Chrisikos CTO
Danielle Toledo promoted to EvoNexus CFO.
LA JOLLA, Calif., March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern California's leading startup incubator EvoNexus today is announcing two new executive staff members, Marco Thompson as President and George Chrisikos, Ph.D. as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Mr. Thompson has been a significant contributor to the Organization since its inception, as an active board member, as well as mentoring startup companies in a Senior Executive in Residence position. Dr. Chrisikos joined EvoNexus as Chief Technology Product Strategist last August. He has since become a member of the startup Selection Committee and is an Executive in Residence. Danielle Toledo has been promoted to Chief Financial Officer (CFO), expanding her executive staff finance and operations responsibilities.
"This is a dynamic time for us as we continue in a pivotal role reshaping the innovation economy throughout the Region with high impact results," said EvoNexus CEO and Co-founder Rory Moore. "As that momentum continues, building our executive staff is important to execute new programs in support of new corporate sponsorships and strategic funding partnerships."
Moore continued, "Together Marco and George bring deep business and technical experience to EvoNexus and all of our top tier portfolio companies. I'm enthusiastic about working with Marco, George, Danielle and the entire EvoNexus organization as we realize our collective vision and sustainability goals."
As President of EvoNexus, Mr. Thompson is responsible for the oversight of all activities for the San Diego incubator, including portfolio deal flow, admission to the program and mentoring the portfolio. Additionally, he, along with Rory Moore and Dr. Chrisikos, will be responsible for making strategic and institutional investor introductions to portfolio companies when they are prepared for an infusion of capital.
As a successful technology entrepreneur, investor and sales and marketing visionary, Mr. Thompson brings more than 44 years of experience in startup and executive leadership to EvoNexus. He is a familiar face in the boardrooms of numerous innovative San Diego companies and organizations. Mr. Thompson has founded several non-profit startup assistance organizations that provide networking, mentoring and funding opportunities to San Diego entrepreneurs. These include the San Diego Telecom Council (that later developed into the incubator EvoNexus) and San Diego Sport Innovators. Mr. Thompson has served as an Angel Investor for over 30 years, funding more than 50 companies. He is currently Managing Partner of an early stage venture capital firm Express Ventures. Early in his career he founded Doctor Design, an embedded engineering services firm that contracted for fortune 500 companies. The $50 million company was later sold to Integrated Systems which merged with Wind River (WIND) in 2009 and later merged with Intel (INTC) in 2009. Mr. Thompson stayed with the firm for 25 years before departing in 2009.
Mr. Thompson earned his BSEE in Applied Physics & Information Systems in 1979 from the University of California San Diego. In 2003 he was named the Alumni of the Year by UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
Dr. Chrisikos, as Chief Technology Officer at EvoNexus, is providing deep technical expertise to the Organization and its portfolio companies across many sectors. He will be instrumental in developing the sectors of hard tech, and certain fintech and healthcare technology. Dr. Chrisikos will assist in insuring high quality startup company admissions, the incubator company review process, mentoring and technology guidance. In addition, he is a technical liaison with EvoNexus corporate partners and their respective technology leads.
Dr. Chrisikos formerly led advanced technology development efforts at Qualcomm's QCT division. He holds over 120 granted and pending U.S. and international patents in 5G, LTE, Wi-Fi, GNSS, RF, IoT, and computing algorithms. Most recently, he was selected to advise Qualcomm's executive leadership on technology strategy, M&A, and Ventures, and to build revenue synergies from technology investments including autonomous driving, machine learning, and RF front-end. Previously, he had two successful startup company exits where he held management and engineering leadership roles. He was the engineering director and product line manager at Applied Wave Research (AWR) Inc. where he was responsible for architecting and leading the development of a design automation suite for modem and RFIC design that gained widespread industry adoption worldwide. He also led the business and account management of the product line, increasing the revenue many fold and growing the customer base to more than 100 of the leading communications companies including Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nokia, Ericsson, and TriQuint. AWR was acquired by National Instruments. Earlier, he spearheaded communication systems engineering and modem design efforts for development of CDMA and WLAN chipsets, leading to an acquisition by Texas Instruments.
Dr. Chrisikos is a Fellow of the IEEE, has been an invited speaker and delivered keynotes at various corporations and conferences worldwide, published numerous papers in international journals and conferences, and contributed to textbooks. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles with an emphasis in communication theory, statistical inference, digital signal processing and RF/electromagnetics. Subsequently, he completed the Management Development Program at the USC Marshal School of Business, Office of Executive Education.
As CFO at EvoNexus, Ms. Toledo is responsible for management oversight and audit functions for all of the Organization's financial reporting, cash management, budgeting and forecasting. Additionally, her role encompasses all operational responsibilities of the Organization including human resources, information technology, facilities, administration, legal and corporate matters. Ms. Toledo works closely with the Executive and Finance Committees of the Board. She contributes to the development and implementation of strategic initiatives including new partnerships and office locations. Ms. Toledo previously served as Director of Finance and Operations for the Organization (2016-2018), and Controller (2013-2016). She possesses a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship, and brings a decade of experience in financial management, accounting and operations to EvoNexus. She holds a B.S. in Management Science, Economics from UC San Diego.
About EvoNexus
EvoNexus is Southern California's leading startup incubator with locations in San Diego and Irvine. We enable motivated entrepreneurs to turn their transformative technologies into fundable, commercially-viable companies. Since 2010, $1.6B in funding and acquisition outcomes have been achieved by EvoNexus startups. A total of 26 EvoNexus startups have been acquired since 2013. EvoNexus is supported by corporate investors, including some of the largest multinational corporations in the world. Its companies enjoy Class A offices and dry lab spaces provided by California's leading commercial real estate developer the Irvine Company. For more information, visit EvoNexus' website and its Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
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