TIV's Advisory Council

TIV is fortunate to be supported by the technical and business acumen of our Advisory Council, who provide their expertise on numerous TIV initiatives, in addition to helping shape our strategic direction.

Howard B. Rockman is a Chicago patent attorney, Intellectual Property Management consultant, author and lecturer. He counsels companies and individual innovators and creators on a variety of intellectual property matters. Fifty years ago, Howard began his legal career as a Patent Examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office before moving on to his role as an Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. Howard represents clients in litigation of patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret cases in Federal and State Courts, as well as clients seeking to secure domestic and foreign intellectual property rights before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Copyright Office, and similar intellectual property offices throughout the world.

Professor Howard Rockman

Northwestern University

Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; IP Attorney

Dr. Anna Quider

The Quider Group

CEO of the Quider Group

Adam has over 20 years of consulting and technology experience in the areas of intellectual property licensing, technology commercialization, innovation strategy, expert testimony on damages and IP valuation, and data analytics. Adam began his career with Ernst & Young working with clients in the telecommunication and energy industries. Adam then worked as a licensing professional in the field of academic technology transfer, where he managed diverse portfolios of intellectual property providing technology commercialization and development services to various stakeholders. From there, Adam developed a consulting practice focused on litigation consulting and data analytics, technology commercialization and valuation.

Mr. Falconer holds a Juris Doctor and Certificate in Law, Technology and Management from Syracuse University, College of Law (cum laude), in addition to an undergraduate degree in Management Information Systems from Iowa State University, College of Business (highest honors).

Mr. Falconer has served as a guest lecturer on intellectual property damages at the University of San Francisco School of Law, University of Kansas School of Law, and has lectured on patent policy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy. Adam is a member of various professional associations, including the Forensics and Valuation Services Section of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Valuation and Pricing Committee of the Licensing Executives Society (LES) and he is a Certified Licensing Professional (CLP).

Mr. Adam Falconer

Reality Sense LLC

Intellectual Property (IP) Expert & University Lecturer

Dr. Charles Weiss

World Bank & Georgetown University

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Georgetown University; Former Advisor to the President of the World Bank on Science, Technology & Innovation

Oltac Unsal brings a great deal of experience in the technology entrepreneurship, investment, and development sectors. He is the President of Smyrna Capital and has invested in over 45 startups in technology, renewable energy, and other opportunistic sectors. His success in their entrepreneurial ventures is greatly attributable to his mentoring of the portfolio businesses on market positioning, growth, and sales strategy. In these ventures, he has led the development of numerous products (from conception to lab tests to mass engineering and sales).

Mr. Unsal has worked as a Senior Advisor/Manager at the World Bank. He managed Early Stage Innovation Financing programs and initiatives in 50+ countries for infoDev and led ministerial-level innovation-led economic development initiatives in over 30+ countries. During his position as Senior Portfolio and Offerings Manager for Microsoft, Oltac assisted the turnaround of $500M unprofitable Enterprise Services to $800M, 14% profit business in 3 years through focusing on value-priced productized services and international. He also architected a three-year offerings strategy to reinvent all of Enterprise Services away from a cost-plus business model to define a clear “theater of operations” that minimized channel conflict and helped the Federal team redefine offerings pricing and strategy to minimize support costs by 42% and increase customer response times by 75%. He also served as Investor-In-Residence at USAID Development Innovation Ventures (DIV).

Mr. Oltac Unsal holds an MBA in Finance/Entrepreneurship from Stanford Business School and a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Whitman College.

Mr. Oltac Unsal

World Bank Group

World Bank Advisor on Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Mr. Beard has over 30 years of international finance and business development experience with an emphasis on emerging markets. He joined Interlink after serving as the COO of Delphos International, a consulting firm specializing in government lending programs he helped build and sell to Banc One Capital Corporation (now JP Morgan Chase). Mr. Beard headed merchant banking for Banc One Capital Corporation and served as an official in ExIm Bank and the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. During his career, he has arranged several billion dollars in government (i.e., U.S., European, Asian, and multilateral) grants, equity, guarantees, and loans for hundreds of companies. He sits on the boards of several companies for which he has raised money.

He has also acquired and managed multi-unit residential real estate in the U.S. as a Principal in LRA International. Mr. Beard was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University for undergraduate and graduate international business courses. He has edited and contributed to the writing of more than 20 books and is a frequent speaker on international finance issues. More recently, he has co-authored and edited Trade Finance Handbook, Inside the World’s Export Credit Agencies, Inside the World’s Development Finance Institutions, and Terrorism & Personal Security, all published by a division of Thomson Reuters. Mr. Beard graduated from the University of Utah cum laude and received his MBA from George Washington University.

Mr. Alan Beard

Interlink Capital Strategies

Managing Director of Interlink Capital

Susan Kling Finston is a key opinion leader (KOL) on innovation, assimilation, and commercialization of new technologies to create social and economic benefit, with a deep understanding of government procurement and broader business development opportunities for bioscience and related R&D programs. Her substantive experience includes evaluating projects relating to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other low-carbon technologies.

With 25+ years of work experience at the top echelons of corporations and government, Susan’s transformational vision yields consistent dividends for clients. Milestones include licensing and commercialization transactions over $20M, market access, and strategic partnering agreements for Fortune 100 companies. She also has completed successful engagements for corporate clients in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), World Health Organization (WHO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and World Trade Organization (WTO). She has served as a cleared advisor (Secret level) to the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative (IPR, Tariff/Trade Facilitation) and served in the U.S. Foreign Service, Department of State with Top Secret and Code Word (compartmentalized) clearance levels. She has founded and/or co-founded several companies and NGOs with visionary leaders, including biotech pioneer Ananda Chakrabarty, Ph.D.

She earned her Joint Degree J.D./M.P.P. from the University of Michigan Law School & Ford School of Public Policy.

Ms. Susan Finston

Finston Consulting

President of Finston Consulting

Professor Howard Rush is a founder member of the Centre for Research in Innovation Management (CENTRIM), where he was the Head or Deputy Head for 26 years. He has also been co-director of the ESRC-funded Center on Complex Product Systems Innovation (CoPS).

Professor Rush has made significant contributions to the socioeconomic impacts of information technology, benchmarking of research and technology institutes, and the diffusion of new technologies in developing countries. Additionally, he is a global thought leader in evaluating national and regional innovation policies, managing innovation in complex projects, illegal innovation in cybercrime, and, most recently, innovation with humanitarian relief. He has published over 125 academic papers and has been the Principal Investigator on over 25 major research projects funded by various national and international agencies. He is often called upon to conduct consultancies for major organizations such as the (former) UK Department of Trade and Industry, the World Bank, the European Commission, and United Nations agencies such as the ILO, UNDP, UNESCO, and IFAD.

Professor Rush is dedicated to ‘closing the loop’ between academia and industry and has been deeply involved in programs developed at CENTRIM to transfer and disseminate knowledge. As a certified trainer on the Managing Innovation course, he has delivered the program in South America, Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia. He is also certified as an instructor on the course’s ‘train-the-trainer’ program.

Dr. Howard Rush

Brighton University

Professor Emeritus of Brighton University

Dr. James J. Gillespie, Ph.D., JD, MPA, is a consultant and researcher in the advanced application of analytics and technology to address challenges and opportunities for economic development and innovation in the biotechnology, device, healthcare, medical, and pharmaceutical sectors. He co-founded the “Diversity, Inclusion, and Health Equity Symposium,” the leading annual event focused on D&I for the global biopharmaceutical sector.

Dr. Gillespie’s research has appeared in numerous academic journals and industry periodicals. He has an article titled “Biopharmaceutical Entrepreneurship, Open Innovation, and the Knowledge Economy” forthcoming in the Journal of Innovation Management. Dr. Gillespie has also been published in the Academy of Management Review, American Behavioral Scientist, European Journal of Social Psychology, Harvard Business Review, Life Science Leader Magazine, Pharmaceutical Executive Magazine, and Strategic Management Journal.

His education includes Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University School of Law, J.D., Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy, M.P.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S., Carnegie Mellon University Heinz School, and Rand Graduate School. He also serves as President & Co-Founder at the Center for Healthcare Innovation in Chicago, IL, and as a Project Director & Senior Advisor at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, CA.

Dr. James Gillespie

Center of Healthcare Innovation

Co-Founder of Center of Healthcare Innovation (CHI)

Kurt Hoffman has a solid track record over three decades as a pioneering architect of strategic, institutional, and program-level civil society initiatives to tackle the twin global challenges of overcoming poverty and advancing the sustainability agenda.

From 2011 through 2012, Kurt served as Chief Executive of the Institute for Philanthropy, a global leader in training leading philanthropists to help maximize the social value of their philanthropy. Since 2015 he has served as director of School for Startups (S4S), a UK-based social business whose mission is to advance entrepreneurship’s contribution to equitable economic growth. It does this by inspiring and training entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses. Prior to this, he designed and launched TransFarm Africa – a multi-million-dollar funded investment initiative catalyzing equitable, sustainable commercialization of subsistence small-farmer agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa.

Kurt spent 10 years as a Senior Fellow at the University of Sussex and 5 years as an entrepreneur launching two venture capital-funded start-up businesses. From 1998 to 2008, he designed and led the Shell Foundation, an influential corporate foundation pioneering new approaches to strategic corporate social investment and creating enterprise-based solutions to poverty. In all these positions, he has played a vital role in designing robust needs analysis/business diagnostics tools for organizations such as gazelle firms, not-for-profits, and social enterprises. His ability to identify and analyze critical needs in these organizations has been crucial to their success.

Mr. Kurt Hoffman

School for Startups

Director at School for StartUps