Draper Data Science Business Plan
Competition Judges
Cat Dizon
Co-Founder & COO, Active Capital
Cat Dizon is Co-founder and Partner of Active Capital, a venture firm based in San Antonio that is focused on leading seed rounds for B2B SaaS companies. She was Executive Director of Alamo Angels, the San Antonio based group of Angel Investors that invest in Texas based startups and was a founding member of the Beam Angel Network, an organization with the mission to advance women founders striving to scale their businesses in Texas.
Prior to her venture capital experience, Cat built her career operating businesses and creating incredible value delivering on both levels of strategy and execution. For 11 years, she worked at Rackspace where she was a Director of Corporate Strategy & Development leading in areas of Mergers & Acquisitions, Post-Merger Integration, Growth Businesses and Staff Operations.
Cat proudly serves as the Chairman of Geekdom’s Board of Directors, is a Board of Trustee for the Mind Science Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors for Girls Inc. of San Antonio. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Dirk Elmendorf
Co-Founder of Rackspace &
CEO, Witte Museum.
Dirk Elmendorf moved to San Antonio to attend Trinity University. He graduated with a BA in Economics. After helping to start a very small computer consulting company, he stumbled onto the idea that would change his life. Along with two other Trinity students, Dirk co-founded Rackspace Managed Hosting in 1999. Rackspace (RXT) is currently a public company. Dirk left Rackspace in 2009 to get back to his start-up roots.
In addition to advising several startups, Dirk is currently the CEO of the Witte Museum. The Witte Museum inspires people to shape the future of Texas through relevant and transformative experiences in nature, science and culture.
Ravi Kanniganti
Director of Innovation, H-E-B
Ravi Kanniganti is currently working as Director of Innovation at H-E-B. Prior to this role, he was running Tech Accelerator for Target. As Innovation Director, he works with eco-system players such as start-ups, VCs, Universities and other accelerators for joint research, innovation, and co-development. He mentored, coached, and accelerated start-ups from US, India, Israel, Singapore, HK and Estonia and enabled them to work on challenging use cases ranging from customer engagement, marketing, sourcing, supply chain and sustainability using 3D, Blockchain, AR, AI/ML and Robotics. In his long career of 20 years, he worked for both large technology corporations and for start-ups. He established centers of excellence, innovation labs and testing labs for global product companies.
Ravi graduated with MS in Engineering from Virginia Tech and MBA from Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University. He attended “Retail Forum for Senior Leaders” at Harvard Business School Executive education.
Alejandra Zertuche
Interdisciplinary Scientist & CEO, Enflux
Alejandra Zertuche is an interdisciplinary scientist and the Chief Executive Officer of Enflux, an ed-tech startup that harnesses educational data to provide actionable insights, enhancing decision-making processes to boost student outcomes and success.
With a strong foundation in process performance, finance, statistics, biomedical informatics, and academic assessment and accreditation, Alejandra brings a diverse skill set to her roles. She currently serves as a Director for TransPecos Banks and has been acknowledged with distinctions including the San Antonio Business Journal's 40 under 40.
Alejandra earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and an MBA from St. Mary’s University, along with an M.S. in Biomedical Informatics from UT Health at Houston. Her mission through Enflux is to offer a secure, cloud-based platform that presents an accessible view of university program performance down to the individual student level, aiming to support curriculum delivery, strategic planning, accountable action, and continuous quality improvement.
