STAC Silicon Valley is a 501c3 non-profit focused on helping to advance science and technology enabled entrepreneurial initiatives in the Philippines, Silicon Valley, New York and the ASEAN region through efforts of its members and strategic partners.

STAC serves as a Bridge that provides Access, extends the Network and helps increase Knowledge of the ecosystems it serves.

This is achieved through core activities such as the ON3 pitch competition, ExcelR8 immersion program and Latitude Longitude conference as well as strategic consulting. All of STAC’s activities are supported through a combination of volunteer efforts, donations, grants and sponsorships. If you would like to support STAC’s efforts, please contact us at [email protected] or [email protected]. All donations are tax-deductible. STAC’s Tax ID is 94-3161336.

Board of Directors

Dennis Fernandez, Chairman

Dennis has over twenty-years experience in Silicon Valley and High-Tech Industry, as a patent prosecutor and intellectual property litigator, a venture capitalist, and an engineering manager. He specializes in developing offensive and defensive patent strategies for start-up electronics, software and biotech companies and their investors.

Dennis serves as strategic advisor to leading venture capital firms, including Sevin Rosen, Venrock, Charles River Ventures, and Walden International. Representative clients include Marvell Technology, SiRF Technology, Ayala Corporation, Stanford University, and Northwestern University, as well as various start-up companies acquired by Cisco, Broadcom, Ciena, and Cadence Design Systems.He also serves on the Editorial Board of the Nanotechnology Law & Business Journal, the Board of Directors of the Association of Patent Law Firms, and the Science and Technology Advisory Council. Previously Dennis served on a consultancy with the United Nations Development Programme on Asian economic development.

Dennis is also an inventor of several U.S. and international patents in the areas of digital television, sensor networks, and bioinformatics. He has an Electrical Engineering degree from Northwestern University, a law degree from Suffolk University Law School, and is a Registered U.S. Patent Attorney.

Christina Laskowski, President

CHRISTINA LASKOWSKI serves as a strategic advisor and management consultant to consumer and technology companies. Her background includes 16 years as a boutique investment and M&A banker where she helped raise more than $2.0 billion serving more than 100 clients; and three years in equity research as a member of the founding branded consumer research team at Hambrecht & Quist,

one of the original premier boutique investment banks in San Francisco.Currently, Ms. Laskowski also serves as President of STAC (Science & Technology Advisory Council) Silicon Valley, a 501(c)3 focused on driving economic growth in the Philippines and US through holistic entrepreneurship. After a fulfilling career in investment banking, Christina engaged the reigns full time and in 2009 transformed STAC SV to a strategic advisory organization with proprietary services. She presented a five year strategic plan to the Philippine President in 2010 outlining steps to cultivate the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Her leadership was instrumental in creating a collaborative community of stakeholders resulting in a country wide movement to support tech entrepreneurs at the local level and the launch of the first three tech angel funds in the country in 2012.Christina is also an active member of the community. She serves as an advisor to The Hinabi Project, an advisory board member to USF’s entrepreneurial program and led the most successful College Night program for NUSD in Marin County. Previously, Christina was regional board member to Women’s Initiative for Self Employment, a non-profit focused on transitioning women from welfare to self –employment.

In 2010, the Philippine President presented Christina with the Golden Heart Award, Rank of Grand Officer. The same year she served as a Balik Scientist (return Scientist) awardee of the Philippine Dept. of Science & Technology. In 2011, FWN recognized her as one of the “100 Most Influential Filipinas” in the United States.

Jojo Flores, Vice President

JOJO FLORES is Co-Founder at Plug and Play Technology Center, which started in January 2006. Presently, Plug and Play accelerates the success of a community of over 350 startup technology companies in 3 campuses at Silicon Valley at any given time. Plug and Play provides a value added ecosystem composed of a network of over 200 angel investors, 180 venture capital firms, 300 corporate partnerships and service providers, and industry experts.

Aside from giving heightened access to investors and customers for startups, Plug and Play is also a seed and angel investor itself with over 500 companies in its portfolio, including PayPal, Dropbox, Lending Club, Soundhound, Zoosk, among others. Plug and Play also offers C-level management and consulting thru its Executives in Residence program, as well as numerous networking and educational events. To date, Plug and Play startups have raised in excess of $3.5 billion.

In the Philippines, Jojo is Co-Founder of Launchgarage, which started operations in April 2016. Patterned after Plug and Play, Launchgarage is an incubator, accelerator, and investor for tech startups in the Philippines and the ASEAN region. Jojo currently advises startups in the country, including Appsolutely, Bloom, Goodmealhunting, Ateam, Taxumo, Tralulu, Gava, Acudeen, Magpie, Social Light, Mober, Social Light, among others.
Jojo is presently the Vice President for International Operations and Board Member of American Liquid Packaging Systems (ALPS), which he joined in 1995. At ALPS, Jojo started and operated 5-gallon bottled over 10 water companies under the brand name “Aqua Service”, presently employing over 1,000 people in over 40 cities around the world. Jojo was responsible for establishing ALPS as a market leader in Europe with a valuation of over $100 million. Jojo currently sits as a board member of ALPS’s companies in Spain (Viva Aqua Service Spain) and Sri Lanka (American Premium Water Systems). Prior to joining ALPS, Jojo started his career in the bottled water business in the Philippines when he started Metro Bottled Water Corporation from 1991 to 1995, under the brand name “Wilkins Distilled Drinking Water”.

Jojo is also the Vice-President of Chemtex Plastics Asia, which he started in Manila in 2013. Chemtex is the exclusive distributor of polyolefin resin for ExxonMobil in the Philippines.

Jojo graduated with a BS Business Administration degree from the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 1989.

Outside of work, Jojo is also the Vice President of the Science and Technology Advisory Council- Silicon Valley – (STAC-SV). He enjoys playing golf.

Katrina Montinola, Secretary

KATRINA MONTINOLA is our chief engineer, talent officer and serial entrepreneur. She has an eye for engineers and a unique skill to get them to work seamlessly which we hear is quite a challenge. She serves as VP, Engineering at Archimedes and is responsible for the software implementation of the Archimedes Model.

Katrina joined Archimedes in November of 2006 and built the Software team, which consists of an Architect, Software Engineers, Quality Assuarance Engineers, Product Managers, and IT/Desktop Support Engineers. The Software team’s goal is to transform the model into an industrial strength Internet application. Prior to Archimedes, Katrina held senior management positions at Agile Software, ChemConnect, E-Stamp, PointCast and Oracle. She is a named inventor on two (2) software patents.

Estella Luluquisen, Treasurer

ESTELLA LULUQUISEN is our treasurer and analytical operations specialist. She has over 16 years of hands-on experience with start-up companies and currently serves as co-COO of Integrated Home Systems.

Estella’s career focus is working with small business, start-up companies, and entrepreneurs. In 2000, she relocated to the Lake Tahoe region to open an incubator during the dot com boom for a ‘retired’ Silicon Valley entrepreneur and a real estate developer. The dot com bubble burst and plans for the facility diminished. She remained in the area and honed her operations skills while working with a home automation company from inception to its ten year anniversary where she managed its growth through the expansion and contraction of the real estate market. Currently, she leverages her skills by advising and mentoring entrepreneurs who are in the early stages of the start-up lifecycle. Early in her career she worked in Silicon Valley for various technology start-ups ranging from e-learning, customer relationship management, and internet service provider. Estella holds a M.S. in Operations Research from Stanford University and a B.S. in Business Decision Science with a minor in Economics from the University of San Francisco.

Denny Roja, General Counsel

Denny Roja leads the Silicon Valley practice of Carr McClellan, a boutique law firm based in Burlingame, California. As a corporate lawyer, his practice is focused on corporate transactions for emerging growth companies, including mergers & acquisitions, strategic partnering, venture capital financings, corporate finance, intellectual property licensing, as well as advising technology startups across a wide spectrum of matters.

Denny Roja’s law practice is enhanced by his years of experience in venture capital and investment banking. He is a deal maker at heart and has enjoyed leading, negotiating and consummating M&A deals, technology licensing, corporate finance, private equity and venture financings thus significantly contributing to clients growth and profitability. A significant mark is his ability to balance legal risks with business objectives to get deals to close successfully. Prior to joining Carr McClellan, Denny served as Managing Partner of Venture Law Partners where he provided general counsel services to emerging growth companies. He currently serves as general counsel of Smart Orbis, Inc., an Internet of Things security company and iSenseCloud, a cloud company that combines the power of sensors, data mining and data analytics to detect impending failures in infrastructures.Denny was recently managing partner and general counsel of Acuity Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund which invested primarily in web-based software. Prior to that, Denny was managing director for a Silicon Valley-based investment banking firm that provided corporate financial advisory and mergers & acquisition services to technology firms. He was also previously head of mergers & acquisitions for two Fortune 50 companies — General Foods where he managed the successful acquisition of Entenmann’s Baked Goods, Ronzoni Italian Foods and Oscar Mayer Corporation — and Pacific Telesis where he played a key role in its mobile telecom and wireless acquisitions. Denny’s international experience includes serving as a legal and strategic advisor to Olympus Corporation of Japan and Wells Fargo’s Asian strategic business unit.

He is a fellow of American Leadership Forum, a board member of the Philippine Development Foundation, the Stanford University Buck Cardinal Club, the Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC Silicon Valley), and the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) of San Francisco. He has been inducted in the Stanford University Alumni Multicultural Hall of Fame

Mr. Roja holds a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, an M.B.A., Stanford University Graduate School of Business, an M.S. Chemical Engineering from University of Washington and a B.S. Chemical Engineering, summa cum laude, from University of Santo Tomas. He has been an NSF Fellow in Industrial Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Angela Cheng, Director

Angela advances nanoscience at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), combining atomically precise DNA origami with silicon lithography as a part of the Molecular Programming Project. She is dedicated to creating a thriving and resilient society through sustainable technologies. She worked with computational physics and precision measurement at NASA, Agilent, and Sandia before joining a $130m fund as a technology research analyst. In tracking how disasters impacted supply chains, she championed cleantech alternatives leading to investments in SSDs, LEDs, and smart grid synchronization infrastructure. She previously served on the nanotechnology team at a patent law firm, leading to involvement in the Philippines technology ecosystem as the founder is STAC’s chairman. She has participated in Philippine based initiatives, immersed entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley accelerators, and hosted public and private leaders for educational business development tours.

Angela studied physics, economics, classics, and materials science at Stanford, where she probed the nanoscale, reassembled Greco-Roman pottery, and coded virtual realms. She also taught science summer camps and managed online courses. At Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program she used satellites to monitor the environment. Her first venture Blue Can has prepared over half a million people for disasters with FEMA and is a social business recognized as a CleanTech Open Semifinalist. She practices yoga and is a certified instructor, organized events as president emeritus of Stanford Young Alumni, and has lived/worked in Europe and South America.

JR Calanoc, Director

JR is CEO of Panalo Solutions, a San Francisco-based startup that looks to bridge the gap between Philippine talent and global markets. Panalo’s developers and marketing specialists, who are located in the Philippines, work with small businesses internationally to help them grow. Additionally the company’s in-house incubator, Panalo Labs, focuses on building apps and software to help drive growth in the Philippines.

JR is a graduate of University of San Francisco where he majored in Economics. He loves adventure and is a long time scuba diver, Ironman finisher, as well as a private pilot.

Lieza Danan-Leon, Director

LIEZA DANAN-LEON has over 10 years of extensive experience as a technical leader in fast-paced Biopharmaceutical, cGMP Analytical CRO, and Instrumentation Facilities here in the Bay Area, in Lancaster, PA, and in the Philippines. She has held positions asGroup Leader, Senior Scientist, and Principal Scientist in various companies and institutions such as the National Chemistry Instrumentation Center (Philippines),

UC Davis Mass Spec Facility, Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories, ELLI-Genentech, biotech startup SutroBioPharma, and the recently acquired biotech startup Stemcentrx (now AbbVie-Stemcentrx).Lieza is an SME in mass spectrometry, a powerful analytical technique that can accurately describe the contents of any compound. She specializes in the characterization of protein therapeutics and antibody drug conjugates (ADCs),an important class of highly potent biopharmaceutical drugs designed as a targeted therapy for the treatment of people with cancer.

Lieza utilizes 18 years of experience in mass spectrometry in her current role as Head of Mass Spectrometryat AbbVie Stemcentrx, where shecreates from the ground up fit for purpose mass spectrometry-based analytical strategies and workflows for characterization, quantification, and quality checkof cancer drugs to support over 10 functions within the company. She led and facilitated strategic addition of over $7 M worth of resources to the mass spectrometry function by strategic recruitment of three best in biopharma mass spectrometrists, and critical selection of four state of the art LC-MS instrumentation.All workflows help in the rapid advancement of ADC oncology drug candidates from discovery, to development, to Ph I clinical trials (first in human studies).

Lieza obtained a BS degree in Chemistry and MS units in Chemistry from the Ateneo de Manila University (Katipunan, Quezon City, Philippines) where she also taught college-level Chemistry classes. She then moved to Davis, California for graduate school in 2004, and obtained her Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry in 2009 from the University of California, Davis.

Outside of work, Lieza is the Co-Founder and Acting President of the SF Bay Area Ateneans Alumni group, which has over 400 members in northern California. She also volunteers as a mentor for college students through theFilipino Americans in Silicon Valley Tech (FASTER) and forfund-raising events of the Philippine International Aid (PIA) and Pilipino Senior Resource Center (PSRC).

Lieza is a new Board Member of Science and Technology Advisory Council Silicon Valley (STAC SV).