Rich Allen

Richard K. Allen is a civil engineer and lawyer by training and has been deeply involved in the design and construction industry for over 45 years. During that time, he has held a series of board and executive leadership roles encompassing a broad range of responsibilities. He has extensive design, consulting, and construction expertise as well as large company management, merger and acquisition, dispute resolution and legal expertise.

Since 2018, he has served on the Board of Directors of Gilbane Construction, Inc., a 150-year-old $6B privately held family-owned construction and real estate development firm. From 2018 through 2022, he served as the outside advisor to the Board of Directors of GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc., a 660-person professional engineering and consulting firm.

He is the former chief operating officer for Stantec Inc.’s global operations — now a $4 billion, 22,000-employee international design and consulting professional services firm. Mr. Allen’s leadership at Stantec focused on the aggressive growth and profitable operations of Stantec’s global-wide locations. Before serving as Stantec’s COO, Mr. Allen was their east regional operating leader responsible for that unit’s financial performance while actively involved in the company’s U.S. operations acquisition and integration programs, strategic planning, budgeting and project contract and dispute resolution activities. He retired from Stantec in 2016. Mr. Allen was the past president and CEO of Dufresne-Henry, Inc. a New England-, New York- and Florida-based consulting engineering firm. He led Dufresne Henry through its ownership transition and later that company’s sale to Stantec in 2006.

An attorney and a construction dispute arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association, Mr. Allen’s was also a former general partner at Gadsby Hannah, LLP (now McCarter English LLP) serving as chairperson of the design and construction law practice with a concentration on litigation, arbitration and dispute resolution as well as transactional advisory services to the design and construction industry. Prior to his legal career, Mr. Allen worked for consulting engineering firms as a project engineer and manager on numerous public work-related projects throughout New England and the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. Allen is a registered professional engineer in several states in the U.S. He earned his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1976 and his Master of Science degree in civil engineering from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1980 after completing graduate research at McGill University in Montreal. He also has a 1985 law degree from the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce Law Center and is a member of the bar in several states and has appeared before state, federal and appellate courts.

Rich lives just south of Boston with his wife. He has 3 now grown children and 5 grandchildren living in the Boston, New York City and Los Angeles regions.

Priya Yadav

Priya is Deep-tech Investor at MassVentures, the Commonwealth’s strategic venture capital team. As Vice President, Investments, she is responsible for clean energy and tech innovation based non-dilutive programs, dilutive venture investments, and providing technical and business support to early-stage, high-growth Massachusetts based deep tech and diverse startups as they move from concept to commercialization. For non-dilutive programs, she manages the end-to-end process with startups from solicitation to grant and post grant management. For Venture investments, she shepherds deals through preview, pitch, diligence, closure, and manages post close activities with startups. Priya also teaches Business Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Engineering Students at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

Prior to joining MassVentures, Priya was a Senior Leader at Intel® for several years, with extensive leadership experience and transferable skills in problem solving, product & program development, leadership development and business operations. Most recently she was a Senior Director of Engineering, and as Project Manager, Priya led large cross-Intel® teams of ~300 engineers with responsibilities to plan, staff and execute innovative Xeon®, Itanium® and custom silicon projects which generated significant revenue for Intel®. She seamlessly led teams to deliver designs for manufacturing and post-silicon qualification. She was also the Intel® Massachusetts Site Leader responsible for ~1000 Intel® employees. Priya led strategy, fostered innovation collaboration with Massachusetts research institutions, sponsored employee groups and secured funding to implement several key programs. She spearheaded communication and organizational health initiatives for employee development and training. Priya led a cohort for senior women, providing them mentoring and development support, besides being a Mentor and Coach for leaders and employees, helping them in career progression and leadership growth. She initiated and drove multiple leadership events to foster innovation, grow business acumen and thought leadership.

She has a Master of Science – MS, Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, and a Bachelor of Engineering – BE, Electronics Engineering from University of Mumbai.

To further her passion for giving back to the community, Priya is also a Business Mentor at EforAll’s Roxbury startup accelerator program supporting EforAll’s mission to accelerate economic and social impact through entrepreneurship in mid-sized cities. Among her many other volunteering activities, Priya is a TYE Mentor and has been a dedicated Intel Involved Volunteer for several years.

Firas Raouf

Firas is a Co-Founder and General Partner of Companyon Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that was founded based on his experiences as an entrepreneur at multiple startups and a VC at Insight and OpenView Venture Partners. At Companyon, they fund companies between Seed and Series A and help great teams perform even better with on-demand fractional experts who can unstick bottlenecks, use data to chart an efficient growth strategy, and implement best practices in sales, marketing, and finance.

Daniel Pelaez

Daniel brings a blend of passion, vision, and good old-fashioned elbow grease to the tech industry while solving real-world problems that have been overlooked for decades.

A graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Daniel’s journey started during his time working on the road crew at the Public Works Department in Southbury, CT, where he was struck by the inefficiencies from a lack of data on physical transportation infrastructure.

Applying his undergrad knowledge in LiDAR and computer vision, Daniel set out to devise an automated infrastructure mapping solution for a sector that had seen minimal technical advancement over the years. This inspiration culminated in the establishment of Cyvl.ai in 2021, initially co-founded as Roadgnar in 2020 with his long-time friend and roommate, Noah Budris, and later joined by robotics prodigy, Noah Parker.

Under Daniel’s leadership, Cyvl is on a mission to revolutionize the way our world manages its physical infrastructure. His goal is not merely about technological advancement, but about creating a sustainable, data-driven future that solves pressing global issues across various verticals, now enabled by scalable sensors and hardware to connect the physical and digital worlds.

Known for his humility and transparency, Daniel fosters a collaborative and hard-working environment within Cyvl. A mentor to startups in his free time, he’s keen on giving back to the startup community, inspired by the guidance he’s received from his own mentors and advisors.

Blair Heavey

Over the past 30+ years Blair Heavey has been a pillar of success for the multiple businesses he has worked for ranging from digital power-houses, traditional media, new innovation, software and start-ups. Blair is experienced in creating, reinvigorating, investing, and leading companies to achieve their goals. Blair has held many different roles at different stages of company growth from Seed stage through Public Companies. This gives him the unique experience and expertise to see businesses from multiple angles, his included CEO, President of Sales, Strategic Advisor and Board Member. Blair knows that the first step to any successful business is to make sure your product fits the market you want, you have the right go-to market strategy with the right operational team leaders to clearly drive your intended purpose and results.

Blair has helped businesses across many industries including social, mobile, electronic commerce, online marketing, online advertising, fintech, edtech, print, and data protection markets.. He is passionate about challenging and helping leaders think through ventures, teams and business models toward improved purpose and results. Blair uses his collaborative personality style with years of innovation, growth and turn-around experience to assist companies with their strategic vision, creative ideas, and realistic approach to the market. Blair has helped over 25 companies achieve success and can’t wait to help your business next.

Backed by his undergraduate degree at Boston College and his MBA from Babson College, Blair has the ability to see the correct path for your business and elevate it to new heights. Blair currently lives in Ipswich, MA with his wife and 2 dogs, his 3 children live in Boston, MA.