Phil Wickham

“Of the 10,000 start-ups we studied, 65% died because of dysfunctional human dynamic.” —Noam Wasserman (Founder’s Dilemma), HBS 

Phil Wickham is Co-Founder and Executive Managing Director of Sozo Ventures, a $1.7 billion venture fund with offices in Redwood City and Tokyo. Sozo has, for over 15 years, invested in disruptive data science start-ups with global ambitions, specifically supporting them with early, intelligent engagement with Japanese markets. Notable successes include Palantir, Twitter (X), Square, MongoDB, Coinbase, Zoom, ChorusAI and Fastly. Sozo is also an early investor in Applied Intuition, Anduril, Saronic, Grammarly, Deel, Chainalysis, Need, Molten, Mercy Bio, Yellow Card and Carbon Robotics.

Phil is emeritus CEO and Chairman of the Kauffman Fellows. Over 30 years, he’s shepherded the development of nearly 1000 emerging leaders in venture capital in more than 60 countries. During his tenure, more than 300 new venture funds were created from within the Kauffman global community. He also helped conceive, staff and seed-fund TrueBridge Capital Partners (FoF), as well as The Kauffman Fellows Fund (direct), and is an emeritus advisor to the Creandum Fund in Stockholm, Angular Ventures in London/Tel Aviv, Taro Ventures in Tokyo, Frontline Ventures in Dublin and MaC Ventures in LA. 

From 2018-2022, Phil taught capital formation at Waseda University as a Visiting Professor. In 2024, he co-founded the 11KS Foundation in Japan to promote innovation education. Phil has also published two #1 best-sellers in Japan on capital formation for startups and writes regularly for publications there.

He was raised on hockey rinks in Upstate New York, and has been playing competitive tennis for longer than he cares to admit. He is an avid collector of antique maps—a passion passed down by his father—and often invokes the parable of the “Island of California” to reinforce the importance of good inquiry and challenging assumptions. He is the proud father of two daughters, the youngest of three children and a screaming Enneagram Type 7.

Ade Mabogunje

Ade conducts research on the design thinking process with a view to instrumenting and measuring the process and giving feedback to design thinking teams on ways to improve their performance in the Stanford Center for Design Research. He works in collaboration with partners in the engineering education, design practice and investment community as a participant-observer in the practice of building and developing ecosystems that support accelerated and continuous innovation in products and services. 

Diana Chapman

Diana is an advisor to exceptional leaders who has worked with over 1000 organizational leaders and many of their teams, and is a founding partner at Conscious Leadership Group. She has created and implemented professional onboarding and ongoing programs—based on the comprehensive body of work she developed with CLG co-founder Jim Dethmer—with clients such as Asana and Esalen.

In addition to facilitating CLG Forums in the Bay Area for founders, venture capitalists, and CEOs, Diana facilitates YPO Forums and Chapters worldwide. She also trains coaches in conscious leadership in the CLG training program she and Jim created. Diana co-authored the best-selling book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success, in 2015. 

Helen L. Chen

Helen is a research scientist in the Center for Design Research in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and co-founder of the Integrative Learning Portfolio Lab in Stanford Career Education. She earned her undergraduate degree from UCLA and her PhD in Communication with a minor in Psychology from Stanford. Her scholarship is focused on engineering and entrepreneurship education, portfolio pedagogy, reflective practices, non-degree credentials, and reimagining how learners represent themselves through their professional online presence.