Prior to joining the Dingman team, Elana was an Associate and a Vice-President at the Boston office of Revolution Partners, a national middle market investment bank specializing in mergers and acquisitions and private capital advisory for the technology industry. While at Revolution Partners, Elana advised on a variety of transactions ranging between $5 million and $100 million, including venture investments for both early and late stage private companies, sell side and buy side acquisitions and fairness opinions. Elana worked with companies in a number of industries, such as enterprise & infrastructure software, technology services and digital media. Elana also served as Revolution Partner's Chief Financial Officer from 2003-2006, and administered the firm's internal controls and its budget as it grew to $10 million annually. From 1997-2000, Elana was a consultant with Accenture, where she implemented technology solutions for clients in the financial services, government and natural resources industries.

Elana earned an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in 2002, and earned a BS in Finance, magna cum laude, from the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1997. Elana resides in Potomac, Maryland, with her husband and two children.

She is an associate editor of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and the editor of the SSRN Entrepreneurship and Economics Journal. Rajshree has received research grants from the Kauffman Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Marketing Science Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Agriculture. Rajshree has taught a wide range of courses in strategic management, entrepreneurship, technology and innovation, industrial organization and microeconomics at the undergraduate, MBA, Executive MBA and PhD levels. Consistent with her interests in innovation, she strives to incorporate the latest pedagogical technologies in her teaching, and has won many awards for teaching excellence and a demonstrated increase in teaching productivity. She is passionate, in particular, about providing business education to science and engineering students to enable them to be effective in diffusing the knowledge they create for economic growth and social welfare. Prior to coming to University of Maryland, Rajshree undertook efforts at the University of Illinois towards creating specialized certificate programs and courses to help serve this need. In part as recognition of these efforts, and in part for her scholarly achievements, the University of Illinois bestowed her with the “University Scholar” designation in 2009, the highest honor given to its faculty in recognition of overall excellence.

Holly first joined the University of Maryland in 2007 as the Associate Director of University Marketing. Her primary responsibility was management of the University’s largest annual event, Maryland Day. The event is hosted by 8,000 University volunteers and is attended by more than 75,000 people. In this role, Holly helped coordinate the planning and implementation of more than 400 events and managed such items as the marketing materials, event budget and planning committees of more than 60 people.

In addition to Maryland Day, Holly assisted in a variety of strategically targeted marketing initiatives including the university’s branding campaign, “Fear the Turtle.” While she was involved in most aspects of the campaign from brainstorming to implementation, Holly’s main role was to manage and execute the campaign media buy.

Previously, Holly worked for Cohn & Wolfe, a New York City-based strategic marketing public relations firm with offices worldwide. She served on multiple pharmaceutical accounts including GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil CR, Avandia and the Vaccines Franchise. On these accounts, Holly assisted in the planning and implementation of a number of public relations and government affairs campaigns, including the PR campaigns for the U.S. Food & Drug Administration approvals of two new pharmaceuticals.

Holly received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. While her roots are deep in East Tennessee, she currently lives in Annapolis, MD with her husband, Davy and their Portuguese Water Dog, Crockett.

Prior to joining the Dingman team, Joel held a wide variety of roles in finance, operation and strategy. This experience spans across firms of all sizes, from start-up to large enterprise. Joel started his career in investment banking with First Union Securities where he advised corporate clients on a variety of transactions including mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings (IPO) and follow-on equity offerings. After five years of investment banking, Joel joined the financial planning and analysis group of a publicly traded wireless provider. Desiring to get more involved with a startup company, Joel then joined a venture backed communications company based out of Chicago. In this role Joel worked alongside the CEO and CFO to provide strategic and financial analysis in addition to supporting all mergers and acquisitions activity. After the company merged with its largest competitor, Joel continued his focus on early stage companies. This is included working at an incubator in Cambridge, MA and helping to run a technology focused angel investment group in the Boston area. While in business school, Joel completed a number of consulting assignments including evaluating business opportunities for Daymond John, the creator of FUBU, and working in the corporate development group of a large enterprise software company.

Joel earned an MBA in from Babson College and earned a BBA in Finance from the College of William & Mary.

During her work at RLPG, Alla’s responsibilities included market research, product positioning, branding, planning and executing marketing strategies for various product lines.

Alla is a 3rd year part-time MBA student at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. She received a B.A. in English Language and Literature and a B.S. in Computer Science from the State University of Moldova. She moved to the United States from Moldova (Eastern Europe) in 1999. Currently she lives with her son in Arnold, MD.

Danielle received a B.A. in Political Science from the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh in 2011. During her undergraduate career she completed internships with Evergreen Information Technology, Inc. at the United States Department of Agriculture Network Operations Center and with Events Management, LLC.

In 1996, Dr. Lamone was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young for his work in support of entrepreneurship. In 1998, Dr. Lamone was selected to receive the President's Medal at the University of Maryland. In 1999, Dr. Lamone co-founded DirectGene, a biotechnology company that has developed gene therapies directed toward the treatment of metastatic prostate and breast cancer.

Dr. Lamone serves as Director on the board of several companies, public and private. He also serves as a venture partner with Gabriel Venture Partners, Annapolis, MD, and Redwood Shores, CA. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Dr. Lamone received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the business school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He has published in The Academy of Management Journal, The Journal of Business Venturing, The Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Science, Personnel Psychology, Strategic Management Journal, Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, and he has chapters in four books. His dissertation, The Relation of Traits, Competencies, Vision, Motivation, and Strategy to Venture Growth won the 1995 Academy of Management, Entrepreneurship Division, best dissertation award. Three of his publications won best paper awards at Babson - Kauffman Entrepreneurship Research Conferences, and he is editor of The Psychology of Entrepreneurship, a Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology Frontiers Series book. Baum is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Venturing.

Baum earned his BS in engineering from Lehigh University MBA from Northwestern University and PhD from the University of Maryland. He has founded three new ventures, and he is a member of the board of directors of four businesses.