VALOR - Key Persons
Alaina Percival is a venture partner at Valor helping focus our pipeline of high-quality female and minority founders. As founder and executive director of Women Who Code (WWCode), an international nonprofit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers, she is uniquely positioned to canvas a broad pipeline. WWCode is building a world where women are represented as technical leaders, executives, founders, VCs, board members and software engineers. Percival's organization has executed more than 8,000 free events around the world, garnered a membership exceeding 167,000, and has a presence in 20 countries. Learn more at womenwhocode.com.
Gary has 25 years experience investing in cloud-based software in the Southeast with 19 years as a general partner and seed-stage VC investor. Starting with Council Capital's debut fund in 2000, Gary was a General Partner for 3 funds at Council Capital focused on seed and early-stage cloud software serving health care. Gary's referenceable track record includes leading 38 investments at the seed stage in the Southeast, achieving impressive returns. Prior to Council Capital, Gary was Principal at Stonehenge Growth Equity for four years. There he made his first seed stage investment, SecureTax.com, which is Intuit's Web Turbotax today. Gary's experience as a seed stage & early stage investor began in 2000. Gary's track record includes >2 dozen seed & early stage investments in Valor's target region, including 14 in Atlanta. In 2014, Gary left Council Capital to focus active seed-stage investing personally, and joined Valor first as an investor and operating partner before joining the general partnership.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Founder
- Venture Partner
George Azih is CEO and founder of the fastest growing complex accounting software platform in the world, LeaseQuery.
Jean-Luc is a serial entrepreneur. After scaling to several locations including an offshore presence in China, he sold his first company, software development firm Finalist, to investors in 2010. His experiences as an entrepreneur in a scaling tech company helps him source interesting solutions and advise founders. He is currently president at Write2Market, a tech public relations firm, and leads the tech practice. He has software development clients from San Francisco to New York. Jean-Luc's hobbies include Python and marathons.
Kevin is an experienced and visionary Chief Technology Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the hospital & health care industry.
Job Titles:
- General Partner
- Managing Partner
Valor founding managing partner Lisa Calhoun is the first woman to launch an institutional seed lead venture capital firm in the largest region of the United States, the South. Lisa was recognized in 2022 with the Kauffman Fellows Class Leadership Award. In 2023, Business Insider ranked her among the top 30 women investors in the early stage. She is a thought leader who has been featured by SuperReturn, NASDAQ Top Quartile, TechCrunch, WithinIntelligence, VentureBeat, and Forbes.
Lynne Laube is an operating partner at Valor. Prior to joining Valor, she was co-founder of Cardlytics
Nwanyinma Dike, who describes herself as an "engineer turned strategist," has the organization's top spot. While Dike started her career in corporate, she is no stranger to the local startup scene. After working at Merck commercializing vaccines, she found herself drawn to the procurement side of business. That move helped her catch the "business bug," so she went to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for her MBA before going into management consulting, a path she described as "the equivalent to a residency after medical school." In 2021 she founded UltraViolet Insights, a business consulting firm for startups and SMBs (small and mid-sized businesses). This last spring she joined ATDC, Georgia's business accelerator, as the Georgia AIM Startup Catalyst. The grant-funded role is designed to help the state transition to automation in manufacturing. In addition to her work at Spelman, she leads a college planning cohort internship program that recruits college student volunteers to guide high school students through the college application process. In her free time, Williams enjoys watching historical documentaries and reading.
Former Chief Enterprise Innovation Officer at Samsung, Chief Information Officer / Chief Technology Officer / Chief Information Security Officer for BlackBerry, and Chief Compliance Officer at AT&T, Robin brings 20 years of direct technical due diligence to her role as Founding Partner at Valor. She leads Valor's technical diligence process, chairs our Innovation Council, and coordinates portfolio alliances with major enterprise technology firms. She has 15 patents, many in use today. Robin has presented at the CIO Forum, Gartner and Forrester, and is sought for comment by Forbes, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. She is the founder and owner of Atlanta Tech Park, one of the largest innovation centers on the East Coast. Robin serves on the boards of Mitsubishi Financial (MUFG) and Great West Life Co. She holds a masters degree in the management of information technology from Georgia Tech.
Tiffany's high-level organizational and administrative experience stretches the project management spectrum: Customer relationship management (CRM); market research; event coordination; webinar setups; grant proposal design; fundraising; and video editing, to name but a few. Enthusiastic, committed, flexible, and efficient, Tiffany's learning curves are short, and she is always excited to branch out for new challenges. Tiffany's range of interests extends to her work - bring on any project, and Tiffany is readily hands-on in both knowledge and execution. Detail-oriented, Tiffany welcomes all levels of a task, in any type of task. Enhanced by her BS in Computer Science, Tiffany brings extensive technological savvy and people-skilled broad-mindedness to every professional role. She has excelled in a wide array of functions - from sales, billing, meeting planning, scheduling, training and documenting and maintaining office processes. Tiffany is a dynamic, resourceful, and energetic individual who is comfortable with being the go-to person for anything related to the seamless running of an office. There is never a task too small or too big for her.
William graduated with cum laude honors from Mercer University where he studied finance and entrepreneurship. Throughout undergrad, William sharpened his finance, venture capital, and startup skillset with roles at Morgan Stanley, VU Venture Partners, Royalty Headwear, and knock app. Immediately following graduation, William joined the Dynamo Ventures team as their 3rd fellow where he sourced supply chain & mobility startups, performed investment diligence/ market research, and was involved in all aspects of the venture investment and fund management process.
Wiliam got his first taste of the startup ecosystem working for his friend's startup at the Mercer Innovation Center (MIC). The MIC provides aspiring entrepreneurs the programs, networking opportunities, physical space, tools, experts, student interns, and access to potential funders that can help take an idea from conception to market. Going forward, William is hopeful to pay it forward as a mentor at the MIC and is excited to help cultivate future entrepreneurs emerging from the southeast US.
In his free time, William enjoys community service, options trading, golfing, cooking, and reading autobiographies; along with his best friends, he mentors underserved youth in Metro Atlanta. His [current] favorite shows on Netflix are Ozark & Lupin.