PLASMA VENTURES - Key Persons
Burhan Jaffer is Founder and Managing Partner of Plasma Ventures.
Burhan is also a Co-Sponsor and Chief Financial Officer of Compass Digital Acquisition Corporation (NASDAQ: CDAQ), a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, that is currently seeking a business combination with software and/or software enabled services assets in the $1 trillion Digital Transformation market.
Previously, Burhan Jaffer was the Chief Strategy & Corporate Development Officer at Conduent, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNDT), a F500 global leader in technology outsourcing, digital processing, business services and solutions. Conduent is a spin-off from Xerox (NYSE:XRX) following shareholder activism at Xerox. Mr. Jaffer worked on several key aspects of the spin / post separation transformation of Conduent and has rich experience dealing with shareholder activism and an activist-led Board. As a member of the Executive Team and reporting to the CEO, Mr. Jaffer was responsible for all aspects of corporate strategy, mergers, acquisitions, transformation, business development and inorganic growth initiatives.
Before his time at Conduent, Mr. Jaffer spent 12+ years at Infosys (NYSE:INFY), a F500 global leader in technology, consulting and outsourced IT services, in a variety of roles from Portfolio CFO to leadership roles across Strategy, M&A, Investments and Corporate Finance. Over a decade, he led a variety of M&A, strategic initiatives, transformation programs, and growth initiatives at Infosys. Under his stewardship, Infosys developed and launched a $500M venture fund investing in early-stage start-ups focused on disruptive technologies.
Prior to Infosys, Mr. Jaffer was with ConAgra (NYSE:CAG) working in the South Asian market in roles spanning trading, commercial operations and finance.
As a Venture Partner and Strategic Advisor, Mr. Jaffer is currently involved with MIT Solve a marketplace and incubator for socially conscious technology innovation, a boutique NYC based VC on social impact investments, and a host of technology startups addressing technology innovation themes as diverse as public safety, food security, AI/ML governance, and data analytics. He also serves on the boards of Mission Society, a New York based non-profit and Bottom Line and is a Fellow of the Herndon Directors Institute (Class 1).
Masooma Ali is a PhD. in Quantum Gravity from the University of New Brunswick (2014-2019). She was awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal for her work during her PhD. thesis. As an NSERC Fellow at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics (2019-2021), she applied advanced statistical techniques to problems in classical and quantum gravity, and worked at the intersection of physics, data science and high-performance computing.
More recently, Masooma is applying her formidable prowess and talent as a Senior data scientist at Sesh,focusing on some unique applications of natural language processing and audio analysis.
Besides pondering on the deepest mysteries of the cosmos, Masooma is a devoted Super Mom, an avid hiker and a compassionate philanthropist and educator.
Job Titles:
- Director Business Development
John Roberts is a former investment banker, who brings his rich experience in M&A and investing across asset classes and full investment life cycles, to Plasma Ventures.
John spent 10+ years investing in and advising companies through his work in investment banking, private equity and venture capital. Prior to joining Compass, John was a Vice President within Barclays' investment banking division where he executed M&A transactions, advised strategic planning and growth initiatives and raised billions in capital for clients in the equity and debt capital markets. He also has experience supporting and investing in companies while working at Lee Equity Partners, a middle-market private equity firm, and Cue Ball Capital, an evergreen venture capital firm.
A multifaceted investment professional, John also leads Business Development for Compass Digital Acquisition Corp, a SPAC investment platform, where both Burhan Jaffer and John Roberts share an affiliation. He is also Co-founder and Managing Director of an independent search fund, dedicated to sourcing, acquiring and managing small businesses and helping them scale.
John holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and Bachelor's degrees in Finance and Spanish Language & Literature from the University of Notre Dame.
Kamelia's prior experience includes her time as Managing Director of Performance Analytics at CBAM, a credit focused asset manager, where she headed Investment Performance & Analytics for the firm. Prior to joining CBAM, Kamelia was a Managing Director at ACA Performance Services where she conducted GIPS® verifications, performance examinations, and provided various consulting services related to investment performance and performance measurement.
Kamelia is a CFA® charterholder who also holds the CIPM designation. She received a B.B.A in Economics and a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Georgia.
Kamelia cares deeply about issues concerning community, education and social justice around the world. She is devoted to her goal of creating an educational foundation for kids in Morocco. In her spare time, she enjoys cross fit, training for marathons and yoga.
Job Titles:
- Entrepreneur - in - Residence and Technical Advisor
- Technical Advisor to
Saquib Kothawala is a technical advisor to Plasma Ventures and a budding serial entrepreneur himself, focused on building his portfolio of full stack applications, data platforms, search systems, CI/CD pipelines and more. He owns and operates startups like Guru Ops, bolo.fm, useboilerplate.com and blog2tweet.com showcasing solutions where he has embraced the paradigm of cloud native.
Saquib is a hands-on technology practitioner at heart, who not only leveraged his formal training in mathematics, statistics and machine learning but also added enterprise software development and building web-applications to his burgeoning repertoire of skills. Over the last ten years, Saquib has led teams of developers, data scientists, data engineers, and UX designers and has delivered projects for some of the best funded startups in Silicon Valley as well as large multinational enterprises, including The Royal Bank of Canada, Mckinsey and Company, Deloitte Canada, Sidewalk labs (an Alphabet Company), HealthTap and DrChrono.
Saquib is a mathematics alum of the University of Waterloo and goes deep sea fishing in his spare time.