Expertise: economic development, venture creation, program implementation and operation, and funding strategy.

Abi is additionally the Executive Director for the Maryland Innovation Initiative, a state investment fund for university spinout technologies. He previously served as Chief Business Officer at Southern Research and as Consultant at McKinsey & Co. His accomplishments at Southern Research involve building the organization’s commercialization programs, including an incubator and accelerator, and leading a business development team responsible for $25m annually in sales. He led Birmingham’s Biden-Harris Technology Hub designation through ecosystem development work. He has worked across finance, startups, government, and private non-profits.

Abi holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar) and a BSc in Mathematical Physics from Brown University.

Expertise: venture creation, venture advisory, due diligence, and ecosystem building to support technology startups.

Tayo previously served as Director of the Venture Studio at Southern Research and as Investor at Anzu Partners, a deep technology venture capital firm. At Southern Research, he led venture creation and fundraising for the organization's in-house therapeutics portfolio, executing its first IP license to a venture capital firm and co-launching Station 41 with a 15,000 sqft biotech incubator and $3M annual therapeutics development fund. As Anzu Partners' first life sciences investor, Tayo led and co-led diligence on 15+ companies across biotechnology and advanced manufacturing, deploying more than $130M in capital, sourcing university spinouts including CytoTronics (Harvard) and Codetta Bio (UNC-Chapel Hill), and serving as board observer for multiple portfolio companies.

Tayo holds a PhD in Engineering Science from Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar) and a BSc in Materials Science from UW-Eau Claire (Goldwater Scholar).

Luke leads program management, data infrastructure development, and consulting engagements across economic development and life sciences. He manages the Alabama Biomanufacturing Labs accelerator, a state-funded program supporting early-stage biomanufacturing startups across Alabama. He leads data and insights for BlueHour, Arrowpoint's research intelligence platform built on a knowledge graph of publications, patents, grants, and institutional data. At Arrowpoint, Luke has supported consulting engagements spanning regional cluster analysis, university technology transfer, and innovation ecosystem design across multiple states. He previously served as Therapeutics Fund and Venture Studio Project Manager at Southern Research, where he managed the $3 million Station 41 Therapeutics Development Fund and supported the launch of commercialization programs, including an incubator and venture studio.

Luke is a Venture for America Fellow and holds a B.S. in Information Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.