Team
Jim Jen, Director of AlphaLab
As Director of AlphaLab, Jim works closely with the entrepreneurs, mentors and partners in the AlphaLab program while overseeing its overall strategy and direction. Jim helps the AlphaLab companies by leveraging his experience and network gained from working closely with over 30 companies in the Innovation Works portfolio and from his software marketing and product management experience.
At Innovation Works, Jim has worked closely with the management teams of its portfolio companies to identify and address their critical business issues. He has led investments and served as a board observer to many of Innovation Works' software and Internet-related companies, including BeatBox (acquired by Mercury Interactive, now part of Hewlett-Packard), Carnegie Speech, Deep Local, Etcetera Edutainment, Impact Games (acquired by Hybrid Learning), Landslide, Left-Right Studios, mSpoke (acquired by Linkedin), Penthera Partners, Shoefitr, ShowClix, Smash, TalkShoe, The Resumator, and Wherever TV.
In addition to his experience of wokring with startup companies in the Pittsburgh region, Jim brings prior experience from Silicon Valley in the areas of strategy, marketing, and product management. Previously, Jim built and managed software businesses at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Agile Software (acquired by Oracle), and Instill Corporation (acquired by iTradeNetwork Inc). As a management consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton, Jim advised executive management of Fortune 500 companies on marketing, strategic planning, and organizational issues. Jim holds a BA and MA in Economics from Stanford University and an MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
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Mike Woycheck, Program Manager
At AlphaLab, Mike works closely with AlphaLab companies to help formulate their product and business strategies. He provides insight to companies about technology trends, competitive/market research, and user feedback/testing. Mike also assists with managing the technical resources at AlphaLab, as well as participates in management of AlphaLab operations including facility management, event production, and the application process.
Prior to joining the AlphaLab team of Innovation Works, Mike served as an information systems technologist for the Pittsburgh Technology Council where his responsibilities include database administration, technical architecture and systems management. Mike also has held a variety of consulting, technical and management positions, and he has significant experience working with large database implementations from both the development and administration perspectives. His previous employment experience includes Pittsburgh-based Yanni Partners where he served as a Manager of Information Systems and Unisys Corporation in Blue Bell, PA as a senior consultant.
Mike holds a bachelor of science in management information systems from The Pennsylvania State University, Behrend College. He is also a co-founder of Pittsburgh Bloggers and has been a volunteer organizer with Podcamp Pittsburgh.
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Rebecca Selah, Digital Communications Coordinator
Rebecca focuses on ensuring the stories of AlphaLab's companies are communicated to the public and the program's unique and dynamic culture is accurately reflected in its online presence. In addition to managing AlphaLab's blog, twitter account, and various other social media outlets, she works on ways to expand AlphaLab's community through the engagement of diverse communities in the surrounding region.
She works on similar digital marketing endeavors at Innovation Works, hoping that sharing all the success stories of IW portfolio companies will bring more attention to Pittsburgh's remarkable economic transformation.
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Meet the rest of the Innovation Works Team who will be working with AlphaLab companies.
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