Alpita Shah
ADVISOR
Alpita Shah, a partner at the Chicago-based law firm of Chico & Nunes, has a wide-reaching background in law, strategy and economic development at the local, federal and international levels. She has held senior executive positions within the government and has led teams on high-profile matters in various sectors, including aviation, security, finance and global health. Most recently, she served as Senior Counsel in the Aviation, Environmental, Regulatory and Contracts division of the law department at the City of Chicago. In that capacity, she advised the Mayor’s office and other senior officials on legislative, procurement and regulatory matters; she also negotiated critical agreements on behalf of the City, such as a 15-year use and lease agreement with airlines operating at for O’Hare International Airport and a fast-track contract for the Police Department to acquire tasers, body cameras and related cloud-based technology.
Prior to her tenure at the City, Ms. Shah served as special advisor to the CEO of World Business Chicago, focusing on economic compacts between Chicago and its international sister cities (e.g. Mexico City and Shanghai), as well as business environment and neighborhood development strategies. Prior to this role, Ms. Shah was Counsel in the emerging markets practice group at the global law firm Mayer Brown, where she represented international financial institutions and, on a pro-bono basis, local community development organizations.
Before returning to her hometown of Chicago in 2012, Ms. Shah spent a decade in Washington D.C. as a lawyer and policy advisor for Presidential-appointed officials in the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the World Bank. In these positions, she negotiated debt relief and other financing agreements between the U.S. and developing countries, as well as coordinated economic reconstruction efforts in war torn regions in the Middle East and Southeastern Europe. She earned a Meritorious Honor Award from the Department of State for her work in establishing the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
Ms. Shah holds a B.A. in Economics (summa cum laude), from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She is also a certified yoga teacher and is completing a 2-year mindfulness mediation teacher certification program with the UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.
Dr Lyle Berkowitz
ADVISOR
Lyle Berkowitz, M.D., FACP, FHIMSS is a primary care physician, a digital health innovator and a serial entrepreneur with a passion for creating real world solutions which improve the quality and efficiency of the healthcare system for both patients and physicians. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Back9 Healthcare Consulting, where he helps healthcare systems, companies and investors rethink problems and develop innovative solutions. He was most recently Chief Medical Officer for MDLIVE, one of the largest telehealth groups in the nation. Previously he was a practicing physician and health system executive focusing on innovation and digital health transformation at Northwestern Memorial Healthcare in Chicago. He has additionally helped start and manage multiple digital health companies in that time frame and currently sits on the boards of healthfinch and Oneview Healthcare.
You can find him at www.DrLyle.com and @DrLyleMD.
Charles Byers
ADVISOR
Charles Byers is a Senior Electrical Engineer / Engineering Fellow / System Architect with a track record of leadership in telecommunications, IoT, video, and common platform design / architecture at the chip, board, system, and network levels. Over his 30+ year career, he has served as lead architect on over 20 IoT, video, switching, access, and wireless products.He is also a leader in standards bodies like the OpenFog Consortium, Industrial Internet Consortium, IEEE, PICMG and SCOPE, where I have he has been involved in founding several key standards (including OpenFog, AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC, MicroTCA), serving as CTO, and chairing several influential committees. He has prepared lots of ideas for the future, and how to make it better through highly advanced telecommunications, network, and computational elements. He holds over 100 US patents.
