Greif Center Practicioners-in-Residence

Our Practitioners-in-Residence Program offers USC students interested in entrepreneurship access to workshops, meetings, and mentorship with experienced professionals in a variety of areas. 

This semester, students will be able to interact with the following individuals:

Aigerim Shorman

Aigerim brings 20 years of product leadership experience. She currently serves as Vice President of Product Management at Meta, leading the Horizon Product team. Throughout her career, Aigerim has built several zero-to-one products, including Facebook Dating and the Avatars platform, and worked on scaled products like Ads Manager and Facebook Profile.

Before Meta, Aigerim co-founded and led Triptrotting, a Google Ventures-backed startup that scaled to over 100 countries. She currently serves on the board of USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association and formerly served on the board of OneGoal Bay Area.

Aigerim earned her B.S. in Business Administration from USC Marshall School of Business, where she was selected as Commencement Speaker for the 2007 graduating class. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and kids.

Derek Kan

Derek T. Kan was appointed to the Postal Service Board of Governors by President Joseph R. Biden and confirmed by the Senate on May 12, 2022. He is serving a term that expires December 8, 2028. Kan was elected by his fellow Governors to serve as vice chairman on November 14, 2024, and was reelected as vice chairman on November 14, 2025. He currently serves on the Audit and Finance Committee.

Kan currently serves as a Vice President at Shopify, after its acquisition of Deliverr, an e-commerce fulfillment company where he was chief business officer. Before this role, Kan held several high-level positions in the federal government, including deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Before his recent public service, Kan held various positions focused on emerging technologies, including general manager for Lyft. Earlier in his career, Kan was a policy advisor to the former Senate Majority Leader and was a Presidential Management Fellow at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Kan currently serves on the board of directors of Toll Brothers, the nation’s largest luxury homebuilder. He previously served as a member of the board of directors of Amtrak from January 2016 through May 2019. He also served as a board observer for Rand Logistics.

Kan earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Southern California in just three years, followed by a Master of Science from the London School of Economics, and a Master of Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Derek Norton

Derek is the Founder and Managing General Partner of Watertower Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital fund investing in visionary founders transforming mission-critical industries through AI-enabled software. His investment focus includes capital markets infrastructure, the evolution of media and proprietary IP, embedded AI for the enterprise, and commerce enablement.

Previously, Derek founded Watertower Advisors, an industry-leading boutique investment bank where he advised more than 250 technology companies, including Widevine, ExtendMedia, Envivio, Riot Games, and Machinima, developing a differentiated approach to capital formation, fundraising, and M&A. Earlier in his career, he founded and built three successful technology companies—Entertainment Media Ventures, Digital Boardwalk, and Jefferies Technologies, the latter named to Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest-growing privately held companies.

Derek holds a BA from the University of Southern California and is a frequent speaker on venture capital, artificial intelligence, the future of commerce, and the evolution of media. He serves on the Advisory Council of the USC Iovine and Young Academy and is a board member of Turnaround Arts, the nonprofit founded by Frank Gehry.

James Lee

Growth-focused senior executive, serial entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, CEO coach, fractional CxO, and strategist with an extensive track record of building organizations, revenue streams, and measurable impact across business, startup/scaleup, and nonprofit sectors. He’s been a founder, builder, executive, advisor, and consultant in a variety of situations, ecosystems, geographies, and growth stages for dozens of companies in the for profit and nonprofit spaces.

In addition, James has been an Adjunct Professor at University of San Francisco and currently is working at Santa Clara University helping to run the Miller Center for Global Entrepreneurship accelerator program. James would like to contribute his experience, expertise, and background to informing the journey for students wanting a deeper understanding of how to deliver quality projects in the consulting space.

Joel Stein

Joel Stein was a columnist at Time magazine for 20 years, where he wrote 22 cover stories. He was also an opinion columnist for the L.A. Times for six years, and Entertainment Weekly for somewhat less, and has contributed to The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He's the author of two books, Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity and In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm Better Than You and You are Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book. He taught a class in journalism at Princeton in 2004. He's also written for television and film. He has a B.A. and M.A. in English from Stanford.

Jonathan Carson

Jonathan Carson is a dynamic, engaging Bankruptcy expert bringing insight and enthusiasm to his commentary on current bankruptcy news and developments. Drawing on his experience as a corporate-restructuring professional and award-winning entrepreneur, he serves as Co-CEO of Stretto, the largest technology business serving the bankruptcy and insolvency industries. He is a professor at Michigan Law School, guest lecturer on both corporate restructuring as well as on entrepreneurship and leadership at universities and law schools around the country, and he frequently speaks with the media on topics relevant to his expertise.

Jonathan began his career as a corporate-restructuring attorney with Kirkland & Ellis and leveraged his legal expertise to launch Kurtzman Carson Consultants (KCC), a technology firm that redefined the administration of large Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases. He and his co-founder, Eric Kurtzman, successfully grew KCC to become the market leader in its space, and their entrepreneurial success earned them widespread recognition, including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Carson and Kurtzman sold KCC in 2009, and after a brief stint on the corporate sidelines, they re-emerged in 2017 to continue their shared vision resulting in the building of Stretto, a market-leading technology and services partner serving legal and financial markets.

Kavitta Ghai
Kavitta Ghai is the CEO & Co-Founder of Nectir, building AI-powered learning partners that personalize education at scale. She launched Nectir as an undergraduate student at UC Santa Barbara, raising $6M+ in VC funding to transform classrooms into dynamic, student-driven spaces. Today, Nectir’s purpose-built AI infrastructure is powering personalized learning at over 100 institutions nationwide. Featured in TechCrunch and Fast Company, Kavitta is a leading voice on the future of learning, speaking on how AI can modernize the teaching and learning experience while keeping accessibility and inclusion at the center of innovation.

Marina Kim

Marina is a culture strategist and trusted advisor to visionary leaders, helping startups, philanthropists, and social impact organizations build high-trust, high-performance teams.

A life history interview specialist, Marina works with Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs and a global leader in social innovation, to identify world-changing changemakers. Through in-depth interviews, she uncovers key influences that shaped their entrepreneurial life path.

She currently serves as a Culture Strategist for Adyton, a venture-backed startup led by military veterans that develops software solutions for the DoD. In this role, she works to cultivate a high-performance team culture aligned with the company’s mission of serving those who serve.

Marina serves on the Strategic Advisory Board of NYU Stern’s Initiative on Purpose & Flourishing, guiding efforts to integrate purpose-driven leadership into workplaces. She is a Board Member at CoGenerate, where she champions cross-generational collaboration to tackle society’s most pressing challenges. She also contributes to the Paradigm Project Working Group, helping reimagine higher education as a more holistic and inclusive space.

Her career began as a student leader at Stanford, and she then co-founded and scaled Ashoka U for over a decade, building a global network of hundreds of universities committed to social impact. Recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree for Social Entrepreneurship, Marina was awarded the Tom Ford Fellowship in Philanthropy from Stanford University and named an Honorary Fellow of the University of Northampton. She holds a BA in International Relations from Stanford University.

Shivani Siroya
Shivani Siroya is the founder and CEO of Tala, the first financial platform for the Global Majority. Over 15 million people across Kenya, the Philippines, Mexico, Peru, Tanzania, and India have used Tala products to start and expand small businesses, manage day-to-day needs, and pursue their financial goals with confidence. Tala has raised nearly half a billion dollars in investments and debt, backed by visionary investors including Kindred Ventures, Upstart, the Stellar Development Foundation, RPS Ventures, IVP, Revolution Growth, Lowercase Capital, and PayPal Ventures. The company has been named to the Fortune Impact 20 list, CNBC’s Disruptor 50 five years in a row, and Forbes’ Fintech 50 list for nine years running.

Tara Roth

Tara Roth is the president of the Goldhirsh Foundation, a 100% mission-aligned foundation that supports innovation via its financial, human, and social capital. Tara oversees all aspects of the foundation, including assisting with the sourcing and vetting of investments that aim to advance human life and well-being, and catalyze human potential. Last year, the foundation established a new, all-female investment committee—believed to be the first of its kind at an organization of its size and scope.

Tara started her career at Franklin Templeton, and with a particular lens on marketing and sustainability, has remained purposeful in business and finance as the founding COO of GOOD, working with New Schools Venture Fund, and serving on myriad boards, including the Ad Council, President's Council of Cornell Women, UCLA Arts, USC Price School of Public Policy, and AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles. She received an MBA from Oxford University, where she was awarded a Skoll scholarship in social entrepreneurship. Tara and her work have been featured in media outlets such as the BBC News Business Matters, Los Angeles Magazine, Southern California Public Radio, Los Angeles Business Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Inside Philanthropy, and Fast Company.

Tom Rosso
Tom Rosso is a life-science and biotech industry executive with extensive experience in building and scaling global operations and product development teams. He co-founded Solana Biosciences, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) that focused on innovative tools and solutions for life science and biotech companies. Following Solana’s acquisition by Inscripta, Tom served as Senior Vice President of Product Development and Operations at Inscripta, where he led product development, process development, technology transfer, manufacturing, supply chain and field service/support functions to enable the commercialization of Inscripta’s cutting-edge gene-editing technologies for sustainable biomanufacturing.

Prior to his leadership roles at Solana and Inscripta, he held senior positions at Illumina, a major provider of genomic sequencing technologies. His career reflects a strong track record of product innovation, operational excellence, and strategic growth in the biotechnology and life-science industries. Tom continues to serve as an advisor to multiple startup and emerging companies. He is also a trustee, director, and leader on several non-profit boards in the San Diego area. Tom holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Stay tuned for updates!

Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies | Website | View More Events

Contact the organizers