TiE Houston Kicks Off 2019 with Charter Member Dinner

Board of Directors from left to right: Front Row: Aruna Viswanathan, Dr. Atul Varadhachary, Dr. Arun Pasrija, Vinita Gupta. Back Row: Dr. Ram Shenoy, Somesh Singh, Aju Koshy, Ana Rojas Bastidas (Executive Director), Juan Arjona, Dr. Anudeep Jain, Dr. Shri Iyer, Ravi Brahmbhatt.

HOUSTON: TiE Houston kicked off 2019 with a gathering of its Charter Members and distinguished leaders in Houton’s entrepreneurial community by hosting their annual Charter Member dinner at the Doubletree by Hilton on January 26th. They gathered to celebrate the accomplishments of 2018 and to lay out the goals for 2019.

TiE Houston President, Dr. Arun Pasrija welcomed all the guests and debuted their promotional video which was created by TiE Houston member, Namrata Singh of Misfit Communications. It highlights the history, mission, and diversity of the global TiE organization and how Houston’s chapter works hard to uphold its pillars of education, networking, mentoring, incubating, and funding.

After some networking, TiE Houston President, Dr. Arun Pasrija, gave an overview of all of the past year’s events which included expert panel discussions on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Energy; angel investments in several startup by TiE Houston charter members, mentoring and offering third largest investment prize at last year’s Rice Business Case Competition, and leading to teach entrepreneurship to 30 high school students from underprivileged areas in HISD.

He handed out a small token of appreciation to all of the organizations that TiE partnered with, such as The Cannon, HAN, TMCx, UH and Station Houston. He also highlighted the progress of their TiE Young Entrepreneur program which is currently running with 30 high school students from underserved HISD schools.

Finally, he gave many warm thanks to those who supported his past two years as President and introduced TiE Houston’s new president, Dr. Atul Varadhachary.  Atul is a physician-scientist who serves as Managing Partner of Fannin Innovation Studio, Houston’s most active early-stage development group in the life sciences. Prior to Fannin, Atul has served as President, U.S. Operations at Reliance Life Sciences, President & COO at Agennix, Inc. and as Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Co. Atul also serves as adjunct professor at Rice University, UT School of Public Health and Baylor College of Medicine and serves on a number of private company boards.
Atul welcomed the crowd and shared his vision in 2019. In addition to his new presidency he announced the election of new board members. Before introducing the new members, he presented outgoing board members Karl Maier and Dr. Roopa Gir with a placard noting their years of service.

He then introduced new board members Dr. Anudeep Jain, Somesh Singh, and Aju Koshy. Finally, Atul and Arun jointly presented outgoing Executive Director, Ana Rojas Bastidas, with a placard for her years running TiE Houston. She is stepping down to start her own business after being inspired by all the entrepreneurs she had the pleasure of working with. That concluded the evening.
TiE’s mission is to foster entrepreneurship through mentoring, networking, and education. TiE has 56 chapters across 17 countries with 11,000 members and 2,800 charter members. Charter Members, who are successful entrepreneurs and/or business executives, make the pillars of each chapters.

These charter members commit their time to help next generation of entrepreneurs – a “leveraged give back” which creates jobs, economic activities and wealth in the community. Houston chapter has a strong and vibrant charter member community helping meet’s TiE’s mission and making it a meaningful part of Houston’s start up eco system.
For more information on TiE upcoming events: TiE Houston: www.houston.tie.org