Leading up to the Grid Pitch, each student team receives four weeks of mentoring and coaching from David Wise, Director of the Maryland Momentum Fund. The Maryland Momentum Fund is a new initiative of the University System of Maryland (USM) to provide late seed investment funding for promising technology ventures that come out of any of the twelve constituent institutions of the University System or its incubators. Mr. Wise has a business career spanning over thirty years including serving eight and half years as CEO of The Genetics & IVF Institute in Fairfax, Virginia an international women's healthcare company with operations in both the US and China of which the Inova Health System was the largest shareholder. In 2014 he decided to shift the focus of his career to helping develop the innovation economy in Maryland. Since 2014 he has been the Venture Advisor to the President of the Abell Foundation on its direct investment program. He is also an advisor to UM Ventures and the Sinai/LifeBridge Health Bioincubator. In addition, he is a member of the Betamore Advisory Board and of the Board of the Maryland Humanities Council and sits on the Bioscience Committee of the Greater Baltimore Committee. He has served as a business competition judge for Accelerate Baltimore, Beta City, and at both the Fischell School in College Park and their School of Medicine of the University of Maryland, among others.

We are thankful to David Wise for supporting our students as they start their journeys as entrepreneurs, and invite you to join us in celebrating them as they share their innovative ideas at the Grid Pitch.