Five seasoned hard-tech leaders serve as fellows' closest advisors throughout the two-year fellowship.
At the heart of each Activate community—Berkeley, Boston, Houston, New York, and Anywhere—is its on-staff managing director, or “MD” for short.
Each MD is a seasoned hard-tech leader who serves as an expert guide and hands-on mentor to the fellows in their community. In turn, fellows say this kind of constant, personalized support is one of the most impactful aspects of the fellowship.
“You can have advisors and executive coaches, but an Activate MD is going to develop deep context on you and your company, align with you as a person, and stick with you for two years,” said Dan Recht, Activate’s chief fellowship officer. “Fellows consistently report that there’s nothing like it.”
In addition to bringing deep expertise from many angles of hard-tech commercialization, all of our MDs, plus our chief fellowship officer who oversees the MDs, have been science entrepreneurs themselves.
“Hard-tech founders need people that they can call on their worst day—people who've had that day themselves,” said Josh Martin, managing director of Activate Boston.
MDs are also community-builders and connectors, within and beyond each Activate community. “Some of the best outcomes happen when fellows learn from each other, collaborate, or simply realize they're wrestling with the same things—and a real part of the job is building the environments where those connections can happen,” said Cristina Escoda, managing director of Activate New York.
One thing the MDs won’t do is tell you what to do. Instead, they ask questions, challenge assumptions, and facilitate fellows’ personal and professional growth.
Activate's goal is to develop fellows as hard-tech leaders, not to push them toward specific milestones or outcomes. MDs can help each fellow determine what success looks like for them—even if that means pivoting, exiting, or even shutting down the company and enriching the hard-tech ecosystem in a different way.
As we announce Cohort 2026, we couldn’t be prouder to introduce our powerhouse team of managing directors and our chief fellowship officer, who together continue to define our U.S.-based flagship fellowship.
Dan Recht, Chief Fellowship Officer
Recht mentored four cohorts as managing director of the Activate Boston Community before recently becoming chief fellowship officer. In this role, he brings his impact to a national scale—steering the strategic direction of the Activate Fellowship and overseeing the team that serves fellows on the ground across Activate’s five U.S. communities.
“In addition to the fellows, the team was a key motivation for me to take on this role,” he said. “The fellowship team is amazing.”
Recht sees big things on the horizon as Activate’s flagship fellowship passes the ten-year mark. “The second 10 years of the Activate Fellowship will be an exciting time because deep-tech tends to reach full scale on a 20-year time horizon,” he said. “We should see some early fellows reach the scale where their technology has truly changed the world—although like most infrastructure, it may not make the news.”
Some of his goals as chief fellowship officer are to double down on strengthening the community—one of the most cited benefits of the fellowship—and to find more ways for Activate to continue to serve its alumni after they graduate.
Kevin See, Managing Director of Activate Anywhere
Previously Activate’s head of ecosystem, See built programs to connect fellows with advisors, early customers, and capital. See brings deep product and market expertise from roles as VP of Product Strategy at Geminus.AI—advancing physics-informed AI for industrial sustainability—and senior leadership at Lux Research, where he guided corporate innovation across AI, energy, and materials. He’s also a former advisor to the quantum silicon company Equal1.
As managing director of Activate Anywhere, See helps fellows accelerate product-market fit through targeted mentorship, customer discovery, and strategic partnerships.
As for his mentorship style, See focuses on giving actionable advice and helping fellows break bigger problems down into smaller ones that are manageable. “You bring the agenda, and my role is to ask difficult questions and provide supporting information, frameworks, and ways of thinking that can move you forward,” he said.
“I am also cognizant that being a founder can be a lonely endeavor so I always like to know how the person is doing,” See said. “Through our regular touchpoints I always hope to convey explicitly or implicitly that the founder is not alone in this journey.”
Jill Fuss, Managing Director of Activate Berkeley
In 2022, she rejoined Activate to leverage her startup and technical expertise to mentor fellows as managing director of Activate Berkeley. Including Cohort 2026, she’s now mentored more than 70 fellows across more than 50 companies, accounting for over half of all the fellows and companies that have ever been part of Activate Berkeley, our longest standing Activate community.
“Being a fellow was a life-changing experience for me and I want to replicate that experience for every fellow in the program,” she said.
For Fuss, it’s important to bring empathy to every conversation she has with a fellow.
She also adapts her mentorship approach to match the fellow’s current needs. “Sometimes I’m a cheerleader, other times I’m a coach, a teacher, an accountability partner, or a thought partner,” she said. “For most fellows, I’m each of those things at some point in their journey.”
Her goal for fellows is to “make it from zero to one” by the time they leave the fellowship—which sounds simple, but it’s often the hardest step for an early-stage hard-tech venture.
“I write handwritten cards to my fellows when they graduate,” she said. “It’s a success when I can say ‘Congratulations—you’ve built a company!’”
Josh Martin, Managing Director of Activate Boston
Martin calls it a “rare privilege” to now serve as an MD. “I get to work at a foundational level with scientific founders across wildly different domains, and accompany each one on what may be the most sensitive part of their journey,” he said.
It's also personal for him. “There were stretches of my own experience building a company where I would have given a lot for the kind of trusted community and counsel Activate is built around,” he said. “I know what it's worth because I felt its absence, and am looking forward to adding value from this particular angle.”
“I want fellows to feel that working with me leveled up the way they bet on themselves,” he said. “I am looking forward to accompanying each fellow on their journey to change the world.”
Jeremy Pitts, Managing Director of Activate Houston
One lesson Pitts brings to his MD role from his own experience is that the founder journey is indeed a marathon, not a sprint. “I often talk to fellows about ways to make their workload sustainable for the long run,” he said.
He also helps fellows navigate decision-making. “Fellows will often come to me with dilemmas they are facing or big decisions they need to make. There rarely is a right or wrong answer in these situations,” he said. “It sounds a bit cliche, but the question I ask most often is probably ‘What are you trying to get out of this experience?’ or ‘What motivates you?’ Digging into their motivations and goals, even what success means to them, can help highlight what they should do.”
Pitts describes his mentorship style as casual, collaborative, and highly fellow-led.
“I lead with authenticity and trust and try to create an environment where fellows can ask the questions they think are silly or are embarrassed to ask anywhere else and just be their full and true selves,” he said.
Cristina Escoda, Managing Director of Activate New York
Escoda became the managing director of Activate New York earlier this year.
“What drew me to Activate is the conviction that exceptional scientists and engineers deserve a path to becoming founders before they fit the traditional venture mold,” she said. “I wanted to place my experience as VC and entrepreneur at the service of our fellows within the umbrella of an established program such as Activate’s with years of experience helping science entrepreneurs.”
Escoda describes her role as that of a “candid challenger,” understanding how a fellow is thinking about a problem and challenging their assumptions. “After that, I would describe myself as part strategic thinker, part creative sounding board. I like to go deeper into the details, because nuances in strategy, communication, and positioning really matter,” she said.
One thing she encourages fellows to do is fall in love with the problem they’re trying to solve, not with a specific cutting-edge technology. “I push fellows to hold the technology, the customer, and the path to scale in view at the same time, because all three have to move together.”
“The fellows already bring the technical depth,” she said. “The opportunity is to create the conditions for them to do their best work beyond the tech, and accelerate their path as founders and leaders.”