Our 19 fellows were carefully selected from an application pool of 300+ students from Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Stanford.*

NFX has always been all-in on student founders. We know that college campuses are incubators for incredible ideas. That’s why our fellows are our representatives on campus, and within their respective alumni communities. They have access to all NFX playbooks for investing and company building to be the best possible early backers of their classmates.

This cohort is an especially talented group of operators and investors with a variety of backgrounds. They have worked in AI, B2B SaaS, techbio, marketplaces, the consumer space, fintech and others. They’re passionate about technology. They know the ins and outs of investing in these spaces. Most importantly, they’re experienced enough to help their founders succeed from Day 1.

Because of this, we’re going to move even faster.

Announcing NFX FAST LITE

For the first time, we are launching FAST LITE: an early version of our usual spring FAST competition.

FAST LITE is designed to support founders from Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, and MIT at the earliest stages. Winners receive $50K – $100K checks, and the opportunity to receive feedback from NFX Partners.

It’s the kick off to a relationship that will potentially culminate in further support and funding down the line.

If you’re a student founder or an alumni of these schools, submit your application below. You can also reach out to our fellows directly for support with the application process.

Applications for FAST LITE open on November 1st, 2024.

• • Apply to FAST LITE Stanford
  • Apply to FAST LITE Harvard
  • Apply to FAST LITE Berkeley
  • Apply to FAST LITE MIT

Learn more about the 2025 NFX Fellows below:

Stanford Fellows

Alice Liu

Alice is a second year MBA student at Stanford GSB. Prior to GSB, Alice was based in San Francisco, and led Instagram’s revenue strategy team, where she helped launch ads on Instagram Explore and Reels. She also worked in Venture Operations at a16z, where she leveraged analytics to improve the firm’s operational support for portfolio companies. Over the summer, Alice worked at NFX (with her favorite team!) and ran an accelerator for 46 female founders. Alice is especially excited about applications of AI in consumer and healthcare. She loves Pilates, playing board games, and trying out new restaurants!

Loubaba El Ayoubi

Loubaba is a first-year master’s student in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, she was based in Paris and London, where she interned as a deeptech VC analyst at Elaia Partners, focusing on techbio, future materials, and hardware. She later joined Kurma Partners, a healthcare-focused VC, where she worked on investments in digital health, diagnostics, and AI in healthcare. She also interned at a medical device company, contributing to go-to-market strategies for a new heart prosthetic. She is super interested in seeing what will disrupt the healthcare industry in the upcoming years. Outside of work, Loubaba enjoys waterskiing, trekking, and Pilates.

Mariëlle van Kooten

Mariëlle is a scientist and entrepreneur who aims to develop transformative technology that will accelerate progress in the longevity community, move the frontiers of synthetic biology, and shape commercial initiatives that target mitochondrial disease and dysfunction. She obtained a PhD in Synthetic Systems Biology at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where she contributed to international efforts to build a synthetic cell. In Switzerland, she co-founded SciSwipe. The team developed computational pipelines enabling the crowdsourced exploration of complex, large-scale data, and was supported by the Swiss Innovation Agency. As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Stanford University, Mariëlle set out to deduce and employ gene regulatory networks in human cells at RNA isoform resolution to improve human health. She’s keen on figuring out why we still have a mitochondrial genome, and if we can get rid of it sometime soon.

Wyeth Coulter

Wyeth is a first-year MBA student at Stanford GSB. Prior to business school, Wyeth worked in the venture groups of Point72 and K5 in New York and Los Angeles respectively. At Point72, Wyeth was an investor on the fintech team where he specialized in AI’s effect on financial services, identity, climate and payments. While at K5, Wyeth worked both on the firm’s first growth fund, where JP Morgan was the anchor LP, and the firm’s incubations including 818 Tequila. Wyeth grew up in San Francisco and previously attended Stanford undergrad where he received a degree in Management Sciences and Engineering.

Mark Levin

Mark is a first-year MBA student at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to GSB, he held operating roles at Whatnot, leading the growth of its collectibles business, and at Uber, where he played a key role in scaling Uber Eats. Earlier in his career, Mark was a founding team member of Seated, a restaurant rewards marketplace. A Bay Area native, Mark earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Computer Science from Harvard College.

Michelle Vinocour

Michelle is a masters student at Stanford studying Management Science and Engineering, and Symbolic Systems with a focus on Human-Centered AI. She is the Managing Director of Cardinal Ventures, Stanford’s premier student-run startup accelerator, and founded the Deep Tech Fellowship in 2021. Previously, she worked as a PM at Google and at Bain & Co’s Private Equity Group doing technology investments. Michelle grew up in Costa Rica and is passionate about building at the intersection of creativity, learning and AI. 

Harvard Fellows

Shefali Sastry

Shefali is a first-year MBA student at Harvard Business School. She is from a suburb in northern California and lived in San Francisco for a few years before moving to Boston. She previously worked as a Data Scientist and later as a Customer Analytics Manager at Nextdoor, followed by an internship at SpaceX in Build and Flight Reliability. Shefali graduated from UC Berkeley in 2020, where she created her own major, focusing on data science and information systems. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors, dancing, and working on side projects.

Itamar Belson

Itamar is a second year MS/MBA student at HBS and the Harvard Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He previously led engineering teams at Twitter focused on experimental features and was Head of Engineering at a Series A consumer social startup. Prior to that, he worked at Pixar Animation Studios, contributing to films such as Coco, Incredibles 2, and Onward. Itamar graduated from MIT where he studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and double majored in Media and Film Studies. He then completed his masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT’s Media Lab where he focused on the intersection of Computer Graphics and AI.

Antía Vazquez

Antía is a second year MBA student at HBS. Prior to HBS, she was in São Paulo working as Chief of Staff at NFX-backed startup Zubale, an ecosystem of e-commerce solutions that empowers retailers in Latin America to grow their businesses. Prior to that, she was a consultant for McKinsey in Mexico City. Antía graduated from the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019.

Alexandra Baranowski

Alie is a second year student pursuing the dual MS/MBA in Biotech at Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Prior to HBS, she was at Cambrian Bio, a biotech company developing drugs targeting age-related diseases. During her time at Cambrian, she set up and served as Head of Ops for several subsidiaries, taking the companies from their inception to the late candidate stage. She is particularly interested in how we can leverage computational biology to better understand and develop therapeutics to extend healthspan in humans, and in women’s health. Prior to Cambrian, Alie was an investor at Playfair Capital, an early-stage fund based in London, and spent her most recent summer in the Business Development team at Genentech. She received her BA (Hons) in Natural Sciences and MS in Systems Biology from Cambridge University, where she spent time in the Martinez-Arias Lab developing protocols for ESC-based “gastruloids” studying early development.

Raphael Maarek

Raphael is a second year MBA student at HBS. He was previously working at the Viola Group, one of Israel’s largest investment funds, as a Principal in the Credit team. Prior to that, he was a consultant for Bain & Company, mostly in the Private Equity practice. Raphael graduated from ESSEC’s Grande Ecole program in Paris with a MIM and magna cum laude from NC State University with a B.S.c in Business Administration.

Ismail El Hailouch

Ismail is a first-year MBA student at Harvard. At Harvard, he is a member of the AI Club and holds leadership roles in the VCPE and Entrepreneurship Clubs (as part of their VC Relations vertical). Prior to Harvard, Ismail was a Chief of Staff to the CEO of Turing – a $1.1B AI company accelerating AGI advancement through LLM training – working with AI leaders like OpenAI, and Google. While at Turing, Ismail worked on critical workstreams that shaped the company’s strategy and growth. Before Turing, Ismail spent 2 years at BCG supporting 7 Fortune 500 companies in different functions (strategy, operations, due diligence) and across multiple industries (healthcare, finance, technology). Ismail holds a BA from Yale in Economics & NELC.

Berkeley Fellows + Buck Institute Fellows (Bio)

Renzo Viale

Renzo is an early-stage deep tech investor based in the Bay Area, currently pursuing an MBA at Berkeley Haas. Previously, he was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at a multi-family office investing in US private and public markets, and a Product Manager at a Center for Advanced Analytics, building data and AI/ML products for heavy-industry enterprises in LatAm. He fostered the first and largest data analytics community in Peru and led fundraising for two new asset-class (venture and private debt) funds. He enjoys meeting bold builders, hearing their stories, and connecting them. In his free time, you’ll find him surfing.

Vardaan Tekriwal

Vardaan is a returning Berkeley NFX Fellow, majoring in EECS, Math & Statistics, IEOR. He’s an ML researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, a DoE federal lab, and has worked in Web3, fintech, and AI, achieving recognition from the likes of Ethereum and Ripple. He is the co-founder of AI Entrepreneurs Berkeley, an incubator with over $14M invested in cohort companies. Besides, he is an avid adrenaline junkie and sports enthusiast; scuba diving, long-distance running, badminton, and soccer are all up his alley.

Sierra Lore 

Sierra is a PhD student at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, co-advised by the Verdin and Scheibye-Knudsen Labs. Her research focuses on understanding how somatic mutations in the immune system contribute to the aging process. Born in London and primarily raised in New Jersey, she earned her B.S. in Bioengineering from Stanford University, with minors in Writing and Spanish. Sierra also has a background working at healthcare startups and a longstanding passion for the intersection of entrepreneurship and longevity. Outside of the lab, her focus is on exploring replacement therapies at the cellular and organ levels as promising strategies to achieve effective healthy lifespan extension.

MIT Fellows

Lorenzo Ligato

Lorenzo is a second-year MBA candidate at MIT Sloan. At Sloan, Lorenzo serves as President of the Venture Capital & Private Equity Club and the Investment Management Club. Prior to Sloan, he was an investor at a long/short equity hedge fund, where he managed $200M of capital across stocks in consumer technology, marketplaces, and commerce enablement.

Teddy Sun

Teddy is a first year MBA candidate at MIT Sloan, where he serves as the VP of External Relations of the Venture Capital & Private Equity Club, and the VP of Finance for the Impact Investing Club. He is excited to be transitioning his technical expertise and operational acumen from 7+ years as a System Engineering Program Manager at Apple to the world of venture capital – especially in the AI, deeptech, and healthtech sectors. Most recently, he managed both product development for the Vision Pro and architecture studies for an internal health-tech, R&D collective. Prior, he was fortunate to have led new product introduction and shipped a range of other products – from iPhones to iMacs to the Apple Watch and even iPad accessories. However, he’s most proud to have been the Director of Fundraising for Project by Project, the nation’s largest 100% volunteer run, AAPI focused non-profit!

Feliks Vaksman

Feliks is a first-year MBA student at MIT Sloan. Before MIT, he was an Analytics Product Manager at AWS in London, where he created a next-generation data platform that advanced strategic investment decisions by identifying emerging trends, evaluating startup potential, and expanding AWS’s role in the startup ecosystem. Feliks also worked as a Data Scientist for leading companies such as Procter & Gamble, Upsolver, and H&M Group, where he developed innovative systems that improved advertising targeting, accelerated sales cycles, and optimized production processes through advanced business analytics. Feliks holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and is passionate about leveraging AI and robotics to transform bio and traditional industries.

Lucía Castello Pedrero

Lucía is a PhD candidate in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program. Originally from Spain, she graduated with a BSc in Biomedical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where she contributed to optimizing a biosensing platform at the Nanophotonics Technology Center and one of its spin-offs. Before starting her PhD in the US, she completed an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise at the University of Cambridge while consulting for medtech and biotech start-ups in London, Cambridge, and Paris. Lucía is interested in leveraging physical and biological interactions at the nanoscale for early disease detection and effective intervention. At MIT, she works in the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies, focusing on engineering novel cancer immunotherapies with enhanced efficacy and reduced toxicity.