Our team

Prior to co-founding Acrew Capital, Theresia was a co-founder at Aspect Ventures and a Managing General Partner at Accel. Theresia has been fortunate to work with many successful companies through IPOs or acquisitions including: Forescout (FSCT), Imperva (IMPV), Trulia (TRLA), Hotel Tonight (ABNB) to name a few. Theresia currently serves on the board for several Acrew Companies in the Data & Security thesis area as well as in the Community Activated thesis area. Theresia was named to Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women list, has been recognized 9 times on the Forbes Midas List, was named one of the 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech by Time Magazine, and was named to the Carnegie Corporation’s annual Distinguished Immigrants List.

Lauren leads the fintech thesis area at Acrew. She has made investments in companies including Chime, Clara, Divvy, Gusto, Klar, Papaya, Pie, & Plaid. Prior to co-founding Acrew, Lauren was a partner at Aspect Ventures. Previously, Lauren worked in product marketing at Google, where she led a number of launches for Workspace, including Google Drive.

A co-founder of Acrew, Asad is excited about defragmenting data silos, applied machine learning, and enabling security & privacy. Asad leads and works closely with investments including System, Edge Impulse, Vanta, Aira, Bazaar, Grain, Arthur AI, Observable, and Ketch. He previously joined Aspect in its first fund and co-led or worked with investments including Ciphertrace, Coinbase, Skale, Silverfort, Gusto, and Writer. Asad is on the board of NextGen Partners, a mentorship organization supporting thousands of venture investors. He studied Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University where he also worked on turning academic research into real-world healthcare products.

Mark Kraynak is a technology executive, company builder and erstwhile poet/engineer. Before co-founding Acrew, Mark joined Aspect Ventures as Entrepreneur in Residence and converted to a full time investor at the end of 2017. Prior to joining Aspect, Mark spent nearly 13 years at Imperva, where he held a number of marketing, product, corporate development and strategy roles.

‍
Mark has led or co-led investments in Aembit, At-Bay, Casa, Moderne, Nextdata, Nokod Security, Protect AI, Radiant Security, and Silverfort in the early stage and Aqua Security, Cato Networks, Exabeam and Vanta in the later stage. He has also been an advisor to Exabeam, Indegy, Kloudless, Trustar, and Aqua Security.

Aliisa focuses on AI-native companies and platforms reshaping enterprise software. Before joining Acrew, she was an executive at OpenAI, where she scaled the go-to-market function from early days and helped grow revenue to billions, including leading the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise. Earlier, she held senior operating roles across high-growth technology companies like Mixpanel and WalkMe.

Kendra rejoined the Acrew founding team in early 2021 where she leads LP and Investor Relations and works with the healthcare investing teamlet.  Prior to Acrew, Kendra was a GP & COO of Aspect Ventures.  Prior to joining the Aspect & Acrew teams, Kendra spent 20 years as a growth and late-stage investor at DAG Ventures, Alta Communications, and Steamboat Ventures.  Kendra currently serves on Stanford Business School’s Advisory Council, and previously served as member of the GSB Trust.  As a passionate supporter of women’s sports, she also serves on the Havard Athletics Alumnae Committee.

John Gardner has spent his 25+ year career as a serial entrepreneur and business leader in financial services. Most recently he was the Head of Invest at SoFi, where he led the creation and management of the retail brokerage, robo-advisor, crypto, and ETF businesses for the company. He started his career at SEI Investments, a publicly traded Asset Management firm, where he held a variety of equity research, product management, and strategy roles. John has been a Board Member of the New York Pops, which is the largest independent pops orchestra in the United States, for the past 6 years. He is also a Board Member of the David Lynch Foundation, an organization that promotes and teaches Transcendental Meditation.

Maitree is a student of consumer behavior shifts and a creative. She leads investments across Health and Fintech, working closely with the firm’s investments in Cometa, Future Family, Banked, ShopShops, Creative Juice, among other unannounced companies.

Prior to Acrew, Maitree was an investor at Cerity Partners Ventures (fka Touchdown Ventures), where she helped launch and manage venture capital programs on behalf of large corporations, including T-Mobile. She started her career as an investment banker at Citigroup.

Maitree was named Forbes 30 under 30, Venture Capital in 2022 and is a board member at NextGen and an active member of All Raise,  helping to launch the All Raise Cohort Program fostering community and mentorship for women early in their venture capital careers.

Maitree graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a BA in Business Economics.

Tom is a Principal at Acrew and is the firm’s dedicated growth investor. His responsibilities include sourcing and evaluating new investment opportunities, running diligence processes, and ultimately providing support to portfolio companies. Tom works closely with the firm’s investments in Alix, Crux, Ditto, Finix, Highbeam, Medallion, Nala, RapidSOS, and Silverfort. Tom first joined Acrew in 2023 after two years investing at the Softbank vision funds. Tom started his career at Morgan Stanley, where he spent five years in the tech banking group in Menlo Park. He studied finance and economics at Northeastern University.

Kunaal is an investor at Acrew focused on the firm where he primarily focuses on AI and healthcare investments. Prior to Acrew, he operated at several startups and most recently invested at Virtue VC in pre-seed & seed companies. Before Virtue, he was a Data Scientist at Tempus AI (NASDAQ: TEM), where he built multimodal data products. He also developed clinical AI/data products in the cardiovascular and metabolic therapeutic areas at Valo Health. He holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Andrew is an investor at Acrew, where he focuses on sourcing, selecting, and supporting the firm’s early and growth stage investments. Prior to Acrew, he led early and growth stage fintech and vertical applied AI investments at Tower Research Ventures and led growth, structured, and control buyout fintech investments at Golden Gate Capital. In addition, Andrew co-founded a successful AI-native vertical SaaS company and serves as a Perplexity AI Fellow. Andrew holds his Bachelors in Healthcare Markets and Finance magna cum laude from The University of Pennsylvania.