2008 FastPitch Judges

Yaniv Tepper, Co-founder and Managing Partner at the Angeleno Group

Mr. Tepper is co-founder and a Managing Partner of Angeleno Group ("AG"), a private equity fund focused on high-growth energy and environmental investments. Prior to the formation of AG, Mr. Tepper managed $2 billion in private and public equities and structured securities on behalf of institutional and mutual fund clients while at Aetna (now ING Group), a financial services company that managed over $60 billion in assets for 350 institutional clients worldwide, including corporate and public pension funds, endowments and foundations. Under Mr. Tepper's management, his funds grew from $150 million to $2 billion, consistently outperformed the funds' benchmarks, and ranked in the top tier of their competitive universe. Earlier in his career, Mr. Tepper held various engineering R&D positions at Bechtel in San Francisco and at MIT's Advanced Materials Lab in Boston under the Department of Energy. He has been a speaker and lecturer on topics including asset allocation, sector diversification, and alternatives investing, an author in various finance journals including the Journal of Financial Planning, and has been quoted in Bloomberg, Business Week, and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Tepper holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley, an M.S. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from MIT and an M.S. in management from MIT.

Chris Daniel, President, Daniel Investments, Inc.

Chris has been an early stage investor in renewable power generation technology since selling his family's business, www.gerarddaniel.com, to Schroders Bank.  Chris began his career in asset management at Merrill Lynch and was president of Daniel Development, a real estate development company that developed property with Centex and Lennar Homes. Chris is a graduate of Skidmore College and lives in Los Angeles. Chris' investment focus is on non-traditional approaches to renewable power generation.

Mike Napoli, Founder and Chairman, Absolute Return Group

Mike Napoli is the founder and Chairman of the Absolute Return Group, a consultancy focused on early stage venture capital and advising institutional investors on alternative investment strategies.  Mike has been mentoring and investing in early stage companies since 1997. Mike has been a member of the Tech Coast Angels, a southern California based venture investment group since 2000, and is the current President of the Tech Coast Angels Inland Empire Network. 
Mike has held senior positions at several prestigious financial organizations over the past 30 years. His extensive capital markets and investment expertise was achieved as in his roles at Bankers Trust Company, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Wilshire Associates and UBP, one of the world’s largest allocators of capital to hedge funds.  Early in his career, while living in New York City, Mike was an adjust professor at New York University. Additionally, Mike has been a speaker at investment conferences around the world speaking on a variety of topics in the financial services industry.