Julia MacDonald 

Founder and Director

Julia is an MBA Candidate at Berkeley Haas School of Business. Prior to this role she worked as a Mergers & Acquisitions Senior Consultant at a Ernst & Young, where she has been since July 2012. Julia has over a year of Private Equity experience as an Associate Intern at ARDIAN (formerly AXA Private Equity), where she supported the Leveraged Buyout Investment Teams in Frankfurt and in Vienna. Julia has also gathered strategic consulting experience during her internship with McKinsey & Company. Overall Julia has worked on over 10 transactions in Germany and in Eastern Europe. Julia holds Magister Degree in International Business Administration from Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU Wien) as well a joint Master’s degree in International Management (CEMS) from HEC Paris / WU Wien

Curtis MacDonald

Guest Lecturer

Curtis is a Seed-Stage Venture Capitalist at High Tech Gruenderfonds. Since joining HTGF in 2010, Curtis has led HTGF’s Seed and Series A Investments in a dozens of startups, including HTGF’s first international investment. Prior to moving to Germany, Curtis founded a VC-backed consumer WiFi company, hField Technologies. Over the next five years in his roles as CEO and later as CTO, Curtis was responsible for the technological and product development of the company’s first product, the Wi-Fire (previously available at Best Buy). Curtis was awarded a dual IBE Business and Computer Engineering degree at Lehigh University, followed later by a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. Curtis spends his free time working on numerous android and python projects.