Meet the solo* team

Ashesh C. Shah (Alex) is the Founder and CEO of  solo* sciences, the culmination of several of Alex’s first-to-market IP solutions and his wide-ranging expertise in IP, licensing, consumer loyalty, couponing and payment technology, category management, data analytics and AI. While applicable to all consumable goods, the challenges in the emerging cannabis industry enticed Alex to launch solo* to vet, verify, and match products and consumers — like a Pandora for anything consumable.  

Prior to founding solo* in late 2017, Alex spent the last 20 years in global operations, building, integrating, and managing enterprises from concept through IPO. He has managed a venture capital portfolio of over $1.5B AUM with returns in excess of 30%.  As a serial entrepreneur, he has overseen the high-profile exits of Good & Co, Black Duck Software, Draft.com, Frigo RevolutionWear and StarStreet, among others. Alex is an active participant in the global entrepreneurial community and specializes in sourcing transactions often unavailable to the broader investment community and ahead of institutional exposure. He holds patents in intellectual property, licensing, consumer loyalty, couponing, and payment technology. 

Alex has served on a Presidential taskforce for the CIA, holding top secret and special clearances. He has also served as a VP of R&D for Razorfish and on the Advanced Research Board at Partners Healthcare. He is a graduate of Williams College. He has recently been asked to serve as special advisor to the CEO of  Eaze, an online marketplace and technology platform that helps provide legal access to cannabis through safe and convenient delivery. Forbes recently featured a profile of Alex and the promise of solo*. 

The Chief Financial Officer for solo* sciences, Lokesh Chugh, has more than 20 years of global experience nurturing startups into profitable ventures. He has worked as a Managing Director for Peak XV Capital, a Partner for the London Fund, Vice President of Sales and Business Development for Byte Consulting, and an Advisor for Byte Academy. Throughout this time, he has focused his attention on emerging markets and emerging technologies that possess high-growth potentials. Lokesh received his MBA from the University of Western Australia.

Katie Flannery, Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships at solo*, brings eight years of sales startup experience with five years spent in the Quality Assurance, Research & Development and Engineering space consulting for FDA-regulated life sciences companies such as Stryker, Philips Healthcare, Medtronic, Astellas, Hospira/Pfizer. She has been a top billing technical sales leader in SaaS and VAR and has built out several multi-million dollar revenue streams from scratch. On top of her background in sales, Katie holds a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Pre-Med. She is also an avid skier, adventurer, and musician.

Mark Troy joined solo* in June 2018 as Chief Marketing Officer. A marketing and sales guru, serial entrepreneur, and investor, Mark has been integral in the development of several innovative digital marketing firms over the course of his 25-year career, such as Piehead, and Flywire. Mark is also a founder of Union Resolute, a demand generation agency, and Oomiji, a research platform that improves user engagement for companies or organizations. While much of his career has been focused on revolutionizing the marketing industry, he is quick to recognize compelling opportunities and has invested in a diverse array of startups like Futuro, ONvocal, and Connected IQ. Not one to hold back, he is both bodacious and generous with the wisdom he has acquired in the private sector and has been sought out to guest lecture at Emerson College and Boston University.

Dr. Benjamin Caplan, MD, is Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of solo*. Dr. Caplan is a board-certified Doctor of Family Medicine who graduated from Tufts University School of Medicine after completing his undergraduate studies at Williams College. In addition to a practice as a primary care and urgent care physician in the Boston area, Dr. Caplan is also the Founder of the CED Clinic and CED Foundation, which were established to explore the benefits of medicinal cannabis. Previously, he served as the Chief Medical Officer of Canna Care Docs, an organization that has provided medical cannabis evaluations to over 300,000 patients across 10 states. A strong advocate in favor of advancing scientific research on medicinal cannabis because he has witnessed its therapeutic benefits firsthand, Dr. Caplan has become an authority within the community and frequent speaker in the cannabis ecosystem.

Founding Investor and Director of solo* sciences, Palle Pedersen has been both an inventor and an entrepreneur since he began running an electronics repair shop at the age of 12. Since then, he received his Electrical Engineering Masters Degree from Danish Technical University, created multiple world-record benchmarks for large scale computing at Thinking Machines Corp, and obtained a host of patents in such diverse fields as large-scale genome-style search, cryptography, and legal document management. He even created a searchable database of all open source code in the world that includes even the most elementary units of code. Palle has also been a co-founder/investor/CTO of numerous companies that include BlackDuck, ICE, Healthology, Draft, StarStreet, Spydre, and Good&Co, a psychometrics-based HR analytics culture platform. He brings to the solo* team a wealth of experience, the wisdom, and the perfect shade of grey to execute on their strategic objectives.

Co-Founder and Vice President of Research & Development for solo*, holds degrees in Economics, Statistics, and Computer Science from Columbia University and Oxford University. He was also a programming prodigy by age 7, a developer of commercial inventory management software by age 13, a security consultant for the Department of Defense by age 20, and the manager of a $4M network for a major university by age 22. On top of being a precocious child and evangelist of HP software, Aryeh has demonstrated his ability to lead by overseeing large, distributed development projects. He is also a world-class chef.

Chris Battis is the VP of Marketing at solo* sciences. Chris is a serial entrepreneur and tech investor who comes to solo* with more than a decade of marketing and project management experience. Chris founded and ran his own company, Great Island Technologies, an inbound marketing agency, until it was acquired by Hubspot. Following the acquisition, Chris spent five years as the Director of Technical Services at Hubspot and the Managing Director of HubSpot’s Portsmouth NH location. A born problem solver and leader, Chris is an integral part of the solo* team. Chris is also an avid surfer, angler and skier.

Creative Director Jamie Leo brings a breadth of disciplines to solo* – honed through leading successful national brand launches and team-building at agencies, boutique design houses, universities, and advocacy organizations. His award-winning, cross-channel storytelling (via his writing and design competencies) include campaigns for IBM, P&G, Wolters Kluwer, as well as writing an award-winning campaign for New York City's recycling program. Jamie is also a contributor to the Huffington Post, a keynote speaker, design adjudicator, hackathon winner, and an Edward Albee Writing Fellow. A key designer for the hit musical, “RENT,” he recently premiered his own work “'68” (co-written with composer Paul Leschen), all while preparing his newest body of artworks to show again at Art Basel Miami.

Zej Moczydlowski is the Brand Onboarding Specialist for solo* and also a Special Operations Combat Medic with 5 years of active duty in the Army and 5+ years in the Reserves. Prior to joining the solo* team he was a private intelligence analyst specializing in threat assessment and risk mitigation. He is a proud graduate of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University and, in his spare time, is an endorphin enthusiast with passions for skydiving, scuba diving, distance running, and urban biking in NYC.

Logan Donovan is the Engineering Lead for solo*. Logan received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Columbia University School of Engineering, and has worked as the Technical Lead at littleBits Electronics. A passionate skydiver who has logged more than 2,400 jumps, Logan has been named one of the top 5 female canopy piloting competitors. She also founded Control Tower, the industry-leading software for canopy piloting competitions.

Dr. Rushab Choksi, PharmD, is solo* sciences' Clinical Trial Officer. Dr. Choksi has had an illustrious medical career and has demonstrated his entrepreneurial bona fides by launching multiple healthcare companies. He is the Founder of the East Coast Institute for Research, which is both the leading organization for independent FDA Phase II/III clinical trials in the nation and responsible for obtaining the approval for most diabetes and cardiovascular drugs on the market today. He has numerous publishing credits, memberships on multiple advisory boards within the pharmaceutical industry, was named US Navy Civilian Pharmacist of the Year, and is one of Jacksonville's 40 Under 40.

Advisory Board member Chirag Shah is a noted expert and executive in Supply Chain & Product Security Risk Management with 17 years of leadership roles across multiple highly regulated industries. Chirag currently serves as Director of Global Product Security at Sanofi Pharmaceuticals, mitigating risk for the entire end-to-end supply chain of pharmaceutical products. Chirag has expertise in all three aspects of supply chain, production planning & scheduling (SAP APO, DP & SNP), distributed manufacturing, Product Security (anti-counterfeit technologies), Risk Assessments & Audits (including governmental programs such as TSA CCSA, USB C-TPAT) and has worked in this capacity for Amgen (another global pharmaceutical company), Kraft Foods, Accenture (management consulting for supply chain), and more.

Gordon Wade, one of the founders of category management for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, is an honors graduate of Harvard and is an alumnus of Procter & Gamble, where he was the youngest product manager in company history. Gordon is one of the three people who created the discipline of category management for the CPG industry which is now used by every major manufacturer and CPG retailer globally. In 1993 when category management was originally conceived, he created over 80 analytical templates to drive the process and then trained hundreds of practitioners on the data types, analytical approaches, order of operations, and analytical pathways required by the discipline. In 2017, with the objective of totally updating category management with all the new data and analytics developed over the past 20 years, he assembled a group of 17 leading CPG-related companies including brand owners such as P&G and Mondelēz, retailers such as Walmart, Walgreens, and Ahold Delhaize, as well as solution providers such as IRI, Periscope By McKinsey, Kantar Retail, and Market Trac (now Numerator). That effort included all the new online and offline data and whole new classes of metrics afforded by the new data and analytical software.  Mr. Wade has written several of the most widely read white papers on the new data and analytics in recent years. He is a major shareholder in the Category Management Association which has over 200 corporate members. He is on the board of advisors of r4, whose AI platform recently received Gartner's Eye on Innovation Award for Platform of the Year. 

He resides in his native Kentucky with his wife, Jill, and noble dog, Heidi.

Vinay Shah has an MBA from New York University, is a CFA, and graduated from Williams College. Over the past two years, Vinay was based in India and was president and cofounder of simplyforhomes.com, an online portal that helps consumers connect with merchants and banks for financing for home improvement projects.  Prior to that, Vinay spent over 20 years in financial services and technology companies as a research analyst, portfolio manager, and in business development at a diverse set of companies including Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley (Vice President), Fidelity Investments, Putnam Investments, and First Data (Senior Vice President). Vinay recently relocated back to New York City and enjoys playing tennis, reading, traveling and wine.    

Michele is a training professional with more than fifteen years of leading technical and soft skills training for in-person and web-based environments, as well as in IT and publishing industries. Her special expertise is in program design, technical writing and project management; she has delivered worldwide rollouts of internal products, ensuring effective work processes, tech integration, and company culture throughout several organizations, including IBM & IDG/IDC. Michele's educational background includes a degree in musical theater from Emerson College, and a master's in education and creative arts in learning from Lesley University.