Team
Victoria Slivkoff
Victoria Slivkoff is the Executive Managing Director of Extreme Tech Challenge, the world’s largest startup competition and ecosystem for founders building tech innovations to improve the world, as inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She also serves as the Head of Ecosystem at Walden Catalyst Ventures, a VC firm helping early-stage companies in the U.S., Europe, and Israel build the next generation of category-defining businesses in deep tech, with a focus on AI and data.
Victoria is passionate about driving high-impact vision, strategy, and operations to transform complex innovation ecosystems at scale, and serving as a trusted partner for entrepreneurs with breakthrough technologies creating future-defining companies.
Victoria comes from a multidisciplinary background in corporate development, investment, investor relations, business strategy & operations, and management consulting. She’s experienced in forming public-private partnerships to drive investments and scale innovative technologies in the U.S., Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Europe.
Board Members
Young Sohn
Chairman of Semiconductor Advisory Board, Samsung Electronics
Chairman of HARMAN Board of Directors
Board Member of ARM
Former Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer, Samsung Electronics
Founding Managing Partner, Walden Catalyst Ventures
Co-Founder, Extreme Tech Challenge
Young Sohn is a Silicon Valley business executive and investor. Young is currently a Founding Managing Partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures, an over $550M early-stage venture capital fund dedicated to deep-tech investments focused on data & AI across North America, Europe, and Israel.
Previously Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer for Samsung Electronics, as well as CEO of two successful Silicon Valley public companies (Inphi, Oak) and board member of Arm, Cadence, Cymer (ASML), and others, he now serves as Chairman of the Board of HARMAN International. Young was also an important seed investor for various innovative companies, such as Berkeley Lights, AI21 Labs, Zoom Video, Graphcore, and TTTech Auto.
Young is a co-founder of the Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC), a global start-up competition inspired by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Bill Tai
Angel Investor; Partner Emeritus CRV; Co-Founder, Extreme Tech Challenge
Bill Tai has been funding startups as a Venture Capitalist since 1991 and has had 22 of his startups become listed companies. He has served as Board Director of 8 publicly listed companies (AWRD EGHT HUT8 IAWK NPIX TMTA TUNE and IMGO) that grew from startups he funded at their formative stages. Originally trained as a chip designer, he holds a BSEE with Honors from University of Illinois and an MBA from Harvard. He co-founded as Chairman – Treasure Data (acquired by ARM/Softbank), IPInfusion.com (Tokyo TSE:4813) and iAsiaWorks (IPO via Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley) and is Board Chairman of Hut8 Mining (NASDAQ:HUT). He is among the first angel investors in Canva, Color Genomics, Class.com, Dapper Labs (Cryptokitties / NBA Topshot), Safety Culture, Tweetdeck/Twitter, and Zoom Video, where he was the 1st committed backer. He is co-founder of ACTAI Global a 501(c)3 community of Athletes Conservationists Technologists Artists & Innovators supporting 1) environmental conservation and 2) economic empowerment via entrepreneurship. He is creator or cofounder of the worldwide startup competition www.ExtremeTechChallenge.org, the annual www.NeckerBlockchainSummit.com and the annual www.WestTechFest.com, Western Australia’s largest technology festival held annually in Perth where he is an Adjunct Professor at Curtin University.
Advisor
Karin Schmid
Karin has a track record of 24 years experience in the international energy infrastructure development. Her activity as an EPC contract manager involved expatriations in Europe, Africa and Asia. She looks back at a dozen construction projects for oil & energy majors, before turning to the development of offshore wind farms in France, South Korea and Taiwan. Karin earned a Master of Arts degree in Italian, English and German at the University of Vienna, Austria, after obtaining a diploma at an Austrian vocational institute specialized in business administration. She completed her education with executive training at HEC Paris.