Vice Chairman
Brian Ellerman
Brian has served since 2022 on the Board of Deserts Angels. He was elected Vice Chairman in May 2024.
Brian made his first investment in 1985 in Applied Biosystems. When it was acquired by Perkin-Elmer in 1993, he caught the ‘investor bug.’ Over the past decade alone, Brian was an early investor in Doorbot (Ring, acquired by Amazon), SoundBetter (acquired by Spotify), Trusted (acquired by Care.com), ALAViDA (acquired by LifeSpeak), Echo Labs (acquired by CELLINK), Loom.ai (acquired by Roblox), Medumo (acquired by Philips), Intabio (acquired by SCIEX), Apprente (acquired by McDonalds, then IBM), June (acquired by Weber), Science 37 (SPAC), Caribou Biosciences (IPO), and Inkbox (acquired by BIC). He is an LP/investor with Hemisphere, Bioverge, Jenny Rooke/Genoa, Zach Coelius, and on AngelList.
Brian has been active in the Southern Arizona startup community, founding several companies as well as serving as Vice Chair of the board of directors for the Desert Angels (the 4th most active group in the US). He is a strong advocate for expanding access to expertise and capital for early-stage entrepreneurs, especially those from overlooked and non-traditional backgrounds.
With over 25 years of medical and health technology experience, Brian worked from 2002 to 2017 for Paris-based pharma Sanofi, where he held numerous roles from site head overseeing the technical construction aspects of the Oro Valley R&D facility to high performance computing and big data. In 2013, he created the global technology scouting and partnering group, and traveled the world to connect the top incubators, accelerators, startups, and venture firms to critical business problems and corporate venture. Building on that success, in 2016 Brian was part of a corporate digital health strategy team looking to optimize the $4 billion clinical research operations through decentralized trials, telemedicine, and other technology-enhanced aspects of trial participant recruitment, enrollment, and retention.
After leaving Sanofi at the end of 2017, Brian began to plan the renovation of the historic Roy Place Building in 2018 and founded Arizona FORGE in August of 2019. As a unit of Research, Innovation and Impact, FORGE has three missions: developing an entrepreneurial mindset in all students, advancing the entrepreneurial ecosystem in every community, and driving the scale and launch of promising startups. Due to changes within the university, Brian will be departing his role at the university end of June and FORGE has been moved under Tech Launch Arizona for now.