Staff Directory

Core Staff

Program Consultants

  • Ariane Chabuliez, Facilitator. Small Business and Women’s Mentored Growth Groups.
  • Awilda Irizarry, Instructor, Business Planning Guide. Business Counselor at Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network.
  • Lew Shaw, Instructor, Managing Your Numbers. Professor, Sawyer School of Management, Suffolk University.

Technical Consultants

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Board of Directors

Executive Director

  • Jeanne Strain, Executive Director

Ms. Strain joined CBDc in July of 2000 and brings 20 years of experience in community economic development to the job.  Ms. Strain was Cambridge’s Economic Development Director, where she developed a comprehensive economic development policy and oversaw a team that implemented it.  Her extensive experience includes developing innovative financing tools, leading revitalization efforts in older industrial and commercial districts and developing job training programs for unemployed and underemployed adults seeking technical careers. Ms. Strain has a Master’s degree in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of technology and a Bachelor’s degree in history, magna cum laude from Tufts University.  Ms. Strain was named Woman of the Year 2001 by the Cambridge YMCA and was one of Mass High Tech’s Movers and Innovators of 2001.

Board of Directors

  • Salvatore A. D’Agostino, Founding Director and Chairman of the Board

Mr. D’Agostino has been an entrepreneur in the field of machine intelligence for nearly twenty years. After graduating from Harvard College with a concentration in economics, he began his career as a business analyst and quickly moved into alternative technology assessment.  Since 1986 Mr. D’Agostino has been working in the machine vision industry with Computer Recognition Systems, (CRS), Ltd. (England) and Inc. (U.S.). He is principal and director of CRS, Ltd., and director, president, and CEO of CRS, Inc.

  • Michael T. Brown

Mr. Brown has been in the real estate business for nineteen years, managing first class office buildings in Boston and Cambridge. Currently, he is managing properties on Summer Street in Boston and Canal Park in Cambridge for Fallon Hines & O’Connor Inc., a company which he founded. In this role, Brown works to ensure that clients’ real estate situations contribute to the ongoing success of their business plans and goals. 33Mr. Brown has a Bachelor of the Arts from Lake Forest College and is a licensed Massachusetts Real Estate Broker.  Brown has been a member of the Cotacean Research Unit Board of Directors and Communispond, Inc. New England Advisory Board.

  • Christopher T. Dahl

Mr. Dahl is a partner in the Boston law firm Lucash, Gesmer & Updegrove, LLP, where he represents high-tech, emerging growth companies, and venture capital firms and other investors in connection with capital formation and portfolio investments. He has particular expertise in the areas of business development, private equity, mergers and aquisitions and intellectual property-related transactions. He is the Chair of the High Technology Practice Group, and the Business Law Section of the Massachusetts Bar Association, and a member of the Board of Directors of CapitalVenue. He is a member of the Program Committee for the Legal Issues Series for the Massachusetts Software and Internet Council, regularly participates as a moderator and speaker in legal education programs and has written on various topics relating to his practice, including “Due Diligence in Intellectual Property Transactions,” in a book entitled “Due Diligence in Massachusetts,” published by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education. Mr. Dahl is a graduate of Ithaca College and Northeastern University School of Law, and post-graduate programs for attorneys at Harvard University Law School.

  • Eva Ghosh

Ms. Ghosh has worked in the real estate industry for more than fifteen years, with an office in Cambridge.  She is currently the owner/partner of Albee Services, a real estate firm based in New Jersey. Previously, Ms. Ghosh served as president of the Cambridge-based Alliance Group, where she was responsible for creating and executing financial real estate strategies for the company.  She also oversaw $500 million in commercial property as an asset and portfolio manager for Copley Real Estate Advisors. Ms. Ghosh holds dual masters degrees from MIT in Real Estate and City Planning and a masters degree in business management from the Bajaj School of Management in India. She has also served on many boards, including the education committee at Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols School in Cambridge and the technology committee at the Heath School in Brookline.

  • Pamela L. Hamilton

With 20 years’ experience in the high-tech marketplace, Ms. Hamilton founded Collaborative Communications Inc. to provide strategic public relations counsel and related communications services to high technology and e-commerce companies. In previous agency positions, Ms. Hamilton managed major client accounts, including Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Avid Technology, PLATINUM technology, inc. and News Corporation’s Delphi Internet. As a corporate attorney with Hale and Dorr, Ms. Hamilton specialized in emerging and start-up companies, venture capital financings, initial public offerings, software and other technology licenses, and federal securities law. As the New York bureau manager for Electronics (a McGraw Hill publication), Ms. Hamilton conducted in-depth interviews and reported on technological developments originating in the New York metropolitan area for the leading trade publication serving the high technology industry. Ms. Hamilton has a bachelor of arts with honors in linguistics from Brown University and graduated cum laude from Boston College Law School.

  • John V. Koles

As Senior Partner and President of High Ground, Inc., Mr. Koles has provided public relations and marketing assistance to many high tech companies. Mr. Koles has successfully started up and turned around several businesses. He has held vice president, general manager and managerial positions in high-tech and traditional companies, giving him an in-depth understanding of many high-tech areas including software, e-commerce, health care, biotechnology, electronics, environmental, and many others. Mr. Koles received his undergraduate degree from Boston University in International Economics and his MBA from Babson College.

  • Michael Levy

Mr. Levy is founder and president of Profit Logic. He has more than thirty-five years of engineering, senior financial, and manufacturing management experience in the high technology environment including serving as systems design vice president of a Fortune 500 company.  Active in the computer industry from its inception, Mr. Levy has a wide-ranging background in most facets of microprocessor technology and product development. For the past decade, he has worked as a consultant to Fortune 500 firms and to venture capitalists as well as being the principal of Profit Logic.

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