He was a founding judge of the MIT $10K (now $100K) Entrepreneurship Competition.  He has been a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management since 1984. He co-developed The Manager’s Legal Function course (now known as Law for the Entrepreneur).  He was a frequent speaker for the MIT Enterprise Forum's Satellite Broadcast Series (SBS) where he has spoken about company valuation and structuring venture capital deals.   Reprints from Hadzima's popular Boston Business Journal column, "Starting Up," are available.

Joe received a B.Sc. from MIT, a S.M. in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Juris Doctor law degree cum laude from Harvard Law School.  As a practicing lawyer for 17 years he was Partner, Founder and Director of the Sullivan & Worcester LLP High Tech/New Ventures Group.

Speakers for this year's sessions are:

Bob Jones  

Author, Start-up advisor; Serial Healthcare Industry Entrepreneur Bob has started four companies and served as CEO of a company that's publicly traded on the Hong Kong exchange.  His book The Start-Up Starter Kit: How to Avoid Failing in the Crucial First Two Years is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Read his bio here.
Bob Jones at his Other Job - www.bluesdogsboston.com

Ken Zolot  

MIT Senior Lecturer- MIT School of Engineering; Professor of Creative Entrepreneurship, The Berklee College of Music Ken is an active advisor to numerous organizations involved in advancing innovation and entrepreneurship, including TechStars, Deshpande Foundation, Fintech Sandbox, MassChallenge, and FIRST Robotics.   LinkedIn Page

Read Ken's Bio Here.

Rich Kivel  

Serial Healthcare Industry Entrepreneur; Venture Investor Rich is Managing Director of GrayBella Capital LLC., a VC/PE investment fund focused on biotech, healthcare and technology companies in Europe.   LinkedIn Page

Read His Bio Here.

Vivian Vitale   Organizational Consultant
Human Resource Executive - Founder led companies

Ms. Vitale has over 30 years of experience in people management in high technology organizations; the last 20 years as part of the leadership teams of RSA Security, Unica Corporation, Care.com, and, most recently, Veracode.

Read her bio here.

Steve Derezinski  

Entrepreneur, Senior Executive and Senior Advisor for technology-based ventures Steve has been senior executive in venture-backed software and semiconductor companies, working in strategic marketing roles to place breakthrough semiconductor, MEMS, Nanotechnology and software innovations into the right early market segments. LinkedIn Page

Read his bio here.

John Harthorne  

Experienced Technology Innovator and Investor John is the Founder & Managing Director of Two Lanterns Venture Capital, and also the Co-Founder & Former 10-year CEO of MassChallenge, largest startup accelerator on the planet which has graduated 3,000+ startups with cumulative revenue of $billions and over 200,000 jobs.   He also won the MIT $50K in 2007 with Robopsy.  LinkedIn Page

Read his bio here.

Mindy Garber  

Experienced Negotiator Mindy is a co-founder and is Chief for Quality/Customer Satisfaction at Parlance Corporation, makers of speech-recognition telephony applications  LinkedIn Page

Read her bio here 

Bob Jones  

Author, Start-up advisor; Serial Healthcare Industry Entrepreneur Bob has started four companies and served as CEO of a company that's publicly traded on the Hong Kong exchange.  His book The Start-Up Starter Kit: How to Avoid Failing in the Crucial First Two Years is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Read his bio here.
Bob Jones at his Other Job - www.bluesdogsboston.com

The Teaching Assistants for 2026 are: Taylor Brown and Eric Youshao

Taylor Brown Taylor Brown, CPA is a 2027 MBA Candidate at MIT Sloan, leveraging entrepreneurial finance to drive thoughtful innovation and move society forward. Prior to Sloan, she specialized in tech and AI-enabled finance transformations for Fortune 500 companies at Ernst & Young (EY). As a former Colorwave fellow, she has been cultivating expertise to support early-stage ventures across her varied interests. She aspires to achieve financial inclusion through equitable capital systems & processes and foster social good by applying AI & Robotics toward creating a sustainable, equitable, and accessible future. In addition to her core focus, she is an avid art & music lover and can be found wandering local galleries or headbanging away with an up-and-coming garage band. Taylor received a B.S. in Accounting, summa cum laude, from Loyola Marymount University. LinkedIn Page

Eric Youshao Eric Youshao is a 2027 MBA Candidate at MIT Sloan and Finance Lead of MIT's $100K Competition. Prior to Sloan, Eric worked at Getlabs, a health-tech start up delivering at-home lab diagnostics to patients, and Clarion, a life sciences consultancy, where he helped develop clinical and commercial strategy for biopharma clients. Eric earned his Bachelors of Science in Biomedical Engineering and Economics from Yale University. LinkedIn Page