Bill Robbins has more than 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, seed-stage investor, start-up executive and corporate manager in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical technology and materials science. Bill's interest in advanced materials led him to launch a new business in 2010 to sell a new line of consumer products for impact protection.

As Managing Director of Convergent Investors, LLC, Bill played a central role in the creation of four start-ups, including Neurion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., ORFID Corp., Encode Bio, Inc. and Proteio, Inc. Bill has also advised more than 30 companies in fields ranging from drug discovery and development, to medical devices, diagnostics, medical information technology, and advanced materials—the latter, mostly in the life sciences, but also in other industries, such as electronics, aerospace, and consumer products.

Prior to embarking on a career as an entrepreneur, Bill served as VP, Business Development, at Bio-Imaging Technologies, Inc., where his original idea for Convergent Ventures was born. As both a concept and a company, Bio-Imaging Technologies was a perfect example of technology convergence. The company represented a coming together, or a merging, of physics, engineering, biology, and medicine. Bio-Imaging created an entirely new niche within the field of clinical research by using data from medical imaging devices to evaluate the effects of drugs on human subjects in clinical trials. As the seventh employee and first business person to join Bio-Imaging, Bill was responsible for business development, marketing, sales, and investor relations for the company during its critical early years. Earlier in his career, Bill worked in product management and new product development at Warner-Lambert Company, (the original maker of Listerine® and Lipitor®) prior to the company's acquisition by Pfizer. Bill began his career in pharmaceutical advertising account management at Grey Medical Advertising, in New York.

Bill is a member of the Coulter Foundation Oversight Committee for Translational Research in Biomedical Engineering at USC and is a member of the National Board of Directors of the American Technion Society. In 2006, Bill wrote about his experiences as an entrepreneur and seed investor in Seed-Stage Venture Investing: The Ins and Outs for Entrepreneurs, Start-ups, and Investors on Successfully Starting a New Business. (2006 Aspatore Inc.) More recently, Bill and co-author Jon Lasch, Ph.D. wrote Seed-Stage Venture Investing, 2nd Edition: An Insider’s Guide to Start-ups for Scientists, Engineers, and Investors, ©2011 by Thomson Reuters Westlaw.

A graduate of Columbia Business School and Dartmouth College, Bill is a road bike rider, mountain biker and downhill skier.

Nima Shiva has served in the life science industry since 1990 first as a scientist and later as an investor and a serial entrepreneur. In that capacity he has been involved in formation and executive management of a number of life science start-ups including Proteio, Inc., Encode Bio, Inc., and Neurion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Mr. Shiva is a Managing Director of Convergent Investors, LLC., a seed-stage life science venture capital fund based in Los Angeles.

His prior professional life science experiences include equity research in biotechnology and medical devices at Wedbush Morgan Securities as well as technical and research management positions at UC San Diego and Sequana Therapeutics. Mr. Shiva holds an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California and a B.S. in Physiology and Neurosciences from UC San Diego.

Kate Hawkes has overseen administration of business development, finance and human resources at Convergent Ventures' portfolio companies since 2005. Previously, Kate was Manager, Finance and Administration at Neurion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a portfolio company of Convergent Investors, LLC. Prior to joining Neurion, Kate was a Financial Analyst at Accenture LLP. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Claremont McKenna College.