Sherry Farrugia is an innovative health care and life sciences executive who excels at driving growth for new products while also creating return on investment for stakeholders. Sherry currently serves as the Sr. VP of Preclincial Services at Veranex where she is 100% focused on working with industry and academia enabling medical device commercialization. In her prior role as CEO of the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI), she positioned the organization to serve the medical tech industry in addition to academia, leading to the commercialization of numerous devices. 

Sherry built from the ground up and led for seven years the Pediatric Technology Center (PTC) at Georgia Tech in partnership with Children’s HealthCare of Atlanta (CHOA) and Emory School of Medicine. She created an organization that focused on connecting engineers and clinicians to solve the most difficult problems in pediatrics. 

Sherry won the President’s Award for Excellence in Multidisciplinary Team Research and is a seventime winner of the Georgia Bio Award including the coveted “Industry Growth Award” recognizing individuals who have had incredible impact on Georgia’s Life Science industry. She was also named Women of the Year in Technology in 2018, and in 2023 was named to Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Power 10 – Top Healthcare Leaders. 

Sherry is a founding member of the International Society of for Pediatric Innovation; currently sits on the board of MMIB; and serves as an advisor to Relational Capital and Atlanta Tech Council. She is also a proud alumni member of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Innovation Board, International Society for Pediatric Innovation and Emory Board of Visitors. 

Sherry holds a Bachelor’s of Science from Auburn University in Chemistry and attended the University of Oxford where she received a Certificate in Global Innovation. 

She lives in Atlanta and is the proud mom of TWO YellowJackets! She enjoys spending time with family – especially her grandson, Thomas, reading, watching college football, and she LOVES playing Pokemon Go!

Kathryn O'Day is a partner at Atlanta Ventures where she empowers entrepreneurs to learn, build, and grow. She has been scaling Atlanta tech companies for over a decade as employee #9 at Pardot (acquired by Salesforce) and COO at Rigor (acquired by Splunk).

Kathryn lives in Atlanta with her husband and two sons. She is a 7x Ironman Triathlon Finisher including two World Championships. She shares weekly startup wisdom at The O’Daily and loves helping founders start and scale companies!

Wesley Pergament is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sola Insurance in Atlanta, Georgia. Before beginning his studies at Georgia Tech, Wesley founded and ran the largest pre-collegiate coding event in the Northeast. Growing up on Long Island and experiencing Hurricane Sandy firsthand inspired him to enter the insurance industry at a flood insurance startup, where he worked on private and FEMA flood data. These experiences shaped his interest in data-driven, automated insurance payouts and ultimately led to the founding of Sola.

Sola exists to redefine what affordable and reliable insurance looks like. By harnessing natural disaster and weather data, we lower out of pocket costs and bring financial resilience to tens of millions of households.

Sola won first place at the InVenture prize back in 2022 as the youngest team to ever win.