ADVISOR
BOARD
M&A COUNSEL
The Right Question.
Governance counsel for founders, CEOs, and boards. Pre-seed through public company. Two engagements at a time. Three is the ceiling.
The discipline of guiding other people's decisions, when the stakes are theirs and the judgment has to be yours. Judgment is the product. Presence, trust, and taste are how it compounds. Board seats, ongoing advisor seats, growth-stage counsel through Nfluence Partners with a focus on mission-driven companies, and senior advisory at PsyMed Ventures across frontier brain health, mental health, and behavioral health. I have sat in every seat: founder, investor, acquirer, executive, board member. Brought in at moments that matter, with particular depth in human-centered AI, behavioral science, and mental health technology.
Boards pressure-test growth, M&A, and AI strategy. Founders sharpen the decision before it hardens
Presence. Trust. Taste.
What endures when everything else is replaceable.
CURRENT BOARD COMMITMENTS
Where I hold a seat right now.
BOARD TRUSTEE
CIIS Board of Trustees
Higher education, behavioral health and consciousness research.
BOARD ADVISOR
Sensational League
Professional women's soccer. Sports and entertainment.
BOARD DIRECTOR
Audible Reality
Music technology. Spatial audio at scale.
BOARD ADVISOR
Global Goals
Global human rights and Sustainable Development Goals nonprofit.
Two ongoing advisor seats and one board seat open for 2026 to 2027.
THE THROUGH LINE
What I advise on, across every seat.
Presence is how connection begins. Trust is how it deepens. Taste is how it lasts. Connection is how human potential compounds.
ANGEL GAMBINO
Taste is what you choose to build, what you back, what you refuse. Trust is how founders let you into the conversation before it is polished, and how the room lets you lead when it matters. Judgment is how you decide under pressure, with incomplete information, when the model cannot close the loop for you.
Those three endure. They are the only assets in an AI-saturated market that do. And they are the quiet skill set every company needs in the room before the term sheet, before the raise, before the offer. Not after.
That is what I advise on. Not the deck. Not the tactic. The judgment upstream of both.
THE PRACTICE UNDERNEATH
The Right Question
In counsel, the right question is the one no one in the room wants to raise.
The deck argues for the acquisition. The memo recommends the pivot. The cap table assumes a clean Series B. Underneath, there is a question of whether the founding team still wants the company they set out to build, or what the board will tolerate when the next quarter misses. Earn the trust to name it. The decision changes shape. So does the next conversation with the board.
WHEN TO CALL ME
Most engagements start at one of these moments.
You are raising and the story is not landing.
You have inbound investor or acquirer interest and need to understand the real options.
You are negotiating terms that may shape the exit years later.
You need board-level judgment before a decision hardens.
You are deciding whether this is an advisory issue, banking issue, or operating issue.
HOW I WORK
Five ways to bring me into the room.
Not every company needs the same kind of advisor at the same altitude. Some need one sharp hour to recut the narrative before a raise. Some need a seat in the room for the next twenty-four months. Here is how the work is structured, and the right entry point for each.
01
1:1 call, early stage
Founders pre-seed, seed, Series A. Operators in inflection.
30 or 60 minutes. Paid per-session via Hubble.
The fastest way into my calendar. Book a single call when you need a sharp second opinion on narrative, investor targeting, term-sheet dynamics, or a founder-investor conversation that isn't landing. You walk in with the specific decision you are trying to make. You walk out with three things: the frame I would use, the two questions that expose the real gap, and if useful, the one introduction worth making.
I take a limited number of these calls each month. They are not discovery sessions. They are working sessions. Many ongoing seats begin here.
02
Ongoing advisor seat
AI, human-centered AI, behavioral science, brain health, mental wellbeing, neuroscience, media, consumer, capital markets.
Monthly cadence. 6-month minimum. Equity plus retainer.
A seat, not a subscription. I take on a small number of ongoing advisor engagements at any one time, and I choose them for taste. If I hold a seat with your company, I am in the room when it matters: the board prep call, the term-sheet negotiation, the hire-or-don't-hire decision, the moment you are choosing between two acquirers. I bring the network behind me: Angel Club's, specialist banker's, the relationships I have built across three decades of global operating work.
The invitation is selective. The work is regular. The alignment is real.
03
Board seat
Growth-stage companies, funds, mission-aligned institutions.
Multi-year. Independent director, observer, or chair. Fiduciary posture.
A board seat is the deepest engagement I offer and the one I take most seriously. The discipline of sitting with the company through the full cycle: capital formation, executive hiring, exit design, the hard decisions the CEO cannot make alone, the moments where presence in the room is the entire point. I have sat on the acquirer side of the table at MTV/Viacom/Paramount, on the founder side at five venture-backed companies I have built or co-founded, on the investor side across more than a thousand early-stage bets, and as Board Trustee at the California Institute of Integral Studies. When I take a board seat, I commit for the cycle.
If the company, fund, or institution is ready for an independent director or chair, I am ready to have the conversation.
04
Growth-stage call with specialist intro
CEOs, CFOs, Series B+.
60 minutes with Angel. Optional 60 minutes with a Nfluence Partners MD.
Growth-stage decisions deserve a deeper bench than a single call. Book an hour to walk me through the situation: the raise shape, the cap-table constraints, the strategic horizon, the inbound you cannot yet respond to. If the conversation warrants it, I will bring in the right Managing Director from the bank, the investment bank where I sit as Senior Advisor, for a second specialist call on capital formation, M&A, or strategic positioning. That specialist call is a separate engagement on Nfluence's standard terms; I handle the introduction and the framing.
The point is not to sell you a banker. The point is that you get the right conversation the first time.
05
Public-company advisory
CEOs, CMOs, CSOs, corporate development, board chairs. AI, ventures, partnerships, growth, GTM, ecosystem.
Project-based or quarterly retainer. Cash or cash equivalent.
Public companies sit inside categories that startups are quietly redrawing. The question is no longer whether AI, venture activity, and partnership-driven growth reshape the business. It is who in the room can see the redraw early, frame the response, and convert it into ecosystem advantage before the analyst note lands. I advise public-company executives and corporate development teams on AI strategy, startup and venture strategy, partnerships, growth, GTM, and ecosystem development. The work is informed by three decades inside global media and consumer (BBC, MTV, Viacom, Paramount, Bebo, Napster), live operating relationships across the AI and venture stack, and a clear view of how early-stage markets feed public-company strategy.
Engagements range from a single CEO or CMO working session before a board offsite, to ongoing quarterly counsel on AI integration, ecosystem strategy, corporate venture, or M&A pipeline. The work is paid in cash or cash equivalent, scoped against existing corp dev and IR functions, and structured for the constraints of the seat. Executive side of the table, not consultant side. Judgment under public-company governance, not a deck.
For fractional Chief Growth Officer engagements, see the executive page. For capital deployment
alongside named leads through the Angel Club syndicate, see the investor page. Advisory is its own seat.
THE SUBSTANCE
Six capabilities. One judgment.
FOUNDER JUDGMENT
The framework upstream of the decision.
Most founders don't fail because the market is wrong. They fail because they are optimizing for the wrong objective function, usually one an early investor quietly encoded. I teach the frame for evaluating decisions before they calcify into strategy. Founder judgment is the only thing that endures.
BOARD DISCIPLINE
Governance that compounds, not governance that leaks.
A board is an instrument. Used well, it sharpens the CEO and protects the company through the moments that define it. Used poorly, it is a quarterly performance review with a liquidation preference attached. I help CEOs, chairs, and independent directors build boards that operate like the former.
TERM-SHEET ARCHITECTURE
Incentives are code. You write the code early.
Every exit is written at Series A. Liquidation preference, protective provisions, board composition, founder vesting, acceleration, information rights. These are not legal boilerplate. They are the behavior the company will be forced into, later, when it matters. I help you write them on purpose.
NARRATIVE, POSITIONING
The thesis is the asset. The deck is the artifact.
Capital doesn't flow to founders who have the answer. It flows to founders who have named the right question, and can show you how they will answer it. I work with founders on the narrative spine that holds across the seed pitch, the Series B board meeting, the acquirer diligence room, and the press release, because they are the same story told at different altitudes.
CAPITAL FORMATION, M&A
Raise shape, investor sequencing, exit design
I have sat on both sides of $2B+ in M&A exits across Napster, Bebo, and global media. I work on live banking mandates today. I help growth-stage teams architect the raise, or the sale, that the company actually needs, not the one the inbound demands.
NETWORK
Angel Club. Nfluence. PsyMed. Three decades of rooms.
The network is the infrastructure. 8,000 founders and 411+ investors in Angel Club. The banking desk at Nfluence. Three decades of relationships across global media, consumer, and enterprise: BBC, MTV, Paramount, Napster, Bebo, AWS, Westfield, Ford. I don't make introductions for the sake of them. I open the door when it moves the company forward.
SELECTED ENGAGEMENT
Named seats. Anonymized patterns. The work behind the work.
NAMED SEATS, CURRENT
INVESTMENT BANK
Nfluence Partners
SENIOR ADVISOR
Growth-stage investment bank. Capital formation, M&A, strategic alternatives for technology and consumer companies. Live banking mandates.
VENTURE CAPITAL
PsyMed Ventures
SENIOR ADVISOR
The Neuro VC. Frontier neuroscience, brain health, mental health, human augmentation. Portfolio and LP introductions.
COMMUNITY
Angel Club
FOUNDER & CEO
Global private membership community. 8,000 founders, 411+ investors. Syndicate, resources library, and founder-to-investor infrastructure.
ACADEMIC
California Institute of Integral Studies
BOARD TRUSTEE
Leading academic institution for somatics and transpersonal psychology research. Governance seat.
REPRESENTATIVE, NOT EXHAUSTIVE. ADDITIONAL ENGAGEMENTS PRIVATE.
ANONYMIZED ENGAGEMENT PATTERNS
The shape of the work.
PATTERN 01: $40M FAITH-ENTERTAINMENT SLATE
Growth-stage entertainment platform. $15M already raised, $25M remaining. Advisory on investor segmentation across family offices, faith-based investors, and strategic entertainment capital. Data room, narrative architecture, and raise sequencing.
Entertainment · Growth stage · Fundraising advisory
PATTERN 02: FRACTIONAL CGO, AI-ERA MEDIA
Mid-stage company. Fractional CGO engagement on commercial strategy, partnership architecture, and investor narrative. Monthly retainer plus equity, structured for alignment; performance gates at quarterly review. Referred from advisory conversation to executive seat.
Media · Mid-stage · Executive seat
PATTERN 03: TELEMENTAL-HEALTH FOUNDER, PRE-SERIES A
Early-stage telemental-health platform combining AI and physiological data. 1:1 advisory call on investor positioning, raise sequencing, and U.S. expansion. Follow-up access to Angel Club's investor infrastructure.
Healthtech · Early stage · 1:1 call plus network
PATTERN 04: SERIES B GROWTH PIPELINE
Recurring founder-CEO calls at Series B+ on capital formation, strategic alternatives, and M&A readiness. Introductions routed through Nfluence Partners for specialist banking conversations where the situation warranted a full mandate.
Technology · Growth stage · Growth call plus Nfluence intro
WHY ANGEL
Not an advisor in theory. An operator who has sat in every seat.
01
I have been in the seat you are in.
Founded and co-founded five venture-backed companies. Held senior executive roles at MTV/Viacom/Paramount, BBC, Napster, and Bebo. Bootstrapped a venture in Detroit, ran it for eight years, and sold to Ford for the Michigan Central campus. Written the first angel check on a team before the product existed and watched it become Calm. Sat at the M&A table on the acquirer side, the seller side, and the advisor side. The frameworks are lived, not borrowed.
02
I bring the network behind me.
Specialist banker. Board Trustee at CIIS. Founder of Angel Club. Three decades of operating relationships across global media, consumer, and enterprise. When I make an introduction, it moves.
03
I choose engagements the way I would choose a fund.
A small number of board seats. A handful of ongoing advisor seats at any time. Selective 1:1 calls each month. The work is the filter. If I hold a seat with your company, I am in the room when the stakes are real, and I am not holding the same seat across ten other companies at the same altitude.