2022 INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR AWARD NOMINEES

working with nearly 100 patients, a successful clinical study and hundreds of hours of beta usage Eyedaptic’s first product was introduced at the end of 2019. Since that time a strategic partnership was formed with the world leader in low vision aids, which was announced in March and is helping drive the product throughout the USA, and the world.

Gorn & StaffGrit, Santa Ana Vanessa Benavides, Founder & CEO

Vanessa Benavides, the founder and LatinX CEO of healthcare startup, GoRN, and native to Orange County is a beacon of innovation and empowerment. Her 20+ years in healthcare ranges from entrepreneurship to patient care, as Benavides is a registered nurse. Her multidisciplinary background in nursing plus her keen sense of curiosity lead her to Magnet, a healthcare innovation incubator through St. Joseph’s Hospital. Thus, GoRN was born in 2016 as technology “for nurses designed by nurses”. GoRN has exponentially grown 150% from staffing two shifts per day pre-pandemic to 300+ shifts per day in 2021 with the use of the dynamic platform. Their technology grew to being utilized across Southern California to support COVID emergency response, homeless crisis management, and nationally with opportunities in acute, non-acute, and travel. The platform has simplified three complex problems: staffing and scheduling, and transportation through their latest strategic partnership, UberHealth. Benavides knew their revolutionary technology could impact other industries, thus StaffGrit was born in 2021. This would not be possible without Benavides’ innovative mind and leadership.

GTFO It’s Vegan, Newport Beach Tanya Pierce, Co-Founder & President

After being a stay-at-home mom for over 10 years, Tanya Pierce conceived of the idea to create the largest online vegan retailer and wholesaler in the U.S. With the rapid growth of plant-based grocery products, coupled with a true concern of creating an offering that was “better for you and better for the planet”, the idea of GTFO It’s Vegan was created in February of 2020, just prior to the pandemic. Once the pandemic hit, the idea further accelerated due to the need for home delivery of groceries. In just 24 months, GTFO It’s Vegan has grown to become the largest player in the market, with over 40k consumers, fulfilling over 40k orders and realizing total sales of over $5 million. GTFO It’s Vegan has also become THE influencer in the vegan and plant-based space with over 140k followers with average posts being viewed by 1-5 million consumers. Today, the company has over 4,000 products across 1,000 brands. The company also has developed its own line of vegan products including vegan sashimi, cheeses, appetizers, and baked goods.

Helio Genomics, Irvine Justin Chen Li, Chief Executive Officer

Justin Chen Li, MBA, CFA, is a founding member and chief executive officer of Helio Genomics, an AI-driven healthcare company focused on developing and commercializing early cancer detection tests from a simple blood draw. Helio recently launched a breakthrough product, HelioLiver, with Fulgent Genetics (NASDAQ: FLGT) for the early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer. Founded as a technology spinoff of UC San Diego, Helio Genomics is one of the earliest pioneers and innovators in cfDNA methylation technology for cancer detection. Chen Li has overseen the growth of the business, including the development of ECLIPSE, an automated, highthroughput laboratory process for the accurate and sensitive capture of methylation signals from blood, and the MESA approach (multi-modal epigenetic signatures), a unique bioinformatics technique that combines epigenomics and fragmentomics, two of the company’s unique technology platforms that support the early detection of liver cancer and have potential applications in future cancer indications. To date, Helio’s holding company has raised $151 million in funding.

Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, Newport Beach Robert Louis, M.D., Chief of Neurosurgery and the Empower360 Endowed Chair for Skull Base and Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery, Pickup Family Neurosciences Institute at Hoag

Dr. Robert Louis specializes in minimally invasive brain tumor surgery, skull base surgery, neuroendoscopy, micro neurosurgery and pituitary surgery. Through the use of cutting-edge neuroimaging and ne uro navigational equipment, he utilizes the concept of keyhole neurosurgery, minimizing the damage to surrounding brain, vascular and soft tissue structures. Dr. Louis believes that most brain and skull base tumors can be resected through small openings or by utilizing naturally occurring orifices. This approach has been demonstrated to decrease postoperative pain, minimize neurologic complications and shorten length of hospitalization, resulting in better outcomes for his patients. Since 2015, Dr. Louis has been involved with the development and implementation of Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies for preoperative simulation and rehearsal and intraoperative navigation. He is passionate about and advocates for the implementation of virtual reality throughout the patient care continuum from preoperative planning and patient engagement, to intraoperative augmented reality through postoperative physical therapy and pain management.

iBASEt, Lake Forest Dr. Sung Kim, Chief Product & Technology Officer

Dr. Sung Kim is an expert technology architect, a published computer scientist with over 20 years of experience, and chief product and technology officer (CPTO) of Orange County-based iBASEt, an industry leader in manufacturing software that simplifies how complex products are made. As CPTO, Dr. Kim is responsible for leading the product development and management efforts of iBASEt. Dr. Kim helped developed iBASEt’s long-term technology vision and is responsible for the overall product architecture and infrastructure deployment profiles, focusing on open standards and integration technologies. Dr. Kim’s work has led to iBASEt’s solutions being adopted by manufacturing giants, implementing cutting edge processes that vastly improve the performance of their manufacturing operations, quality assurance and industry compliance. His work is enabling manufactures to make their complex operations, simple. iBASEt customers include Lockheed Martin, Pratt and Whitney, Rolls Royce, D&K Engineering, Honeywell, AST Science, NASA and more. Prior to, Dr. Kim worked in the telecommunications industry and academia. He has taught and lead research published in international journals. Dr. Kim holds a Master’s and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas.

iTrustCapital, Irvine Todd Southwick, CEO

Todd Southwick is co-founder and CEO of iTrustCapital, the #1 crypto individual retirement account (IRA) software platform in America. Launched in 2018 with only $1.3 million in friends and family seed capital, the company has grown from $2 billion to nearly $5 billion in total transaction volume in the past seven months alone, with more than 33,000 clients funded IRA accounts, resulting in nearly $50 million in 2021 revenues at 40+% EBITDA margins. Southwick has accumulated over 20 years of experience with media and technology startups, and recently led iTrustCapital in a $125 million Series A institutional equity round led by NYC-Based Left Lane Capital, at a valuation exceeding $1.3 billion.

Kibsi Inc., Irvine Tolga Tarhan, CEO

Tolga Tarhan has more than two decades of experience leading companies. He was an early pioneer of cloud native thinking, popularizing developer, and automation focused workflows and serverless application development. In 2013, Tarhan co-founded Sturdy.cloud, an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, which popularized these concepts as one of the most innovative AWS partners. In 2017, Sturdy was acquired by Onica, where Tarhan continued to lead the industry by pushing cloud native concepts into the Fortune 500 and building Onica into the largest cloud native AWS-focused professional and managed services company, worldwide. In 2019, Onica was acquired by Rackspace Technology and Tarhan joined the executive team as the chief technology officer, where he helped Rackspace return to the public markets with an IPO. Most recently, Tarhan founded Kibsi, an end-to-end, low-code platform designed to build custom vision-enabled apps with ease, eliminating complexity, risk, and expense. In Q3 of 2021, Kibsi raised a $4 million seed round led by NTTVC. Tarhan continues to show thought leadership in the field through his extensive speaking engagements at events, industry conferences, and educational groups.

Loko Ai, Irvine Joseph Zaki, CEO & Founder

Joseph Zaki is the founder and chief executive officer of Loko AI. He is a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence with a specialization in real-time Computer Vision and Autonomous Systems. He has 20 years of Hollywood Blockbuster Visual Effects experience delivering groundbreaking Academy and Emmy award-winning Visual Effects, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality for top Hollywood Studios, Advertising Agencies, Fortune 500 companies and AAA Game Studios. Zaki holds numerous US Patents in Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Synthetic Data and is passionate about creating jobs and career pathways for underserved communities in Orange County, California.

Lutheran Social Services of Southern California, Fullerton Jim Pijloo, Clinical Area Director

Jim Pijloo has a varied employment history as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with the State of California since 1990. His achievements and/or history goes from being a direct line clinician to his current position as a clinical area director. He’s been instrumental in multiple “start-up” programs from Home Based Senior Case Management to new Hospice Programs to two separate county Housing and Sustainability Programs. The last program in Orange County where he currently oversees is the CalAIM program that houses the homeless who have lived with trauma throughout their lives. Additionally, he has served as a faculty member of CSULB’s Social Work Department since 1989 and currently is a Lecturer in their Graduate Social Work Program for those students who are on the precipice of graduating. Lastly, Pijloo has had experience as a medical social worker (hospital/home health/hospice/clinic) as well as a manager/director/clinical area director at different levels.

M S International Inc., Orange Manu Shah, CEO

M S International Inc. (MSI) was founded by Manu and Rika Shah in 1975 in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. While operating out of their basement in 1981, the Shahs secured the contract to supply the black granite for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. In 1984 after seeing the advantage of being on a coast, the family relocated to Southern California. In 2003 after approaching $50 million in revenues, sons Raj and Rup Shah joined MSI. Manu was named E&Y’s National Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007 in the Distribution/Manufacturing Category. In 2021 MSI reached $2.4 billion in annual revenues, 3,000 employees and has created over 250,000 jobs around the world across their supplier base.

MaxLinear Inc., Irvine Dr. Curtis Ling, Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Curtis Ling, is a co-founder of MaxLinear and its chief technical officer since April 2006. He is the named inventor on 275 patents worldwide related to broadband semiconductor communication technology. From July 1999 to July 2003, Dr. Ling served as a principal engineer at Silicon Wave, Inc. From August 1993 to May 1999, Dr. Ling served as a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Dr. Ling received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the