2020 Hall of Fame Inductees

Ameesh Divatia is the Co-Founder & CEO of Baffle, Inc., a cybersecurity company that provides a privacy preserving analytics solution for enterprise data stores. He has a proven track record of turning technologies that are difficult to build into successful businesses, selling three companies for more than $425 million. His specialty is conceptualizing, developing and executing on early stage business plans that lead to the creation of new product categories. Ameesh loves to mentor young startups through his incubation venture called Incarta, LP., helping secure seed funding for them and providing guidance for go-to-market strategy, operations and business development.

Before Baffle, Ameesh was the President and CEO at Lightwire, Inc. Lightwire is widely recognized as a leading innovator in the silicon photonics space. During his tenure, the company transitioned from the technology development phase to the product development phase. He drove a strategic partnership with Cisco Systems, Inc. that eventually resulted in an acquisition for $271 million in February 2012.

In 2001, Ameesh co-founded Aarohi Communications, a pioneer in the storage virtualization space. Over the course of 5 years as President and CEO, he built the management team, established customer relationships with Intel, EMC, Infineon and McDATA and drove its product strategy. Aarohi was acquired by Emulex Corporation in Costa Mesa, CA in May 2006 leading to the Intelligent Network Products business unit where he served as Senior Vice President and General Manager from May 2006 to September of 2008.

Prior to Aarohi, he founded PipeLinks, Inc. in July 1996 and served as its Chief Technology Officer, where he was responsible for developing the Integrated SONET/SDH Router product from concept to technology implementation. Cisco acquired PipeLinks in December 1998 for $126 million as its first acquisition in the optical space and created the Optical Transport Business Unit.

Ameesh arrived in the US from India to pursue a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of California at Irvine in 1989, where his area of concentration was performance analysis of communication networks working with Prof. Audrey Viterbi as his advisor. He interned at Rockwell Communications in Irvine in the summer of 1988 before graduating in 1989. He worked as a communications network design engineer and architect at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) followed by 3Com for 7 years before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey.

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm is a hydrologist with research interests in modeling of surface and groundwater systems, climate-hydrology-vegetation interactions, water quality and modeling of the water-energy-food nexus. He has been a Principal Investigator in research sponsored by NASA, NOAA, NSF, USDA, USAID, the World Bank and other agencies, and has worked as a consultant in water resources projects in all five continents for over 20 years.

He is currently Chair and Professor of the Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland (UMD), where he also directs the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. Prior to his appointment at UMD, he served on the faculty at Northeastern University, the University of Miami, and Florida International University. He also spent 5 years as a civil servant in the Water and Sanitation Division of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC.

Fernando is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the states of Massachusetts and Florida.

Fernando earned a MS degree in the (then) Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at UCI, working with Prof. William A. Sirignano as his advisor. Prof. Roger Rangel also co-supervised his thesis research, and other members of his thesis committee were Profs. Derek Dunn-Rankin and Dimitri Papamouschou. He also took excellent classes with Profs. Said Elghobashi and Scott Samuelsen. He was a classmate and played baseball in summer with (then graduate student) Prof. Jake Brouwer. He remembers all of them very fondly.

Fernando lives in Bethesda MD with his wife Monica, and is the father of two girls (Andrea, now a graduate student and Adriana, class of ’20, both at UMD). On nice sunny days, you will most likely find him playing tennis at NASA Goddard, or on the Capital Crescent Trail on his running shoes, his bike, roller blades or his Sector 9 longboard.

John Lenell is currently Chief Executive Office of Irvine based early stage technology startup Qxonix Inc. Prior to co-founding Qxonix Inc., John focused on private capital investments and advisor roles in early stage startups.

From 1995 to 2016, John enjoyed a 20-year career at Broadcom Corporation, beginning as a startup team member. While at Broadcom, John lead new product development teams for Broadcom’s first ethernet repeater, switch, ethernet controller, and hard disk drive controller achieving many industry's first milestones. As senior technical director, John was instrumental in the team development and growth of what became the Enterprise Networking Business Unit from pre-revenue to multi-billion annual revenues and the dominant industry position in network communication devices. John transitioned from product development roles to a position as Senior Director of strategic investments and facilitated the acquisition and integration of Provigent and Netlogic Microsystems for Broadcom.

Immediately following graduation from UCI in 1992 with a master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, John began his career at Standard Microsystems as a chip design engineer. John credits his experience in graduate school with advisor Professor Nader Bagherzadeh, working with a small team to develop and have fabricated a processor device, for his successful career at Standard Microsystems and Broadcom working with small teams on leading technology.

While at UCI, John was a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity and the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. He also served as a research assistant and a teaching assistant during his time as a graduate student.

John and his wife Rachel reside in Newport Beach and together have four adult children. His third son is currently a senior at UCI, pursuing a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. John enjoys outdoor activities in his spare time, and he also serves on the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County board of directors, the UCI Alumni Association Board, and the UCI Engineering Leadership Council.

Amit Shah focuses on early-stage investments, creating globally renowned businesses, where technology innovation and markets intersect. He targets large markets across all business sectors including materials related technologies; construction, semiconductors, advanced software solutions and systems.

Prior to founding Artiman Ventures, Amit was a successful repeat entrepreneur. Both companies he founded were acquired: Zeitnet (acquired by Cabletron) and PipeLinks (acquired by Cisco). He was also General Partner of Anthelion Capital, a seed stage venture firm based in Menlo Park, CA.

Amit holds a B.S.E.E from M.S. University Baroda and did graduate work at UC Irvine.

Over his career of 20+ years of investing he has led investments in many companies such as Everest Design Automation (acquired by Synopsys), IKANOS (Nasdaq: IKAN), iManage (Nasdaq: IMAN), Lightwire (acquired by Cisco Systems), Netscaler (acquired by Citrix), Sierra Design Automation (acquired by Mentor Graphics), Tavant (acquired by Ameriquest).

He is currently on the boards of Ultrasense, Tonbo Imaging and Niron Magnetics.

He is an avid reader of historical fiction and biographies of interesting people. He is passionate about trying to understand wine and playing better golf, with unfailingly similar outcomes of failure to do so. That has not prevented him from continuing to try.

Aziz Hashim, Founder and Managing Partner of NRD Capital, is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts in franchising and foodservice.

NRD Capital invests in companies that offer compelling unit-level economics, as well as in technologies that improve the profitability of operators. Its portfolio includes iconic brands like Ruby Tuesday and Frisch’s Big Boy, as well as fast-growing concepts like Fuzzy’s Taco Shop and The Captain’s Boil. In the technology sector, NRD has invested in leading workforce and artificial intelligence platforms such as Harri, 1Huddle, Nextforce, Valyant AI and others. The firm boasts more than 75 years of collective operational and financial experience, and the corresponding ability to underwrite brands at the unit level as viable business opportunities.

Prior to NRD Capital, in 1996, Aziz founded NRD Holdings – a franchise development and holding company. After starting with just a single quick-service location in Atlanta, NRD Holdings soon grew into one of the largest restaurant franchisee companies in the United States. At NRD Holdings, Aziz operated leading global franchise brands, including Popeye's®, KFC®, Taco Bell® and Domino's Pizza®.

Aziz’s dynamic leadership, success, and innovation have led to esteemed recognition across the industry. In 2018, he was named by Nation's Restaurant News as one of the 10 most influential leaders in the restaurant industry. Additionally, NRD Capital, after just four years of establishment, was named to Restaurant Business Magazine’s 2018 “Power 20” list, alongside some of the other most well-regarded private equity firms in the nation.

Aziz remains deeply committed to community service and leveraging the franchise business model to create financial independence for families in developing countries, as well as social sector franchising to improve the quality of life for families in emerging countries. Additionally, Aziz previously served as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the International Franchise Association (IFA), representing the franchise industry and its $1.6 trillion annual economic output.

Aziz created the NRD Foundation to support non-profit and for-profit international organizations that create entrepreneurs, foster financial independence, and power academic research focused on franchise entrepreneurship.

Aziz graduated with honors from the University of California at Irvine's prestigious electrical engineering program.