Enjoy dinner and conversation on a warm spring evening on the patio at Ophelia's Fish House a block from Eastern Market.
Meet John Felts, CEO of Cruz Foam & UCB Haas alum and Rhonda Shrader, Executive Director of Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship
John Felts, CEO of Cruz Foam (UCSB BS) UCB Haas NSF I-Corps alum, creates sustainable and compostable packaging foam from upcycled seafood waste as a replacement for single-use plastics. John Felts, and his two partners, have decades of combined bioplastics expertise and co-founded Cruz Foam with the mission of saving our oceans and helping end the global plastic pollution epidemic. In 2018, Cruz Foam participated in NSF I-Corps through the local program at Berkeley-Haas before moving on to the National NSF I-Corps program where they completed 100+ customer discovery interviews in 7 weeks. The data and insights uncovered a significant, unmet market need and resulted in a significant pivot. As a result, the team formed a company and has acquired initial pilot customers, including one of the largest domestic soda manufacturers.
Rhonda Shrader is the Executive Director of Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship as well as the Bay Area Node for NSF I-Corps. As an entrepreneur, she was an early team member of MIT spinout Organogenesis, one of the first publicly traded regenerative medicine companies. She has founded or was an early stage team member of startups in biotech, behavioral health, non-profit, retail and AI. She served as a long-time mentor for UCSF’s Idea to IPO course, is an active advisor for NASA spinoff BrainAid, and recently led the winning teams for both the Health Tech Forum Codeathon and the San Francisco MedHack 2.0 Hackathon. She received an undergraduate degree in neuropsychology and premedical studies from Harvard and an MBA from Berkeley-Haas.
Ophelia's Fish House is conveniently located on Capitol hill, just short walk from Eastern Market metro. Nats are playing at 7 pm, so we're delaying the dinner till 7:30 so you can travel on metro AFTER the baseball fans have left the trains:-) Although there is now a parking garage nearby, METRO METRO METRO strongly recommended!
Check out the MENU for Ophelia's. Not to worry, for those who are not fish fans, there is the ever classic burger as well as chicken and vegetarian options! Have requested seating on the large patio which should be lovely on a warm spring evening.
Metro: Eastern Market on blue/orange/silver lines
Parking: entrance to the 700 Penn garage is on C St SE just east of intersection with 8th St SE, $12 for 2 hours, $16 max.
