Elana Fine a ‘Tech Titan’

Every two years, Washingtonian magazine identifies the “most influential and exciting people” in the D.C. region’s technology scene.

Elana Fine stands out in this crowd. 

Fine, managing director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, joins the magazine’s 2015 Tech Titans list, where she landed in 2013. The Washingtonian formerly recognized this year’s honorees in a May 21 “Tech Titans cocktail” reception at the Carnegie Institute for Science.

Fine reappears on a list including “Silicon Valley’s congresswoman” Zoe Lofgren, pro sports franchise owner Ted Leonsis and Facebook Vice President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan.

Also among the 2015 honorees: Dean Chang, UMD associate vice president for Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Mark Walsh, chairman of the Dingman Center Board of Advisors; and Jonathan Aberman, Smith School adjunct entrepreneurship professor.

The magazine cites Chang for “grooming the next generation of innovators” as UMD’s entrepreneurship program head, and Walsh is noted as “a fixture on the local tech scene as a former AOL executive and current executive chairman of HomeSnap ex, a venture partner at Revolution, a member of several boards” – including Dingman’s – “and an angel investor on the side.”Aberman, managing director of Amplifier Ventures, is cited for “leading Tandem NSI, a public-private effort to connect federal agencies with local start-ups working on national-security issues.”

The list’s introduction refers to a regional startup scene that’s “exploded” since 2013, “bringing deep reservoirs of talent to the region in an effort boosters hope will create a Silicon Valley on the Potomac.”

That year – 2013 – marks Fine assuming Dingman’s managing-lead role. A former investment banker, she joined the center in 2010 as director of venture investments. “Our team was smaller but we worked incredibly well together,” she says on a “We are Smith” profile page. “Simultaneously, a renaissance was underway in the larger startup community in D.C., and Dingman was inundated with opportunity.”

The magazine’s intro to its 2015 list further references “the rebirth of the area’s tech scene,” which “can be can be seen in the angel groups and incubators that offer advice and funding, or in the massive, informal get-togethers where hundreds of people share ideas and job opportunities.”

Fine, categorized as a “dealmaker” among the Tech Titans, oversees an incubator of student-run businesses and the center-facilitated Dingman Center Angels investor network whose members look to invest $100,000 to $1million in seed-early stage companies, and will often syndicate with other angel groups and VC’s for deals up to $2 million.

View the entire Tech Titan list – from the Washingtonian’s May 2015 issue – here.