Valerie Hoecke
Work
Valerie has built businesses in over 40 countries, founded two startups with successful exits, and led digital transformation for some of the most iconic brands on the planet. She spent eight years tripling revenues at Benefit Cosmetics, then moved up to become Global Chief Digital Officer for LVMH Beauty's $8 billion portfolio, modernizing 16 luxury brands and accelerating their digital sales in just three years.
After her time at LVMH, Valerie served as COO of Dia&Co, the Sequoia and Union Square-backed startup, where she managed all business functions and drove a successful pivot that elevated the entire brand – before joining the global Venture Consultancy Mach49, where she ran the Board Member in Residence team. Before her work with luxury brands, Valerie co-founded Fire Engine Red, a boutique consultancy that was profitable from year one and worked with clients like Accel Partners, Oracle, Sony Entertainment, and Mayfield Fund. The firm was acquired by Rare Medium Group, where she created and managed the Venture Strategy Group.
Valerie moves fluidly between startups and large corporations because she understands both worlds completely. Her team-building expertise and instinct for big opportunities have been tested across every type of business challenge you can imagine.
Recent Experience: Board Member In Residence at Mach49, COO at Dia&Co (Sequoia-backed), Global Chief Digital Officer at LVMH Perfumes & Cosmetics
In Real Life
Water runs through everything Valerie does. As a two-time World Championship competitor on the US National Dragonboat team and international outrigger canoe paddler, she learned that elite performance requires both individual excellence and seamless team coordination. The same focus that drove her success as an athlete drives how she approaches impossible business problems. Water teaches patience, timing, and the difference between fighting forces you can't control and harnessing the ones you can.
Growing up with immigrant parents shaped her understanding that adaptation isn't just survival – it's advantage. Her work across Chinese, French, British, Korean, Spanish, and Latin American markets, plus time living in the Philippines, Tanzania, and Zanzibar, taught her that cultural fluency means more than speaking the language. It means reading the room, understanding what's not being said, and building trust across completely different ways of seeing the world. These experiences made her a translator between cultures, markets, and mindsets in ways that boardroom education never could.
Now rooted in her adopted home of Hawaiʻi, she tends gardens that feed both her family and her community. Living in relationship with the land and supporting the people of this place has taught her that real sustainability requires thinking beyond quarterly earnings. She grows food, builds community connections, and approaches business challenges with the long-term perspective that comes from understanding your role in something much bigger than yourself. The ocean, the soil, and the community keep her grounded in what actually matters when the pressure gets intense and the stakes get high.
Chris Tacy
Work
Chris sees the future. He saw the internet coming before most people knew what a website was. In 1994, he pitched an online business concept to his employer's board, got shot down in favor of a print publication, then told them their entire industry was doomed. A year later, they admitted he was right. That kind of foresight doesn't happen by accident.
Since then, Chris has been a founder or executive at five successful startups, managed a $325 million corporate venture fund, and closed corporate development deals worth over $2 billion. His investment track record speaks louder than any slide deck: over $100 million in returns on less than $7.5 million invested. He has worked with Baker Hughes, Oracle, Google, Lockheed Martin, Xerox, Sony, Viacom, and Nike. At Mach49, he built the Venture Strategy practice and spent five years partnering with Global 1000 leadership teams to unlock growth that actually moved the needle.
Chris doesn't just understand business model disruption. He creates it. He has been doing corporate venture transformation since before it had a name, and his instincts for spotting the future remain as sharp as ever.
Recent Experience: General Partner in Residence at TDK Ventures, Chief Strategy Officer at Mach49, Board Member at Inflect Health, Corporate Development at Mozilla Corporation.
In Real Life
Growing up poor and outside the mainstream taught Chris that the view from the margins is clearer than the view from the center. Living under the Federal poverty line didn't just build character, it built hunger. The kind of hunger that drives you up cliffs as a professional climber, into two World Championships as a US National Dragonboat team member, and through every business challenge with the unshakeable belief that losing isn't an option. Whether guiding climbers up mountains, battling on soccer fields and hockey rinks, or navigating boardrooms, he learned early that outsiders see opportunities that insiders miss because they're not blinded by how things are supposed to work.
The kitchen and the stage were his first classrooms in creativity under pressure. Working the line as a cook, then sous chef, then chef taught him that excellence happens in real time with no room for excuses. Being in bands, DJing, and making music sharpened his ear for rhythm, timing, and reading the room. These experiences shaped how he approaches business: you blend ingredients that shouldn't work together, you adjust on the fly when things go wrong, and you know when to build energy and when to let it breathe. Words became his tools for telling stories that move people, whether in a pitch deck or around a dinner table.
Now happily living in Hawaiʻi, he grows food to share because abundance means nothing if you keep it to yourself. Cultivating crops that end up in meals for friends and community taught him that the best business outcomes come from thinking beyond your own success. Supporting the people of the place and understanding your role in something larger than quarterly profits grounds every decision he makes. Whether he's in the garden, the kitchen, or a client meeting, the question is always the same: how do we create something that nourishes everyone involved and builds something that lasts?
