Our Team

In Memoriam: Charles Beeler

Charles passed away unexpectedly this September after a courageous battle with cancer. He was a devoted family man, a brilliant venture capitalist and the truest friend you could ever have.

Charles co-founded Rally in 2012 as the apotheosis of his career which was spent almost entirely in venture capital. Charles’ parents imbued in him a love of technology and entrepreneurship: his father George Beeler ran IT at Mayo Clinic and his mother Selby Beeler was an author and entrepreneur. With Charles’ additional interest in finance, he chose venture as his career of choice when he graduated from Wharton Business School.

After stints at Scripps Ventures and Piper Jaffray Ventures, Charles joined El Dorado Ventures, whereupon his first deal as a new partner in 2000, NuSpeed, returned over 55x invested capital, forever cementing his truly best in class career IRR! Charles had success investing in multiple tech sectors over the years including seminal companies like Coupa and Compellent, both of which he oversaw from nearly the very beginning through their IPOs.

Read our full tribute to Charles here.

Jeff has been an entrepreneur, executive and venture capitalist for over 25 years. Jeff co-founded Rally Ventures in 2012 with Charles Beeler.  He has founded or co-founded numerous companies and has had the good fortune to have been surrounded by brilliant co-founders and executives.  Jeff had a successful run as a software CEO early in his career and realized his competitive advantage was in a boardroom and as an investor rather than as an executive.

Some of Jeff’s notable investments include: SoFi (IPO), Figure Technologies, Bold.co, Algety (acquired by Corvis), Broadsoft (IPO, then acquired by Cisco), Compellent (IPO, then acquired by Dell), enStratius (acquired by Dell), IPCell (acquired by Cisco), iTKO (acquired by CA), Lockpath (acquired by Navex), NetCentrex (acquired by Comverse), NuSpeed (acquired by Cisco), Sistina (acquired by Redhat) and SportsEngine (acquired by NBC/Comcast).

Jeff serves on the boards of Crowdstreet, JustiFi, Krista Software, Parallax, Total Expert, Vertical Insure and Yardstik, and has twice served as President of the MVCA. Jeff received his JD from Harvard Law School and his BA from Northwestern University.  He began his professional career at McKinsey & Company.

Justin has more than 20 years of strategic operating experience in high-technology, including deep expertise in Saas, payments and network effect businesses.

Justin was a Rally Technology Partner beginning in 2015 and joined Rally Ventures as General Partner in October 2019. Prior to joining Rally, Justin was CEO and cofounder of SportsEngine, one of Rally’s early portfolio companies. SportsEngine defined the SRM (Sport Relationship Management) market and under Justin’s lead, grew to provide its CRM and Payments platform to more than 45,000 paying customers, more than 35 million monthly unique platform users and more than $100 million in revenue, while growing to more than 500 full-time employees.

The company was acquired by Comcast / NBCUniversal in 2016 and continues to operate as the amateur sports division of NBC Sports. Prior to SportsEngine, Justin was the cofounder of Third North Creative which developed CMS and E-Commerce technologies for corporations.

Justin currently serves on the boards of AnyRoad, Bond Sports, JustiFi, Kaleidoscope, Kyros, Order, PayGround, Total Expert, Vertical Insure, Yardstik and Zingtree. He is a board observer at Allen Control Systems, Epoch, ManageXR and Parallax. Justin received his BA in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-EauClaire.

Stephanie has more than 20 years of experience in the finance industry and has spent the last 15 years in venture capital. Stephanie joined Rally Ventures in January 2014. As Rally’s Chief Financial Officer, Stephanie is responsible for the firm’s operations and financial management including legal and regulatory filings as well as investor relations, accounting, tax compliance, and financial reporting for the funds.

Prior to joining Rally, Stephanie held senior financial positions with Crescendo Ventures and Decathlon Capital Partners. She began her professional career at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, LLP (PwC) in 1995 and worked in a variety of industries but decided to focus on financial services and quickly determined the venture capital industry was where she wanted to be. Stephanie received her BA from the University of St.Thomas and is a CPA (inactive).

Jessi Howard has 20 years of experience in Human Resources, and she has spent the majority of her career in the technology industry.

As Rally Ventures’ Chief People Officer, Jessi leads the firm’s HR practice and operates as the Fractional Chief People Officer for Rally portfolio companies, providing strategic guidance and tactical support around expanding and supporting their teams.

Prior to joining Rally, Jessi helped grow and shape multiple tech start-ups, including SportsEngine, RedBrick Health and Secure Computing. Jessi received her BS from the University of Wisconsin, Stout and her MA from St. Mary’s University.

Kathy has more than 20 years of experience in investor relations and capital formation within the alternative investment and private equity industry. Kathy joined Rally Ventures in February 2019. As Vice President of Investor Relations, she is focused on managing the firm’s investor relations, marketing and corporate communications efforts.

Prior to working with Rally, Kathy was a Managing Director at Castlelake and lead the firm’s investor relations team. During her tenure at Castlelake, she was responsible for developing and directing investor relations’ policies and procedures, managed and maintained existing investor relationships and executed on all aspects of capital raising initiatives. Kathy began her career in investor relations at Crescendo Ventures. She received a BS in Marketing and Business Administration from St. Cloud State University.

Angie has over 19 years of experience in the finance industry. She joined Rally Ventures in October 2015. As the Director of Finance, she is focused on the firm’s operations and financial management including investor relations, accounting, tax compliance and financial reporting for the funds.

Prior to joining Rally, Angie worked at various investment firms such as CarValInvestors, Galliard Capital Management and Pine River Capital Management. She started her career in the finance industry at Crescendo Ventures, where she worked with Jeff Hinck and Stephanie McCoy. Angie received her BS from the University of Minnesota, Duluth and is a CPA (inactive).

Rachel is a marketing and PR professional with fifteen years of experience in communications, digital media and relationship management.

She joined Rally Ventures in July 2020. As the Director of Platform, Rachel is responsible for the firm’s marketing, PR and editorial content. She also guides community and resource development for the Rally portfolio.

Prior to joining Rally, Rachel led marketing and communications for Questscope, a humanitarian organization based out of the Middle East. Rachel’s experience also includes positions with The Collaborative, a member organization for Minnesota entrepreneurs and investors, and Second Street Media, an audience engagement software platform.

Rachel received her BS in Economics and International Development from Saint Louis University.

Holly has over 20 years of experience in the finance industry. She joined Rally Ventures in October 2023. As the Finance Manager, she is focused on the firm’s operations and financial management, including accounting, tax compliance and financial reporting for the funds.

Prior to joining Rally, Holly held fund accounting positions at CarVal Investors and Pine River Capital Management. She began her professional career at KPMG LLP, primarily auditing financial services companies.  Holly received her BBA from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire and is a CPA (inactive).

Michael has more than 30 years of experience in information technology and business development. He joined Rally Ventures in November 2018. Prior to joining Rally, Michael was the CEO of Secure-24, a leading provider of comprehensive managed IT services. During his time at Secure-24, Michael led the company through nearly 200% growth over 6 years and the successful sale to NTT Communications in 2018.

He was also the co-founder, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Business Development at Appshop, a leading provider of hosted Oracle application and database technology. Michael’s experience includes positions with El Dorado Ventures, United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, InfoSolutions and SimulTrans. Michael has designed and built industry leading hosting and software delivery platforms, built and managed global information system support organizations, supported over 500 technology sales cycle wins, managed the implementation of more than 30 ERP and CRM deployments, founded and built two companies.

Michael served as Chairman of the board for 10^thMagnitude, a leading Microsoft Azure partner that sold to Cognizant in 2020 and currently is a board member of Bugcrowd, Gappify, Spec, Ostra and Protera. He studied Network Engineering and Management at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

CEO for more than 30 years. He joined Rally Ventures at its inception in 2012. Prior to joining Rally, Zenas co-founded and has co-managed Vesbridge Partners since 2004. He also served as the co-Managing Partner of SPVC (formerly St. Paul Venture Capital), which he joined in 1997.

Some of Zenas’ notable investments include Acopia (acquired by F5), Granite Systems (acquired by Telcordia), Castle Networks (acquired by Unisphere), Corvil and VisiTrend (acquired byCarbon Black).

He was CEO of: Vivo Networks (acquired by Real Networks), CAECO (acquired and h by Mentor Graphics) and Control Automation (acquired by Universal Instrument).

Zenas served as a board member of PictureTel, Natural Microsystems and Concord Data Systems and currently serves on the board of Ottometric. He started his career at Bain & Co. and BNY. Zenas received his MBA from the University of Chicago and his BA from Dartmouth.

Tom has been a venture capitalist for more than 30 years and is a veteran early-stage technology investor, focusing on enterprise software and infrastructure companies. Tom joined Rally Ventures at its inception in 2012 as Venture Partner. Tom was one of the founding members of El Dorado Ventures in 1986 and drove the bulk of the returns for the firm during his career. He began his venture career in 1984 with Union Venture Corp., the venture capital arm of Union Bank. Prior to joining Union Venture, Tom held engineering and management positions with Hewlett-Packard and General Electric.

Some of Tom’s notable investments include: Access Health (IPO, then acquired by McKesson), Braze (Nasdaq: BRZE), Clinical Research IO (purchased by The Riverside Company), Cyras (acquired by Ciena), Earthlink (Nasdaq: ELNK), Efficient Networks (IPO, then acquired by Siemens), Jigsaw (acquired by Salesforce), MediaQ (acquired by NVIDIA), Rogue Wave (Nasdaq: RWAV), Scout Labs (acquired by Lithium) and Swarm (acquired by Groupon).

Tom serves on the boards of 401GO, Appdome, Epoch and Rev, and is a board observer at DecisionNext, PieEye and SenseIP. Tom received his MBA from UCLA and his BS from Iowa State University.

From 2008 to 2022, Ben worked at Google, where he was Vice President, Chief Information Office, and New York office Site Lead. As Chief Information Officer, Ben oversaw the creation and deployment of technologies and systems that power Google’s enterprise and make Googlers uniquely productive, during a period of historically unprecedented growth. Ben has a diverse background in systems engineering and software development. He has led development of mission scheduling software for NASA at a Bay Area startup and spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley, where he rose to the level of Managing Director and led teams responsible for software development, internet infrastructure, and business intelligence.

Ben currently serves on the boards of Kyros and ZOLA Electric, and he is on the advisory board at Bugcrowd.

Outside of work, Ben is a member of the editorial board of Communications of the ACM and Queue magazine, serves on the Board of Visitors, Columbia University School of Engineering, and is Co-chair, Columbia University President’s Council on Data & Society. Ben is a graduate of Columbia University.

Luke is a seasoned operator and entrepreneur with deep experience in strategy, business scaling and operations engineering. 

Luke became a Rally Tech Partner in 2023 and joined Rally as an Operating Partner in 2024. Prior to joining Rally, Luke was Co-founder and CEO of Reigning Champs. Reigning Champs assembled a complete solution that helped high school athletes navigate to college teams under the brand NCSA and helped college coaches recruit athletes under the brand Front Rush. The company also offered youth sports experiences, such as NFL Flag Football, under the brand RCX.

When Reigning Champs was sold to IMG Academy (Endeavor) in 2021, it had grown to over $200M in revenue, with NCSA serving over 150,000 clients and RCX engaging more than 450,000 participants annually. Luke served as the Chief Strategy Officer at IMG Academy, which was then sold to EQT in 2023. 

Prior to Reigning Champs, Luke held executive roles at The Match Group (IPO MTCH), RMG Networks (Korbyt), BriteVision Media (acquired by Trimaran) and i2 Technology (acquired by JDA). Luke received his BS in Economics & Transportation at Northeastern University and a Masters of Engineering in Logistics at MIT.       

James joined Rally Ventures as an Associate in September 2020.

Most recently, he was a Summer Associate with Rally. James graduated from Colby College, where he majored in English and double minored in Managerial Economics and Mandarin Chinese.

Outside of the classroom, James spent his time as a member of the Track and Field team; as the Head Staffing Tutor of the Writers’ Center; as a Co-President of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee; and as a Clerk for Student Financial Services.