Our Leadership

Andy’s experience spans all three sectors of the economy and includes launching and operating an international business and nonprofit. His early fundraising success provided seed funding to two nonprofits during their tenuous startup phases. Andy is the founder/director of the Asian American Civic Association (AACA) Asian Business Training & Mentorship Program.

Prior to AACA he advised numerous nonprofits on fundraising strategy, was the national program director of Boston University’s InnerCity Entrepreneurs (now Interise), which was contracted by the U.S. Small Business Administration to teach its curriculum in cities throughout the United States. Prior to BU, Andy founded a successful international IT/telecom consultancy and publishing enterprise. He served as the Latin American trade representative for Massport. He earned his B.A. from Bowdoin College and M.A. from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Andy Goldberg

Founder & CEO
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Ren Lanzi

Community Engagement Coordinator

Ren Lanzi is the Community Engagement Coordinator at ElevAsian, where she works to build meaningful connections between the organization and the entrepreneurs it serves. In this role, Ren aids in the planning and execution of ElevAsian's programs and events, manages relationships with partners and community stakeholders, and supports the communications and outreach that keep the ElevAsian community informed and engaged.

What drives Ren is simple: she believes that access to the right resources and the right community can change the trajectory of a small business and that too many entrepreneurs from underserved backgrounds have had to build without either. At ElevAsian, she gets to help change that.

Before stepping into this role, Ren built a foundation in marketing, advertising, and graphic design, earning her bachelor's degree from Florida Atlantic University and her master's from Boston University. That background shapes how she thinks about storytelling, visibility, and what it means to help a community see itself reflected in the spaces it occupies.

When she's not coordinating programs or connecting with partners, Ren is usually thinking about how to make the next event a little more welcoming and the next communication a little more human.

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Sandhya Balasubramanian

New Venture Advisor and Instructor

Sandhya Balasubramanian is a startup co-founder, entrepreneurship educator, and venture mentor focused on supporting early-stage founders building innovation-driven ventures. As a New Venture Advisor with ElevAsian, she supports founders in shaping ideas, strengthening startup teams, and translating promising concepts into scalable ventures. She is a co-founder of a NIOSH-funded biomedical startup developing technology to improve respirator fit testing and safety outcomes. Her experience building a research-driven venture informs her work mentoring founders navigating early-stage uncertainty, product validation, and team formation.

Sandhya also serves as Assistant Dean at the WPI Business School, where she provides strategic leadership for initiatives that connect students, startups, and industry partners. She directs the WPI Small Business Digitization Initiative (SBDI), leading efforts that help local small businesses advance digital transformation while providing students with hands-on consulting experience. Her research focuses on entrepreneurial orientation, startup team dynamics, and entrepreneurial leadership—examining how early-stage ventures build strong teams and scale effectively. Over the years, she has also mentored and advised founders, university innovation ecosystems, and startup communities across Asia and North America.

Through her combined roles as a scholar, strategic leader, and startup practitioner, she brings both academic insight and real-world experience to venture development. She holds an MBA and PhD in Entrepreneurship from the Manning School of Business at UMass Lowell.

Barry Horwitz

CEO Action Tank Co-Facilitator

Barry Horwitz is a strategy consultant, entrepreneur, author and educator. His career has been exceptionally diverse and varied, spanning a broad range of industries, organization types and  sizes, both domes:c and international.  

His 20+ year consulting career includes several years with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a  leading global strategy firm, and several years operating his own independent practice. His  clients have ranged from Fortune 500 companies to early-stage companies, global NGOs and  many others in between. 

Barry also has held senior management roles in a variety of retail organizations. He led the formation and growth of a 32-unit instore bakery division for a leading regional supermarket chain, and later served as VP of marketing and strategy for two different billion-dollar regional  discount department store chains. 

Barry’s entrepreneurial experience includes several years as a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of a venture-backed Internet startup. He raised over $12 million in early-round venture  capital for the organization and led the company’s growth for three years. 

In addition to his consulting work, Barry teaches courses in strategy and entrepreneurship at the Questrom School of Business and the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University, where he serves as the Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He earned his MBA at Harvard Business School and his bachelor’s degree in economics at Colby College. He has recently published a book, The Strategy Game: 41 Essays on Playing to Win for Competitive Advantage, based on a curated collection of his writings over the past several years. He lives in Newton with his wife and empty nest.

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Three professionals sitting at a conference table, with one woman speaking into a microphone while the others listen. The woman is wearing a purple blazer and black shirt, the second woman is in a gray blazer, and the man is in a dark suit with a purple tie. Laptops, papers, and plastic cups are on the table.
Two women sitting at a conference table; one woman of South Asian descent speaking into a microphone and holding the hand of the other woman of East Asian descent, who is opening a woven bag inside the table.