Board of Directors & Officers

Mike Forster

Chairman and CEO

Mike Forster is a retired executive with more than 50 years of sales, marketing, and general management experience in the information technology industry. Most recently, he served as the CEO and Chairman of CommerceQuest, Inc., a SaaS (software as a service) company located in Tampa, FL. From 2017 to 2019, he was Chairman of the Innovate Mississippi board of directors.

Nashlie Sephus

Board of Directors

Dr. Nashlie H. Sephus is the Applied Science manager for Amazon’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) focusing on fairness and identifying biases in the technologies. Prior to working as the CTO of Partpic, she received her Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2014. She received her B.S. in Computer Engineering from Mississippi State University (2007). Dr. Sephus is a native of Jackson, Mississippi and a graduate of Murrah High School/Power Academic and Performing Arts Complex (APAC).

Glenn McCullough

Board of Directors

Glenn McCullough, jr. led economic development and community programs that resulted in record private capital investment, job growth in higher-income jobs, and
global export trade. Before MDA, he was Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and was a former mayor of Tupelo, Miss.

Willie Jones

Board of Directors/Community Programs Director

Willie Jones is president of the DSC Training Academy with 30 years of experience in workforce development Wille Jones is determined to create diversity in the job market and serve the needs of women and underserved young people in the Jackson Metro area.

Eric Hill

 Board of Directors

Eric Hill is the executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach at Mississippi State University. He believes in the potential for young entrepreneurship and technology startups in Mississippi.

Joe Donovan

Board of Directors

Joe Donovan is currently the Division Director of The Entrepreneur Center @ Mississippi Development Authority. The Entrepreneur and Innovation Center focuses on developing an environment that ‘raises entrepreneurs’ and building an entrepreneurial eco-system targeting next generation technologies. Specifically developing the Mississippi economy through technology-based economic development. Donovan has been best described by the Mississippi Business Journal as a “serial entrepreneur.”

Dr. Sarah Lee

Board of Directors/Director of Golden Triangle Region

“Sarah Lee began serving as an advisor to the board in 2018 during her tenure as a member of the faculty and Assistant Department Head in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Mississippi State University. Sarah assumed a new role in 2020 as Director of the School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern Mississippi. She is working with stakeholders in Hattiesburg and on the Gulf Coast to implement coding academy opportunities for persons in south Mississippi. Sarah spent nineteen years at FedEx Corporation in a variety of roles in the information technology division, before following her passion to increase diversity in computing in her home state of Mississippi.”

Tony Jeff

Secretary and Treasurer

Tony Jeff serves as the president and CEO for Innovate Mississippi and is a technology evangelist who regularly speaks on emerging trends and strategies in technology and innovation commercialization. Tony has overseen the coaching of more than 1,200 entrepreneurial ventures and consulted with companies that have successfully raised more than $170 million in private-equity financing.

IN MEMORY OF…

Richard A Sun

 Board of Directors

We lost co-founder Richard Sun in the spring of 2022. Rich focused on start-up and high-growth companies, as a private equity investor, adviser, board member and executive. He played a key role in nine startup companies, has invested $230 million in four early-stage companies for institutional private equity investors and personally invested in thirteen others. He was the first Entrepreneur in Residence at Innovate Mississippi from 2017 to 2018.