Ramesh Raskar

Macauley Kenney

Macauley Kenney is an Entrepreneur in Residence and a lecturer at MIT Sloan and MIT D-Lab.

Macauley is an executive leader at SurgiBox, a medical device venture creating novel surgical technologies. At SurgiBox, she oversaw the launch of the first ultraportable operating room, taking the product through the design for manufacturing process and into use on the battlefield in Ukraine. Macauley also served as the PI on a $2.5M SBIR P2 with US Air Force Special Operations Command, and as company liaison for DOD engagements.

She is passionate about human-centered design and increasing the success of impact-based ventures, particularly in hardware. Macauley teaches manufacturing technologies, with a focus on adaptation within low-resource settings, at MIT’s D-Lab. She is also the author of two patents on OR technology.

Prior to this she was an early joiner at a rapidly expanding consulting startup in Bogota, growing the company 4x in two years and overseeing the expansion into three new country offices: Kenya, Peru, and Morocco. A serial entrepreneur, Macauley has specialized in scaling organizations in emerging markets, and has led operational systems for ventures in the U.S., Rwanda, and Uganda. Additionally, she has studied early founding team dynamics and their impact on growth strategies. Her research has been featured in multiples news outlets, including Forbes and Engineering for Change.

Macauley is an accomplished public speaker, winning the MIT Can Talk competition while at university, and the North American Present Around the World Competition. She frequently serves as a competition judge, and coaches public speaking with an emphasis on stage presence and narrative building.

Macauley holds an MS in Technology and Policy from MIT, a Sustainability Certificate from MIT Sloan, and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from WPI. Outside of her work as an EIR she serves on the Council of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, an international professional engineering society.

Rym Baouendi

Rym Baouendi passionate about using her expertise in sustainability, urban planning, and innovation to unlock sustainable and inclusive growth opportunities in emerging markets. She brings over two decades of international experience working with professional firms, startups, governments, academia, and not for profit organizations developing high-impact projects of unique entrepreneurial and innovative excellence.

Over the years she has worked to promote green buildings and sustainable cities globally, through policy advocacy, masterplanning, and design. She advised serval leading organizations including the US National Parks Services, the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, the World Green Building Council, Nokia, Abu Dhabi Louvre, Masdar, and BMCE bank in Morocco.

Rym also played an active role in building the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Tunisia. She has also contributed to the wider innovation agenda in Africa, the Middle, and emerging markets. She co-founded Cogite, Tunisia’s first co-working space, which Forbes named as one of the “10 best co-working spaces on Earth”. She is a founding board member of Endeavor Tunisia and has spearheaded the development of BIAT Foundation’s entrepreneurship support programs in Tunisia. She also mentors startups at renowned incubators and accelerators such as the Harvard iLab, BWM Respond, and Katapult.

Rym currently serves as a Senior Advisor at the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT and as a Climate Advisor with pan-African private equity and venture capital firms AfricInvest.

Rym holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA, USA, a Masters degree in Building Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, a Civil Engineering and Urban Planning degree from INSA de Lyon in France, and a diploma in Initial Studies in Architecture from the School of Architecture of Lyon. She is also THNK fellow and a BMW Responsible Leader.

Rebecca Xiong

Rebecca Xiong is the Managing Director, Programs and Engagement. She spearheads a strategic portfolio of programming and resources for the Harvard Innovation Labs’ community of student and alumni innovators across industry sectors, including health and life sciences; social impact; consumer products and services; business-to-business (B2B) technology.

Becca brings to the Harvard Innovation Labs two decades of experience in the MIT startup ecosystem. She previously served as the program director of MIT Startup Exchange, which promotes collaboration and partnerships between 2000 MIT-connected startups and industry. Prior to that, Becca co-founded two startups: social analytics and marketing startup SocMetrics, and Going.com, an events social network that grew to one million members and was acquired by AOL. Xiong has also held positions at DataPower (acquired by IBM) and Akamai Technologies.

Becca received a PhD in Computer Science from MIT, and did her thesis research at the MIT Media Lab. Becca has been an active member of her community including president of the MIT Club of Boston (the largest alumni club serving 17,000 area alumni) and lead organizer of Cambridge Parent Summit.