Fitness & Active Brands Virtual Live Summit

Jason LaRose

Jason LaRose is the CEO of Equinox Media , a transformative on-demand platform offering access to the best brands in fitness. In his role, LaRose is responsible for leading strategy, growth and expansion for the company.

LaRose joined Equinox Media following more than 20 years of experience in brand, e-commerce, omnichannel retailing, and building communities in the digital and athletic spaces. Prior to Equinox Media, LaRose was President of North America for Under Armour where he spearheaded the company’s entrée into wearables and fitness tracking apps, expanded the Under Armour Connected Fitness platform, and established the global e-commerce business. In the earlier days of e-commerce and social media, LaRose served as an Associate Principal in the Consumer and Digital Practices at McKinsey & Company where he helped companies expand their brands into the digital space. LaRose also previously served as a board member at Shop.org and held numerous executive strategy and operating positions at Sears Holding Corporation and Express, LLC.

LaRose holds a B.S. from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Duke
University.

Jean-Michel Fournier

Jean-Michel (JM) Fournier is currently CEO of Les Mills Media, a division of the Les Mills International Group. He leads Les Mills worldwide consumer business, the entire B2B and direct-to-consumer digital portfolio of products and P&Ls, as well as our worldwide music management. With nearly 7 million weekly active users & 140,000 fitness instructors, Les Mills is one of the largest active fitness & wellness community in the world.

Before joining Les Mills, JM co-founded and led several start-ups in Silicon Valley, including QEDSoft, Janalent and BitGym. I have also been Senior Vice President at United Health Group, and Vice President of Business Development at Hewlett-Packard.

JM is also a strategic adviser for the French government, focusing on supporting the development of French start-ups abroad. He is an active member of California Harvard Angels networking group, and He has been consulted by government organizations, venture capitalists and corporations about technology and business entrepreneurship.

JM was born in France and have an Electronic Engineering degree from the Institut de Technologie in Nimes, as well as being a masters graduate of the Harvard Business School.

Jon Congdon

As CEO, Jon is responsible for driving the vision and growth for Openfit, the all-in-one digital streaming platform for integrated fitness, nutrition and wellness that launched in 2019.  Under his leadership, Openfit has expanded its offerings for subscribers, including the addition of live classes, personalized meal-prep and nutrition tracking tools, and grown the subscriber base by 3.5X YTD 2020.

As President of Beachbody, he is responsible for all Direct to Consumer Marketing, Media, Strategic Analysis and Insights, and Human Resources (The People Department).

A former ranked beach volleyball player and functional fitness and yoga practitioner, Congdon has long been an advocate for health and well-being, with a balanced approach to fitness, wellness and nutrition. He serves on the St. John’s Health Center Foundation’s Board of Trustees, and is a founding Board Member of the Careyes Foundation, addressing youth education and community issues in the Costa Allegre region in Jalisco, Mexico.

Congdon graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  He lives in Malibu, California, with his wife Becca and daughter Gigi.

Daniel Shellard

Dan is cofounder and CEO of Fiit. Previous to Fiit he co-founded Qubit — a leading European SaaS business — in 2010 after successfully raising $76 million. As COO, he built a world class team and company culture, and advised hundreds of the world’s leading retailers including Net-a-porter, Emirates Airlines and Topshop. Today Qubit employees over 250 people across six countries. Prior to Fiit and Qubit, Dan was part of the early team at Google UK, where he spent over four years in sales, strategy and operations roles.

Recognised for his entrepreneurial achievements, Dan was listed as Bloomberg’s Business Innovators 2016 and Young Guns, Class of 2014 by startups.co.uk. A self-confessed sport and fitness nut, Dan played football for Team Bath, and can usually be found either training for his next ironman or relaxing on golf course.

Aly Orady

Aly Orady is the CEO and Founder of Tonal, the world's most intelligent fitness system and the first truly personalized approach to strength training. A 20-year silicon valley veteran, engineer and serial entrepreneur, Orady started his career at Hewlett-Packard’s Computer Systems Laboratory designing super-computers, followed by technical leadership roles at a series of startups, including Kealia, Inc. Armed with an M.S.E.E. from Stanford, and a B.Eng. from McMaster University, Orady founded Pano Logic, where he served as the company’s Chief Technology Officer and oversaw core technology development, architecture, and patents, as well as functional roles including product management, go-to-market planning, business development and manufacturing operations. Orady has leveraged his extensive product and technology background paired with his own fitness journey and 70 lb weight loss to invent Tonal. His goal is to help enable people to lead healthier lives by providing them with the technology, guidance and support to effectively reach their fitness goal.

Marc Diaper

Rodney Appiah

Rodney joined Foresight in 2016 and works as a Director based in our London Office.

Prior to Foresight, Rodney worked for the Business Growth Fund where he spent five years providing minority growth capital and board support to UK SMEs. Prior to BGF, Rodney was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch, advising PE sponsors and TMT corporates on leveraged finance transactions and M&A activity.

In his spare time, Rodney is Chairman of the CBI's London U35 committee, a business advisor to a number of start-up businesses and a school governor for an East London based Academy.

Rodney holds a Bsc in Economics from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Asaf Avidan Antonir

Asaf is the Co-Founder and CEO of Onyx, a fitness platform that uses computer vision and AI to bring personalized, connected fitness to everyone. Prior to starting Onyx, he was a product manager and software engineer at LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Illumio, and completed his degree in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at UC Berkeley.

Onyx leverages mobile, on-device computer vision to track nearly any exercise, correct your form, and provide guided workouts tailored to your performance in real time. Our mission is to make truly personalized fitness accessible to anyone, and create the greatest connected fitness experience that doesn’t require additional hardware. Onyx launched in late 2019, has grown to hundreds of thousands of users, and was recently featured as Apple’s App of the Day in the United States.

Nate Forster

Nate Forster is a former professional tennis player turned entrepreneur. Nate started his career in hospitality and transitioned into the health and wellness industry in 2010. At the start of his entrepreneurial career, he was an operating partner at dek23 and b.e.d. nightclubs in Miami, in which he brokered the sale of both businesses.  In 2010, he  became the owner and operator of the first Reebok-partnered CrossFit gym and by 2014, he was the largest CrossFit affiliate owner globally with 15 locations. Nate is now the co-founder and CEO of NEOU, a digital fitness platform that helps fitness influencer and workout brands scale to a larger audience. The mission of NEOU is to bring consumers the best of all types of fitness, health + wellness concepts and trainers to anyone in the world at anytime.

Colin Waggett

Colin is CEO of Third Space, London’s luxury collection of health clubs.  Third Space has 6 large scale clubs in central London and plans to grow significantly in the coming years. Colin has been in the health club industry for over 15 years, with experience spanning from 6 years as Global CEO of Fitness First growing that business to over 500 clubs in 20 countries, to two start ups in the boutique studio business.

Debra Strougo

Debra is the Co-Founder of Row House and was the founding CEO from 2013 until her partnership with Xponential Fitness in late 2017 which grew the brand to 100 currently open studios and 200 more in the works. Debra currently owns and operates the Manhattan Row House locations and works with the corporate team on all strategic brand initiatives, business development best practices and on programming initiatives. She also sits on the Franchise Advisory Council and the Marketing Fund Committee to support and represent the franchisees who are in varying stages of growth. Row House has recently been ranked 1066 in the Inc.com 5000 list of quickly growing private companies.

In addition to her expertise developing Row House from scratch, Debra has played key roles in developing businesses from scratch. Prior to Row House, she created a million dollar plus annual business for NYC, focused on creating digital partnerships with the city's tourism facing assets.  This work helped NYC achieve its annual tourism numbers; tourism is traditionally the city's second biggest economic stimulus.  During this time she worked with city agencies and constituents, leveraging their assets, knowledge and know-how with that of private business of all sizes. These spanned from corporations like Red Bull, Jet Blue, Starwood Hotels, and more to smaller constituents with either multiple locations like BR Guest Restaurants or single location businesses like Empire State Building and American Museum of Natural History.  Debra also worked extremely closely with Broadway, spearheading the creation of Broadway Week; as a follow-up to Restaurant Week; which has become a global program to solve need periods.  Debra's 5 years at NYC & Company was pivotal to her career; giving her the network and know-how to succeed.

Prior to her time developing NYC & Company's digital partnerships, Debra wanted more than anything to find a way to bridge her business acumen with her passion for the fitness industry.  As an avid fitness professional, teaching classes before and after her un-related career in digital publishing, she came to learn the industry inside and out. She taught classes for top brands in NYC and took on many consulting projects to learn more about the varying aspects of the fitness industry: from gyms to what was becoming boutiques, to infomercial projects, to at home videos, to health and wellness expos, to the certification side of the industry, Debra spent over 5 years taking on projects to determine how she could create a career in fitness that she loved.

Even after graduating college a few years prior, she was in digital publishing for small up and coming VC-backed companied. She was passionate about disruption and even know, continues to move through her career motivated to cut through the clutter, create differentiation and establish sustaining business in smart niches.

Ed Stanbury

Co-Founder and CEO of BLOK, the boutique fitness studio Vogue magazine dubbed “the trendiest gym in London”. In 2020 BLOK launched BLOKtv, their digital fitness platform.

Ed oversees all aspects of the business and is responsible for driving BLOK’s strategy for growth from a neighbourhood gym, to a global digital brand.

With 35,000 users joining live classes and customers in 134 countries since the beta launch in May 2020, BLOK is now raising investment to fuel the growth of their digital fitness platform globally. 

Paul Cocker

Paul is Co-founder of retail and consumer sector specialist investor True.  Paul led True’s $100m investment into at home fitness platform, Zwift, and also sits on the board of True’s investee companies Ribble Cycles, The Cotswold Company, Frugi, Soulfresh and Hush.

Jeff Morin

Jeff Morin is a MIT-educated engineer and certified personal trainer with an eye for both physical and technological performance. Prior to founding Liteboxer, Jeff operated as Manufacturing Lead at Formlabs then DEKA, overseeing manufacturing management, supply chain and procurement for next-gen product development.

Jimmy Martin

Jimmy is a New York based creative + health and wellness professional with over 10 years experience creating inimitable experiences with everyday people. Prior to conceiving and co-founding Brrrn, Jimmy was a former scholarship Division I athlete for George Mason University Men's wrestling program. Following college, Jimmy started his own private personal training business with clients ranging from C-Suite Executives to celebrities in film, television and fashion. In addition, Jimmy had also worked as a stuntman, background performer on SNL, humor greeting card writer and, most notably, as an advertising copywriter, where he penned memorable campaigns for brands such as Manhattan Mini Storage, ParkFast and Seagram's Gin. As Brrrn's co-founder, Jimmy serves as a founding instructor, executive producer of Brrrn At-Home, and leads all branding, marketing and fitness programming for the company. 

Jon Caranick

Jon Canarick is a Managing Director with 18 years of consumer private equity investment experience. Since joining North Castle in 2001, Jon has actively managed North Castle’s investments across a variety of Healthy, Active, and Sustainable Living sectors and across all job functions at North Castle. Having started his career at NCP as an Associate out of investment banking, Jon has played a crucial role in the development of North Castle and many of its portfolio companies. Jon currently sits on the Board of Directors of Echelon Fit, CR Fitness, Encore Vet Group, Kettlebell Kitchen, The Escape Game, Barry’s Bootcamp, Brooklyn Boulders, Curves, Jenny Craig, Palladio, and SLT. Previously, Jon served on the Board of Directors of Mineral Fusion, gloProfessional, Flatout, International Fitness, Enzymatic Therapy, Performance Bicycle, Avalon and DDF and was actively involved in the Firm’s investment in Grand Expeditions. Prior to joining North Castle, Jon worked in the Financial Sponsors Coverage and Leveraged Finance groups of Bear, Stearns & Co., where he executed leveraged buyout transactions and provided advisory services for financial sponsors. Jon earned a B.B.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.

Kari Saitowitz

Prior to creating Fhitting Room, Kari, was a marketing executive at Pepsi. She focused on building equity for powerhouse brands and launching new product innovations.

In 2007, she left the world of boardrooms and bubbles and entered the world of diapers and sleepless nights. Exhausted and time-starved, Kari began Functional High-Intensity Interval Training as a means to work off her pregnancy weight in her scarce free time. As someone who hasn’t always loved exercise, Kari was blown away by the physical and emotional results of HIIT and the efficiency of her new, only 2x weekly, workout routine.

Around this time, specialized boutique fitness studios started popping up, and people were getting instantly hooked on the fun, social dynamic classes provided. Kari loved the idea of working out with friends but couldn’t find a studio that offered functional HIIT workouts with enough personal attention from certified trainers. Her friends were taking classes 2-3x weekly and seeing personal trainers 1-2x per week, a time consuming and expensive practice.

Kari took her love of planning unique consumer experiences and finding creative solutions to develop a new way for anyone to access the benefits of a personal training session in a motivational group setting. This “Gym Idea” became the subject line of an email Kari sent to a close friend in 2012 and led to the opening of the first Fhitting Room location in a small studio on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in March 2013. The lease for Fhitting Room’s flagship Flatiron location was signed six months later, followed by the Upper West side flagship in 2017.

Kari is the Founder + CEO of Fhitting Room overseeing three Fhitting Room studios in NYC, Fhitting Room On Demand and Fhitting Room LIVE!, the brand's virtual boutique class platform. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated with honors, and she graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Economics from the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania.  

Kristian Merritt

Sadie Kurzban

Sadie Kurzban, 30-year old founder and CEO of 305 Fitness, began working on 305 as a side hustle her senior year of college at Brown University. 305's emphasis on inclusivity and body-positivity was a direct response to Kurzban's battle with disordered eating growing up in Miami. On social media, she utilizes her personal account to share more than dance moves. Dubbed “the next fitness cult leader” by the New York Observer, Kurzban is a bold, outspoken leader of the next generation. 305 Fitness currently has 7 locations in New York, Washington D.C., and Boston, with weekly pop-up experiences in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago and pushing 1000 certified instructors teaching their method across the globe.

Rory Gibbs

John Capodilupo

John "Capo" Capodilupo is the CTO and Co-Founder at WHOOP, a technology company building wearable fitness trackers and an analytics suite that provides feedback to help people optimize their training and performance. Capo leads technology strategy and development efforts at WHOOP across hardware, software, signal processing, and data science teams. Capo attended Harvard where he was studying astrophysics and computer science before dropping out to co-found WHOOP.WHOOP is the Official Recovery Wearable of the NFL Players’ Association and the only product of its kind approved for in-game use by Major League Baseball. Most recently, organizations like The PGA and LPGA Tours as well as the University of Tennessee procured WHOOP to support player performance and health during a return to sports.    

Eric Elia

Eric is Head of Strategic Accounts at Mux where he helps storytellers at product and media companies from around the world build the next generation of video experiences. Mux is a developer video platform that enables innovators such as Equinox Media, Robinhood, VSCO, Reddit, Discovery, Fox and ViacomCBS. Previously he was part of the founding team at Brightcove, the pioneering online video platform company and led the first streaming initiatives at Comcast. 

Fabrizio Cecchinelli

Fabrizio Cecchinelli joined Technogym in 2005 and has held a number of positions from R&D in biomechanics and physiological testing of equipment to marketing and sales helping Technogym switch from product selling to solution selling.  Today Fabrizio is a Group Product Manager for strength, functional and biomedical equipment. He has lead the development of the most immersive and effective training experience in the industry - SKILLATHLETIC. Fabrizio holds an M.S. in Exercise Physiology.

Robert Louw

Robert has over 20 years’ experience across the breadth of the health and fitness sector, both as an operator and a supplier.

He joined the Wexer team through the acquisition of ClubVirtual where, as commercial director, he had both spearheaded growth of the business and developed an in-depth and invaluable understanding of the digital fitness market.

In his current role as Global Head of Business Development at Wexer, Robert leads Wexer’s commercial strategy and speaks with operators on all continents. He is a passionate believer in the brand’s mission: to make world-class exercise accessible to more people by harnessing the power of technology, while simultaneously ensuring traditional facilities remain at the very heart of the fitness experience.

To this end, his partner-centric mindset has seen him support numerous organisations in the health club, hotel and corporate sectors through their journey of digital transformation. His goal: working in collaboration to develop digital strategies to future proof these businesses and safeguard their relevance to today’s digitally savvy fitness consumers.

Prior to his move to ClubVirtual in 2014, Robert’s diverse roles spanned everything from sport manager at DeMIX Fitness in the Netherlands, through sales manager at Fitness First, to senior account manager at the Netherlands-based powerhouse that is the HDD Group.

Brian Smith

Brian Smith is a managing director and member of the Piper Jaffray consumer investment banking team, focused on providing M&A advisory services to companies in healthy, active and sustainable living industries, with a focus on fitness, sports nutrition and multi-unit retail.

Prior to joining Piper Jaffray, Smith was a partner and founding principal at Partnership Capital Growth, a boutique investment bank providing M&A and private placement services to health and wellness-oriented businesses. Prior to investment banking, Smith served as a director of corporate development and sales & marketing analysis at EAS, a leading sports nutrition and supplements company based in Golden, Colo. Smith previously worked with North Castle Partners where he was primarily focused on new deal generation, due diligence and financial modeling. Prior to NCP, Smith was a management consultant for Bain & Company in Boston and Los Angeles.

Smith graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a bachelor's degree in economics.

Matthew Tingler

Matthew is a Managing Director in Baird’s Investment Banking practice where he advises on equity offerings, mergers and acquisitions and other financial advisory services in the Consumer sector, with a focus on in the apparel & footwear, health, wellness & fitness and outdoor recreational categories.  Prior to joining Baird, Matthew was an Associate in Merrill Lynch’s M&A Investment Banking practice. Previously he was an Associate in Citigroup’s Equity Research practice and a Manager in Ernst & Young’s Transaction Advisory Services practice where he performed M&A due diligence, restructuring and valuation assignments. Matthew received an M.B.A from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University with distinctions and a B.S. in accounting and marketing with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst charterholder through the CFA Institute and a recipient of the SGB 40 Under 40 award sponsored by SportsOneSource Group. Additionally, Matthew serves on the Leadership Council for A Better Chicago, a venture philanthropy organization dedicated to strengthening and scaling high performing nonprofits focused in the education sector for low income Chicagoans. He lives in Chicago with his wife and three sons. 

Alexandra Dantzig

Alexandra began her career in foreign exchange electronic trading at Forex Capital Markets in 2005, where she was an integral member through its growth phase and IPO in 2010, providing technology and liquidity solutions. She focused on business and corporate development, leading many of its acquisitions, fund manager relationships and white label partnerships with clients such as E*TRADE and Charles Schwab. In 2016, she joined Convergence, a big data research and advisory firm for the alternative investments industry led by the former CFO of Apollo Management and JP Morgan. As Director and its 7th employee, she provided solutions for Convergence's blue chip clients, before leaving in 2017 to pursue her passion for bringing turnkey technology solutions to the boutique fitness studio industry.

Steven Webster

A lifelong entrepreneur, technologist, martial artist and coach, Steven Webster is the CEO & Founder of ASENSEI, the leading technology that uses motion capture and human movement recognition to power personalized Connected Health and Fitness experiences.

Holding a 4th degree black belt and two 2nd degree black belts in Ju Jitsu and Karate, Steven is also one of the most successful sports coaches in British University Sport. He captained and then coached Edinburgh University Karate Club to 10 consecutive national championships. After moving to California in 2009 with the sale of his first company to Adobe, the club won 8 more titles, under a coaching staff he taught as students.

For Adobe, Steven played a leadership role in the creation of a worldwide design-led consulting organization. Steven was trusted advisor to Adobe's most strategic clients, from NATO and NASA to Nike and the NFL.

Prior to ASENSEI, Steven opened Studio 415 for Microsoft, leading a team of Bay Area designers, engineers and data scientists in an innovation lab built to ideate and co-create new experiences with strategic customers including Gatorade and Sony. Working alongside colleagues from Microsoft Kinect, XBox Fitness, Cortana and Health Vault, Steven and team pioneered the idea of natural user interfaces - voice and gesture understanding – to  interact with intelligent digital assistants.

In 2014, Steven left Microsoft to start ASENSEI and lead the creation of the “Connected Coaching” category of intelligent sports and fitness technology powered by human movement recognition, that would one day democratize and scale access to world-class personal coaching.