We are scientists, engineers, operators, and designers who know how to execute and scale at every stage of a business. Our collaborations with world leaders in our fields give us insights to see around the next corner.

When we’re not publishing papers on AI, earning PhDs in pharmacology and bio-engineering, or filing for patents, we’re building transformative companies that deliver outsized returns and make positive impacts on society.

Full Biography

Nate is an Operating Partner focused on Playground Global’s Engineered Biology portfolio, bringing over two decades of life sciences industry experience across venture capital and investment banking.

Nate started his career in Venture Capital as a Partner on Andreessen Horowitz’s Corporate Development team. Within the a16z Bio team, he was responsible for advising a16z Bio portfolio companies to define and execute on strategic plans, including fundraising, capital markets readiness (IPO), M&A, financial operations and strategic business development. Nate helped establish a16z’s relationships with healthcare and life sciences investors as well as strategic acquirers and key advisors.

Prior to joining Playground Global, Nate was a Managing Director for CBC Group, an Asia-focused healthcare private equity/venture capital fund. At CBC, Nate focused on U.S. life science investments which include venture capital investments, cross-border asset licensing and joint-ventures for CBC’s core China/APAC strategy. He also served on the Joint Value Creation team to advise and guide CBC’s U.S. portfolio companies across financing and business development.

Prior to a16z Bio, Nate spent 14 years in healthcare investment banking and covered life science companies at Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and RBC Capital Markets. He started his industry career as a clinical research associate at Quintiles (now known as IQVIA) and later transitioned to business development at PPD.

In Nate’s free time, he likes to get on his road or gravel bike and travel with his bike in countries like Colombia or Spain. On the weekends, he’s shuttling his kids to either basketball or soccer games in the Bay Area.

Nate received an M.B.A from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and studied Molecular Biology and Applied Mechanics (Bioengineering) at the University of California, San Diego.

Full Biography

Katja is an Operating Partner focused on marketing at Playground Global, bringing two decades of brand-building, messaging, go-to-market strategies, media and analyst relations, and communications expertise to the firm and its portfolio.

Prior to joining Playground, Katja created and led the marketing function at growth equity firm TCV, supporting companies including Spotify, Nubank, Brex, OneTrust, and Rapid7, and General Catalyst, an early stage venture capital firm. Most recently, she led external communications at fintech startup Brex, expanding the company’s market presence as a leader in corporate credit cards and spend management software.

Katja’s previous experience includes running strategic communications and thought leadership for Cisco’s President, Engineering and Sales. She also worked with technology companies across consumer and enterprise sectors at early stage venture capital firm, DCM, and with growth stage companies at Warburg Pincus. Prior to that, Katja led the U.S. marketing efforts at 3i, an international private equity and venture capital firm.

Katja speaks five languages and loves to travel, read, play tennis, and ride horses. She is an identical twin, and her family used to dance disco routines with some fairly complex moves. They still break them out from time to time at birthdays or weddings. People are often impressed. Her son is not.

Katja holds an M.B.A from UC Davis, where she was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma. She also earned an M.A. in International Relations, Political Science, and Linguistics from Johannes-Gutenberg University in Germany and holds a B.A. in Business Management from the University of Applied Sciences for Economics, Berlin.

Full Biography

Marissa Huang is an operating partner focused on full-cycle recruitment with more than a decade of experience spanning new graduate to executive search hiring. She specializes in building out and executing on hiring strategies for startups, specialized teams, and hard-to-source positions.

Prior to joining Playground, Marissa led the talent function at Niantic Labs, growing the team from 70 to 700 employees in four years. She changed the function, culture, and impact of talent operations across the company to support the company’s business goals and strategies as well as the needs and aspirations of its growing workforce.

Marissa's previous experience also includes executive search, managing talent teams, and managing talent and people operations at later stage companies like Asana, Facebook, and Google. Marissa was the first head of talent at Thumbtack and Figma. She has previously worked with many prominent leaders across Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, to build and manage talent operations that support and reflect their dynamic needs.

In her spare time, Marissa enjoys reading, riding her motorcycle, making pottery, flipping houses around the Bay Area, and spending time with her dog and fiancé at their home in San Francisco. She loves learning new things and is inherently curious about people and their stories. In her executive coaching practice, she supports startup founders, CEOs, and other senior executives on their journey to becoming stronger leaders who build diverse teams and successful products.

Full Biography

Clinton Lazzari is an operating partner at Playground Global with a focus on electronics engineering, product design, manufacturing operations, and program management, bringing more than 20 years of experience in all aspects of shipping global products from architecture to manufacturing.

Prior to joining Playground, Clinton was a senior hardware engineer at Google, where he managed the launch of several consumer product designs from architecture to production including electrical design and specification, trade-offs between software features and thermal limitations, compliance certification, manufacturing test criteria, and processes, and more. Clinton designed the first consumer electronics to advance the Android operating system to devices beyond the smartphone and tablet.

He also designed, developed, and debugged the digital and RF systems for X Lab’s Project Loon, the ambitious skunkworks project that brought high-speed internet to remote areas in the world via weather balloons. Clinton managed external contractors, designed subsystems, and guided a team of junior engineers.

His professional experience often blends the most difficult elements of program management, operations, hardware engineering, and product design. As an engineering and business consultant, he has worked with a wide range of industries on projects that include medical devices, industrial power tools, consumer electronics, robotics, aerospace control systems, and much more.

Outside of work, Clinton lives in Medford, Oregon with his wife Brooke and three children, Neasa, Reid, and Teagan, where in his spare time he runs a company that designs, builds, and sells electronics for hobbyist building remote control model aircraft. He has a cat named Midnight that runs the house, and when he’s on vacation, he can be found using his airline miles and travel points from traversing the globe to take his kids to various renown zoos across the country.

Full Biography

Kendra Leigh Perlitz is an operating partner focused on investor relations at Playground Global, where she is responsible for Playground’s capital formation and related operations. She partners with current and prospective limited partners to develop their investment strategy, targeting early-stage innovation through fund commitment and co-investments.

Prior to joining Playground, Kendra was managing director of investor relations and operations at SVB Capital, leading product strategy across venture capital fund of funds, direct equity, and private credit funds. Her previous experience also includes serving as vice president of capital formation and investor operations at Top Tier Capital Partners, a venture capital fund of funds located in San Francisco.

Before Top Tier, Kendra served as senior manager of financial planning and analysis for US pharmaceutical generic drugs at McKesson, the largest provider of distribution and technology solutions within the healthcare industry. In her early career, she worked at iRhythm Technologies, a venture-backed healthcare startup, and client services at Hall Capital Partners, a San Francisco-based investment advisory firm.

A native of Silicon Valley, Kendra holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in human and organizational development with leadership effectiveness and a minor in economics from Vanderbilt University. She also holds a master of education in organizational leadership from Vanderbilt. When Kendra is not raising billions for venture capital, she enjoys hosting community events, traveling, skiing and pilates.

Full Biography

Sandy Taylor is the CFO for Playground Global. An entrepreneurial-minded finance executive with decades of startup experience, Sandy brings her passion for building high-performance teams and leading organizations through significant growth to the firm and its portfolio companies.

Drawn to tech from an early age, Sandy moved to Silicon Valley in the late 1990s to realize her dream. She first worked at Oracle as Director of Finance and Strategic Planning, where she relished the opportunity to build a new team at an established organization and developed a keen interest in early technology.

After spending time at early online marketplace Respond Networks, Sandy linked up with her future Playground colleagues at Danger, Inc. With Sandy in the VP of Finance role, Danger’s subscriber base grew from 60,000 to nearly 1.4 million. She helped secure funding from the likes of Redpoint Ventures and Softbank, and played a key role in the negotiation and execution of Microsoft’s $500M+ acquisition of the business.

Sandy stayed at Microsoft for another two years before assuming the CFO role at Zong, later leading PayPal’s acquisition of the firm. Sandy stayed on as CFO of PayPal after the deal, where she was responsible for the Finance and Operational Excellence for PayPal Mobile and the integration of Zong business functions into PayPal and eBay.

Next, Sandy spent over three years at Mocana, an IoT security platform overseeing 100 million devices. There, she oversaw strategy, sales operations, $30 million in VC fundraising, and general finance, among a wide array of responsibilities.

In 2018, she reunited with her former Danger colleagues and joined the Playground team. Sandy loves the energy of the startups combined with their potential longevity and impact, getting the best of both the entrepreneurial and finance worlds. At Playground, Sandy runs the finance team, human resources, and facilities teams, as well as supervises in-house events.

Sandy is married with one daughter and lives in Palo Alto, CA, where she spends most of her spare time working on the constant remodeling of her 100+-year-old home.