Justin Padinske

Justin is the Head of Partnerships and Fundraising at the Alchemist Accelerator and Dean of the Awesome Foundation STEAM chapter (STEM + Arts).

Alchemist is a venture-backed accelerator focused on accelerating the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises. It gives companies around $36K and runs them through a structured 6-month program heavily focused on sales, customer development, and fundraising. Backed by many of the top corporate and VC funds in the Valley and Europe – including Khosla Ventures, Volvo, Cisco, Siemens, GE, and Salesforce, among others, the accelerator seeds 75 enterprise-monetizing ventures each year.

The Awesome Foundation is a global community advancing the interest of awesome in the universe, $1000 at a time. Each fully autonomous chapter supports awesome projects through micro-grants, given out monthly. The micro-grants, $1000 or the local equivalent, come out of the pockets of the chapter’s “trustees” and are given on a no-strings-attached basis to people and groups working on awesome projects.

Justin graduated from Alvernia University with a focus on biology, physics, and philosophy. He spent his last year untangling the genetic mysteries from the world’s oldest humans, supercentenarians (people who live to be 110 years or older). After college, he started his career working for an enterprise startup called Bonfyre as one of the first non-engineering hires.

Outside of work, he spends his time rock climbing, trail running, and doing anything that makes his mom concerned.