Board

Yoly currently serves as the Community Relations Executive in the central and Texas Region for BBVA Compass. She supports the bank’s corporate responsibility objectives for community outreach, reputation building, and business development. She holds a master degree from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and an undergraduate degree in political science from Williams College.

Brian A. Hall is a member of Traverse Legal, PLC and the managing partner of its Austin, Texas office, doing business as Hall Law. He has represented enterprise Internet and technology companies, startups and brand owners throughout the world with their Intellectual Property, Internet Law, including such areas as digital and social media, advertising and promotions, privacy and data matters, and Business Law issues. Brian regularly advises clients on the acquisition of, enforcement of, licensing and monetization of intellectual property, and he has extensive experience with countless multi-million dollar corporate transactions involving an entity's business-critical IP. Brian has served as outside general counsel, as well as in-house counsel in a secondment role, to private, venture backed companies, public companies and venture capital funds. Brian has also litigated cases across the United States involving trademark, domain name, copyright, software trade secret, online defamation and privacy/personal rights issues.

He is a regular author and speaker on legal topics of particular interest to technology companies given his background as an IT Consultant with the global IT firm Accenture. Brian has provided trademark legal commentary on Fox 7 News (Austin), authored Coach’s Corner for foundingAUSTIN and the Founders’ Friday blog series, and presented CLE on a variety of topics.

Brian has been chosen by his peers as a Rising Star in Intellectual Property, as rated by SuperLawyers, for the years 2010-2017. Brian is also a limited partner in StartupRunner, a seed stage venture capital fund, an angel investor with the Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN) and regularly mentors and advises entities at all stages of the startup ecosystem. He is an active member of EO Austin and also is a member of the Steering Committee for the Global Entrepreneurial Bar Association. He has served as President of the Michigan State University College of Law AA Board of Directors and on the United Way Board.

Nina Nelms is a proven Senior Executive with 28 years of success across finance, entertainment, education, technology, and engineering. Leveraging extensive experience in financial operations and process improvement, she is a valuable asset for higher education, entertainment, or organizations looking for strategic insights, growth, cash flow, and mergers and acquisitions. Her broad areas of expertise include change management, high performance team building and development, cost-reduction strategy, supplier negotiations, purchasing and procurement, supplier diversity, Six Sigma, supply chain management, supplier sustainability and new technology implementation, including robotics.
Throughout her executive career, Nina has held leadership positions at Bank of America, Dell and The Coca-Cola Company. She has been responsible for creating enterprise-wide strategies for environmental, social responsibility and governance (ESG), robotics process automation (RPA), offshoring and supplier diversity for Bank of America, generating $20M in first year cost-savings at Dell using global sourcing initiatives, leading a category management team with $8B of spend, about 20% of third-party spend for the entire global banking enterprise, driving 8 LOB category strategies to hit business objectives and delivering a supplier rationalization analysis reducing Dell’s supply base >90% with $11M savings.
Nina earned a B.A. in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin, an M.B.A. from University of Phoenix and is Certified Six Sigma. She also proudly serves as Lead Faculty Area Chair since 2012 and an Adjunct Professor since 2010 with University of Phoenix, School of Business, teaching graduate courses in Management, Supply Chain, Critical Thinking and Organizational Behavior and Development. She coaches and mentor’s faculty and students in other official university roles.
Nina currently lives in Austin, Texas where she is active with the Austin Community Volunteers, Junior Achievement, and National Black MBA Association’s Leaders of Tomorrow. She mentors others via Bank of America’s CFO Mentoring Program and LEAD. Nina is a member of the Order of Eastern Stars (OES), the National Association of Female Executives (NAFE) and is on the Advisory Board of Huston–Tillotson University’s School of Business and Technology.

Cecilia Castelo’s responsibilities encompass service experience, small business and community development, regulatory compliance, sales, and employee performance management of 34 Woodforest branches throughout the greater Austin and San Antonio, TX markets.

Castelo joined Woodforest in 2001 as a retail banker in Sequin, TX. She has successfully managed the bank’s Converse, TX and Seguin, TX branches, as well as the DeZavala, TX branch, San Antonio’s flagship 24 hour location for Woodforest. Castelo was promoted to Assistant Vice President in 2008 and in 2011 she was promoted to Regional Manager for the San Antonio area. In 2017 Castel was promoted to Vice President of Retail Banking.

Castelo is a graduate of the Bank Operations Institute of Texas and currently serves on the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Small Business Committee. Castelo is passionate about making a difference in the community, often volunteering and providing support in the areas of affordable housing, economic development, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship.

Larry was Senior Vice President and National Specialty Finance Manager of JPMorgan Chase Bank, where he has been employed for 27 years. He has been in banking for 38 years and SBA lending for 17 years. He has experience in most all forms of lending, Equipment leasing, Real Estate Appraisal, loan work out and Community Development.

He obtained a BBA from TCU and MBA from the University of Texas at Arlington. He is a MAI, SRA Designated Real Estate Appraiser, and a licensed Real Estate Broker.

Larry is Chairman of the Board of the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Appraisal Institute, the Board of the Southern Dallas Development Corporation, Dallas Non Profit Loan Center, Texas Charter Schools Financial Foundation Loan Committee, City of Arlington Revolving Loan Committee, and as Senior Warden for Trinity Episcopal Church in Fort Worth.

He resides in Fort Worth, Texas

Eugene Sepulveda is CEO of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, a partner & director at Capital Factory, and a senior advisor and treasurer for Austin Mayor Steve Adler. Eugene brings nearly 40 years experience at the intersection of finance, startups, banking, community development and politics. He and his husband, Steven Tomlinson, are committed to and invest in social justice and economic opportunity.

Luther is the Head of Digital Lending and Account Origination strategy for Fiserv, focused on scaling and rolling out product/capability for clients nationwide. Prior to Fiserv, Luther was President and Co-Founder of Fintech iLendx, LLC. Over his career, Luther has deployed over $20 billion in capital, managed portfolios for over $100 billion and raised more than $1 billion. Luther served in leadership roles with top institutions like Bank One where he was SVP National Product Management between 1984 and 1999, and USAA where he was SVP between 1999 and 2007. Additionally, Luther served on the Board and in a leadership/fundraising role with LiftFund (formerly ACCION, Texas) from 2004 to 2007. He has a BA in Political Science and Business from New Mexico State University. He is a graduate of the Consumer Bankers Association (CBA), Graduate School of Banking at the University of Virginia, and he completed the Master’s Leadership Program (MLP) in San Antonio in 2008. Luther is a veteran and supports veteran causes. He started his career in the military as an Air Defense Officer serving through the first Gulf War and has served on several veteran support organizations including Momentum Texas.