Ryan Gembala

Ryan is a seed stage technology investor & founder of Pathbreaker Ventures. Prior to starting Pathbreaker, Ryan was a deal lead on the corporate development team at Facebook where he spent time working with product and engineering teams to landscape technology ecosystems and execute acquisitions in pursuit of Facebook's mission. Acquisitions worked on include Oculus, PrivateCore, LiveRail, Teehan Lax, and NimbleVR. Areas of focus included virtual reality, security, artificial intelligence, video, and product design. Prior to Facebook, Ryan worked in both an investing and operating role at Azure Capital, an early stage venture capital firm with $750 million under management. In addition to series A & B investing, he worked within portfolio companies as VP of Business Development & Partnerships at Telly, the video discovery & content network, and at Convercent, the SAAS leader in employee governance, risk, and compliance. Ryan is the co-founder of H.E.R.O. for Children, the first non-profit focused on quality of life care for children affected by HIV/AIDS. Ryan built HERO to $1M in revenue and 2,000 volunteers. In 2018, HERO celebrates its 15th Anniversary where Ryan continues to serve on the Board. Ryan earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business where he focused on finance, entrepreneurship, and early stage tech investing. At Chicago, he and his team won the International Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) out of 56 MBA programs. Ryan speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian and is learning robotics programming.