Team
Rudi Scheiber-Kurtz – Founder & CEO
For the last eight years Rudi has positioned companies for profitable growth by implementing efficient systems and procedures. She has helped innovative startups articulate and accomplish their strategic goals and objectives; she has also designed dynamic accounting infrastructures for established companies, allowing them to achieve greater scalability. Time and again, her investor relationships have advanced her clients to their next stage. Her industry focus is high tech and life sciences.
Prior to starting NSS, Rudi worked at WGBH. She was in charge of more than 30 budgets of the National Promotions department. She was also a member of a Senior Management Team advising PBS’s Executive Producers on strategic planning. Earlier, Rudi was Director of Arts/Lexington, where she turned around the failing education program by increasing enrollment by 300 percent in three years. She founded a collaborative with other local art centers to pool resources and fundraising efforts, resulting in an inaugural State Grant Award.
Rudi’s first company was an on-demand fabric silk-screens startup, featuring her own bold and colorful graphics. Prior to this venture, Rudi held financial positions with two Boston advertising agencies, Cabot Advertising and Harcomm Associates. In her first U.S. position, she was an Order Editor with the Scott Paper Company.
Rudi is a frequent speaker and panelist both in the greater Boston business community and internationally and is active in the Boston business community. Engagements include:
- Committee Member of “Women to Watch” for Mass High Tech
- Partner of the Private Sector Network of InnerCity Entrepreneurs, ICE
- Advisor for Larta National Institutes of Health NIH-CAP Program – Medical Devices
Rudi received her BS degree from Lesley University and an MBA from the Simmons School of Management. Rudi grew up in Switzerland and holds dual US/Swiss citizenship. She most recently enjoyed her first paragliding experience in the Swiss Alps.
Charlie D’Ambrosio – CFO Consultant
Charlie D’Ambrosio’s 25 years of financial experience began with Andersen Consulting as a senior consultant in the banking, construction and high tech industries. Charlie then joined Intermetrics, a start-up software services and products company, holding positions of Manager of Financial Planning & Budgeting, Treasury Manager, V.P. of Human Resources and V.P. of Finance & Administration. Charlie’s many roles at Intermetrics exposed him to a high growth and entrepreneurial environment where he developed his skills in FP&A, M&A, IPO’s, banking and credit, compliance, facilities management, shareholder relations and the full gamut of Human Resource management functions. As CFO and VP of Administration for Ember Corporation, a start-up wireless semiconductor company, Charlie closed a $12M round of financing, established the necessary financial, reporting and human resource controls and processes to facilitate the company’s growth, developed, coordinated and managed an $18M budget plan, grew headcount 50%, managed financial and legal due diligence, and served as BOD interface. Charlie also held financial and business management roles at EBI Consulting where he directed all start-up business development activities to launch this privately owned emerging environmental consulting firm into the federal, state and municipal markets. At Tatum, LLC, Charlie was a principal consultant assisting client companies facing financial and operational transitions.
Charlie enjoys the challenges, excitement and pace of the start-up environment where he’s able to wear many different hats and exercise his broad financial, administrative and operational and skill set.
Charlie holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Northeastern University and Master in Business Administration from Babson College.
Steve Dance – CFO Consultant
Steve Dance has over thirty years experience in corporate finance, primarily in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Most recently, he was senior vice president and chief financial officer for ViaCell, Inc., a biotechnology company, a position he held from January 2004 until August 2007. Mr. Dance led the initial public offering for ViaCell in January 2005, raising over $60 million in cash. Prior to that, he spent five years as senior vice president and chief financial officer at SangStat Medical Corporation, a biotechnology company. At SangStat, he raised over $150 million in cash via public and private equity and loan financings and was a key member of the team that sold SangStat to Genzyme in September 2003. Previously, Mr. Dance spent one year with Plantronics, Inc., a telecommunications company, where he was responsible for worldwide financial accounting, reporting and planning activities. He spent fifteen years with Syntex Corporation, a pharmaceuticals company (later part of the Roche group), in a number of finance positions of increasing responsibility, including as controller of US sales, marketing and manufacturing operations, a division with over $1 billion in revenues. Other positions include seven years with Deloitte & Touche in London and San Francisco.
Mr. Dance holds CPA and FCA (UK equivalent) qualifications in accounting. He also holds a B.A. degree in French from the University of Leeds in England, and is fluent in both French and Spanish. He is currently a director of the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality, Inc. a non-profit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Lucinda Linde – CFO Consultant
Lucinda Linde invests in and consults to early stage information technology companies. While at First Light Capital, she invested in Nellymoser, Incipient, KESI, Strong Numbers (now part of Intuit’s “It’s Deductible” product) and HubX (acquired by SynXis).
She was an angel investor in Visualization Technologies Inc. (acquired by GE Medical Systems), Viveca (acquired by Open Pages) and Collego (acquired by MRO Systems) and Softrax (profitable company). Lucinda co-authored an in-depth study on angel investors, VSS Project: Report on Angel Investors, for Ken Morse of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and Professor Howard Stevenson at HBS.
Previously, Lucinda helped build a management consulting firm focused on the telecommunications industry, COBA Boston, now Adventis. Start-up experience includes operations and marketing positions at Molten Metal Technology and Ceramics Process Systems. Both were venture-backed companies that went public. She holds an SB and an SM in Materials Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Karen Biscoe – Director of Business Development
Karen Biscoe is the Director of Business Development for Next Stage Solutions, Inc. She brings 10 years of executive level recruiting and talent acquisition experience and is a Certified Personnel Consultant (CPC). She is the founder of Green Search Partner, an executive level search firm.
Working with a variety of multinational companies, she has led a team of senior recruiters to hire top notch accounting and finance professionals. The majority of her clients have been venture-backed, early-stage ventures with high demands and limited resources. Karen has successfully balanced the expectations of both her clients and their equity funders, with a highly pro-active, results-oriented approach to the search process. As Director of Business Development for Next Stage Solutions, Karen is now able to utilize both her strong relationship building skills with the ability to accurately match highly qualified professionals with our vast network of emerging and established client companies.
