About Us

Adaptability. Alignment. Emergence.

What's in a Name?

If you’ve ever seen a murmuration — a group comprised of sometimes thousands of starlings—engaged in an aerial ballet, you know how incredible strategic alignment can be. Their movements are smooth, fluid, and organic, as if the flock were a single organism rather than a collection of individual birds.

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The structure of the flock is an emergent property, self-organizing yet connected. Each bird knows where it is in the group and understands what the wider group is doing, and importantly, where it is going. The result is an incredible speed of communication and agility. Beautiful and effortless to the eye, with a fierce and aggressive nature at play.

We can learn much from these incredible birds. By applying the same principles, we too can flock more strategically — working at the scale of the individual, in close alignment and communication with the organization as a whole, to bring about success.

Meet our Team

Rania Nasis, MD, MBA

Founder & CEO

A self-described startup junkie, Rania has been working with startups for over 15 years. She’s seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Reached amazing highs and spent time in the trough of disillusionment. She has a wide breath and depth of experience across a multitude of areas in healthcare, including digital health, aging tech, biotech, life sciences, devices, and diagnostics.

Knowing how to envision the big picture yet having a mastery over the details is what has allowed her to launch innovative companies, knowledgeably invest in new ventures, mentor up-and-coming entrepreneurs, and lead day-to-day operations for early stage organizations.

Anthony Gold

Anthony is a social entrepreneur, advisor, and director for various companies. Early in his career, he ran hardware engineering for Unisys Corporation. Then he was given an opportunity to build a software and services startup that hit the market at the perfect time and helped usher in the then-new era of open source software. By then he had fallen in love with entrepreneurship.

He subsequently built a healthcare software startup along with several of the world’s top physicians focused on reducing the incidence of chronic illness. Following that he co-founded a wearable tech B-corporation that developed a safety module to help reduce assaults against women. He now spends his time helping others launch & grow their companies. He greatly enjoys helping business leaders who have a mission to make a strong impact on the world. He has a particular interest in business strategy, leadership development, fundraising, social impact B-corporations, personal growth, and male allyship in the business environment.

Kostas Nasis

A technologist with a passion for great design and user experience, focused on building amazing apps and services. Kostas is a seasoned startup CTO, a veteran of multiple venture backed companies, and a serial entrepreneur. Creator of award winning apps and products for Fortune 500 companies and well known consumer brands. His products have been featured (and ranked #1) on Product Hunt and by Apple, with over 1 million users. He’s also an inventor on two issued patents, including one for an interactive medical device and remote disease monitoring and management system.

Kostas runs engineering and design-driven organizations, with bold ideas and a track record of innovation and success across various industries, including education, telecommunications, M2M/IoT, publishing, medicine and retail.

Kyle Martin

Kyle brings a user-centered product development philosophy to the Starlings team. He loves blending strategy, engineering and design to make complicated things work simply. Throughout his career, he’s had the opportunity to develop talented, multi-disciplinary teams to build useful, well-designed, award winning products and services for the some of the world’s largest brands and innovative companies.

Kyle spent the past 10 years building cutting-edge technology in the health care and retail industries. He most recently served as the Chief Product Officer for Slyce, an enterprise technology company pioneering the field of visual search. Before that, he co-founded SnipSnap, the first mobile app mobile app to let consumers save printed coupons to their smartphone and redeem in store. Kyle holds a Bachelor of Science in Film and Media Arts from Temple University.

Kyle enjoys his wild weekends spent with his three toddlers and wife. In his spare time, he participates in hack-a-thons, reads non-fiction and drinks a lot of coffee.

Christina Rizopoulos Valauri

Christina Rizopoulos Valauri is a strategic business adviser, mentor and investor in early stage companies with a focus on healthcare, technology, ESG principles and sustainability. She has worked in both the private and public sectors. Ms. Valauri has extensive experience with C-suite management teams as an advisor, direct report and as a senior equity research analyst, specializing in leading edge medical technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, in the U.S. and international markets.

Christina Valauri is Founding Partner and CEO of Sagestone Advisory LLC and a graduate of Cornell Johnson Business School. She has been ranked a #1 Biotechnology/Biomedical Analyst in The Wall Street Journal’s “Best on The Street” All Star Analyst Survey, and has received the “Award for Excellence in Medical Education Public Affairs”, Association of American Medical Colleges, as a founding member of a non-profit affiliated with NYU Medical Center committed to women’s health education.

Why Hire Us?

Building a company is hard. So is finding people with the right expertise to join your team. We find that in the early stages of company, the right advisors can direct hard working teams to focus on what matters, saving you months (sometimes years) of time and lots of money. We provide guidance to help bridge the expertise gap.

Hire us if you’re ready to do the hard work of building your business. We’ll help you strategize and prioritize, so you can focus on the things that matter.