Aaron Tainter

Aaron is the Program Manager of Innovation Works’ AlphaLab accelerator programs that provides investment, mentorship, education and network-building for technology startups to help companies rapidly iterate through early stages of product and customer development. In this role Aaron oversees the day-to-day operations of the AlphaLab accelerator program and works closely with AlphaLab companies to help guide the companies through their initial stages of development. Aaron spent over 5 years as an Associate at Meakem Becker Venture Capital, a Pittsburgh-based early stage VC firm. In this role Aaron served on the due diligence team where he analyzed startup companies across a variety of industry verticals and was a leader on the deal sourcing team where he built a national deal flow pipeline which led to a number of successful exits including Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon), Shipwire (acquired by Ingram Micro), and HotPads (acquired by Zillow). He also recently served as Senior Manager for Bristol-Myers Squibb, a global biopharmaceutical company, where he led the strategy and implementation of a number of continuous improvement and internal consulting initiatives within the Research and Development organization. Aaron holds a BS/BA in Business Management/Marketing from Eastern University and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business.