Team
David Dolby
CEO
David Dolby is an active technology investor and philanthropist based in San Francisco. Under Ray Dolby’s mentorship, David has developed a strong skill set to identify tough problems worth solving and ways to change the world through technology and media.
David oversees a portfolio of family investments across a wide range of asset classes that include private equity, venture capital and real estate. He directly manages a portfolio of over 20 venture investments ranging across Internet technology, aerospace, digital marketing and retail platforms, Alzheimer’s drug discovery, cognitive health, medical diagnostics, security and cryptography, 3D printing, virtual reality media platforms, independent film impact investments, and consumer products.
David serves as a director of Dolby Laboratories and is a member of the technology strategy committee focused on long-term growth opportunities. David is also a director of Cogstate Limited, where he serves on the audit, nominating and governance, and compensation committees. David is also the CFO of the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund, supporting a variety of not-for-profit initiatives in academic and research institutions, and other social impact sectors. David serves as a board member of Tipping Point focused on addressing root causes of poverty in the Bay Area.
David has a BSE in Civil Engineering from Duke University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. David has studied overseas in Salamanca, Spain; Oxford, England; and Erlangen, Germany. David completed a year-long program at the Philanthropy Workshop West with a focus on impact investing. David has been a guest speaker at the Milken Global Conference and various impact investment and philanthropy conferences. David participates regularly in public company directors’ programs, including Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance and Harvard Business School.
David is committed to honoring Ray Dolby’s values, his belief in supporting highly innovative cultures, and in furthering the impact of his outstanding legacy.
Pascal Levensohn
Senior Managing Director
Pascal joined Dolby Family Ventures, L.P. in 2014 after advising the Dolby family on its direct technology investment portfolio since 2012. He is the founder and Managing Partner of Levensohn Venture Partners LLC (LVP) and the CEO of Levensohn Global LLC (LG). Pascal has over 42 years of business experience: 40 years as a professional investor and fund manager and 28 years of experience as a venture capitalist. With his partners at Dolby Family Ventures, Pascal currently manages over 80 early stage portfolio company investments in sectors ranging from Augmented Reality and Aerospace to Materials Sciences and Biotech.
Through LG, Pascal advises a select group of multi-generational family offices on governance, direct technology investments, and philanthropy.
He is currently the Chairman of the Board of SoundThinking, Inc. (NASDAQ:SSTI), Chairman of the board of NativeWaves GmbH (Salzburg, Austria), a director of Integral Reality Systems, Inc., and a director of Cure Network Dolby Acceleration Partners LLC (CNDAP). He is a formal board observer of Okapi:Orbits (Germany), Salvia BioElectronics (Netherlands), and Strateos (Silicon Valley).
He has served as board chairman, audit committee chairman, compensation committee chairman, and board secretary for venture-backed companies since 1996 and first served as a public company director in 1993. An expert on corporate governance, since 1999 he has published three widely read white papers on this topic.
Pascal is a former director of the National Venture Capital Association (2007-2011). He was a faculty member of the Kauffman Fellows Program Center for Venture Education (2006-2020) teaching the Corporate Governance module. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Trustee of the American Academy in Berlin.
Pascal holds an AB in Government, cum laude, from Harvard University. He is a former co-chairman of the Socrates Society Forum of the Aspen Institute (2007-2009), and a former Chairman of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation’s Business Leadership Council (2007-2008).
Andrew Krowne
Managing Director
Andrew joined Dolby Family Ventures in 2014 and currently serves as a managing director where he helps lead technology investments across a range of portfolios. Andrew is a board director of Phase Four, TripleBlind and H2U and a board observer of DiamondAge. His previous board roles include Discover Echo (acquired by Cellink), Roviero and Plethora. He is a Kauffman Fellow, Class 22.
Prior to Dolby Family Ventures, Andrew earned an MBA at the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley, where he graduated with honors and was the recipient of the inaugural Investment Management Fellowship and the CFA Merit Award, as well as being a Consortium Fellow. He has served as a Mentor in the Investment Fellowship Program since 2016.
Andrew spent five years in investment banking at Barclays Capital, Merrill Lynch and RBS, where he was a Vice President in the Technology, Telecom & Media group focused on the capital markets. Andrew began his career in the Valuation Advisory Practice of Ernst & Young.
Andrew has a BS degree from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, with a double-concentration in Finance and Accounting.
Sourav Kole, PhD
Managing Director
Sourav joined Dolby Family Ventures as Managing Director of Life Sciences in 2022, where he invests in early-stage neuro companies with particular focus on Alzheimer’s Disease and broadly neurodegeneration, clinical depression and broadly psychiatry, and neurotech. Sourav is a board director of MindImmune Therapeutics and Reservoir Neuroscience and a board observer of Libra Therapeutics, Neurotherapia, Paros Bio, Quralis, and Therini.
Prior to Dolby Family Ventures, Sourav was at Verily (fka Google Life Sciences) as the business lead for programs and partnerships for a wide-range of next-generation technologies at the convergence of life sciences and data science. This includes programs with Allergan, the Broad Institute, Gilead, Procter & Gamble, Verb Surgical (acquired by Johnson & Johnson) and Verily’s efforts towards the opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic (helping to test 2M+ people between March to July 2020).
Prior to Verily, Sourav was at Varian (previously, NYSE: VAR), where he enabled the strategic transformation of the company. At Varian, Sourav created corporate strategy, executed towards that strategy via $2B of M&A, partnerships, and equity investments, cofounded a venture capital arm, grew the ~$250M China business while working in China, and led the rollup of interventional oncology assets to create a new business unit. Varian was acquired by Siemens Healthineers for $16.4B.
Prior to Varian, Sourav built, consulted for, and invested in a number of early-stage healthcare companies. Successful exits across his investing experiences include Arterys (acquired by Tempus), Fusion Pharma (NASDAQ: FUSN), Grail (acquired by Illumina), Health Catalyst (NASDAQ: HCAT), Instructure (NYSE: INST), Lineagen (acquired by Bionano Genomics), Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT), Zebra Medical (acquired by Nanox).
Sourav started his career as an entrepreneur by cofounding Xenocor, which commercializes single-use, small footprint laparoscopy enabling widespread access to minimally invasive surgery. By training, Sourav has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah, where he was a Lassonde Scholar. His doctoral research focused on developing imaging biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases, specifically Alzheimer’s Disease. Sourav has BS in Biomedical Engineering with a specialization in Electrical Engineering from Penn State.
Lin Ning, PhD
Senior Associate
Lin joined Dolby Family Ventures in 2023 as a Senior Associate, where she supports the life science portfolio and invests in early-stage neuro companies. Her areas of interest include neurodegeneration, mental health, and neurotech.
Prior to Dolby Family Ventures, she was a Venture Partner at Valkyrie Fund, where she played a key role in building the biotech portfolio. Her main responsibility was to identify visionary founders and companies working at the forefront of digital biology. She led investments in companies such as Meliora Therapeutics and Cache DNA.
Lin is also the founder of Vysta Bio, a research service company that advises investors and early-stage companies across the biotech industry. She has consulted for various roles, including company formation with Humboldt Fund, pipeline strategy with Spring Discovery, and product development with Aromyx.
Lin was trained as a scientist with over 15 years of experience in neurobiology and bioengineering. As a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, Lin developed a series of protein tools for non-invasive imaging, which have been employed for in vivo pharmacological screening. One of the compounds developed via this platform, a protease inhibitor that targets SARS-CoV2 infection, is currently undergoing preclinical animal studies. As a graduate student, Lin studied how neurons and microglia communicate with each other and how their interactions impact memory formation and cognitive decline.
Lin received a PhD in Neuroscience from University of Helsinki, Finland, and is an alumnus of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Ignite Program in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Usua U. Amanam, PhD
Associate
Usua joined Dolby Family Ventures in 2023 as an Associate, where he supports the technology portfolio and the firm’s climate efforts. Prior to Dolby Family Ventures, Usua was an Investment Associate at NGP Energy Capital Management. He focused on deal analysis, sourcing, market research, and portfolio company monitoring for the firm’s energy transition funds.
Usua started his career as a management consultant in the energy industry at PowerAdvocate (now part of Wood Mackenzie), where he was a Director. His primary engagements focused on helping utility clients successfully navigate the capital project life cycle, both through strategy development and execution.
Usua has a PhD in Energy Resources Engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Siebel Scholar. His doctoral research focused on three main areas aimed at hydrocarbon alteration in the subsurface: chemical kinetics, the effects of nanocatalysts on reaction products, and nanoparticle transport through porous media. Usua completed his BS and MS in the Energy Science & Engineering (fka Energy Resources Engineering) department at Stanford University and was a member of the school’s football team.
Clayton Hess
Controller
Clayton joined Dolby Family Ventures in 2023 and currently serves as the organization’s Controller, overseeing accounting, finance operations, and financial reporting. Prior to Dolby Family Ventures, Clayton spent five years at Standish Management, where he provided fund administration services to multiple venture and private equity funds. Clayton served in the US Air Force from 2014 – 2017, where he was an executive aide to a general officer overseas. Clayton has a BA degree in Finance from the University of Washington.
Alona Cochran
Office Manager & Executive Assistant
Alona began working with Dolby Family Ventures in 2014 while working for Levensohn Venture Partners, which she joined back in 2006. Prior to that, Alona worked at J.P. Morgan as an Executive Assistant in the Technology, Media, and Telecom Investment Banking group. Her experience at J.P Morgan includes three years of client entertainment and event planning. She has also worked as an executive assistant at ThinkEquity Partners, Pacific Crest Securities, and OffRoad Capital. Alona has a BS in Business Administration from the University of San Francisco.
Parasto Shamlou
Executive Assistant
Parasto joined Dolby Family Ventures in 2024. Prior to that, She worked at a venture capital firm supporting the Founder, Managing Partner, Chief Operations Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Parasto is a seasoned Executive Assistant, with over 10 years of experience working in the technology and startup space, supporting cross-functional executives in fintech. She also serves on the Board of Directors for RegisterHer. Parasto holds a BA in Psychology from San Francisco State University.