PondLeap Announces Board of Advisors
Chicago, IL, Release: December 9, 2020. For Immediate Release
PondLeap today announced the creation of their Advisory Board. After opening their doors on July 4th, 2020, leaders James McGuinness, Jamie Weinstein McGuinness and Christina Sterzel began curating a team of mentors, leaders and subject matter experts in the fields of Employment Law, Sales & Marketing, Accounting, Finance and Investing.
This team was designed to further PondLeap’s mission to help professionals and companies grow in a cost-effective way while mitigating risk. With all of these great minds, there comes collaboration, idea sharing, and checks and balances that all startups need.
“We really value and appreciate all of the official and unofficial support, input and guidance” said James McGuinness, CEO of PondLeap. “We were excited about our Board of Advisors before our kickoff call and left the call absolutely stoked to be working with and learning from all of them.”
Here are the members of PondLeap’s Advisory Board:

Medha Patel
I am from Chicago and have recently moved to California to enjoy the beautiful sunshine. I graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor’s in Accounting and obtained my CPA license. I started my career as a tax accountant at a public accounting firm and then switched into account management for a couple of years. I now do some freelance consulting for various companies and really enjoy helping business owners solve their finance and accounting problems. In my spare time, if I’m not planning my next trip, I’m usually baking, reading or out for a bike ride.

Alex Weinstein
Alex is an attorney focusing on representing employers in all aspects of employment litigation and counseling, including, class and collective actions, general labor and employment issues, independent contractor issues, pay equity analysis and disputes, executive disputes, whistleblower claims, government contractor compliance, employee mobility disputes, and wage and hour litigation. His practice also includes representing clients in non-compete and trade secret matters, including counseling, drafting restrictive covenant agreements, negotiating resolutions of disputes and litigating restrictive covenant disputes. Alex has been selected as a Rising Star by Super Lawyers Magazine in 2017, 2019 and 2020. Alex was also selected for inclusion in the inaugural 2021 publication of Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch.

Scott Nelson
I am a dynamic, passionate & energetic leader with a proven track record of building, coaching and leading top sales teams in emerging, hyper-growth organizations. I have the unique experience of leading both an Inside & Field team and receive great satisfaction from growing and promoting people from within. I’ve generally worked in small start-up companies, but have also worked in large, publicly traded companies. Scott spent over 13 years at LinkedIn Directing multiple sales teams and growing their sales team from infancy.
Specialties include (but not limited to): SaaS, recruiting, building teams, territory planning, smiling and laughing

Haley Fitzsimmons
Haley Fitzsimmons holds over seven years of valuable transaction advisory and financial consulting experience across various industries including environmental services, healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, distribution, retail, and professional services with deal sizes ranging from $1 million to $1.5 billion. She has served private and public corporate, private equity, lender, and private individual clients across the USA, Ireland, the UK, and continental Europe.nnAs Vice President of Operations at iLeed Capital Management (“iLeed”), Haley offers her breadth of financial and operational expertise to portfolio companies, manages valuable external partner relationships, and acts as an internal accelerator to accomplish strategic goals. She also devotes herself to developing, vetting, and implementing new business concepts, with the goal of creating maximum value for various stakeholders. nnPrior to joining iLeed, Haley worked in transaction due diligence and corporate finance between RedRidge Diligence Services and Grant Thornton (both in Chicago, Illinois and Dublin, Ireland). She completed a multitude of buy-side and sell-side due diligence, independent business review, enterprise valuation and ad hoc financial consulting engagements for clients primarily positioned in the middle market. nnHaley holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in both Accounting and Finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin School of Business. She is a licensed CPA in Illinois and member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and Illinois CPA Society. She is also a Level I CFA candidate.
Contact info:
Name: Jamie Weinstein McGuinness
Organization: CRO – PondLeap
Phone: 847-527-7971