A Global team

Founder & Managing Partner - Fuse Global

Darian Harris is a seasoned entrepreneur and growth strategist, passionate about helping startups scale through strategic investments and go-to-market acceleration. Before co-founding Connected Capital, Darian led Fuse Accelerator, where he worked with hundreds of startups to refine their sales, partnerships, and investor readiness.

His career includes time as a Merchant at Walmart, managing multi-billion-dollar product categories, and a strategic role at The Harvest Group, helping brands optimize their market positioning. With deep expertise in investment strategy and revenue acceleration, Darian ensures Connected Capital’s portfolio companies are positioned for high-growth and successful exits.

Past Leadership Roles: Fuse Accelerator, Walmart, The Harvest Group

Specialties: Startup Scaling, GTM strategy, Fundraising, Investor Relations

Founder & Managing Director - Fuse Global

Tom is a leading expert in identifying and implementing emerging technologies within the world’s largest enterprise. As the former Director of Emerging Technology at Walmart Tom assessed hundreds of technologies and companies annually giving him deep insight into how to successfully advance enterprise innovation and scale growth stage startups. Tom is now the founder of Catapult Consulting drawing on his experience and networks to help startups elevate their business with fractional C-level leadership, long and short-term strategy development, product market fit analysis and enterprise relationship management. He actively coaches startups across a variety of sectors including retail, supply chain, health, defense and government, cybersecurity and others drawing on his unique business acceleration program and extensive network. 

Past Leadership Roles: Walmart, Royal Ahold, Catapult Consulting

Specialties: Enterprise Readiness, M&A Strategy, GTM

Head of Comms - Fuse Global

Founder & CEO - Silvia Communications

Melissa is a successful and forward-thinking communication strategist with a broad and diverse background in communication strategy development and implementation. With extensive experience in independent consulting, executive brand management, internal communications, speechwriting, and high-performance team development, Melissa excels at crafting impactful strategies that drive organizational success.

Empathetic and collaborative, she brings a team-oriented approach to her work, leveraging her strong interpersonal skills to help leaders create dynamic and effective communication strategies. Melissa is dedicated to aligning messaging with business goals, ensuring cohesive communication across all levels of an organization.

As a key contributor to long-term organizational prosperity, she specializes in analyzing current communication strategies and developing a clear roadmap to guide future success, empowering organizations to strengthen their messaging and achieve their objectives.

Executive in Residence - Fuse Global

Founder @ CEO - Behr & Associates

Albert is a globally-recognized innovator and leader focused on technology commercialization. He led two companies to acquisitions by Microsoft and Symantec. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Behr has been in the technology industry for more than three decades. His experience spans high-level corporate development, strategic marketing, operational, engineering and financing roles across leading technology companies and startups around the world.

While based in the U.S. and Asia, Behr held executive leadership roles with technology giants such as AT&T, Fujitsu, and Symantec. While in Canada, he served as Chief Strategy Officer for BorderWare Technologies, COO of NRG Group, Senior VP for Platform Computing/IBM, and most recently CEO of BehrTech.

For the past 25 years, Behr has been at the helm of the technology commercialization and strategic partner consultancy he founded, advising more than 1,100 tech companies. During that time, he led numerous large-scale strategic partnerships, acquisitions, and funding efforts for some of the most promising IT, Clean Tech, SpaceTech, AgTech, Mobility and Medtech firms in North America and Europe. In early 2017, he began devoting time to speaking engagements around the globe and curriculum development for one of Canada’s top universities, where he is a professor in the faculty of engineering and teaches a course focused on entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology commercialization strategies.

Managing Director - Fuse Arizona

Brent is a seasoned professional with over two decades of experience in operations, sales, marketing, and client engagement. As a results-oriented leader, he thrives in building high-performing teams and leveraging a blend of coaching and empowering leadership styles.

Throughout his career, Brent has demonstrated a deep understanding of big data and its power to drive success. At Infogroup, now Data-Axle, he played a pivotal role in helping large retail brands leverage big data to achieve growth and enhance customer engagement. Brent spearheaded the strategic consolidation of 18 business units, streamlined processes, and utilized data insights to develop targeted and effective marketing campaigns. Brent was instrumental in the explosive growth of Salesgenie.com, a division of Infogroup.

Brent has a proven track record of delivering exceptional results across various industries. He has provided strategic thought leadership in marketing, data analytics, client engagement, and sales enablement to companies including LG, Molson Coors, AT&T, Allstate, American Express, Coca Cola, Regis Salons, and many more.

Beyond his professional accomplishments, Brent is driven by a desire to contribute to organizations making a meaningful impact on the world. He is actively involved in various community initiatives and serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations.