We could not be more excited to announce that Alyssa Tsenter has joined the firm as a Senior Associate. Venture capital firms add to their investment teams infrequently, so each hire is important and deliberate with an extended interview process to assess capabilities, commitment, and all-around compatibility. While we will make a few hundred investment decisions together over the course of a fund, we might only make a handful of hiring decisions. Notwithstanding that, this one was easy as we continue to build our core investment team.
Alyssa earned her MBA from Harvard Business School this past spring, where she focused her course work on the healthcare industry. Prior to HBS, she spent nearly five years at ZS, a leading life sciences management consulting and technology firm. While there she worked on projects that would shorten R&D development timelines, elevate promising pharma assets, and rearchitect innovation processes. Her understanding and fluency of the life sciences sector underscores our increased focus on partnering with entrepreneurs to increase operating efficiencies across the entirety of the life sciences landscape. Alyssa also received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry with an emphasis in Chemical Biology from the University of Southern California.
After our first meeting with Alyssa, her passion and deep understanding of this sector’s many complexities and nuances were abundantly clear. Additionally, while in business school, Alyssa interned for a few venture capital firms and venture studios which sparked her interest in investing in technologies that will transform the healthcare and life sciences industry.
And what an endorsement to get an unsolicited note from a senior HBS faculty member when he learned of Alyssa’s joining the firm – “she was an absolutely terrific student…” Further confirmation of what we all thought.
Alyssa also has an adventurous side. Her parents emigrated as teenagers from the Soviet Union, which left an indelible impression on her. She graduated early from USC to travel the world teaching yoga in places like Thailand, Israel, Peru, and Panama.
Please welcome her to the Flare Capital team.
Other Firm Updates
A quick update on our Flare Scholars program and our pre-seed investment activities with Flare Scholar Ventures (FSV). Since inception, we now have 446 current or former Flare Scholars, who are passionate young professionals from many of our strategic limited partners and leading academic centers around the country. At the end of 2019, we announced the formation of FSV, whereby we earmarked up to 1.0% of our funds to support Flare Scholar-sponsored opportunities. To date, we have made 34 FSV investments, which collectively have raised a total of $147.0 million as compared to our initial investment of $3.6 million. Subsequent to our initial pre-seed investment, we have invested an additional $12.1 million in three of the FSV companies (Cascala Health, Ounce, Visana Health) as they continue to quickly scale.
We are excited to have recently co-led Cascala’s $8.6 million Seed round, marking the third time we have partnered with CEO and Co-Founder, Matt Murphy, himself a Flare Scholar from the great Class of 2017.
Importantly, we will kick off our recruiting efforts for the Class of 2026 Flare Scholars on September 8th and remain excited about the FSV program. Capital will always follow great talent and in this market, it will be great talent that wins.
And please join us for our next quarterly Expert Roundtable Series webinar on September 23, 2025, at noon ET. And subscribe here to follow other news and insights from Flare Capital Partners.
