Debra Strougo
Debra is the Co-Founder of Row House and was the founding CEO from 2013 until her partnership with Xponential Fitness in late 2017 which grew the brand to 100 currently open studios and 200 more in the works. Debra currently owns and operates the Manhattan Row House locations and works with the corporate team on all strategic brand initiatives, business development best practices and on programming initiatives. She also sits on the Franchise Advisory Council and the Marketing Fund Committee to support and represent the franchisees who are in varying stages of growth. Row House has recently been ranked 1066 in the Inc.com 5000 list of quickly growing private companies.
In addition to her expertise developing Row House from scratch, Debra has played key roles in developing businesses from scratch. Prior to Row House, she created a million dollar plus annual business for NYC, focused on creating digital partnerships with the city's tourism facing assets. This work helped NYC achieve its annual tourism numbers; tourism is traditionally the city's second biggest economic stimulus. During this time she worked with city agencies and constituents, leveraging their assets, knowledge and know-how with that of private business of all sizes. These spanned from corporations like Red Bull, Jet Blue, Starwood Hotels, and more to smaller constituents with either multiple locations like BR Guest Restaurants or single location businesses like Empire State Building and American Museum of Natural History. Debra also worked extremely closely with Broadway, spearheading the creation of Broadway Week; as a follow-up to Restaurant Week; which has become a global program to solve need periods. Debra's 5 years at NYC & Company was pivotal to her career; giving her the network and know-how to succeed.
Prior to her time developing NYC & Company's digital partnerships, Debra wanted more than anything to find a way to bridge her business acumen with her passion for the fitness industry. As an avid fitness professional, teaching classes before and after her un-related career in digital publishing, she came to learn the industry inside and out. She taught classes for top brands in NYC and took on many consulting projects to learn more about the varying aspects of the fitness industry: from gyms to what was becoming boutiques, to infomercial projects, to at home videos, to health and wellness expos, to the certification side of the industry, Debra spent over 5 years taking on projects to determine how she could create a career in fitness that she loved.
Even after graduating college a few years prior, she was in digital publishing for small up and coming VC-backed companied. She was passionate about disruption and even know, continues to move through her career motivated to cut through the clutter, create differentiation and establish sustaining business in smart niches.
Dave Long
Throughout his career, Dave has been in on the ground floor of several successful brands, always blending his passion for fitness with his business acumen. As CEO and co-founder of Orangetheory Fitness, Dave has spearheaded rapid growth, opening more than 1,300 studios in 23 countries in the last 10 years. In 2018, he helped Orangetheory Fitness in exceeding $1 billion in systemwide revenues. That success follows on the heels of his work in senior sales/operations roles with Massage Envy, taking it from 20 to 800 stores; and building an area representative network at European Wax Center, which expanded to 550 locations in less than nine years. Zealously committed to nutrition and overall wellness, Dave is an extreme sports enthusiast who has a knack for biohacking. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Florida.
Daniel Shellard
Dan is cofounder and CEO of Fiit. Previous to Fiit he co-founded Qubit — a leading European SaaS business — in 2010 after successfully raising $76 million. As COO, he built a world class team and company culture, and advised hundreds of the world’s leading retailers including Net-a-porter, Emirates Airlines and Topshop. Today Qubit employees over 250 people across six countries. Prior to Fiit and Qubit, Dan was part of the early team at Google UK, where he spent over four years in sales, strategy and operations roles.
Recognised for his entrepreneurial achievements, Dan was listed as Bloomberg’s Business Innovators 2016 and Young Guns, Class of 2014 by startups.co.uk. A self-confessed sport and fitness nut, Dan played football for Team Bath, and can usually be found either training for his next ironman or relaxing on golf course.
Colin Waggett
Colin is CEO of Third Space, London’s luxury collection of health clubs. Third Space has 6 large scale clubs in central London and plans to grow significantly in the coming years. Colin has been in the health club industry for over 15 years, with experience spanning from 6 years as Global CEO of Fitness First growing that business to over 500 clubs in 20 countries, to two start ups in the boutique studio business.
Ben Kirby
Ben is Head of PE at retail and consumer sector specialist investor True. He sits on the investment committees for the True PE and Growth funds. He is a board member of True’s investee companies Frugi and Hush. Prior to True, Ben was an investor in the London team at BGF leading investments into both private and listed businesses including Gymbox where he was a board member. He has also worked within the private equity teams at Greenhill, Goldman Sachs and Octopus Ventures.
Asaf Avidan Antonir
Asaf is the Co-Founder and CEO of Onyx, a fitness platform that uses computer vision and AI to bring personalized, connected fitness to everyone. Prior to starting Onyx, he was a product manager and software engineer at LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Illumio, and completed his degree in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at UC Berkeley.
Onyx leverages mobile, on-device computer vision to track nearly any exercise, correct your form, and provide guided workouts tailored to your performance in real time. Our mission is to make truly personalized fitness accessible to anyone, and create the greatest connected fitness experience that doesn’t require additional hardware. Onyx launched in late 2019, has grown to hundreds of thousands of users, and was recently featured as Apple’s App of the Day in the United States.
Aly Orady
Aly Orady is the CEO and Founder of Tonal, the world's most intelligent fitness system and the first truly personalized approach to strength training. A 20-year silicon valley veteran, engineer and serial entrepreneur, Orady started his career at Hewlett-Packard’s Computer Systems Laboratory designing super-computers, followed by technical leadership roles at a series of startups, including Kealia, Inc. Armed with an M.S.E.E. from Stanford, and a B.Eng. from McMaster University, Orady founded Pano Logic, where he served as the company’s Chief Technology Officer and oversaw core technology development, architecture, and patents, as well as functional roles including product management, go-to-market planning, business development and manufacturing operations. Orady has leveraged his extensive product and technology background paired with his own fitness journey and 70 lb weight loss to invent Tonal. His goal is to help enable people to lead healthier lives by providing them with the technology, guidance and support to effectively reach their fitness goal.
Ali Aneizi
Ali is the founder of Tamweel Capital, a UK based M&A and Private Equity advisory boutique best known for representing some of the brightest Challenger Brands in the leisure sector.
He has spent the last 20 years providing sell-side, buy side and capital raising advice to shareholders, management teams and investors of health, fitness and wellness brands. Before Tamweel, Ali was a partner at RSM where he led their private equity practice and co-led their leisure and hospitality team. Some of his deals in the fitness sector include:
- advising the founders of Ten Health & Fitness, London’s leading Pilates and Physiotherapy provider, in an equity raise backed by Foresight
- advising the founders of Frame, London’s leading boutique fitness brand and operator, in an equityraise backed by Piper
- advising Gymbox, London’s leading gym brand, in a sale and refinancing backed by BGF and HSBC
- advising Gymbox in a mezzanine raise backed by the Octopus Capital for Enterprise Fund
- advising Gymbox in an equity raised backed by Hotbed
- advising the management team of Gymbox in their buy out from Fitness First
Alexandra Zatarain
Alexandra Zatarain is the Co-founder and Head of Brand of Eight Sleep, the world's first sleep fitness company. Eight Sleep has raised over $65M in venture funding and has helped over 30,000 people get sleep fit with its hardware and digital products. In 2017, Alexandra was named by Forbes to the 30 Under 30 list in Consumer Technology, and was also recognized by New York Business Journal as a Woman of Influence. In 2019 she was a finalist for Booking.com Technology Playmaker of the Year Awards. Alexandra is also an angel investor in female founded companies as a scout for Cleo Capital. She was raised in Tijuana, Mexico and now lives in New York City.
