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Dr. Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, which awarded the $10,000,000 Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight. Diamandis is focused on building the X PRIZE Foundation into a world-class prize institute. The X PRIZE is now developing X PRIZEs in Genomics, Automotive, Education, Medicine, Energy, and Social fields. He is also an international leader in the commercial space arena, having founded and run many of the sector's leading entrepreneurial companies. Diamandis serves as the CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation, a commercial space company developing private, FAA-certified parabolic flights utilizing Boeing 727-200 aircraft. In addition, he is the chairman and co-founder of the Rocket Racing League. Diamandis is a co-founder and director of Space Adventures, the company that brokered the launches of four private citizens to the International Space Station. In 1987, Diamandis co-founded the International Space University (ISU), where he served as the University's first managing director. Today he is a trustee of the $30M ISU, based in Strasbourg, France. Prior to ISU, Diamandis was chairman of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), an organization he founded while earning his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics and graduate degree in aerospace engineering at MIT in 1980. SEDS is the world's largest student pro-space organization. After MIT he attended Harvard Medical School, where he received his M.D. In 2005 he has was also awarded an honorary Doctorate from the International Space University. Diamandis is the winner of the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Innovation, the 2006 (inaugural) Heinlein Award, the 2006 Lindbergh Award, the 2006 Wired RAVE Award, the 2006 Neil Armstrong Award for Aerospace Achievement and Leadership, the Konstantine Tsiolkovsky Award, twice the winner of the Aviation & Space Technology Laurel, and the 2003 Worl
Jeffrey Housenbold is President & CEO of Shutterfly, Inc., an internet-based social expression and personal publishing service. Shutterfly provides a full range of products and services that enable consumers to manage their digital photographs. Housenbold has a successful track record of building online consumer franchises by combining commerce and community. In June 2006, he received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Retail and Consumer Products category for the Northern California region. Previously, Housenbold was Vice President of Business Development & Internet Marketing at eBay, where he managed customer acquisition and retention. At eBay he also held positions as Vice President & General Manager of its Business-to-Consumer Group and Vice President of Mergers and Acquisitions. Formerly, he held senior management positions with AltaVista, including Vice President & General Manager, and was the Chief Operating Officer of Raging Bull, the community finance portal. He also served as Vice President of Corporate Development at WinStar Communications and as Manager and Founder of Accenture's Media & Entertainment Strategy Group. Housenbold completed his undergraduate degree with High Honors at Carnegie Mellon University in Economics and Business Administration and was also a Presidential Scholar. He went on to earn his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Dean's Fellow. Housenbold is the co-author of The Shutterfly Guide to Great Digital Photos, an instructional book published by McGraw-Hill on the essentials of digital photography and managing images. He is an avid photographer with his Canon 30D.
David Rothkopf, CEO of Garten Rothkopf and author of <em>Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making</em>, mulls over the research in his latest social macroeconomic tome. He iterates a wealth of trends and statistics on the ever-broadening gap between rich and poor, and how true global influence is the product of a shockingly small handful of global players.
Ken Wilcox is president and CEO of SVB Financial Group. Since January 2000, when he took on the role, Wilcox has successfully pursued a strategy of expansion and diversification, while remaining focused on the company's core niches of technology, life sciences, private equity and premium wineries. Wilcox joined Silicon Valley Bank in 1990 when he co-founded the company's East Coast Technology Division. In this role, Wilcox managed the first regional office of Silicon Valley Bank and was responsible for all lending activity east of the Mississippi River. Upon promotion to chief banking officer in 1997, Wilcox moved from Massachusetts to California and became president and CEO within four years. Prior to joining Silicon Valley Bank, Wilcox spent two years as a member of the Technology Lending Group with the Bank of New England and five years at Shawmut Bank in Boston. Prior to his banking career, Wilcox was a professor of German at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wilcox received a bachelor's degree in German studies from Oakland University and a Ph.D. in German Studies from The Ohio State University. He also earned a master's of business administration from Harvard Business School. Wilcox is a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
Prior to joining B Lab, Kassoy spent 16 years in the private equity business, most recently as a partner at MSD Real Estate Capital, an affiliate of MSD Capital, the $12 billion investment vehicle for Michael Dell. Kassoy is dedicated to growing innovative for-profit and non-profit models for social change. He is a board member of Working Today and the Freelancers Union, which provide affordable health insurance and other financial services to independent workers in thirty-two states. He also sits on the boards of Echoing Green, Wall St. Without Walls, and acts as an advisor to Civic Builders. Andrew was raised in Boulder, Colorado and graduated with distinction from Stanford University, where he was a Truman Scholar and President's Award winner. In 2001, he was named a Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute. Kassoy has also been active in Colorado politics, and he has served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Kamy Wicoff, a writer, and he has two young sons.
Mir Imran founded InCube Laboratories in 1995 to focus on his passion: creating medical device solutions that change the standard of care in critical healthcare markets. Mir began his career as a med-tech entrepreneur in the late 1970's. Over the decades, he has become one of the world's most successful inventors, entrepreneurs and investors in healthcare. Mir now holds more than 200 issued patents - and is perhaps most well known for his pioneering contributions to the first FDA-approved Automatic Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator. Mir's current crop of inventions includes advanced treatments for neural aneurysms, epilepsy, ulcerative colitis, obesity and chronic pain, among others. Most of these will enter clinical trials in the 2008 to 2010 timeframe. As an entrepreneur, Mir has founded over 20 medical device companies, including: Vidamed (acquired by Medtronic), Physiometrix, Cardiac Pathways, Advanced Cytomextrix (acquired by Oncotech 1997), Percusurge (acquired by Medtronic 2001), Reflow, Inc. (acquired 1999), Safeview (acquired by L3 2006) Intrapace (founded 2001), Spinal Modulation (founded 2005) and Zonare (founded 1999). As an investor, Mir serves as the Life Science Venture Partner for DFJ ePlanet, where he has led 9 investments in a range of promising ventures around the globe. Mir is also an active angel investor, with a portfolio based around both medical and pharmaceutical ventures. Mir currently holds board seats with Bodymedia, Cardiovasc, Intrapace, Egeen International, Spinal Modulation, ZARS and Zonare. Mir holds an MS in Bio-Engineering and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers, where he spent three years as a Research Specialist.
Brett Crosby is the Group Product Marketing Manager of Google Analytics. He has been shaping the Web Analytics industry for ten years as the co-founder of Urchin Software Corporation and more recently as a senior product leader at Google. He is currently responsible for product positioning, feature roadmap development and all external product communications. Brett holds a degree from USC in Political Science and International Relations.
Christine has been President of Humane Society Silicon Valley for the past 13 years. During her tenure, Christine has led a progressive spay/neuter program that has dramatically reduced the number of incoming animals to the shelter from 45,000 in 1993 to approximately 9,000 in 2006. Under her leadership, the shelter instituted a spay/neuter at adoption policy, pediatric spay/neuter, an affordable spay/neuter vaccination clinic, and encouraged local municipalities to offer discounted spay/neuter voucher programs. Christine has also instituted policies that have substantially increased the number of animals adopted. Today, 99 percent of the animals available for adoption find new homes; ten years ago, less than 15 percent found new homes. Under Christine's management, the Humane Society's volunteer base increased from 50 to more than 700, and the shelter's donor base increased from 300 to 30,000 donors. In addition to her passion for animals, Christine has a strong business background, having spent four years as an auditor with Arthur Andersen & Co. and 15 years with Hewlett Packard Corporation. At HP, Christine held several managerial positions both domestically and in Europe. Christine is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University. She serves as a board member of the State Humane Association of California and is a volunteer consultant to various nonprofit boards. In 1989, Business Month magazine named Christine to its list of "100 Women to Watch in Corporate America." Christine owns four dogs, all of which were adopted from Humane Society Silicon Valley.
Jesse Fink is a founding partner of MissionPoint Capital and President and CEO of Marshall Street Management. In 2004, MSM established MSM Capital Partners to manage its investment activities in the clean technology and environmental finance sectors. Jesse was the COO of Walker Digital Inc. and Priceline.com and previously worked at Georgia-Pacific, Citicorp, and CUC International. Jesse received a B.S. in Resource Management from the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an MBA from Syracuse University's School of Management. In February of 2007, Jesse received the Cleantech Venture Network's "Leader of the Year" award.
Mike Maples, Jr. is the managing partner of Maples Investments, and is an entrepreneur in his own right. Before becoming a full-time investor, he worked in a variety of executive and management roles in high-growth companies. His background spans a variety of markets including consumer technology, small business, and the enterprise, and he has served in various executive roles in product development, marketing, and corporate strategy. Mike began his technology career in high school, when he started a software company that developed games and educational products for the original IBM PC. He has been passionate about the technology industry ever since. Most recently, Mike co-founded Motive, Inc., the world's leading broadband software company in 1997 and played key roles in its growth from raw start-up through sales of $100 million. Motive was one of the only successful technology IPOs in 2004, and the most successful infrastructure software IPO for the prior three years. At Motive, Mike was General Manager of Motive's Corporate Business Unit, as well as Chief Marketing and Strategy officer. Prior to Motive, Mike was responsible for worldwide product marketing at Tivoli Systems, where he managed the company's product portfolio from its early-stage development through its 1995 IPO and growth to a $750M line of business within the IBM Software Group. Mike began his professional career at Silicon Graphics, where he served in business development and product marketing roles. In his spare time Mike is an amateur artist, movie-maker, and calligrapher. He holds an Engineering degree from Stanford University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a guest-lecturer on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, Stanford University, Princeton University, and the University of Texas.
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