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By partnering with Vietnamese craftswomen, Jennifer Woodsmall is growing a business that gives back.
Trip Hawkins is Chairman and CEO of Digital Chocolate, a creator of innovative mobile phone applications for life, work, and play. Trip is responsible for the strategic focus, overall direction, and performance of the company. Trip has been a new media pioneer for 30 years. Early in his career, Trip played a key role in defining the personal computer at Apple. He went on to found Electronic Arts and built the company into the industry leader. Trip also founded 3DO, a pioneer in digital video, network gaming, and social communities. The author of three patents, Trip introduced the use of celebrities and athletes in video games, and his design credits include award-winning best-sellers such as John Madden Football, Army Men, M.U.L.E., Doctor J and Larry Bird Go One on One, and High Heat Baseball . Trip received an MBA from Stanford University and developed his own major at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Strategy and Applied Game Theory. He was also the first business executive to be inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.
Brook Byers has been a venture capital investor since 1972. He has been closely involved with more than forty new technology based ventures, over half of which have already become public companies. He formed the first Life Sciences practice group in the venture capital profession in 1984 and led KPCB to become a premier venture capital firm in the medical, healthcare, and biotechnology sectors. KPCB has invested in and helped build over 90 Life Sciences companies which are developing hundreds of products to treat major underserved medical needs representing huge markets in the nearly two trillion dollar healthcare sector. Brook was the founding President and then Chairman of four biotechnology companies which were incubated in KPCB's offices and went on to become public companies with an aggregate market value over $8 Billion. He is currently on the Board of Directors of eight companies, most recently joining CardioDX, Genomic Health Incorporated, Five Prime Therapeutics, Nanofluidics and XDx, Inc.. He was formerly a Director of Idec Pharmaceuticals (Chairman), Athena Neurosciences (Chairman), Signal Pharmaceuticals, Arris Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacopeia, Ligand Pharmaceuticals (Chairman), Hybritech (Chairman), Genprobe, Nanogen, and others. These companies have pioneered the medical uses of molecular biology, monoclonal antibodies, molecular diagnostics and genomics. Brook was President and a Director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and is a contributing author to the book "Guide to Venture Capital". He is currently a Board member of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Foundation, the California Healthcare Institute, the New Schools Foundation, Stanford's Bio-X Advisory Council, the Stanford Eye Council and TechNet. He is Co-Chair of the current five year, $1.4 billion, UCSF Capital Campaign. He was formerly a Director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, t
Roger McNamee is a Managing Director and Co-Founder of Elevation Partners. Prior to Elevation, Roger was a co-founder of Silver Lake Partners, the leading private equity fund focused on technology and related growth industries. He was a member of Silver Lake's Investment Committee and was involved in all aspects of that partnership. Prior to Silver Lake, Roger was a co-founder of Integral Capital Partners. Integral is a leading technology investor in late-stage venture and public company investments. Founded in 1991 by Roger, John A. Powell, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Integral pioneered the crossover investment strategy, which seeks maximum capital appreciation by making investments in expansion-stage private companies and growth-stage public companies in the technology and life science industries. Prior to founding Integral, Roger managed the T. Rowe Price Science & Technology Fund and co-managed the T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund, which was at that time the largest emerging growth fund in the U.S. Roger serves as a trustee of Bryn Mawr College, an overseer of the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College, and a director of the Rex Foundation. Roger holds a B.A. from Yale College and an M.B.A. from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College.
If met thoughtfully and thoroughly, challenges faced by entrepreneurial companies in the life sciences can be turned into opportunities for significant economic gain and a lasting contribution to mankind.
Prior to Good Technology, Mr. Shader served as a Vice President and General Manager at Amazon.com, which he joined upon the company's acquisition of Accept.com, a company he co-founded and led as CEO. Accept.com was the first consumer-to-consumer, Internet-based, payment services provider. Mr. Shader's involvement in both Accept.com and Good Technology resulted from his two experiences as an entrepreneur-in-residence with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital. Previously, he served as Vice President of Partner and Developer Relations at Netscape Communications Corporation, where he also built Netscape's international marketing team. Before joining Netscape, he served as Vice President of OEM Sales and Business Development at Collabra Software, Inc., which Netscape acquired, and worked for GO Corporation, a pioneer in pen computing. Mr. Shader received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from University of California at Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.
Joe Liemandt has guided Trilogy's growth since the company's inception defining products and target markets, and building long-term relationships with customers. In 2000, he conceptualized Trilogy's current strategy of delivering 100% customer success through industry-specific offerings, which unlock transformational business value. Consistent with this strategy, Joe has pioneered innovative customer partnering arrangements, tied directly to delivering success: "If we don't help an automobile manufacturer improve their success rate when they're selling cars, they don't pay...if we and our customers are focused on delivering value for their business, then good things happen for both of us." (Newsweek, June, 2002) Joe's visionary leadership has differentiated Trilogy from its competitors. His industry-leading approach to customer success has been featured not just in Newsweek, but also Fortune Magazine, Harvard Business Review and on CNN. Joe has also innovated in the area of organization development and culture, recruiting and training a world- lass team through unorthodox approaches highlighted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Businessweek. Prior to founding Trilogy, Joe attended Stanford University, where he majored in Economics. Courtesy of http://www.trilogy.com/leadershipteam.html and http://www.fortune.com/fortune/ecorp/articles/0,15114,372913,00.html.
The founder of a retailer of telephone headsets advises adapting new technology if, and only if, it improves customer service.
Jeff Hawkins is the Founder of Numenta, but he is also well known as the co-founder of two companies, Palm and Handspring, and as the architect of many computing products, such as the PalmPilot and the Treo smartphone. Throughout his life Hawkins has also had a deep interest in neuroscience and theories of the neocortex. His interest in the brain led him to create the non-profit Redwood Neuroscience Institute (RNI), a scientific organization focused on understanding how the human neocortex processes information. While at RNI, Hawkins developed a theory of neocortex which appeared in his 2004 book, On Intelligence. Along with Dileep George and Donna Dubinsky, Hawkins founded Numenta in 2005 to develop a technology platform derived from his theory. It is his hope that Numenta will play a catalytic role in creating an industry based on this theory and technology. Jeff Hawkins earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1979. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003.
Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing and director of the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, speaks at Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leader lecture series.
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