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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.
As General Manager of Electronic Arts Redwood Shores Studio, Nick Earl is responsible for the management of EA's Redwood Shores and Maxis studio operations. This includes overseeing programming, artwork, audio, research and development, quality assurance and strategy for top EA GAMES franchises as well as EA SPORTS franchises including: The Godfather, The Lord of The Rings, James Bond, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR, and the highly- acclaimed Sims franchise, as well as new titles under development. Prior to his current position, Nick was Chief Operating Officer of the Redwood Shores Studio, responsible for day-to-day operations of the studio at corporate headquarters. Among other games, Nick produced the first Army Men games on PC and PlayStation. He holds a B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Chris Larsen is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Prosper. For over a decade Chris Larsen has focused on using the Internet to make consumer lending more efficient, fair, honest, open, and trustworthy. Prior to Prosper, Mr. Larsen co-founded and served as Chairman and CEO of E-LOAN. Under Mr. Larsen's leadership, E-LOAN closed over $27 billion in consumer loans, and was consistently ranked as one of the nation's most trusted consumer brands. E-LOAN earned consumers' trust by taking radically pro-consumer actions such as being the first company to provide consumers with access to their credit scores, and playing a critical role in the passage of the strongest consumer financial privacy protection law in the nation. Mr. Larsen led E-LOAN through a successful IPO in 1999, and oversaw the company's acquisition by Popular, Inc. in 2005. Mr. Larsen holds an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University and a B.S. degree from San Francisco State University, where he was named the 2004 Alumnus of the Year.
Joe McCracken is Vice President of Business Development at Genentech, Inc. In this role, McCracken is responsible for all business development activities at the company, including the identification and negotiation of collaboration and licensing agreements with academic institutions, biotechnology companies and pharmaceutical companies throughout the world. After a seven-year absence, McCracken rejoined Genentech in 2000 as Vice President of Business Development. During his earlier time with Genentech, McCracken served in many capacities, culminating in positions as Director of Business Development and Representative Director of Genentech Ltd., Genentech's wholly owned subsidiary in Japan. McCracken has more than 19 years of experience in technical, business development and market development roles with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. He has also served as Vice President of Technology Licensing and Alliances at Aventis, and Vice President of Worldwide Business and Technology Development at Rhone-Poulenc Rorer S.A.
Rick Wallace was appointed chief executive officer of KLA-Tencor Corporation on January 1, 2006. Wallace brings 17 years of experience at KLA-Tencor to his current role, and has held a variety of senior management positions at KLA-Tencor. These include president and chief operating officer, executive vice president, overseeing the company's Reticle and Photomask Inspection Division, Films and Surface Technology Division, CTO Software and Customer Groups, and executive vice president of KLA-Tencor's Wafer Inspection Group. He also served at KLA-Tencor as group vice president for the Lithography Control Group, as well as vice president/general manager and vice president of marketing for the Wafer Inspection Division. He joined KLA-Tencor in 1988 as an applications engineer.
Marissa leads the product management efforts on Google's search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google's first female engineer and led the user interface and webserver teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google's search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. In her spare time, Marissa also organizes Google Movies- outings a few times a year to see the latest blockbusters- for 6,000+ people (employees plus family members and friends). Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford to over 3,000 students. Stanford has recognized her with the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award for her outstanding contribution to undergraduate education. Prior to joining Google, Marissa worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Graduating with honors, Marissa received her BS in Symbolic Systems and her MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence. Courtesy of Google, Bart Nagel
Ryan Phelan started DNA Direct in 2003 as a company that provides direct-to-consumer genetic testing and related consumer oriented genomic services. Phelan has been a strong consumer health advocate for the past 25 years, having started the first medical library for consumers in 1978. As Founding Director of Planetree, a nonprofit consumer health care organization, she helped create a national model for humanizing hospitals and a national model for providing health information to the public, the Planetree Resource Center. In 1995 she founded Direct Medical Knowledge (DMK). DMK was an extensive consumer health web site highly regarded for its unique content depth and innovative search interface. DMK developed proprietary software that enabled users to drill down through the most current medical literature and retrieve personalized health and medical information. As CEO of DMK, Ms. Phelan forged alliances with major medical institutions, national health care plans, publishers, and consumer groups. In 1999 Direct Medical Knowledge was acquired by WebMD, and DMK's content became the backbone of WebMD's consumer health site. Phelan is also a co-founder of the ALL Species Foundation, a global science initiative to discover all life on Earth in the next 25 years. In 2002, Phelan served as CEO for the ALL Species Foundation and continues her involvement today by serving on the Governing Board of Directors. She graduated from UC Berkeley. Courtesy of Strategic News Service, SF Chronicle
As a general partner at MDV, Michael Goldberg leverages valuable entrepreneur and investor experience from his more than 25 years of work in the life sciences industry including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, health services and healthcare information technology. In addition to pursuing life sciences investments for MDV he works to extend the firm's reach into major universities and research centers. Prior to joining MDV Michael was Managing Director of Jasper Capital and Co-chair of the California Research and Cures Coalition ($3 billion Prop 71 stem cell campaign). He has also held senior management and operations roles including serving as Chairman of OnCare, an oncology practice management company he founded in 1995. Until 1999 he also served as OnCare's Chief Executive Officer, where he guided revenue growth to $100 million in three years. Previously, Michael was Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Axion Inc., a cancer-focused healthcare service company he started in 1987 and sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1996. Axion ranked number four on Inc. Magazine's list of the 500 fastest growing private companies in America for the five years ended 1994. Michael was also a recipient of Inc. Magazine's 1995 Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Prior to his tenure with Axion, Michael was a partner in the venture capital firm Sevin Rosen Funds, where he was responsible for the firm's investments in the biomedical industry. Michael received a B.A. from Brandeis University and an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Chong-Moon Lee founded Diamond Multimedia Systems in 1982, which later achieved the No. 1 ranking in revenue and market share for PC graphics accelerator products. As the sole founder, it took 13 years of struggles to take the company to its successful IPO in early 1995. In 1996 he started another high technology venture company under the name of AmBex Venture Group. Since then, active investments have been made in the areas of wireless communication, voice over IP applications, Internet infrastructures, network security, and multimedia applications. A native of South Korea, Lee has a diverse background involving not only business but also education, cultural, and athletic activities. Currently, Lee serves as a trustee, commissioner, and executive board member of The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and a trustee of The Asia Foundation among many others. He is also a founding board member of The Tech Museum of Innovation of San Jose. Lee holds honorary doctorate degrees from John F. Kennedy University, Seton Hall University, University of Seoul, and Chung Ang University, MS in Library Science from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, and law degree from Chung Ang University, Seoul. Courtesy of Ambex Ventures
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