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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.
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.
Vinod grew up dreaming of being an entrepreneur. He was raised in an Indian Army household with no business or technology connections. When, at age 16, he first heard about Intel, he dreamt of starting his own technology company. Upon graduating with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, he tried to start a soy milk company to service the many people in India who did not have refrigerators. He then came to the US and got his Masters in Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University. His startup dreams attracted him to Silicon Valley where he got an MBA at Stanford University in 1980. In 1982, Khosla started Sun Microsystems to build workstations for software developers. At Sun he pioneered "open systems" and RISC processors. Sun was funded by long time friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In 1986 he switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins where he was a general partner. There, he worked with Nexgen/AMD, Juniper, Excite, and many other ventures. In 2004, Khosla formed Khosla Ventures. Khosla Ventures offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. The firm helps entrepreneurs extend the potential of their ideas in both traditional venture areas like the Internet, computing, mobile, and silicon technology arenas but also supports breakthrough scientific work in clean technology areas such as bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, battery and other environmentally friendly technologies.
Kavita N. Ramdas has won numerous awards for her vision and advancement of an inclusive philanthropy in which donors and grantees are treated as equal partners. In 2005, Kavita received the Juliette Gordon Low Award for her significant contributions to advancing women's human rights and for being exemplary role model for girls and women. In 2004, Financial Women's Association named Kavita Woman of the Year for the Public Sector; and Women and Philanthropy gave her the LEAD (Leadership for Equity and Diversity) Award for her championship and commitment to funding the global human rights of women and girls. KQED public television recognized her as a 2004 Bay Area Local Hero. She serves on the Board of Trustees of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, and the Board of Directors of the Rural Development Institute, Washington state. She is a member of the Advisory Council to the Ethical Globalization Initiative, a venture of Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She also serves on the Council of Advisors on Gender Equity to the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and the Women's Rights Prize of the Gruber Foundation. Before joining the Global Fund, Kavita supported both domestic and international initiatives in economic development and population as a program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. She earned a master's degree in international development and public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a BA at Mount Holyoke College. Kavita was born and raised in India, and speaks Urdu, Hindi, English, German, French and Spanish.
David Neeleman is Chairman and CEO of JetBlue Airways Corporation. JetBlue, which began operations in 2000, serves 23 U.S. cities with 57 new Airbus A320 aircraft. JetBlue is Neeleman's third successful launch in the aviation business, His goal is to bring people back to air travel by offering low fares, friendly service and a high quality product. JetBlue was rated "Best Domestic Airline" at Conde Nast Traveler's 2003 Readers' Choice Awards for the second consecutive year, and was runner-up for "Best Domestic Airline" at Travel & Leisure magazine's 2002 and 2003 World's Best Awards. Neeleman's career in the airline industry began in 1984 when he co-founded Morris Air. As president of Morris Air, he implemented the industry's first electronic ticketing system and pioneered a home reservationist system that is now the foundation of JetBlue's call center. Neeleman sold Morris Air and took the electronic ticketing to Open Skies. He sold Open Skies to Hewlett Packard in 1999. During this period, Neeleman acted as a consultant to WestJet Airlines, a successful Canadian low-fare start-up airline.
Guy Kawasaki is a founder and Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures. Prior to this position, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. and sits on the board of BitPass Inc. A noted speaker and the founder of various personal computer companies, Guy was one of the individuals responsible for the success of the Macintosh computer. He is also the author of eight books including Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Guy holds a B.A. from Stanford University and a M.B.A. from UCLA, as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
SpaceX is the third company founded by Mr. Musk. Prior to SpaceX, he co-founded PayPal, the world's leading electronic payment system, and served as the company's chairman and CEO. PayPal has over twenty million customers in 38 countries, processes several billion dollars per year and went public on the NASDAQ under PYPL in early 2002. Mr. Musk was the largest shareholder of PayPal until the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002. Before PayPal, Mr. Musk co-founded Zip2 Corporation in 1995, a leading provider of enterprise software and services to the media industry, with investments from The New York Times Company, Knight-Ridder, MDV, Softbank and the Hearst Corporation. He served as Chairman, CEO and Chief Technology Officer and in March 1999 sold Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million in an all cash transaction. Mr. Musk's early experience extends across a spectrum of advanced technology industries, from high energy density ultra-capacitors at Pinnacle Research to software development at Rocket Science and Microsoft. He has a physics degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a business degree from Wharton and originally came out to California to pursue graduate studies in high energy density capacitor physics & materials science at Stanford.
Danish-born David Heinemeier Hansson is the programmer and creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki. He is also a partner at the Web-based software development firm 37signals, based in Chicago. Ruby on Rails provides a "basic development environment" for programmers, according to Wikipedia.org. Based on the programming language Ruby (developed by Japanese programmer Yukihiro Matsumoto in 1995), Ruby on Rails focuses on user interface and "convention over configuration"; meaning, developers can focus on the unique qualities of their Web site or program rather than the building blocks that every application may require. Released in 2004, Ruby on Rails has been incorporated into many applications used by some of the biggest companies, from Twitter to Apple's 2007 release of Mac OS X v.10.5 "Leopard." Aside from his development of Ruby on Rails, Heinemeier Hansson also works as a partner for Web-based software development firm 37signals. Joining the company in 2003, he has helped develop Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack and other Web-based applications. Working in similar ways like Web-based e-mail services like Yahoo! e-mail and Google's Gmail, 37signals hosts a broad range of IT services for companies, including project management to information-sharing. The firm's software has been used by Kellogg's, Sun Microsystems and even Obama '08. Hansson received his bachelor's degree from the Copenhagen Business School in 2005. In that same year, he moved to Chicago and received Hacker of the Year honors for his work on Ruby on Rails from Google and O'Reilly Media. He runs a blog called LoudThinking.com.
Robin Li is the Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Baidu, Inc., and oversees the company's overall strategy and business operations. Since founding Baidu in January 2000, Li has turned the company into the largest Chinese search engine, with over 70% market share, and the third largest independent search engine in the world. In 2005, Baidu completed its successful IPO on NASDAQ, and in 2007 it became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 Index. Prior to Baidu, Li was already regarded as one of the world's top search engine experts. His hyperlink analysis, patented in 1996, is among the inventions that shaped today's search engine technology. Li worked as a staff engineer for Infoseek, a pioneer Internet search engine company, from July 1997 to December 1999, and as a senior consultant for IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997. Robin Li received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Management from Peking University in 1991, and a Master of Science Degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1994.
Ann Winblad is the co-founding Partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. She is a well-known and respected software industry entrepreneur and technology leader. Her background and experience have been chronicled in many national business and trade publications. Ann has over 25 years of experience in the software industry. She began her career as a systems programmer at the Federal Reserve Bank. In 1976 Ann co-founded Open Systems, Inc., a top selling accounting software company, with a $500 investment. She operated Open Systems profitably for six years and then sold it for over $15 million. Prior to co-founding Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Ann served as a strategy consultant for prestigious clients such as IBM, Microsoft, Price Waterhouse, and numerous start-ups. In addition, Ann has co-authored the book Object-Oriented Software and has written articles for numerous publications. Ann received a BA in mathematics and in business administration, as well as an MA in education and international economics from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Ann also has an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of St. Thomas. Ann has served as a Director of start-up and public companies and currently serves as a director of Intacct, The Knot, Voltage Security, Krillion and Mulesource. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas and is an advisor to numerous entrepreneur groups.
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