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Focused on the entrepreneurial world As the designated video channel for entrepreneurship, the e360TV Channel features content focused on important topics that are impacting the world of entrepreneurship as we know it.
Vincent Perlas is President of the LifeBank Foundation. Trained in agribusiness and public health, Vincent chose to dedicate his time exclusively to microfinance in 2005. After years of working in banking and agriculture in nonprofit and for-profit capacities, he began to believe in the promise of microfinance as a serious solution to worldwide poverty. Although he admits that poverty is caused by a spectrum of factors, he firmly believes that the lack of financial services for the working poor, the majority, is one of the core sources of the problem.
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.
C.S. Ghosh is the founder and CEO of Bandhan, a Kolkata-based microfinance institution which provides services in microfinance, micro-entrepreneurship, health, education, and disaster management to India's working poor. The organization focuses primarily on providing financial services to women, a critical step in breaking the cycle of poverty. Bandan ranked second in the Forbes' list of the world's Top 50 Micro Finance Institutions. The first of its kind, Bandhan ranked #3 for its efficiency and impact. With Ghosh's leadership and focus on highly standardized systems, the organization has expanded with increasing efficiency.
Muhammad Yunus earned the nickname "banker to the poor" by giving tiny cash loans -- often the equivalent of a few dollars -- to the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. That simple idea grew into an international movement so vibrant that Yunus was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Peace. Yunus earned a Ph.D. in economics at Vanderbilt University in 1969. He taught at Middle Tennessee State University before returning to Bangladesh in 1972 to teach economics at Chittagong University. According to a now-famous story, his first loan was given to a group of very poor women from the village of Jobra in 1974; the amount was the equivalent of $27. Two years later, in 1976, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank to make such loans on a wider scale, mostly to people with no collateral who would not be served by typical banks. The notion became known as microcredit, and as it spread to other countries it gave thousands of people the opportunity to pull themselves out of abject poverty. Yunus and Grameen were jointly given the Nobel Prize in 2006. By that time the bank had helped more than six million borrowers, the vast majority of them women. In awarding the prize, the Nobel Committee stated: "Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means."
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.
Mitch Kapor has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist. Most recently, Mr. Kapor founded Foxmarks, an upcoming search engine based on bookmarks and related metadata. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1971 and studied psychology, linguistics, and computer science as part of a major in Cybernetics. He attended the Sloan School of Management at MIT before leaving for a Silicon Valley startup. Mr. Kapor founded Lotus Development Corp. in 1982 and with Jonathan Sachs created Lotus 1-2-3, which made the PC ubiquitous in business in the 1980's. In 1990, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He founded the Mitchell Kapor Foundation in 1997 and the Open Source Applications Foundation in 2001. He became the founding Chair of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 and is a trustee of the Level Playing Field Institute. From 1994-1996, he served as Adjunct Professor at the MIT Media Lab. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Kapor was a partner at Accel. In 2006, he became an Adjunct Professor at the School of Information at Berkeley. Mr. Kapor has contributed pieces on information infrastructure policy, intellectual property, and antitrust in the digital era topublications such as Scientific American, The New York Times, and Forbes.
Ashwin Navin is the President and Co-Founder of BitTorrent, Inc. He joined Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, in 2004, moving from Yahoo! where he was an influential member of the company's Corporate Development group. He possesses extensive experience in structuring and negotiating acquisitions, partnerships and alliances in the tech industry. While at Yahoo!, Ashwin was responsible for M&A, divestitures and company strategy in the U.S. and key global markets such as India and Korea. Before Yahoo!, Ashwin worked with Wall Street powerhouses Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Merrill Lynch as an investment banker and research analyst. Ashwin earned a dual B.A. from Claremont McKenna in Government and Economics.
Martin Eberhard is the Co-Founder, President of Technology, and former CEO of Tesla Motors, a company that produces the Tesla Roadster, a battery-powered electric sportscar. Martin brings with him 20 years of start-up, management, and development experience from his time as co-founder of NuvoMedia and Network Computing Devices. At NuvoMedia, Martin helped create the market for electronic books with the 1998 launch of the Rocket eBook. As Chief Engineer of Network Computing Devices, Martin spearheaded the development of X Window-based network terminals for Wyse Technology, where he began his career as an electrical engineer at Wyse Technology. There he designed his first product, the WY-30 ASCII computer terminal. Martin received his bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering and Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Martin lives in both Northern and Southern California with his college sweetheart, Carolyn, and their two children, along with an old Siamese cat.
Armen Berjikly graduated with honors with a Bachelors in Computer Science from Stanford University. His primary research focus was Human-Computer Interaction, where he worked closely with professor Clifford Nass. He went on to obtain a Master's Degree from Stanford in Management Science and Engineering, with an emphasis on Organizations, Technology and Entrepreneurship. Armen was also a Mayfield Fellow, a prestigious fellowship that provides intensive training in entrepreneurship for those with an engineering background. After Stanford, Armen took a product management role at Echelon Corporation, helping manage their "intelligent utility grid" solution from paper concept to hundreds of thousands of units shipped. After a close friend's diagnosis with a serious medical condition, Armen began creating online communities designed to sponsor hope through research and community. Witnessing the power of connecting people with a shared experience, and therefore common understanding, led to the creation of Experience Project. Armen's passion is building technology that unites people who can improve each other's lives, and Experience Project is the epitome of these efforts.
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