Steve Abbott is a Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures, a growth-stage enterprise-technology venture capital firm with $1.4 billion under management. Sapphire Ventures became independent in 2011, but continues to leverage its close relationship with SAP, one of the world’s leading enterprise software companies, to help build global category leaders such as portfolio companies LinkedIn, Box, DocuSign, On Deck Financial, Fitbit and Square.

At Sapphire Ventures, Steve is responsible for capital markets activities across the portfolio and the fund family, and his areas of technology focus include enterprise hardware, financial technology and the Internet of Things. Prior to joining Sapphire Ventures, Steve was a managing director in technology investment banking at Jefferies, UBS and Deutsche Bank; and a strategy consultant at Bain & Company. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, with highest honors, attended the London School of Economics, and received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a JD from Stanford Law School.

Biography details coming soon...

WORK EXPERIENCE NTT
April, 1987
Senior Manager, R&D Strategic Planning Dept, NTT DOCOMO. Inc.
Oct 1999 – Dec 1999 Tokyo, Japan

COO of DoCoMo USA Labs
Jan 2000 – June 2002 (2 years 5 month) Palo Alto, CA, US

Director, Global Business Division, NTT DOCOMO. Inc.
July 2002 – April 2005 Tokyo, Japan

COO of DoCoMo USA Labs
May 2005 – May 2007 (2 years 1 month) Palo Alto, CA, US

President & CEO, DOCOMO Capital
May 2005 – June 2008 (3 years 2 months) Palo Alto, CA, US

Executive Director, Global Business Division, NTT DOCOMO. Inc.
July 2008 – August 2009 Tokyo, Japan

Member of the board of PacketVideo
September 2009 – Present (2 years 9 months) San Diego, CA, US

Chairman of the board of DOCOMO Innovations, Inc.
December 2010 – September 2012 (1 year 10 months) Palo Alto, CA, US

Member of the board of DoCoMo Capita, Inc.
October 2012 – April 2013 (7 months) Palo Alto, CA, US

Vice president, Senior Director, R&D Strategic Planning Dept NTT DOCOMO, Inc.
October 2012 – Present (1 year) Tokyo, Japan

EVP, COO DOCOMO Innovation Ventures, Inc. March 2013 – Present (3 months) Tokyo, Japan

Saeed Amidi is the Founder and CEO of Plug and Play, a global technology startup accelerator headquartered in Silicon Valley and with programs and activities in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.

Saeed started his entrepreneurial journey by founding American Liquid Packaging Systems and operating, growing the business successfully both nationally, as well as internationally, in countries like Spain, Italy, France and Austria.

He started his investment career by founding Amidzad Partners as a General Partner in 1998 and continues that journey today by investing through Plug & Play Ventures. Saeed has been involved in more than 270 investments. Successful portfolio companies include Dropbox, Lending Club, PayPal, Danger, Powerset, Zoosk and SoundHound to name a few.

Saeed’s current passion is in inspiring and helping entrepreneurs and startups, building a bridge for innovation to Fortune 500 companies and making a positive impact. His objective is to identify great entrepreneurs with passion to execute on their ideas.

Saeed is an active member of the technology community and a frequent contributor to numerous charitable foundations. He is also an active member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), a world-class network of Fortune 500 CEOs, accomplished serial entrepreneurs, and veteran financial executives.

For nearly two decades Adiba has worked within startup and innovation ecosystems, in Europe and in the United States, through her own companies as well as through non-profit public agencies - educating and creating relationships within the technology and startup community. Prior to joining Silicon Valley Forum (SVForum) she was the Executive Director of Silicon Vikings, a non-profit business networking organization connecting the Nordic´s innovation and startup ecosystem to Silicon Valley. Prior to Silicon Vikings, Adiba initiated, developed, and launched Innovative Sweden, a world tour exhibition promoting Sweden as an innovative country by showcasing a new generation of Swedish innovations. That is what brought her from Sweden to Silicon Valley in early 2011.

Prior to the Innovative Sweden project, Adiba worked for 13 years within the Swedish innovation ecosystem (science parks, incubators, regional and government development agencies) where she focused on creating sustainable networking platforms, developing/executing high-profile PR projects, and coaching hundreds of startup entrepreneurs in international marketing, business development, market entry, communication, PR and branding. She is also a two-time entrepreneur.

Tony Blankemeyer is the Startup Liaison at 84.51° where he drives business acceleration through making strategic connections between people, ideas, and companies. Blankemeyer leverages his diverse experience across high growth technology companies and agency services to lead these efforts and serves as Managing Director of the Startups in Residence program.

Blankemeyer joined 84.51° from venture-backed Zipscene, the data management platform for restaurants, where he was Director of Strategy & Marketing. During his tenure he acted as a digital strategist for some of the world’s largest restaurant brands, created the product management discipline, and was responsible for internal and brand communications as the company tripled in size. Prior to that, Blankemeyer was Associate Director of Marketing Sciences at POSSIBLE, WPP’s largest digital agency, where he led strategy and analytics within CPG, Automotive, Power/Energy, and Retail verticals. Previously, Blankemeyer was vice president and co-founder of PicsMatch, a photo organization utility that helped find, organize and share photos using a propriety facial recognition engine. Blankemeyer possesses knowledge in early and growth stage startups, marketing, digital strategy, performance marketing, measurement/analytics and continuous improvement.

Blankemeyer devotes extracurricular time to the community by sharing his experiences with future entrepreneurs and leaders as a mentor at Brandery and UpTech. He is a board member for the nation’s largest student-run business, University of Dayton’s Flyer Enterprises and a founding team member of Elementz, hip-hop youth arts center. He also regularly guest lectures at undergraduate and MBA classrooms.

Blankemeyer holds a Bachelors of Business in Marketing & Operations Management from the University of Dayton.

Scott Bowman is a partner with Clareo Partners, a Chicago-based consulting firm dedicated to helping companies generate new ways to grow – within the core, as well as into adjacent and new businesses. Clareo has helped drive growth with firms such as BP, Castrol, GE, AT&T, Amway, Exelon, Raytheon, Rio Tinto, ITW, SCA, Zurich, and others. Mr. Bowman brings over 20 years’ consulting and operational leadership experience in sales & marketing, business development, strategic planning, and corporate development (M&A, licensing and partnerships). He has built several businesses and advised companies – from startups to Fortune 1000 firms – in the technology, business services, resources, durables, consumer products, for-profit education and non-profit industries.

At Clareo, Mr. Bowman co-leads Clareo’s Corporate Venturing practice area, which is focused on driving innovation, growth and new business creation through partnering with startups & emerging businesses. He has also applied the principles of entrepreneurship and business innovation across a range of contexts – including:
• Establishing corporate entrepreneurship, venturing & VC programs in corporate & public-sector context
• New business design and launch for a private, for-profit education business
• Business model innovation for a global nutrition firm moving from products to services & solutions
• IP licensing strategy for a technology startup pioneering the wireless power industry
• Driving growth through new ecosystem partnering models for a leading personal hygiene company
• Investing in & advising startup businesses through Clareo Capital – Clareo’s angel investment arm

Prior to Clareo, he led a $50 million business unit for X-Rite Incorporated, and co-led merger integration planning for the $280M merger with GretagMacbeth, a Swiss company X-Rite acquired in 2006. He has also held multiple leadership positions with Siebel Systems (now Oracle Corporation) overseeing teams responsible for Alliance Business Development, Global Channel Operations, Product Management and WW Sales Operations. From 1999-2001, he helped design, launch and run a startup within the business that grew from $0 to $70M in 18 months.

Scott is also actively involved in the Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN), a network of senior executives from leading global firms dedicated to driving growth and sustainable innovation. He has contributed as a guest lecturer, executive coach & facilitator to the Executive Education programs at the Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern) and Mendoza School of Management (Notre Dame).

Outside of his work at Clareo, Scott is also active in non-profit leadership. He serves as an Advisor for Partners in Compassionate Care, an emerging NGO that recently built a hospital in South Sudan, and is also active in mentoring and training entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Scott earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He and his wife, Dianne, enjoy a full life together with their three lovely girls in western Michigan.

Contact Info: c: +1.616.780.1668 | e: sbowman@clareopartners.com | w: www.clareopartners.com

Wendell Brooks is corporate vice president and president of mergers and acquisitions at Intel Corporation. In this role, Mr. Brooks is responsible for leading, managing and driving Intel's mergers and acquisition strategy and execution. Mr. Brooks has spent 23 years in the investment banking industry split nearly equally between Europe and the United States.

Before joining Intel, Mr. Brooks served as a managing director in mergers and acquisitions for Allen & Company. He opened the company's London office in 2008 and worked to build a European team and presence across the media, technology and telecommunications industries. In 2012, he returned to the United States to focus on large-cap media and Internet transactions.

Prior to Allen & Company, Mr. Brooks worked for 15 years as a managing director for Citigroup. He began his career at Citigroup focused on executing transactions in the media and entertainment sectors. Then he moved to London to run Citigroup's European media practice and was later promoted to head Citigroup's European telecom, media and technology group. While there, Mr. Brooks built and managed a team of professionals executing mergers and acquisitions, debt financings, equity financings, and restructurings.

Mr. Brooks received a bachelor's degree in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA degree from the University of Chicago.

Ger Brophy is CTO for the GE Healthcare Life Science business, a $4.0 billion molecular medicine business that provides a broad range of industry-leading technologies and services for drug discovery, pre-clinical and clinical development and biopharmaceutical manufacturing, as well as molecular tools for therapy selection and treatment monitoring in patient care.

In this role, he is responsible for the overarching technology and development strategy of the business – ranging from Research Tools in academia, through Bioprocessing tools in Pharma Drug Development to Imaging and In Vitro Tools for clinical diagnosis.

Ger has over twenty years’ experience in the global life sciences and biotechnology industry. Previously he was Head of New Product Development at GE Healthcare Medical Diagnostics; encompassing the development of in vivo and in vitro diagnostic technologies, with oversight of discovery (research) and clinical development; regulatory and medical affairs; project and portfolio management; product acquisition and licensing; R&D efficiency projects and collaborations across GE.

He has also led Strategic Planning & Licensing within the Medical Diagnostics business. He was centrally involved in the expansion of the business into the Personalized Medicine space through inorganic and organic investments in in vitro diagnostics and pathology. Before joining the Medical Diagnostics business, Ger ran the Life Sciences Advanced Systems business in Sweden; focusing on the commercialization of improved tools for drug discovery.

Ger joined GE Healthcare through the acquisition of Amersham in 2004.

He has had international assignments in the UK, Sweden and in Chicago & New Jersey.

Ger holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Dublin City University, Ireland

Gregg Bayes-Brown is Editor of Global University Venturing, a trade magazine focusing on university-related research, companies, and investments. MNr. Bayes-Brown comes from a varied journalistic background of science, technology, and finance. When he's not in front of a PC, he can be found on a bike, on a boat, or in another country.

Current Role

Patty represents the Center for Creative Leadership in Silicon Valley and Bay Area, working closely with clients in technology, healthcare and financial services. She is also a member of CCL’s Global Innovation Practice Community, responsible for developing new services to improve innovation leadership and execution. CCL is a global provider of leadership development, ranked among the world's Top 5 providers of executive education by Financial Times and in the Top 10 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek. CCL has offices in Greensboro, NC; Colorado Springs, CO; San Diego, CA; Brussels, Belgium; Moscow, Russia; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Singapore; Gurgaon, India; and Shanghai, China

Experience

Patty is an experienced C-level executive who has served in operational roles with large corporations and startups and as a consultant to venture capital firms, corporate venture and innovation groups and technology startups. She was founder and managing partner of Accelevate, an innovation consulting firm providing business model validation and innovation training for corporate innovation teams, based on Lean Startup and Business Model Canvas principles. She also consulted for Bell Mason Group, conducting corporate innovation readiness assessments, innovation training and corporate venture capital programs. Consulting clients have included AmEx, CitiGroup, Coca-Cola, Philips, Siemens, Dignity Health, SanDisk, McAfee, Fujifilm, Alcatel-Lucent, DSM and Merck.

As Director of Product Marketing at Peter Norton Computing and as VP Marketing at Symantec, Patty pioneered the consumer anti-virus category and managed worldwide corporate, channel and product marketing. She was the first US marketing executive for UK-based Madge Networks, growing the company by 15X over 3 years to a successful NASDAQ IPO. As VP Marketing and the first non-engineering executive at Ramp Networks, she helped create the small business internet access category and drove marketing and sales leading to Ramp’s 1999 IPO and acquisition by Nokia in 2001. She was previously a Partner with Regis McKenna Inc. in Palo Alto and GM of RMI’s Los Angeles office. Patty was also an instructor for the CalTech Industrial Relations Center Executive Education program.

Education and Professional Affiliations

Patty is a member of the advisory board for the Global Corporate Venturing and Innovation Summit and is a Catalyst Award Advisor for the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute. She is also a mentor and advisor to entrepreneurial programs at California College of the Arts/Design MBA and San Jose State University Lucas College and Graduate School of Business. Patty holds a BA in English and German from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jon Callaghan is an early stage venture capitalist and a founder of True Ventures. Mr. Callaghan has founded three of his own companies and has been in the venture capital business since 1991. He founded his first company, Mountain Bike Outfitters, Inc in 1986. He started his venture career as an associate at Summit Partners and then joined AOL’s Greenhouse, the venture capital/incubator for AOL. Mr. Callaghan joined the internet market early by joining CMGi’s @Ventures group in 1996. Before founding True, he was a Managing Director at Globespan Capital.

First as founder and now as investor, Mr. Callaghan’s direct startup experience means that he has seen the world through an entrepreneur’s eyes, making him a confidant and therefore priceless resource for the startups in which he invests.

Mr. Callaghan received a BA in Government from Dartmouth College and an MBA, with distinction, from Harvard Business School. When he is not empowering the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, you can probably find him talking about airplanes or playing with his children.

Jeff has extensive experience managing, analyzing, and visualizing data in a wide range of forms, structure, and content. He is experienced in providing high value services in the areas of data analysis, reporting and visualization using Tableau, SQL queries, Excel pivot tables and R scripting.

His proficiencies include data extraction, preparation, and descriptive and predictive analytics.

Paul is a Senior Management Executive with expertise in starting and scaling organizations internationally. With degree qualification's in both Marketing & Corporate Finance, Paul has worked with both startup and Fortune 500 companies alike enjoying both the challenges of working with zero resource or abundant resource.

Paul joined Enterprise Ireland, the Venture arm of the Government of Ireland in 2002 and has since run the operations of their offices in the UK, Australia and now Silicon Valley. Today, Paul is responsible for leading a team of consultants and executives focused on advising and supporting the start-up, commercialization and globalization of Irish companies focused on the US as a destination market. Key sectors of focus include mobile, consumer web, enterprise, telecoms, health-tech, fin-tech, energy & renewables.

David Mayhew is responsible for all portfolio management, investment strategy and organizational risk for GE Ventures. As a member of the Investment Committee and Senior Leadership Team, David provides strategic oversight and guidance for the organization, helping to minimize investment risk and maximize GE Ventures' financial and strategic goals. David brings over 20 years of finance and risk management experience to the team, most recently as the Chief Risk Officer for GE Capital in Australia and New Zealand. Prior to that David was the global risk head for Deutsche Bank’s leveraged credit activities. David has extensive experience in private equity, structured finance and commercial finance transactions, and portfolio management. Originally from Toronto, Canada, he holds an MBA from York University and a Bachelors degree in finance from the University of Western Ontario.

Rowan’s focus is creating new businesses and investing in digital health, data analytics and precision medicine. She currently sits on the board of Evidation Health, the first Healthcare “NewCo” incubated and launched from GE Ventures. Prior to joining the ventures team, Rowan served as Head of Precision Diagnostics at GE Healthcare, where she was responsible for strategy development to integrate lab services, products, data, informatics, software, and content.

Before GE, she spent 11 years as a Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, where she drove development of the life science investment strategy and practice area. Rowan invested in and held board director and observer roles across a spectrum of healthcare and life science companies, including Adamas (IPO: ADMS), Balance Therapeutics, HealthTap, RainDance, Pacific Biosciences (IPO: PACB), ParAllele (acquired: AFFX), Personalis, Sequenta (acquired: Adaptive) and Verinata (acquired: ILMN).

Prior to joining Mohr Davidow Ventures, Rowan was very early employee at Rosetta Inpharmatics (IPO then acquired: MRK) and a Product Marketing Manager at Incyte Genomics. She holds a Ph.D. and first class honors degree in Biochemistry from Cambridge University, U.K. and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.

Mike Chuisano, Vice President of Venture Investments and Chief Operating Officer, joined Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JJDC, Inc. (JJDC) in 2011. In 2012, he was appointed the additional position of Chief Operating Officer for JJDC. Mr. Chuisano serves on the boards of several JJDC portfolio companies and is based in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Mr. Chuisano has over 30 years of healthcare experience in various operating roles including operations, sales, marketing, R&D and business development across Johnson & Johnson’s Medical Device & Diagnostic and Pharmaceuticals Group companies. In 1991, Mr. Chuisano transferred to Cincinnati as part of the startup team for Ethicon Endo Surgery. In 2000, he joined the Pharmaceuticals Group in an M&A role and was involved in leading and supporting several significant transactions. In 2008, he moved to Corporate Headquarters to establish the Corporate Development Business Development Group for licensing and acquisitions for Johnson & Johnson in white space areas of healthcare.

Mr. Chuisano received an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a BS in Engineering from the University of Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Henry Chung joined LG Electronics in 2010 as Managing Director of LG Innovation Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of LG Electronics. He is responsible for leading venture capital activities in North America and engaging in open innovation activities with venture-backed startups. Prior to joining LG, Henry spent 4 years as a director of SVB Capital’s direct investment team, broadly investing from two funds in technology areas that spanned IT hardware, Internet, cleantech and life sciences. Prior to SVB Capital, Henry was Vice President at Newforth Partners – an M&A advisory firm now part of Woodside Capital Partners.

In addition to these roles, Henry was a founding partner of Imagicians Interactive, a Boston-based interactive agency that eventually was sold to a traditional advertising agency, and he has also spent significant time as a management consultant with Fletcher Spaght – a boutique strategic consulting firm. Henry has also worked as a computer programmer developing system dynamics models at MITRE, and as a DNA researcher at the National Institutes of Health.

Henry graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning both S.B. and M.Eng degrees in Electrical Engineering, with premedical and acoustics specialization. Henry is a native of Virginia, who lived for 13 years in Boston and has resided in the Bay Area since 2002.

Mr. Chuisano received an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a BS in Engineering from the University of Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Vanessa Colella heads global venture investing and strategic growth initiatives. In this capacity, she leads strategic investments, accelerator activities and Citi-wide growth opportunities with the potential to shape the future of the company. Her investing team focuses on early-stage startups in the areas of security and enterprise IT, commerce and payments, data and analytics, and financial technologies.

Before joining Citi Ventures, Vanessa ran marketing for Citi’s North American Consumer Bank for three years. She joined Citibank from U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), where she was an entrepreneur-in-residence. Prior to USVP, Vanessa was SVP of Insights at Yahoo, responsible for developing and executing the company’s consumer data strategy. She was previously a partner at McKinsey & Co.

She received her master’s degrees from Columbia University and M.I.T. as well as a Ph.D. from M.I.T.'s Media Lab. A charter member of Teach for America, Vanessa is also a published author and lecturer, and has previously served as a research fellow at Rockefeller University. She currently resides in San Francisco with her husband and son, who insists on frequent visits to the zoo.

Yujin Chung is a Managing Director at SignalFire focused on investing, portfolio development, and corporate advisory. He previously was a Market Development partner at Andreessen Horowitz. His role focuses on connecting portfolio companies with Fortune 500 / Global 2000 corporates spanning technology, retail, brands, telco, media, and other consumer categories.

Yujin also spent time at a seed stage venture capital at Genacast Ventures, investment banking at Morgan Stanley, a startup marketing internship with Mixer Labs, digital strategy / business development at Warner Music, and strategy consulting at Bain & Co. He has a B.S. and MEng from Cornell, and an MBA from the Wharton School.

Gary Coover is head of Global Operations for the Samsung Accelerator, which is an early-stage incubator that he helped architect in 2012, launch in 2013 and scale to SF, NY and Tel Aviv over the last two years. Gary manages a team that focuses entirely on articulating, selling and delivering on the unfair advantage that the Samsung Accelerator can provide to early stage startups to help them build their product bigger, better, and faster on the back of Samsung resources.

As a prior start-up co-founder and corporate incubation guru, Gary is particularly passionate about the innovation scene and all forms of startup business models. Gary is a builder that specializes in turning chaos and ambiguity into structured clarity. Utilizing a functional skill set that includes strategy, business development, operations, and a dash of common sense, he has have spent the last 10+ years helping create new structures and opportunities for early-stage startups, large multinationals, and internal innovation arms.

He is always open to connect and discuss, especially if coffee is involved.

Sachin Deshpande is a Senior Director of Product Management, overseeing business development initiatives across Qualcomm Ventures.

Sachin currently manages the Qualcomm Ventures portfolio company Zoom. Prior to joining Qualcomm Ventures, Sachin was the co-founder/CEO of Tapioca Mobile (a VC-backed social/mobile video startup sold to Qualcomm). Before that, he lead the BREW Developer Relations department at Qualcomm. He also has product management and marketing experience at Openwave, Banyan, and Cisco. He has an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley.

Jan Dexel holds a position as senior policy advisor on risk capital affairs at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and programme manager at the Netherlands Investment Agency (NIA). These risk capital affairs at the Government includes stimulation of the venture capital market for innovative companies and set up and manage finance structures for innovation policies.

He is policy manager of a fund-of-funds for high tech start-ups, the Credit Facility for high tech SME’s and the international Dutch fund-of-funds initiative (DVI). He is also member of different international expert groups on risk capital and the EFSI/European Fund for Strategic Investments.

Jan worked for both industry and contract research organisations before changing career and becoming a senior policy advisor for the Dutch government in 2001. He has studied Applied Physics before moving to the University of Leiden and Erasmus University Rotterdam studying political economy.

Michael Docherty brings a unique perspective on innovation, having been an entrepreneur, senior corporate executive and venture capitalist. It might explain why he’s passionate about the intersection of corporate innovation and entrepreneurship. In his new book Collective Disruption, Mike reveals how the smartest corporations are learning to partner and co-create with startups for transformative innovation. The book provides established companies with a practical framework for plugging into the startup ecosystem to fuel and incubate new businesses.

As CEO of Venture2 Inc., Mike and his organization work with leading companies to develop transformative innovation capabilities, build innovation ecosystems and accelerate the commercialization of breakthrough new products, services and business models.

Mike holds an MBA degree from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School and BSME degree from Drexel University. He is a highly rated speaker on innovation and corporate venturing and an active supporter of the entrepreneurial community.

Michael Dolbec is Managing Director, Venture Capital and Business Development, at GE Digital. He is responsible for GE's software venture investing program in IoT, big data, data science and cybersecurity. Prior to GE, he led corporate venture capital activities at LG Electronics, Orange, 3Com, and IBM. Earlier he co-founded an award-winning mobile internet startup. Mike began his investment career at Kleiner Perkins and Greylock.

His career has been focused on markets that are evolving rapidly through software innovation: mobility, networking, enterprise software, media, consumer electronics, and most recently industrial manufacturing. Mike has held positions in: R&D, engineering, sales, marketing, business development, innovation and M&A. He has a Masters in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford and an MBA from Wharton.

Patrick is a Senior Director at Qualcomm Ventures and oversees their Global Early Stage Fund, focused on Seed and Series A opportunities. He is based in San Francisco and serves as the Bay Area lead for Qualcomm Ventures. This fund has scaled to 60+ global investments over the past few years. While he works closely with nearly all the early stage portfolio companies around the world, he actively sourced or serves as a Board Member/Observer for investments in August, Blippar, Clarifai, Kaleo, Matterport, Navdy, Noom, OpenSignal, Skycatch, Sense360, Starmaker, Swift Nav and Zoom. Prior investments (exits) include Aicent, Avaak (acquired by NTGR), Divide (acquired by GOOG) Clicker (acquired by CBS), ThinkNear (acquired by TNAV) and Viewdle (acquired by GOOG). He also serves as the key investment lead on QPrize and Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator.

Prior to joining Qualcomm Ventures, Patrick worked for Salomon Smith Barney’s Investment Banking unit in their Chicago, London and Hong Kong offices. He was a member of their Global Telecommunications team, involved in both M&A advisory roles and capital-raising transactions. Patrick has an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a B.A. from Northwestern University.

Jay focuses on consumer technology, including mobile, gaming, and consumer devices. He leads TransLink's activities supporting portfolio companies with their customers and partners, primarily in Korea. Jay’s active current investments include Chartboost, Epic, nWay, Peel, Quixey, SoundHound, and Tango. Noteworthy past investments include Carbonite (CARB), Enterprise DB (ACQ: Peak Equity), and YuMe (YUME).

Before co-founding TransLink, Jay was the head of Samsung Ventures America. Jay directly led several successful Samsung Ventures investments including AnalogTech (AATI), Continuous Computing (ACQ: RadiSyS), DivX (DIVX), InPhi (IPHI), Intellon (ITLN), MontaVista (ACQ: Cavium), Pure Digital (ACQ: Cisco), Techwell (TWLL) and Teknovus (ACQ: Broadcom). Prior to joining Samsung, Jay was an investment officer with the Silicon Valley office of Vertex Management, a global VC firm headquartered in Singapore. At Vertex, Jay focused on investments in communications, mobile, and Internet, including Aicent (ACQ: Syniverse), GRIC Communications (GRIC), Mobile 365 (ACQ: Sybase), and PayPal (ACQ: eBay). Before Vertex, Jay was Senior Director of Business Development at Dialpad Communications (ACQ: Yahoo). Jay also worked as an Associate at McKinsey in Palo Alto, New York, Beijing, and Seoul, and at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong.

Jay received an MBA from Stanford University, as well as an M.S. in Biochemistry and B.S. in Chemistry from Seoul National University. Jay serves as President & Board Director of the Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA) and Board Director of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM). He is also an Advisor for Korea Innovation Center (KIC) Silicon Valley. Jay enjoys travel, Sci-Fi movies, and spicy food.

Claudia Fan Munce is the Managing Director of the IBM Venture Capital Group and Vice President of IBM Corporate Strategy. The Venture Capital Group’s serves as the strategic unit of IBM that drives non organic growth business strategy of IBM through partnerships and acquisitions globally, focusing on growth markets and disruptive technology and business models.

Ms. Munce joined IBM Research Division in 1985 and held many technical and business leadership positions. She is a board member of the National Venture Capital Association in the U.S., and chairwoman of board of the Global Corporate Venturing Group headquartered in London, and many other venture capital organizations around the world. She also served on the board of Latin American Venture Capital Association, Women in Leadership of Private Equity in China.

Ms. Munce is frequently cited as a pioneer and the leader of the fast growing corporate venture community around the globe and contributed many articles on innovation in corporate venturing published by major publications. In March of 2015, The Worth Magazine named her as one of the 20 most powerful players in the Silicon Valley.

David Friedberg is the founder of The Climate Corporation. The Climate Corporation helps farmers around the world sustainably improve their productivity with digital tools that provide unique insights and predictions that help famers make and execute better decisions on their farm. The Climate Corporation was founded in 2006 and acquired by Monsanto in 2013.

David is also the founder and chairman of several other companies, including Metromile, the only pay-per-mile car insurance provider in the US, Eatsa, a fully-automated Quinoa-based fast food chain that is delivering healthy food faster, cheaper, in a tastier format than traditional fast food competitors, and Northern Quinoa Production Corporation, the only commercial producer of quinoa in North America. David is a lifelong vegetarian and believes that technology can help humans make better use of our natural resources, delivering food to all people that is healthier, more sustainable, and more efficiently produced. Earlier, David was with Google where he held several roles in Corporate Development and Product Management. He earned his bachelors degree in Astrophysics from UC Berkeley.

Sarah F. Fisher is a Senior Director, Global Market External Innovation, for the Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Group. She specializes in global go-to-market and commercialization strategies for novel technology introductions with a focus on business models, strategic partnerships, and integration and execution excellence, primarily within new business units. She started her career with J&J in New York City, and has a combined 13 years of cross-functional innovation experience across medical device and pharmaceutical new business units within the Johnson & Johnson portfolio of companies. Sarah’s passion for entrepreneurial ventures has led her to drive 5 different intrapreneurial ventures, and one post- acquisition commercial integration effort.

She completed her Masters of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, MA and her post -graduate diploma in Global Business at the University of Oxford in Oxford, UK. She was awarded the first ever Corporate Entrepreneur accolade by Corporate Entrepreneurs, LLC in 2010.

Sarah is passionate about creating and driving innovation efforts that result in value-based access to novel and effective medical solutions across global markets. She advises select start-ups and various public and private stakeholder groups on novel technology go to market models, commercial strategy and corporate entrepreneurship.

Darcy Frisch is vice president at Hearst Ventures, where she makes investments in early stage digital media and information businesses. Since joining Hearst Ventures in 2000, Frisch has been involved with many investments including drugstore.com, XM Satellite Radio, Circles and MobiTV. She currently serves on the boards of Power To Fly, Ramp and Via. She previously served on the boards of Nexage (sold to Millennial Media in 2014), Sphere (sold to AOL in 2008) and Voxpop.tv (sold to IAC in 2011).

Prior to Hearst, Frisch was with the investment group E2Enet. She also held positions as a tax analyst at KPMG and as the legislative assistant for tax for U.S. Senator David Boren of Oklahoma. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale University and earned her MBA at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business.

Michael is a business convergence leader for the high technology industry with 25 years of operational experience. His talents cover such areas as solution sales, marketing, project/product business management, corporate development, strategic planning and capitalization. Having worked for early stage startups as well as Global Fortune 50 corporations internationally, he brings a clear understanding of market dynamics and a multi-cultural perspective. Through his extensive experience, he has acquired technology domain knowledge in energy, hardware, software, consumer electronics, telecom, wireless & security. Michael has consistently demonstrated a unique ability to translate & position highly technical innovations into cohesive corporate messages that convey compelling commercial value. He is known for his strategic ability to harness value, his passion, integrity and ability to barter in relationship equity.

In addition to being an Adjunct Professor with CCA teaching Venture Studio for the MBA Program in Design Strategy (https://www.cca.edu/academics/dsmba/curriculum/spring/608), Michael consults for a number of start-up companies and has spent the last 4 years as an active Venture Mentor with MIT’s Venture Mentor Program supporting over 200 initiatives focusing on technology innovation. In 2011, Michael was asked by TiE (www.tie.org) to assist with TiECON to organize a panel on effective models and methodology for clean tech capitalization. (http://www.tieconeast.org/2011/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=35)

Michael as also hired by the Korean government to assist with tech-transfer and assessment for innovative emerging market initiatives. Prior, as Chief Strategic Officer for JetQue, an early stage wireless software startup, Michael defined the business model, the “goto market” roadmap, channel strategy, crafted the corporate message, achieved critical milestones & successfully engaged with top tier customers on a variety of levels.

Before JetQue, Michael was a Senior Director of Corporate Development & Strategy for Mitsubishi Electric America. At Mitsubishi, Michael created and championed the corporate “business unit convergence” initiative allowing unprecedented inter-organizational collaboration between multiple divisions. His efforts resulted in the successful launch in an industry wide consortium (HomeAPI now UPnP), assisting and growing and solidifying key clients like Microsoft and COMPAQ ($500M each) and on one occasion, was responsible for securing a $50M unseen revenue stream benefiting five business units. Prior management experience includes having worked on the management team for SONY Electronics where he was responsible for defining the strategy and driving the market adoption of the US SONY brand display initiative ($500M market). He was responsible for a 46% revenue growth for the product lines under his direct management in his first year alone.

Michael has had numerous consulting engagements in a variety of industries and disciplines. In the Silicon Valley venture capital community, he has been active in deal sourcing, due diligence & advisory services to both institutional & corporate venture capital funds. While working for one $5Billion fund, he took a portfolio company from $50 Million valuation to $300 Million valuation growth in only 5 months though operational execution and business development. For the start-up community, Michael has been invaluable in facilitating investment, strategic solution sales, building key relationships and accelerating paths to sustained profitability.

Mr. Fox has lectured internationally and published numerous white papers. He is active in alumni and has participated in trade affiliations such as MIT Club of Northern California, MIT Educational Council, Asia America Multi-technology Association and The Indus Entrepreneurs. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently an advisor to Silicon Valley China Wireless.

Specialties: Expertise in solution sales, marketing, expanding channels, strategic planning with tactical execution, international business development & product management. Historical success in: Securing key customers, commercializing challenging business opportunities, monetizing new markets, & forging long-term strategic partnerships with focus on annuity streams. Successful pedigree in corporate messaging and planning.

Mel Gaceta heads Business Development at U.S. Cellular which encompasses building commercial relationships as well as strategic investing.

Previously, Mel was with Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, a member of the founding team, where he identified, executed, and managed strategic minority private equity investments. Previous roles included diverse finance roles across Motorola’s various business units, including wireless infrastructure, MVNO, semiconductor, vendor financing, and wireless operator JVs.

Andrew Gaule for over 15 years has been advising and working with leading corporates to set up Corporate Venturing and Open Innovation programmes. Andrew is the founder and leader of the GCV Academy which is enhancing the capabilities of global corporates in their corporate venturing and innovation programs. In 2015 over 100 executives have been on Academy programs in California, London and Shanghai giving fantastic feedback on the value they have gained.

He is the creator of several management concepts such as 5Ps of Venturing now in use at organisations such as BAE Systems, BP, E.ON, McLaren, Philips, Unilever etc. Andrew is the author of the definitive book ‘Open Innovation in Action – How to be strategic in the search for new sources of value’ which includes case studies from P&G, Shell, DSM, Tate & Lyle and QinetiQ. He has interviewed and published over 50 interviews with many Corporate Venturing leaders. Andrew is CEO of Aimava, a strategic advisory firm and orchestrator of "Innovative New Value Chains” with many leading global organisations in health, transport, utility and financial services.

Gerd is a Partner, based in Silicon Valley, CA. He specializes in investments in energy, cleantech and transportation.

He manages SVC’s investments in BuildingIQ (ASX;BIQ), ChargePoint, Sensys, Sunverge, Tendril and Wirescan. Earlier investments include Broadlight (acquired by Broadcom), Dune Networks (acquired by Broadcom), G2 Microsystems (acquired by Broadcom), IP-Unity Glenayre, ISE Limited (TSX:ISE), Kagoor Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks), Myrio (acquired by Siemens), Prenova (acquired by Ecova), Reactive NanoTechnologies (acquired by Indium), SmartSynch (acquired by Itron) and Verimatrix. Gerd also serves on the Investor Advisory Board of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

With 27 years of worldwide industry experience, he combines a strong technical background with wide-ranging operational skills. Prior to joining Siemens Venture Capital in September 2000, Gerd held the position of Vice President and Head of CableTV Solutions in Siemens Information and Communication Networks.

Additionally, Gerd's managerial and operating expertise stems from earlier focus on R&D, system integration, product line management, technical sales support, project management and general management in the fields of telecommunication equipment and solutions.

Gerd received a master’s degree in electrical engineering (Dipl. Ing.) from Technical University Darmstadt, Germany.

Since 2008, Burton M. Goldfield has served as President and CEO of TriNet, a strategic partner to small businesses for payroll, HR, benefits, employment law compliance and risk reduction. Mr. Burton has more than 25 years of experience in sales, operational, and technology leadership positions and is known for driving product innovation and business growth.

Since joining TriNet, Burton has transformed the company into a leading cloud-based HR provider and Professional Employer Organization (PEO). With offices throughout America, TriNet serves more than 10,000 clients with 288,000+ worksite employees (as of 12/31/14). Its services allow small businesses to regain focus on executing their visions and growing their businesses while TriNet manages their payroll taxes, day-to-day HR, employment law compliance, and compliance with the Affordable Care Act. TriNet net revenue exceeded $500Min 2014 and has more than quadrupled during Mr. Burton’s tenure. To expand TriNet market reach and strengthen the company’s ability to serve more clients than ever before, Mr. Burton led the company to acquire Gevity, AccordHR, SOI, ExpenseCloud and Ambrose. In addition, he invested heavily in the company’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology platform, leveraging his background from Hyperion Solutions Corporation as well as IBM Corporation’s Rational Software. One of the outcomes of this growth was an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in March 2014 followed by a secondary offering in September 2014. TriNet is traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol TNET.

Prior to TriNet, Mr. Burton was CEO at Ketera Technologies, a Santa Clara-based SaaS provider to FORTUNE 2000 companies. He has also served as senior vice president, worldwide field operations at Hyperion Solutions Corporation and vice president of worldwide sales for IBM Corporation’s Rational Software division.

Mr. Burton received a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Syracuse University and an MBA from Villanova University. In 2010, the San Francisco Business Times named him a Most Admired CEO.

Ian Goldstein is a partner in the Princeton office of the law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP.

Ian is a vice-chair of the firm’s Corporate Practice Group and is the leader of the firm's Emerging Company & Venture Capital practice team. His practice is centered around providing strategic and transactional advice and guidance, as well as functioning as an outside general counsel, to business enterprises, investors and entrepreneurs who are focused on innovation and technology development and commercialization.

Ian specializes in advising corporations and other institutions in connection with corporate/institutional venture fund formation, investment transactions, portfolio company management and exit transactions and has advised a broad range of clients on such matters, including Merck’s Global Health Innovation Fund, Prudential’s Gibraltar Ventures, Comcast Ventures, NBCUniversal (news division), Physician’s Interactive, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Providence Health System, Radian Group, Inc. and GAIN Capital Holdings.

Rich has spent his entire career in roles focused on corporate growth and innovation (corporate strategy, finance/development and venture capital).

Rich is a founder and managing director at Touchdown Ventures, a firm that partners with leading corporations to help manage their corporate venture capital investing activities. In this role, Rich works closely with Apollo Education Ventures and Westfield Labs in managing their respective venture capital efforts and is focused on investing across education, human capital and retail technologies.

Rich founded Touchdown Ventures after seven years in venture capital and strategic development at Comcast. As a principal at Comcast Ventures, Rich focused on a variety of sectors ranging from enterprise software to consumer internet and led the group's investment efforts in education.

Prior to Comcast Ventures, Rich spent 10 years in operating roles for media and technology companies. Most recently, Rich was senior director of strategy & development for Comcast Interactive Media. Prior to that, Rich worked in corporate development for Sony Pictures. Earlier in his career, Rich worked in investment banking for Lehman Brothers.

Rich graduated with highest honors from UC Santa Barbara and received an MBA from The Wharton School, where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar.

Bill Gross founded Idealab in March 1996 and serves as the company's Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Gross founded Idealab to create and build successful businesses that capitalize on innovations in areas with significant growth opportunities, including the Internet.

A lifelong entrepreneur, Mr. Gross started several companies prior to Idealab. In high school, he founded Solar Devices, a firm that sold plans and kits for solar energy products. In college at the California Institute of Technology, he patented a new loudspeaker design and formed GNP Loudspeakers, Inc. After graduating from college, Mr. Gross and his brother Larry started GNP Development, Inc., which made a natural language product for Lotus 1-2-3 called HAL. In 1985, Lotus Development Corporation acquired GNP and Mr. Gross became a software entrepreneur at Lotus Development. In 1991, he started Knowledge Adventure, an educational software publisher that grew to be the third largest educational software publisher in the world and was eventually sold to Cendant Software and is now a division of Havas Interactive, which is owned by Vivendi.

Mr. Gross serves on the boards of directors of numerous companies. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology and of the Art Center College of Design. Mr. Gross received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Deborah Hopkins is Citi's Chief Innovation Officer and CEO of Citi Ventures.

Ms. Hopkins founded and built Citi Ventures recognizing the critical role innovation must play in driving growth at Citi amid accelerating disruptive forces and heightened customer expectations. A lifelong change agent, Ms. Hopkins partners with Citi's businesses to shepherd creativity and implement breakthrough solutions. Based in Palo Alto, her team works to connect Citi to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem through their work in venture investing, identification of transformative trends, sponsorship of a network of labs and accelerators across the company and bringing the adoption of Lean Start Up to the enterprise.

Since joining Citi in 2003, Ms. Hopkins has served in a number of executive roles including Head of Corporate Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions, and Chief Operations & Technology Officer. She continues to act as a senior advisor to Citi's Global Investment Bank. Her experience prior to Citi spans multiple industries; automotive, aerospace, telecommunications and information technology. Previous roles include Chief Financial Officer at both Boeing and Lucent Technologies, VP of Finance at General Motors Europe and General Auditor at General Motors. At Unisys she was General Manager of Information Services and Corporate Controller.

Ms. Hopkins serves on the board of Qlik Technologies as well as the Advisory Boards of Riverwood Capital and Stanford's Technology Venture program. Recently she was named an Executive Fellow at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Fortune has twice placed Ms. Hopkins among the top 10 most powerful women in business and she has been on the Institutional Investor's Top 50 list every year since 2011. Debby holds honorary doctorate degrees from Westminster College and Walsh College.

George Hoyem is a Partner at In-Q-Tel who brings +25 years of entrepreneurial, operations, and VC investing experience. Mr. Hoyem heads up the Advanced Analytics Investment Practice at In-Q-Tel (IQT), the strategic venture arm of the U.S. Intelligence Community. While at IQT, Hoyem has invested in close to 20 companies at IQT across the Advanced Analytics, Cyber Security and Enterprise Infrastructure sectors. Outside of IQT Hoyem has backed, supported, and served on the boards of dozens of emerging technology companies over his career.

Prior to joining IQT, Hoyem was a Managing Partner at Blueprint Ventures, where he helped devise and build Blueprints unique investment focus on VC backed, corporate spinouts. Prior to Blueprint, he worked as a partner at the VC firms Redleaf Group, and El Dorado Ventures.

Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Hoyem built an 18-year operating career with several prominent companies. As the General Manager of HP’s Internet Commerce Division, he was responsible for a $40 million P&L. Prior to HP; he held several executive positions including General Manager with companies such as VeriFone, where he was a key contributor in the $1.3 billion sale of VeriFone to HP. Hoyem was also a co-founder and VP of Worldwide Sales for Visix Software, a VC backed spinout of American Management Systems (AMS), where he helped grow sales to +$20M. Hoyem has also held other executive positions at AMS, Federal Data Corporation, and Tektronix.

Tracy Isacke joined Silicon Valley Bank in 2014 and leads the company’s Corporate Relationship Management Team. As Head of the group, Ms. Isacke is responsible for Silicon Valley Bank’s relationships with corporate venture funds, corporate development teams and innovation groups at some of the world’s largest companies and emerging technology and life science startups.

Prior to joining SVB, Ms. Isacke was EVP New Business Ventures at Telefónica Digital where she identified investment opportunities in Silicon Valley, Israel and Europe with potential to accelerate Telefónica’s business. Ms. Isacke also drove an international Global Partner team to deliver unique partnerships and Direct-to-Bill opportunities for Telefónica across 25 operating businesses in Europe and Latin America.

Ms. Isacke joined Telefónica in 2006 initially as Head of Enterprise Sales in the UK and then leading the acquisition of Jajah in Mountain View. She set up and grew the office in Silicon Valley and led the acquisition of San Francisco based TokBox, as well as several investments on behalf of Telefónica including Boku, Everything.me and Box and key partnerships including Evernote, Pinterest and Rhapsody.

Ms. Isacke started her career at Xerox, rising to be one of the first female members of the UK Board. She then spent four years getting a taste of what life is like in an early stage company, working in a venture capital-backed start-up that went on to achieve a successful exit.

Born in the UK, Ms. Isacke has lived in Italy, Israel and now lives in Los Gatos, CA, with her husband and family.

Dr. Alicia Jackson is currently CTO and Co-Founder of Drawbridge Health, a new company backed by GE Ventures and GE Healthcare, focused on creating a new sample acquisition and stabilization platform to enable the broad access, cost-effective, accurate, and actionable information necessary to pave the way for truly individualized healthcare.

Dr. Jackson launched and served as the Deputy Director of the Biological Technologies Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s principal engine for disruptive innovation. Previously at DARPA, Dr. Jackson created and managed DARPA’s synthetic biology portfolio as well as programs in transient electronics. Earlier in her career, Dr. Jackson served as Professional Staff for energy technology policy for the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Energy Committee.

She has a long standing involvement and expertise in technology policy, serving as an Energy Scholar at Georgetown, a Fellow at the National Academies of Science, and co-establishing the Science Policy Initiative at MIT. Dr. Jackson received both her undergraduate and Doctorate degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT.

Rimas Kapeskas manages the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund (SEF), the private equity strategic investment and corporate venture capital arm of UPS (NYSE: UPS). The fund is globally focused on developing critical partnerships and acquiring knowledge returns from its investments in technology companies and emerging market spaces. Established in 1997, the SEF is an important business development tool that enables exploration of emerging markets and technologies that enhance the evolving business models at UPS.

Rimas oversees all operations of the fund, including sourcing and evaluating investment opportunities, facilitating the ongoing relationship between UPS and the venture capital community and portfolio companies, and management of the fund staff. Since taking over the SEF, Rimas has successfully expanded the fund’s focus from U.S.-only to a global reach and also incorporated a process for direct strategic engagement with startup companies.

Prior to taking over responsibility for venture activities, Rimas spent many years leading UPS R&D efforts and has also been involved in diverse roles in marketing, sales, planning and integration of international acquisitions and related IT. He holds a bachelor’s of science degree from the University of Connecticut and a master’s degree in business administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Rimas resides in Dunwoody, Georgia, with his wife, Carla, and two children, Luka and Viktoria.

Nagraj Kashyap is a senior vice president of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. In this role, Kashyap is the global head of the Qualcomm Ventures group and oversees Qualcomm’s $1 billion strategic venture investment portfolio of over 140 investments.

Kashyap built up Qualcomm Ventures from a US/China focused team of three in 2003 to a global leader in corporate venture capital with 25 investment professionals and direct investments in US, China, India, Brazil, Europe, Israel, Korea and Australia. Kashyap pioneered the first corporate VC seed investment program with the Qualcomm Ventures early stage fund. In addition, he started QPrize™ (www.qprize.com), the highly successful global business plan competition for early stage companies and launched the Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator (qualcommaccelerator.com).

Under Kashyap’s leadership, the group has experienced significant strategic and financial success with early investments in companies such as Xiaomi and Matterport, as well as strong investment exits including Fitbit (IPO - FIT); Invensense (IPO: INVN); Thundersoft (IPO - SZSE:300496); and Waze (acquired by Google). The group has evolved and considerably expanded the investment scope from mobile and wireless to include investments in Frontier technologies like drones and robotics, AR/VR and space where the application of mobile technologies is advancing the pace of innovation. Investments in Frontier technologies include leading companies such as 3DR (consumer drones), Magic Leap (AR) and Spire Global (satellite communications).

Prior to Qualcomm, Kashyap was a manager at PRTM, a management consulting company and had direct client engagements with Nextel, Motorola, DuPont, Caterpillar, Michelin, Bell Mobility and ADC. Prior to PRTM, Kashyap was a senior product marketing manager at Motorola. He has also held engineering positions at 3Com/US Robotics and Nortel.

Kashyap serves on the board of Brain Corporation and is a board observer for Sotera Wireless and Magic Leap. Prior board/observer positions include Airvana (IPO:AIRV); Avaak (acquired by Netgear); Bitfone (acquired by H-P); Clicker (acquired by CBS); Gaikai (acquired by Sony); and Novarra (acquired by Nokia).

Nagraj earned his MBA degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and his MS in computer science from the University of Texas, Austin.

Rick leads the partnerships team at Google Ventures, where he connects the largest companies in the world to GV’s portfolio. Rick was previously a product manager at Google where he led product initiatives on Blogger, Google+, and YouTube.

Rick’s earlier professional experience includes leadership roles at several software and Internet startups. He was an early employee at FeedBurner, where he ran the publisher services team until Google acquired the company in 2007. Rick received dual degrees from Lafayette College, and while a student at the University of Richmond School of Law, he founded the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology, the world’s first student-edited law journal to publish exclusively online.

Outside of his love of technology, Rick is also a political junkie. He has lent technology advice to three U.S. Presidential campaigns, ran the campaign blog for President Barack Obama in his 2004 Senate race, and ran product strategy for and managed Google’s presence at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Diomedes Kastanis Head of Technology for Business Unit Support Systems, leads Ericsson’s long-term technology vision and innovation across Media, OSS, BSS and M-commerce. Diomedes is also contributing towards the university collaboration, industry thought leadership and advanced technology incubations. He also facilitates the technical community within Ericsson BUSS.

Prior to this role, Diomedes held the role of Researcher in the institute of Computer Science of Crete, Head of Enterprise Architecture BSS/OSS for Middle East and Africa and lately the Global Head of Product Line Content Delivery.

Moreover, Diomedes holds an advisory role in multiple forums as well as the technology innovation forum for Greece. Diomedes has played a crucial role in the evolution of Ericsson’s Media Delivery and Identity specifically for Media with a vision towards a network society.

Diomedes is part of the executive team in Ericsson BUSS and holds a number of scientific publication and patents. Diomedes holds an MSc. in Computer Science in Electrical Engineering and an MSc in Mathematics.

Last, Diomedes holds a board member position in new innovative companies around the world.

Deborah Kilpatrick, PhD is the CEO of Evidation Health, a digital health company backed by GE Ventures, Asset Management Ventures, and Rock Health. Evidation Health quantifies digital health impact via predictive analytics and machine learning using medical, behavioral and contextual information at the patient-consumer level.

Prior to her role at Evidation Health, Deborah was the Chief Commercial Officer of genomic diagnostics company CardioDx, whose Corus CAD product was named in the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards, TIME Magazine's Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs, and the Edison Awards. Earlier in her career, Deborah held multiple leadership roles at Guidant Corporation, including Research Fellow, Director of R&D, and Director of New Ventures in the Vascular Intervention Division. She serves on the Georgia Tech Advisory Board, chairs the Georgia Tech College of Engineering Advisory Board, and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Deborah is a co-founder of the MedtechVision Conference now held annually in Silicon Valley, and she has been named to FierceBiotech’s Top Women in Biotech, FierceMedicalDevice’s Top Women in Medtech, and Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 100 Women of Influence. She holds B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering and bioengineering focus from Georgia Tech.

Kay Koplovitz is founder and former Chairman & CEO of USA Networks, including USA Network, Sy-Fy Channel and USA Networks International, today a multi-billion dollar television company. Ms. Koplovitz ran the company for 21 years before stepping down in 1998, when it was sold for 4.5 billion dollars. She is co-founder of Springboard Enterprises, an accelerator and community that has fostered the investment of more than $6.6 Billion in women-led firms, and in 2015 launched the Springboard Fund to invest in Springboard portfolio companies. She is a frequent speaker on media, venture capital and corporate governance.

In 2014, Ms. Koplovitz and Springboard Enterprises teamed up with the Partnership for New York City Fund to launch the New York Fashion Tech Lab. Leading Fashion and Retail companies support the Lab and provide mentorship and feedback to NYFTL companies. Lab companies range from predictive analytics, wearable technology, mobile marketing and inventory control to sourcing platforms, social media and manufacturing.

Koplovitz serves as a trustee for The Paley Center for Media, The International Tennis Hall of Fame, and The College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin.

President Clinton nominated Koplovitz as Chairman of the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) in 1998. She is the author of Bold Women, Big Ideas: Learning to Play the High Risk Entrepreneurial Game (2002) and Been There, Run That (2015).She has received recognition awards throughout her career for leadership, entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

Current boards:
Board Member, CA Technologies, the world’s leading independent IT management software company.
Board Member: Time Inc., one of the largest media companies in the world reaching more than 130 million people globally each month across multiple platforms.
Board Member, ION Media Networks, a privately owned independent television company that owns and operates the largest broadcasting television station group in the United States.

Previous boards:
Kate Spade, Oracle, Instinet, Nabisco, General Re, Sun New Media

Education: Ms. Koplovitz holds a Bachelors of Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Master’s degree from Michigan State University, and honorary doctorate degrees from St. Johns University, Michigan State University, Emerson and Canisius College.

Maciej Kranz brings 25 years of business and management experience to his position as Vice President, Corporate Strategic Innovation Group. Kranz leads the group focused on identifying and capitalizing on the next wave of technology disruptions, shaping and amplifying Cisco technology strategy, and conducting technology due diligence for potential investments/acquisitions. He drives the external innovation and co-innovation efforts including Cisco Innovation Centers.

Prior to this role, Kranz drove the vision, strategy and P&L for a new hyper-growth business unit focused on Internet of Things. As General Manager, Connected Industries Group, he built a $250M business from the ground up in 18 months and relentlessly evangelized the IoT opportunity across Cisco and the market.

As VP Borderless Networks, Kranz led the efforts across Cisco businesses of defining, prioritizing, and delivering Borderless Network Architecture and roadmaps. Cisco networks enabled enterprises to conduct business and communicate from anywhere, anytime, and in any way they wish – as Borderless Networks.

With his tenure as VP of Marketing for the Wireless Networking Business Unit (WNBU), Kranz drove business and product strategy for business-class indoor and outdoor wireless and mobility offerings.

Kranz also led product management for the stackable Ethernet switching business unit, which he grew to a multi-billion dollar business across enterprise, small business, and Metro Ethernet networks.

Prior to Cisco, Kranz held various management positions at 3Com Corporation, where he was instrumental in the strategy, development and expansion into new markets of 3Com’s $1B Ethernet network interface cards (NICs) product line. He began his professional career at IBM Corporation in International Marketing.

Jacqueline is Managing Director of Munich Re / HSB Ventures. Munich Re is the world’s largest reinsurer, while its subsidiary Hartford Steam Boiler is a leader in equipment breakdown insurance and coverage for renewable energy and cyber security.

Previously, Jacqueline was VP of Innovation & Corporate Venture Capital at The Hartford where her team received Global Corporate Venturing’s award for Best Practices in Financial Services for their unique approach to combining investing in start-ups and incubating new businesses.

Scott Lenet is a founder and president of Touchdown Ventures, a firm that works with leading corporations to establish and manage their corporate venture capital investing activities.

Prior to starting Touchdown Ventures, Scott founded DFJ Frontier, a media-focused seed and early stage venture capital firm. As a managing partner, Scott leads fund management, fundraising and portfolio management for Frontier. Scott began his venture capital career in 1992 with Geocapital Partners, then gained operating experience in product marketing at Trilogy Software and as the founder and CEO of SmartFrog.com, acquired by Cybergold in 1999. Several of Scott's successful investments include public companies Netcom and Logic Works, MaxPreps (sold to CBS), and AudioMicro (sold in a private transaction).

In addition to his board roles for several portfolio companies, Scott previously served on the board of the Sacramento Philharmonic and founded the Entrepreneurship Center at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, where he was an adjunct professor from 2003 to 2010. Scott began teaching entrepreneurship and venture capital at the University of Southern California in 2010. Scott graduated with an AB in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and received an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School.

Toby Lewis has been editor of Global Corporate Venturing since the beginning of 2013, having joined the media publication as news editor in 2011. Mr. Lewis has served as one of the three executive directors on Mawsonia’s board since joining the publishing company of Global Corporate Venturing, Global University Venturing and Global Government Venturing.

Mr. Lewis was previously news editor at Private Equity News, part of Dow Jones. He was published regularly in The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, Financial News, Private Equity News and across the Dow Jones network. He has also written as a freelancer for top trade titles including Legal Week, Global Pensions, Real Deals and numerous other titles. Before moving to Private Equity News, Mr. Lewis was a reporter at Private Equity International.

Susan Lucas-Conwell is a global business executive with a proven track record of driving innovation and accelerating revenue growth. Known for her collaborative leadership, she has successfully built teams, communities and strategic alliances in B2B, consumer goods and service organizations. Recent public recognition includes The “Innovator Spotlight Award” and TedX.

Currently Chief Innovation Catalyst with Growth Resources Inc., Susan collaborates with executive teams of Global 1000 companies to build strategic relationships with the innovation ecosystem, identify high potential start-ups and drive corporate growth through external innovation. As Global CEO at Great Place to Work, she re-positioned the brand and increased annual revenues by 30%. Previously, she was CEO of SVForum, where she established long-term relationships with corporations such as Microsoft and IBM as well as venture capitalists, governments and service providers. She also advised hundreds of early stage technology start-ups. Much of her career was spent in France at Cartier International and Ray-Ban before founding Clear-Day, a cross-border business accelerator.

Susan continues to mentor start-ups at StartX and Singularity U in addition to sitting on several private Boards. She holds an MBA from The Wharton School, an MA in Economic History from Johns Hopkins University and a BA with Honours from University of Wisconsin- Madison.

Wendy Lung is Director of Corporate Development and Partner in IBM’s Venture Capital Group. Her mission is to seek out external innovation for IBM through worldwide relationships with VCs and their portfolio companies. She drives early insights into IBM’s strategy development and expands the partner ecosystem and acquisition pipeline across IBM’s strategic initiatives.

Wendy has worked with the venture and startup community throughout her career. In 2000, she built IBM’s Net Generation business in Asia Pacific, focused on internet startups and service providers. In recent years, she created and launched IBM Global Entrepreneur, the company’s first partner program for early stage startups. Today, her focus is business development across Cloud, Mobile, Analytics, Cognitive Computing and 17 vertical industries.

Her previous roles include leading marketing for IBM Telecommunication industry worldwide and for IBM Retail and Wholesale Distribution industries in North America. She started her career in competitive sales in the small and medium business (SMB) market.

Eric Ly is founder of Presdo, which provides an event app called Presdo Match to facilitate attending networking. It has helped connect hundreds of thousands of event participants at events around the world to network and connect on business opportunities.

Eric was a co-¬founder of LinkedIn, the world's leading professional social network. At LinkedIn, Eric helped create some of the core features of the platform in use by all LinkedIn users today. He helped LinkedIn to achieve a quickly growing user base now reaching more than 390 million people around the world.

Susan Lyne is President of BBG Ventures, a new venture fund for women-led tech start-ups. The fund is focused on consumer internet businesses – services, content, commerce – based on the belief that there is a huge opportunity in backing smart entrepreneurs who reflect and understand the consumers driving the fastest-growing areas of the internet. Before launching the BBG Fund, Susan was most recently CEO of the AOL Brand Group where she oversaw AOL’s unique content brands including AOL.com, TechCrunch, Engadget, StyleList, Moviefone, and MapQuest.

From 2008-2013 Susan was CEO and then Chairman of Gilt Groupe, the innovative ecommerce company that pioneered flash sales in the United States.

Prior to that Susan spent three decades in the media industry. She served as President and CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) from 2004-2008. While there she was named Publishing Executive of the Year by Advertising Age and received a Matrix Award from New York Women In Communications.

From 1996 to 2004, Ms. Lyne held various positions at the Walt Disney Company and ABC, including EVP of Movies and Miniseries and later President of ABC Entertainment where she was responsible for the network’s primetime schedule, overseeing the development of shows including Desperate Housewives, Lost, and Grey’s Anatomy.

Before joining Disney she was Managing Editor of New Times and The Village Voice and created and launched Premiere Magazine, serving as Editor-in-Chief and Publication Director.

Susan Lyne is Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Gilt.com and a director of Starz LLC. Additionally, Ms. Lyne is a trustee of Rockefeller University and The New School, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

James Mawson was editor of Private Equity News, part of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal in London, for nearly four years until May, 2010 when he launched Global Corporate Venturing as an independent title from the publishing company Mawsonia. This was followed by the launch of the second publication, Global University Venturing, in January 2012 to help students and faculty and academia more broadly launch or develop their entrepreneurial businesses and work with external peers. The company's third title, Global Government Venturing, was launched in May 2014.

As well as editing Private Equity News, Mr. Mawson coordinated leveraged buyout and venture capital coverage for use by other titles in the Dow Jones and News Corporation group, has acted as a spokesman on BBC radio and television and chaired awards and conferences for a host of media groups, including the BVCA awards, an event for more than 1,000 people in October, 2009.

Currently, Jeff is responsible for Allstate’s global technology strategy and strategic ventures, focusing on creating and investing in capabilities, platforms, and partnerships required to transform Allstate’s core businesses and launch new high growth businesses.

Most recently, Jeff was Senior Vice President of corporate strategy, M&A, and business development where he worked with Allstate’s senior leadership team and board to define future strategy and execute strategic transactions. Prior leadership roles at Allstate include finance and planning, marketing, and serving on the boards and management teams of early stage Allstate business ventures.

In addition to his Allstate experience, Jeff has venture and start-up company experience including running strategy, product development and marketing for Magnify, an advanced data mining and predictive analytics company acquired by Choicepoint/LexisNexis.

Jeff has a MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and a BA in management from Columbia.

Dominique Mégret is head of Swisscom Ventures, which he started in 2007. He joined Swisscom, the Swiss telecommunications and IT group, as head of the Group Strategy unit in 2002.

Previously, Mr. Mégret was an entrepreneur in the United Kingdom, strategy consultant in the European telecom industry and country manager for an IT company in Germany. He currently serves on the boards of Transmedia SA, g2e SA, Mona Lisa Capital AG as director as well as Quantenna Inc (observer), ASSIA Inc., Geosatis and Adello (advisor). He is also co-chairman of the IBF Corporate Venturing Conference in California. Mr. Mégret holds an MBA from Insead.

James Mawson was editor of Private Equity News, part of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal in London, for nearly four years until May, 2010 when he launched Global Corporate Venturing as an independent title from the publishing company Mawsonia. This was followed by the launch of the second publication, Global University Venturing, in January 2012 to help students and faculty and academia more broadly launch or develop their entrepreneurial businesses and work with external peers. The company's third title, Global Government Venturing, was launched in May 2014.

As well as editing Private Equity News, Mr. Mawson coordinated leveraged buyout and venture capital coverage for use by other titles in the Dow Jones and News Corporation group, has acted as a spokesman on BBC radio and television and chaired awards and conferences for a host of media groups, including the BVCA awards, an event for more than 1,000 people in October, 2009.

Greg is a senior investment manager for DSM Venturing with responsibility for biotech, health and wellness, nutrition, Ag Tech and Food Tech investments in North America. He joined DSM in 2011. Prior to joining DSM Greg was CEO of several start-up and public companies including KIP Biotech, Avrio Biopharmaceuticals, and Girindus America Inc. He has held a variety of senior executive positions in operations, program management, engineering and business development at Altergy Fuel Cell Systems, Aerojet Pharmaceutical Fine Chemicals and Aerojet Rocket Propulsion Company.

Greg is a Board member for several DSM portfolio companies including Ganeden Biotech, ZeaVision, Natreon, VioCare and Harland Medical Systems. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.

As senior director of the product and innovation team, Jennifer Micek directs U.S. Cellular’s uniquely customer-focused services a critical element in the company’s successful drive to make "the ideal customer experience" its calling card and look at new areas that the business can innovate and grow new revenue streams. In this role, Micek leads teams in the areas of innovation, product strategy and portfolio management, product launch and development, product management and marketing, business development, corporate venture and vendor management. She has led the efforts on building out US Cellular’s Corporate Venture efforts and Innovation team.

Micek’s career with U.S. Cellular began 8 years ago in product strategy. Since then, she has held positions of increasing responsibility, including senior director product, services and devices and director of product development and strategy. Prior to USCC, Jennifer was at Motorola in a variety of roles in the handset business where she worked with key partners, on developing software applications, handsets and co-developed product concepts with the intent of creating a unique set of experiences for the user in the areas of social networking, imaging, and productivity. Before this, she held a variety of finance roles at Motorola’s corporate headquarters and at incubator businesses in the U.S. and in China.

Micek is a native of the Chicago area and holds a MBA in Marketing, Strategy and Entrepreneurship from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a B.S. in Finance and International Studies from Miami University and is a CPA. She is on the governing board of Girls on the Run Chicago and chairs US Cellular’s Women’s Affinity Network Group. She lives in Park Ridge, Ill, with her husband and three children.

As senior director of the product and innovation team, Jennifer Micek directs U.S. Cellular’s uniquely customer-focused services a critical element in the company’s successful drive to make "the ideal customer experience" its calling card and look at new areas that the business can innovate and grow new revenue streams. In this role, Micek leads teams in the areas of innovation, product strategy and portfolio management, product launch and development, product management and marketing, business development, corporate venture and vendor management. She has led the efforts on building out US Cellular’s Corporate Venture efforts and Innovation team.

Micek’s career with U.S. Cellular began 8 years ago in product strategy. Since then, she has held positions of increasing responsibility, including senior director product, services and devices and director of product development and strategy. Prior to USCC, Jennifer was at Motorola in a variety of roles in the handset business where she worked with key partners, on developing software applications, handsets and co-developed product concepts with the intent of creating a unique set of experiences for the user in the areas of social networking, imaging, and productivity. Before this, she held a variety of finance roles at Motorola’s corporate headquarters and at incubator businesses in the U.S. and in China.

Micek is a native of the Chicago area and holds a MBA in Marketing, Strategy and Entrepreneurship from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a B.S. in Finance and International Studies from Miami University and is a CPA. She is on the governing board of Girls on the Run Chicago and chairs US Cellular’s Women’s Affinity Network Group. She lives in Park Ridge, Ill, with her husband and three children.

Paul Morris advises global corporations on setting up new Corporate Venture Capital units and reviewing or restructuring existing ones. He works with VC funds that seek closer interactions with corporates, and helps early and growth stage companies that are looking to engage with corporate partners.

Morris currently advises the UK government on increasing inward VC investment into high-growth potential UK companies. He is primarily responsible for leading efforts to introduce global CVCs and VC funds to qualified UK early-stage and growth-stage companies.

Paul Morris is a Corporate Venture Capital veteran. He set up the CVC business of Dow Chemical in Europe in 1996 and ran this for 16 years. During this period he invested over $100M in 110 transactions in more than 50 different entities across ICT, Life sciences, and Cleantech. This comprised both direct investments and LP positions in VC funds. He has participated in over 300 board meetings of investee companies, including Oxford Immunotec, Plastic Logic, Fillfactory and Ness. He interacted frequently and closely with many other CVC leaders during this time, and gained an intimate understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with establishing strategic relationships between young entrepreneurial companies and large corporations.

Morris has spoken on CVC at international conferences and on CNBC television, and has had articles published in leading CVC publications. He has run workshops at industry conferences and initiated efforts to establish a CVC Working Group within the European Venture Capital Association. He is an active member of the British Venture Capital Association CVC working group; and a faculty member of the GCV Academy, delivering Masters-level training courses to Corporate VCs in Europe, Asia and the US. Morris currently holds board positions in funds and companies spanning public and private markets in several countries across Europe and the Middle East.

During a 28-year career with Dow Chemical Morris held a wide range of senior commercial management, people management and business development roles. He has captained rugby and cricket sides at school, college and club levels and is a qualified ski instructor. Paul Morris, a UK national, is based in Zurich, Switzerland. He speaks German, and speaks French fluently. Morris holds a First Class Honours degree in Textiles, French and Marketing from the University of Huddersfield.

Karl Mundorff co-leads the Oregon State University Advantage Accelerator and is on the faculty of the College of Business Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship. His recent past includes the position of Director of Research Programs for Oregon BEST, a State Signature Research Center focused on advancing the Cleantech cluster. As Director of Research Programs he worked with University and National Lab researchers to advance technology to market. He helped secure an Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership designation from the Economic Development Administration, which created an opportunity for the Pacific Northwest Manufacturing Partnership to compete for more than $1billion in new federal agency grant opportunities.

Karl also served as President and CEO of BioReaction Industries which developed and commercialized an air pollution control technology utilizing microbes to digest industrial process exhaust. Growing the company from prototype to commercialization created significant IP, sales and license agreements across three continents along with the development of customer engagements with Fortune 500 companies such as Toyota, Weyerhaeuser and 3M. He was also part of the management team at Gardenburger taking the company through a successful IPO.

Karl has also been an Industry Mentor for two National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps teams, one of which earned the top mark out of 23 teams from around the country.

He has been a judge and mentor for programs such as the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Cleantech Open, the University of Oregon Venture Quest and its Technology Entrepreneurship Program. He helped organize and run Portland State University, Wells Fargo funded Cleantech Challenge.

For ten years, he was a part-time instructor at Concordia teaching Global Business, Innovation and Starting New Ventures at the graduate and undergraduate level. He also designed and taught Innovation and Business Model Generation in Concordia's MBA program and has taught Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Portland State’s Masters in International Management program.

Mr. Mundorff holds a Bachelor of Science – Marketing degree from Oregon State University, Master of Business Administration – Entrepreneurship from Concordia University, Portland.

Girish Nadkarni is President of ABB Technology Ventures (ATV), the corporate venture arm of ABB. Girish started ATV in 2009 and it has invested over $165 MM in 18 investments across the globe. Prior to starting ATV, Girish ran the global automotive business for ABB’s Robotics Division.

Girish started his career as an attorney on Wall Street focusing on international banking and M&A. His business career spans Prudential where he was responsible for creating the innovative Pru-Shelf financing facility which at the end of 2014 had 805 customers with a portfolio value of $82 Billion, GE Capital and GE where he worked for Jack Welch on strategy and business development, and United Healthcare as chief operations officer. He has also had a stint as an entrepreneur when he founded and ran vSimplify, a VC funded startup which was a pioneer in the cloud based (ASP) business services area with a SaaS revenue model.

Girish earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Bombay where he was a gold medalist, his masters of law degree from the University of Virginia which he attended as a DuPont Fellow, and an MBA from Harvard where he was designated a Baker Scholar.

Girish serves on the boards of companies in the US, China, Israel and UK. He was also on the Investment Committee of Venture Incubator Partners, a CHF 100MM venture fund sponsored by major Swiss companies to invest in early stage Swiss companies. Girish is considered a thought leader in the area of corporate venture investing and is a frequent speaker at venture capital and industry conferences around the world.

Girish was listed on the Global Corporate Venturing Power List 100 in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Jon Otterstatter is the original co-founder of Preventice Technologies in 2007; formerly known as Preventice. He currently serves as the president, global strategy officer, and Co-CEO for Preventice Solutions. Jon earned a reputation as a creative, solutions-oriented leader and technology expert. His skills and commitment to excellence have brought high value to global enterprises while returning above-average value for stakeholders.

Prior to co-founding Preventice, Jon served as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for SPSS. While at SPSS, he guided the strategic direction, budget, personnel and daily operations for the company’s worldwide technology operations. He also served as Senior Vice President of Technology for ShowCase Corporation in Rochester, MN, and was a Senior Programming Manager at IBM. Jon holds a Master’s degree in Technology Management from M.I.T., and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Inspired by Sci-Fi, Anime, and Video Games, Jay has been building his career on the forefront of innovation, technology, and design. Early in his career, he worked as a Designer, UI/UX Engineer, and Product Manager. His focus on usability and user centric design has contributed to the growth and success of companies he has worked for. The products he has developed ranges from pre-installed applications for OEM vendors, web application interfaces utilized by top Fortune 100 companies, and conceptual designs demonstrating the future of product innovation which has been showcased at CEATEC, CES, and MWC. He has also worked with top industry brands such as Nike, Sony, Logitech, HP and others.

Jay has worked with global corporations and corporate innovators to help identify up and coming trends, build strategy, and execute award winning PoC’s and NRE’s by collaborating with startup companies around the world. He is also an active supporter of Accelerators and participates as a mentor and advisor. Through his activity as a Corporate Venture Capitalist, he has identified and engaged with start ups, many which has been acquired or are on the path of IPO.

Jay has joined Yamaha Motors to help launch Yamaha Motor Ventures and Laboratory Silicon Valley (YMVSV) in Menlo Park, California. YMVSV's focus is to explore new opportunities, provide vision and strategy for the future of Yamaha Motors, and to engage and invest in startup companies around the world. His areas of focus includes Robotics, IoT security and solutions, Smart Cities and Smart Mobility, as well as innovative technologies.

Mark is an experienced technologist, executive, founder, and private equity investor. He is founder/Managing Director of West Capital Advisors, a corporate innovation and venture investment advisory firm. Most recently, he served as a Managing Director in Draper Triangle Ventures, an early stage venture fund. Mark maintains a relationship with Draper Triangle in the role of Venture Partner.

Mark has been involved in many entrepreneurial ventures. He founded Synchrony Communications in 1997 raising $38 million in funding from leading VCs, including Charles River Ventures, APAX Partners and GE Equity. He grew the company to a size of more than 130 employees in four cities serving over 80 customers, including Cincinnati Bell, Bank of America, and Proctor & Gamble. In prior years Mark served in management roles with a series of venture backed Silicon Valley companies, including Gain Technology (sold to Sybase), Siebel Systems (IPO), and Genesys Telecommunications (IPO). After graduate school he worked in management consulting with Theodore Barry & Associates (Los Angeles). Mark began his career as a software engineer with Cincom Systems (Cincinnati).

He currently serves as an observer on the boards of OnShift, Oversight Systems, HubLogix, Amplifinity, and LabelInsight. He is also co-Founder of the Cincinnati Consumer Marketing Summit (formerly Omnichannel Marketing and Pervasive Commerce Conference) an invite-only event bringing together leading innovators, investors and corporate executives to review real world case studies and debate the future of consumer engagement.

Mark holds an M.B.A. from The Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University and a BS Systems Analysis from Miami University.

John is a Senior Managing Director at PwC focused on strategy, innovation and development. Business leaders depend on John for his insights to help them innovate for lasting growth, to increase their profits and commercialize market-leading technologies and new business models to create better experiences for their customers and stakeholders.

John helps clients think about the advantages and challenges of creating ecosystems for innovation. He helps companies clearly define their business objectives, establish innovation boundaries, devise strategies, and create viable innovation operating models that deliver results.

John was recognized for building PwC’s corporate venturing advisory capabilities alongside our innovation services at the 2015 Global Corporate Venturing Symposium where PwC received an award for Consultancy Firm of the Year.

John has spoken at the Global Innovation Summit, the Corporate Venturing & Innovation Partnering Conference, and the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium, and will be a featured speaker at upcoming 2016 innovation and corporate venturing conferences. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in optical engineering from the University of Rochester and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Mark Radcliffe is a senior partner of DLA Piper USA, LLP, an international law firm with 4200 lawyers in over 30 countries and 70 cities. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry magna cum laude from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Mr. Radcliffe’s practice focuses on representing corporations in their intellectual property and finance matters. In his thirty years practicing law in Silicon Valley, he has worked with a wide variety of companies from emerging growth companies to the Global Fortune 100.

He started DLA’s Corporate Venture Practice Group in 2002 and has served as the Chair of the practice since its founding. In 2014, he became Co-Chair of DLA’s Internet of Things Practice Group. He managed a keynote panel at the IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona on Legal Issues in Internet of Things, including Katherine Butler (General Counsel, GE Software). Lorena Marciano (Senior Counsel, Cisco) and Edwina Baddeley (Senior Counsel, Accenture).

Recognitions

Leading international legal publishers consistently rank Mark among the top lawyers in his profession. Chambers USA has repeatedly recognized him as “outstanding” and “a leader in open source-related matters.” Chambers & Partners has commented that Mark “has a wealth of experience in the technology sector. Clients particularly value the proactive approach he takes to understanding their needs and the strategic advice that follows.” In every year since 2009, Intellectual Asset Magazine named him among the “IAM 250 – The World’s Leading IP Strategists.” In January, 2013, he was appointed by the Department of State as the Private Sector Co Chair of the US Japan Innovation and Entrepreneurship Council.

Bipin Sahni is a senior vice president in Wells Fargo’s newly formed Innovation Group, a companywide organization that provides value-added services, leverages emerging technologies, and delivers customer-inspired technologies, products, and services. Bipin is also co-lead for the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator.

Prior to his current role, Bipin led Research & Development and Innovation in the Wholesale Services Group and led the architecture and development teams in Wells Fargo Wholesale Banking on mobile, portal, and front-end technologies. He managed the core authentication and authorization systems in the Wholesale Technology Group. He also led the Data Migration Delivery (DMD) team, which was responsible for all data conversion programs of Wachovia customers migrating to the Commercial Electronic O ce® (CEO)® portal after the Wells Fargo-Wachovia merger.

Bipin led the build-out of the CEO Mobile® channel, making Wells Fargo one of the fi rst banks to launch a mobile channel for corporate and commercial customers. Bipin and his team have patents approved by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Before joining Wells Fargo, Bipin was an application developer in India, working for Hexaware InfoSystems.

He graduated from D.Y. Patil College of Engineering & Technology in India, and received his M.B.A. from University of Phoenix.

Ralf Schnell is responsible for the worldwide activities of Siemens Venture Capital (SVC) with offices in Europe, USA and Asia. The business scope of SVC currently covers Siemens’ corporate venture capital program, a private equity advisory mandate for managing Siemens’ Pension Trust Private Equity portfolio and management of the VC fund-of-funds ‘Siemens Global Innovation Partners’ also for further European institutional investors.

Prior to joining Siemens Venture Capital as CEO in 2005, Mr. Schnell built up Infineon Technologies’ corporate venture capital activities from 1998 and was managing director of Infineon Ventures GmbH. Prior to joining Infineon Technologies in 1998, Mr. Schnell worked with Siemens AG for 11 years where he held various positions in innovation management, microelectronics and software development and corporate research.

Mr. Schnell obtained his diploma degree and PhD in Physics.

Reese Schroeder is Managing Director of Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. He has been in this role since January, 2004. In this position, he is responsible for overall management of Motorola Solutions’ corporate venture capital program.

Reese joined Motorola, Inc. in 1989. Prior to his current position, Reese was a Director in Motorola’s Corporate Development and Strategic Transactions Group responsible for a wide variety of M&A activity. During his tenure with Motorola, he has served in various capacities in the Networks Business Unit, including Senior Manager of the Contracts Department, Commercial Strategies Manager for the International Marketing Organization, Director of Operations for the Asia Pacific business and Director of Business Development.

Prior to joining Motorola, Reese was Vice President of Sales and Administration for a Midwest-based manufacturer of chemical transportation containers. He also engaged in his own private law practice for a brief period of time.

In 1981, Reese graduated from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois with a B.A. majoring in Political Science. He also received his J.D. from John Marshall Law School in 1984.

Kevin is a Partner in PwC’s San Francisco office and leads PwC’s Innovation & Development consulting practice within the US. As both a consultant and a practitioner, Kevin has over 20 years of experience in driving growth through new products, services and business model innovations. Kevin brings a hands-on perspective to presentations from his work leading major transformations at both the strategic and operational levels with companies in a wide range of industries, including high tech, consumer electronics, software, industrial products, financial services, life sciences, utilities and consumer products.

Kevin is a regular author and presenter on a range of Innovation-related topics, including Open Innovation / Collaborative Development, digital transformation, early-stage technology management, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and new product time-to-market. He has authored multiple chapters in the New Product Development Toolbook published by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), specifically on technology commercialization and collaborative development strategies. Most recently, he co-authored the PwC Strategy& Innovation1000 study examining trends in global R&D spending.

Kevin holds a BS in Engineering from Cornell University, an MS in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Thomas M. Sipp is a Managing Director of Credit Suisse in the Private Banking & Wealth Management division, based in New York. He is Chief Operating Officer for the Private Banking & Wealth Management division, and a member of the Private Banking & Wealth Management Management Committees.

Prior to his current role, Mr. Sipp was the COO for Private Banking & Wealth Management Products, and previously the COO And Chief Financial Officer for Credit Suisse’s Asset Management division. Mr. Sipp joined Credit Suisse in September 2009 from Pyramis Global Advisors, a unit of Fidelity Investments that manages assets for institutional clients, where he was the Head of Investment Operations. In that role, Mr. Sipp was responsible for overseeing all investment operational activities, including trading, risk management and derivatives and product development. Prior to that, he spent eight years with the Gartmore Group – the first six as their Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Sipp was a founding principal of Gartmore Global Investments in 1998.

Mr. Sipp received a B.A. in Finance from Alfred University and an M.B.A. from University of Pittsburgh. He is a Certified Financial Analyst.

Sue Siegel is the CEO of GE Ventures and Healthymagination where she spearheads an innovation platform designed to drive growth for both GE and its partners.

Before joining GE, she was a Silicon Valley-based VC and led investments in personalized medicine, digital health, and life sciences. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, she was President and Board Member of Affymetrix, a company that she led from a start up to a global, multi-billion dollar market cap genomics leader. Sue serves on the Board of the National Venture Capital Association, the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative Council, Stanford Hospital’s Board IT Committee, Harvard Partner’s Innovation Advisory Council, and the Cleveland Clinic’s Advisory Council, among others. Sue was a “multiplier” in the bestselling business book: Multipliers: How The Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and was recognized as one of “The 100 Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley”.