Best Startup
At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top California based VP’ operating in the Internet space. If you think a VP’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Sumeet Singh
Vice President Big Data & AI and Location Platforms of Verizon Media
Sumeet Singh is the Vice President of Big Data, AI, and Location Platforms at Yahoo (now Verizon Media). Sumeet is considered an early leader of the big data movement, responsible for launching and scaling most services for Yahoo’s Hadoop platform since 2011. He has more than 20 years of experience in the high-tech, media, and telecommunications industries. Connect with Sumeet on Twitter @sumeetksingh.
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About Verizon Media: Verizon Media offers services in content, advertising, and technology with its brands such as Yahoo, TechCrunch, and more.
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Tenni Theurer
VP and Head of Product for News of Verizon Media
As an innovator & operational executive across consumer and technology domains at Yahoo, Visa and IBM, Tenni’s experience spans 17 years leading product and engineering teams delivering new strategies, features and services. She is currently Sr Director of Product Management where she oversees Yahoo.com and Yahoo News’ product portfolio at Oath. Prior to Yahoo, she was Sr Business Leader for Visa’s consumer digital wallet and mobile services. At IBM, Tenni worked in the Pervasive Computing group developing enterprise mobile solutions for B2B customers in US and Europe. She holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.
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About Verizon Media: Verizon Media offers services in content, advertising, and technology with its brands such as Yahoo, TechCrunch, and more.
Amit Vyas
Global Vice President, Inside Sales of Samsara
Amit is responsible for building and scaling a high-performance sales organization and driving all revenue growth. Known for his energy, motivating leadership style and sharp attire, Amit brings over 15 years of experience across IT, networking, direct and channel sales. Most recently, Amit was Director of Sales, Cloud Networking at Cisco Meraki, where he helped build and scale the sales organization and was a key contributor to the rapid growth through Meraki’s acquisition by Cisco for $1.2B in 2012. When Amit’s not working, he can be found playing almost any competitive sport, doing Bikram yoga, riding his motorcycle, playing chess or hanging with his wife and son at Crissy Field.Amit has a B.A. in Philosophy from San Jose State University.
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About Samsara: Samsara helps businesses in harnessing IoT data to develop actionable business insights and improve their operations.
Malik Ducard
VP and Content Partnerships of YouTube
Malik S. Ducard is the VP, Content Partnerships at Google where he is in charge of premium film, TV and new media partnerships for YouTube. Prior to joining YouTube, he served as senior vice president of digital distribution for the Americas at Paramount Pictures and oversaw distribution of films to online, mobile and digital platforms including iTunes, XBox, Netflix, and a range of mobile, online and device technology partners. A native of the Bronx, NY, Malik attended the Pomfret School then went on to earn his B.A. degree in Film and African-American Studies in 1995 from Columbia University and then his MBA in 2000 from the University of California, Los Angeles, Anderson School of Management.
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About Google, Google, Google, YouTube: YouTube is a video-sharing platform, allows users to upload, view, and share videos, including movie and music clips and amateur content.
Kelly Merryman
VP of Content Partnerships of YouTube
Kelly Merryman is VP of Content Partnerships at YouTube. Previously she managed content acquisition for Netflix in Europe. She began her tenure at Netflix in 2007 licensing content for the US market. In 2010 she dedicated her time to Netflix’s international expansion which has included Canada, Latin America, and the UK and Ireland. Prior to joining Netflix, Kelly held positions in digital distribution and business development at Sony Pictures, and spent time at both Bain & Company and Audax Group, a private equity firm in Boston. Kelly is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Business School. She also serves on the boards of two non-profits in the Los Angeles area: CoachArt and Bookends.
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About YouTube: YouTube is a video-sharing platform, allows users to upload, view, and share videos, including movie and music clips and amateur content.
Robert Slifka
VP of Engineering of Sharethrough USA
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About Sharethrough USA: Sharethrough is one of the top global independent omnichannel ad exchanges
Rick Armbrust
VP Business Development of Framer
Rick Armbrust is an technology executive and advisor to startups
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About Amperity, Framer: Framer is a tool to design interactive high-fidelity prototypes for iOS, Android, desktop, or the web.
Sandy Gould
VP, Talent Acquisition, Development, Diversity & Inclusion of Yahoo
Sandy Gould is the VP, Talent Acquisition, Learning and Diversity & Inclusion at Verizon Media.
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About Verizon Media, Yahoo: Yahoo is a technology and media company that serves users through its portfolio of digital platforms, products, and services.
Jon Prall
VP Production Engineering of Yahoo
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About Yahoo: Yahoo is a technology and media company that serves users through its portfolio of digital platforms, products, and services.
Rob MacKethan
VP of Insurance of Zendrive
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About Zendrive: Zendrive leverages mobile sensor data to provide actionable insights that improve safety for passengers and drivers worldwide.
Jeremy King
SVP, Engineering of Pinterest
Jeremy is SVP of Technology at Pinterest where he leads the company’s technical vision and roadmap and the engineering organization responsible for building and scaling a visual discovery engine. Prior to Pinterest, Jeremy was the CTO and SVP at Walmart. During his tenure at Walmart, Jeremy led the e-commerce tech team that powered the technology behind U.S. retail stores and eCommerce for Walmart and Jet. Focused on creating seamless shopping experiences, he oversaw customer, merchant and supply chain technologies across cloud and data platforms. An expert in e-commerce development and building and scaling technical teams and consumer products at the world’s largest retail organization, he was also previously CTO and SVP at Walmart Labs, EVP of Technology at LiveOps and VP of Software Development and Engineering at eBay.
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About Pinterest, Walmart Labs, Webb Investment Network: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas.
Steve Chazin
Vice President Of Products of Alarm.com
Steve is a Chief Product and Marketing Officer. He is equally adept at product strategy and tactics and has an excellent on-stage presence. He is a rare individual who has synthesized a stellar background in engineering, sales, marketing and management to become a true product leader.
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About Alarm.com: Alarm.com is provides home and business security solutions based on wireless, web and mobile technologies.
Baoqiu Cui
VP & Chairman of Technical Committee of Xiaomi
In June 2012, he joined Xiaomi and built up the Xiaomi Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Platform team. He has led Xiaomi’s “Cloud Computing-Big Data-Artificial Intelligence” technology development route。He is the chairman of the Group technical committee . Dr. CUI, Baoqiu graduated from the Department of Computer Science of Wuhan University and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Prior to joining Xiaomi, he worked in IBM Silicon Valley Lab, Yahoo! and LinkedIn, working on technology development and management in database, search engine, machine learning, big data, social networking and more.
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About Xiaomi: Xiaomi is an electronics and software company that focuses on mobile devices and technology.
Mike Blacker
VP, Enterprise Business Development of The Trade Desk
Mike Blacker is the VP of Strategic Business Development at The Trade Desk, a global demand-side-platform in the $5B real-time bidding industry. In his role, Mike prospects for new strategic clients across various industries and works extensively with existing clients to further embed The Trade Desk platform into their business. Mike is an adtech veteran with a string of start-up including Infoseek, CBS SportsLine, Epylon/Accenture, ExpertCity/Citrix, AudienceScience, Feeva, Quova and Neustar. Mike was one of the first to sell online ads back in 1996 and has spent his entire career working in various roles around digital advertising, adtech and ad platforms. Mike graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara and lives with his family in Ojai, CA.
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About The Trade Desk: The Trade Desk is an online demand-side platform that provides buying tools for digital media buyers.
Daniela Alpert
Co-Founder & VP of Corp Relocation of Shyft
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About Shyft: Shyft transforms the moving and relocation industry by introducing technology, customer service, and lead management solutions.
Peter Ferris
Sr. Vice President, Office of the CEO of Equinix
Pete Ferris serves in the Office of the CEO at Equinix. Peter has held several senior-level positions with Equinix since July 1999 and was appointed Sr. Vice President of Global Partner Programs and Strategic Customer Development in 2013. From 2010 to 2013, he served as Chief Sales Officer. From 2007 until 2010, Mr. Ferris served as President, Equinix U.S. where he was responsible for strategy and growth of the company’s operations throughout the region. Prior to that, he served as the Vice President of Sales for Equinix. Mr. Ferris has more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. Prior to Equinix, he held senior management positions at Frontier Global Center, Genuity and MFS Datanet. Mr. Ferris holds a degree in Economics from Ohio Wesleyan University and lives in San Francisco.
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About Equinix: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Yun Freund
Vice President of Engineering of Equinix
Yun Freund served as Vice President of Engineering, at Equinix, leading the global Product Engineering organization. Previously Yun worked as the VP of Engineering at GE Digital for over 5 years and has been instrumental in building Predix Industrial Internet Platform and driving Digital Transformation with GE business units. Yun also worked at Cisco leading Cloud Services Platform for large enterprise and service providers. Yun has taught graduate computer science courses at San Jose State University as Adjunct Professor and has a PhD in Computer Science. Yun is an executive speaker at various STEM and Women leadership panels and embraces diversity and inclusion in her value.
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About Equinix: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Steve Madden
Vice President, Global Segment Marketing of Equinix
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About Equinix: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Milind Wagle
SVP & CIO of Equinix
Milind Wagle joined Equinix in April 2010 and serves as the Global CIO within the Customer Success Organization. Wagle leads the global IT team and oversees the solution delivery for enterprise applications, information security, and end-user technology infrastructure support for Equinix’s thousands of global employees. For the past six years, Wagle has served in various senior leadership roles within the IT team at Equinix, most recently as Vice President. In addition to managing the global IT applications portfolio, he has managed large-scale, cross-functional enterprise transformation programs for the company, including designing and deploying process, system and organizational standardization across the globe. Previously he has held leadership positions at VeriSign, KPMG Consulting and BearingPoint. Wagle holds a BS, Electronics Engineering from University of Mumbai.
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About Equinix: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Michael Blum
SVP, Business and Legal Affairs of Quantcast
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About Quantcast: Quantcast helps create a more personalized digital world.
Christina Cubeta
VP Marketing of Quantcast
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About Quantcast: Quantcast helps create a more personalized digital world.
William Caraccio
Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary; Chief Legal Officer of Applied Micro Circuits
L. William Caraccio joined us in June 2010 as Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary. In December 2002, he was a co-founder of RMI Corporation (formerly Raza Microelectronics, Inc.), a privately held fabless semiconductor company where he was most recently Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, and, following RMI Corporation’s acquisition by Netlogic Microsystems, Inc. in October 2009, he served a transition role at Netlogic as Senior Counsel until January 2010. From March 2000 to January 2003, he was Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Foundry Holdings, Inc., a privately held investment firm and incubator of high technology companies. From June 1992 to March 2000, he was at Pillsbury Madison & Sutro LLP (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP), an international law firm where he was most recently a Partner and co-chair of the firm’s Corporate Securities and Technologies Group. Mr. Caraccio earned his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Berkeley and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Irvine.
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About Applied Micro Circuits: Applied Micro provides computing and connectivity solutions for cloud infrastructure and data centers.
Matt Wilson
Vice President, Politics of Brigade
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About Brigade, Causes: Brigade wants to make civic engagement easy, effective, and enjoyable — and in so doing, restore political power back to the people.
Michael Wiemer
VP Eng / Co-Founder and CTO of Mojo Vision
Michael Wiemer is the Co-Founder and CTO at Mojo Vision.
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About Mojo Vision: Mojo Vision is developing Mojo Lens, the world’s first AR smart contact lens with a built-in display that delivers Invisible Computing
Eric Johnsen
VP Business Development, Consumer and Enterprise (Fractional) of Mojo Vision
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About Mojo Vision: Mojo Vision is developing Mojo Lens, the world’s first AR smart contact lens with a built-in display that delivers Invisible Computing
Tim A. Miller
SVP Engineering of Quizlet
Tim is Senior Vice President of Engineering at Quizlet, a mobile learning platform serving over 50 million adult and child learners worldwide, including two-thirds of U.S. high schoolers and 50% of U.S. college students. Previously, he served as head of engineering at Flickr, where he built Flickr’s first mobile team and deployed the first free terabyte on the Internet. From 1997 through 2011 he served in engineering and leadership roles at several venture-backed startups including Airflash, Zero G Software, and Deem.
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About Quizlet: Quizlet is a learning platform that uses activities and games to help students practice and master what they’re learning.
Jordan Savage
Co-Founder & VP, Creative of Grove Collaborative
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About Grove Collaborative: Grove creates and curates high-performing, planet-first home and personal care products and is the leader in zero-plastic CPG.
Ben Seri
Vice President of Research of Armis Security
Ben Seri is the Head of Research at Armis, responsible for vulnerability research and reverse engineering. His main interest is exploring the uncharted territories of a variety of wireless protocols to detect unknown anomalies. Prior to Armis, Seri spent almost a decade in the IDF Intelligence as a Researcher and Security Engineer. In his free time, Seri enjoys composing and playing as many instruments as the wireless protocols he’s researching.
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About Armis Security: Armis Security offers an agentless IoT security solution that lets enterprises see and control any device or network.
Shawn Conly
Senior Vice President Marketing of GREE
Shawn Conly is a Vice President, Marketing at GREE.
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About GREE: Gree is a Japanese internet media company that provides mobile social networking, and mobile technology services for its users.
Enrique Rodriguez
EVP and CTO of Liberty Global
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About Liberty Global: Liberty Global is an international cable company providing television, broadband internet, and telephony services.
Oliver Nicholas
VP of Engineering of Nana Academy
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About Nana Academy: Vertically integrated student-to-operator trade skills school, driven by an AI-marketplace.
Brendon Thomas
VP, Distribution of Pluto TV
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About Pluto TV, ViacomCBS: Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service in America.
Bhumi Bhutani
Co-Founder, VP of Sales of Way
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About Way: The No.1 Car Insuretech, Fintech Super App
Steve Yankovich
Vice President of Innovation and New Ventures of eBay
Steve Yankovich joined HomeValet as Chief Experience Officer in 2020.Steve Yankovich, vice president of innovation and new ventures at eBay Inc., leads a newly formed team focused on future-looking technologies and experiences that will drive innovative new approaches to connecting retailers, merchants and sellers with consumers around the world. Steve is focused on creating the future – opportunities beyond core products from a business and technology perspective. From 2009 to 2012, Steve served as vice president of eBay mobile, responsible for eBay’s mobile business and product development worldwide on device platforms such as the iPhone, iPad, RIM, Android, Windows Phone, tablet and mobile web. Under Steve’s leadership, eBay mobile doubled its mobile commerce volume every year from 2008 through 2012, with $13 billion in mobile commerce volume in 2012 alone. eBay mobile is expected to generate $20 billion in 2013. Steve spearheaded the eBay Inc acquisitions of RedLaser and Critical Path Software. His patent portfolio consists of 29 leading technologies, four of which have been formally issued. Before eBay, Steve was Adobe’s Entrepreneur in Residence where he created an Adobe seed project targeted at knowledge and information workers. Before Adobe, he was the founder/CEO/CTO of Movaris Inc., an Enterprise BPM software company that was acquired by Adobe. When Steve isn’t busy tinkering with technology, he enjoys building and driving fast cars.
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About eBay, HALL Wines, HomeValet, Relay Ventures: eBay is an online marketplace that connects a global network of buyers and sellers.
Alexander Stojanovic
Vice President, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Semantic Platform Engineering of eBay
Alexander is an executive and entrepreneur, currently serving as Managing Director of Adaptive Insight. Previously, he served as Vice President of Applied Research and Machine Learning at eBay, managing machine learning activities globally. He was the founding Vice President, CTO, and Chief Architect of the Cisco Cognitive Computing and Real-time Analytics SaaS platform – now a part of the Cisco Cloud Center product line. Prior to Cisco, Alexander was a Vice President and CTO at Oracle Corporation, working on design and strategy of Oracle’s public cloud platform offerings with an emphasis on machine learning-based SaaS offerings. He served as CTO for the Oracle Data Integration Cloud Services and founded both Oracle Data Catalogue and Big Data Preparation Cloud Services. Alexander has also held founder and leadership roles at MAANA. At Microsoft, Alexander founded and led Azure HDInsight, SQL Server Semantic Engine, and Microsoft Solver Foundation product lines. Alexander is an active angel investor and advisor to innovative AI and ML-driven start-ups, including: Kosmos AI, Wave Computing, Sapiens Data Science, Roambee, and DataRPM (acquired by Progress Software in 2017). A graduate of Santa Clara University, he resides in Los Gatos with his family – wife Tatjana and daughter Mina – enjoying electronic music composition, Leica photography, cinema, and sailing.
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About eBay: eBay is an online marketplace that connects a global network of buyers and sellers.
Dan Tarman
SVP & CCO of eBay
Dan Tarman has 30+- years of professional and executive experience. Starting his career as a litigation attorney and continuing in the corporate world, has worked at a number of leading companies in senior marketing, brand strategy and corporate communications roles.
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About Autism Impact Fund, eBay: eBay is an online marketplace that connects a global network of buyers and sellers.
Jordan Sweetnam
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas Market of eBay
Jordan Sweetnam is the SVP and general manager for Americas Market at eBay. He was the vice president of customer experience for Walmart eCommerce. He brings rich e-commerce experience building differentiated products that delight customers and drive growth. He is responsible for leading a high-performance organization with Design, Analytics and Product Management teams that are focused on delivering an amazing customer experience when shopping Walmart.com at home, on their mobile devices or engaging digitally in the store. Jordan joined Walmart’s eCommerce team in 2016. He previously spent 12 years at eBay with his last two years as vice president of Seller Experience. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree with a specialization in finance from the University of British Columbia, where he graduated with honors.
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About eBay, Walmart Labs: eBay is an online marketplace that connects a global network of buyers and sellers.
Sanjeev Katariya
Vice President & Chief Architect of eBay
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About eBay: eBay is an online marketplace that connects a global network of buyers and sellers.
Jean-Francois Van Kerckhove
VP Geographic Expansion – Member of North Americ Executive Staff of eBay
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About eBay: eBay is an online marketplace that connects a global network of buyers and sellers.
Hanumantha Kavuluru
Co-founder & VP of Engineering of Rafay Systems
Hanumantha(Hemanth) Kavuluru is the Co-Founder & VP of Engineering at Rafay Systems.
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About Rafay Systems: Rafay enables enterprise Platform teams to manage the full lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters and modern applications with ease at any scale.
Eric Zhao
VP of technology of JD.com
Eric Zhao is a Vice President of JD.com, leading the company’s R&D efforts in big data, search and personalized recommendations. Before joining JD.com, he worked for several leading US technology companies, including Yahoo and Nextag. At Yahoo, he oversaw the company’s search recommendation products and algorithm research. His research has been published in industry-leading academic journals, such as KDD, ACM SIGMOD, and ICDE, and he holds three U.S. patents relating to his work on the Social Interest Discovery System (SID). Eric holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
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About JD.com: JD.com is an internet company and online consumer electronics retailer in China.
Jean-Claude Junqua
VP, North America Strategy and Business Development of Smappee
Jean-Claude Junqua has 20+ years of successful experience as a global executive in the US, Europe and Japan. During his tenure at Panasonic he led the global speech activities involving teams in US, Japan and China. After 2 years spent in Japan, Jean-Claude Junqua served as Vice President of Panasonic North America and developed the R&D activities of Panasonic in Silicon Valley creating new business opportunities in various areas such as Consumer Electronics, Automotive, Avionics, Mobile Communication, Smart Home, Speech Recognition/Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things (IOT). Always enjoying new challenges, Jean-Claude Junqua created an internal startup inside Panasonic which led to the creation of a new US business unit in the area of Health and Wellness. Jean-Claude Junqua is also Visiting Professor at Osaka Institute of Technology and Adjunct Professor at CMU Silicon Valley. Currently, Vice President of American Strategy and Business development at Smappee, Inc. and CEO and Founder of CE2Innovate, one of his passions is to develop new approaches to innovation, to initiate and develop business transformation and to help startups and public companies reach their next level of growth. He serves as a mentor and coach for startups at a number of accelerators in the Bay area and is the author/co-author of more than 100+ articles and 90+ patents along with 2 books in the area of speech recognition.
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About CE2Innovate, European Commission, Plug and Play Tech Center, Smappee: Smappee develops innovative solutions that foster sustainable energy consumption.
Jodi Alperstein
VP Product of Hired
Jodi Alperstein is Vice President of Product at Hired, where she leads product strategy, execution and design. She is mission-driven and passionate about creating amazing experiences for both our candidates and employers. She has a proven track record of leading Product at start-ups and at scale, with 20 years of success in consumer, B2B, marketplace and subscription business models. Prior to Hired, she helped grow divisional P&Ls at both Moody’s Analytics and E*TRADE Financial to $300 million each. Jodi was Credit Karma’s first VP of Product, helping them reach 40 million members, and she was the first head of product at Varo Money and Roofstock.
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About Hired: Hired is a career marketplace that matches tech talent with innovative companies.
Nidhi Gupta
Senior Vice President of Engineering of Hired
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About Hired: Hired is a career marketplace that matches tech talent with innovative companies.
Thanda Belker
Senior Vice President, Global Distribution of pocket.watch
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About pocket.watch: Pocket.watch is a new studio creating global franchises from the YouTube stars and characters loved by Generation Alpha.
Chase Landau
SVP, Talent & Strategic Partnerships of pocket.watch
Chase Landau is the SVP, Talent & Strategic Partnerships at pocket.watch.
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About pocket.watch: Pocket.watch is a new studio creating global franchises from the YouTube stars and characters loved by Generation Alpha.
David B. Williams
SVP & GM, Channels of pocket.watch
David B. Williams is the SVP & GM, Channels at pocket.watch.
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About pocket.watch: Pocket.watch is a new studio creating global franchises from the YouTube stars and characters loved by Generation Alpha.
Chad Richard
SVP Business & Corporate Development of Yelp
Chad Richard joined Yelp as Senior Vice President, Business & Corporate Development in 2015.
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About Yelp: Yelp operates an online platform that connects people with local businesses.
Justin Norman
Vice President, Data Science of Yelp
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About Yelp: Yelp operates an online platform that connects people with local businesses.
Dan Kimball
SVP Marketing of Yelp
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About S-Docs Inc., Yelp: Yelp operates an online platform that connects people with local businesses.
Song Bac Toh
Vice President of Product Management of Tata Communications
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About Tata Communications: Tata Communications, a member of the $62.5 billion Tata Group, leverages its advanced solutions capabilities and domain expertise across
Miki Heller
VP, Business Operations and Strategy of Astranis
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About Astranis: Astranis is a space startup that builds small and low-cost telecommunications satellites to provide internet access in remote regions.
James Keating
Division Head (Vice President): Apartments, Shopping, Careers, & Digital Marketing of Internet Brands
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About Internet Brands: Internet Brands is an internet media company that operates online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets.
Abhijit Tamhane
VP of Product Development of HackerRank
Abhijit has over 17 years of experience building industry leading products. In his current role, he is leading the Product Management and Design function at HackerRank. Before HackerRank, he was the head of Product Management for the Commerce Group at Target.com and Mobile. Over there, he played an instrumental role in establishing global Product teams and leading a technology led transformation of Target’s Ecommerce business. Prior to Target, he has held Product leadership roles at Salesforce and Hightail. Abhijit holds an MBA from University of California at Berkeley, and a MS in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Chicago.
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About HackerRank: HackerRank, the developer skills company, helps businesses attract, evaluate and hire the best technical talent from around the world.
René Schmitz
Vice President IoT Products & Technology of Vodafone
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About Vodafone, Vodafone: Vodafone is a mobile telecommunications company that offers voice, messaging, and data services.
Brian Robins
VP – Business Development of Bentley Systems
Brian Robins is an experienced B2B marketing executive specializing in enterprise software and IT services. Currently Brian is Vice President of Business Development at Bentley Systems, a provider of software solutions for architecture, engineering and construction. Brian was formerly Chief Marketing Officer at SunGard Data Systems Inc., the largest privately-held business software and IT services company. Between 1999 and 2011 Brian led SunGard’s worldwide marketing organization during which time the business grew from a $1 billion revenue company focused primarily on North America to a $5 billion revenue global Fortune 500 company with 20,000 employees serving 25,000 customers in 70 countries. Brian holds a Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence from New College, Oxford University and an MBA from INSEAD.
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About Bentley Systems: Bentley Systems is the infrastructure engineering software company. We provide innovative software to advance the world’s infrastructure.
Jay Blazensky
Vice President of Business Development, Voice of LivePerson
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About LivePerson: LivePerson provides real-time intelligent customer engagement solutions that help companies enhance the relationship with their customers.
Neil Kim
Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of Marvell
Neil Kim is the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Marvell Technology. In this role, Neil oversees Marvells advanced technology and process development efforts. Prior to joining Marvell in 2017, Neil served as the Executive Vice President of Operations and Central Engineering at Broadcom, where he was responsible for all centralized engineering development, global operations and procurement. During his 17-year tenure at Broadcom, he also held a variety of senior management positions in engineering. Prior to joining Broadcom in 2000, he was the Vice President of Engineering at Western Digital. A holder of 33 patents, he earned his BSEE from the University of California, Berkeley.
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About Marvell: Marvell is a technology company that manufactures and offers integrated circuit solutions using communications mixed-signal processing.
Dan Christman
Executive Vice President of Storage Group of Marvell
Dan Christman is the Executive Vice President of the Storage Business Group at Marvell Technology. In this role, Dan oversees Marvell’s HDD, SSD and Networked Enterprise Storage solutions. Dan joined Marvell Technology in 2016 as Executive Vice President of Strategic Planning, before assuming his current role in 2017. Previously, Dan served as Chief Marketing Officer at ESS Technology, where he was responsible for product roadmaps and strategy, as well as marketing and global customer relationships. Earlier in his career, Dan spent 17 years at Maxim Integrated in various executive and general management roles, where he earned a reputation for his ability to identify new market trends, grow new revenue streams and transform struggling business units into profitable growth engines. Dan earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a B.S. in Physics from SUNY Oneonta.
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About Marvell: Marvell is a technology company that manufactures and offers integrated circuit solutions using communications mixed-signal processing.
Nigel Alvares
Vice President of Solutions Marketing of Marvell
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About Marvell: Marvell is a technology company that manufactures and offers integrated circuit solutions using communications mixed-signal processing.
Mitch Gaynor
Executive Vice President, Chief Administration & Legal Officer of Marvell
Mitch Gaynor is Marvell Technology’s Chief Administration and Legal Officer. In this role, he oversees the company’s Human Resources, Legal, Compliance and Government Affairs teams. Mitch has more than 20 years’ experience as an executive officer at publicly-held tech companies where he lead their legal departments. Prior to joining Marvell in 2016, Mitch was an executive officer and General Counsel at Juniper Networks, Portal Software and Sybase, Inc. He started his legal career at the San Francisco law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. Mitch previously served as Marvell’s acting Chief Human Resources Officer in 2016, working to transform the company’s work environment into one in which employees can do their best work, grow their careers, and share in the company’s success. Mitch earned a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and a B.A. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.
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About Marvell: Marvell is a technology company that manufactures and offers integrated circuit solutions using communications mixed-signal processing.
Vicky Sagehorn
VP of Finance & Operations of LISNR
Vicky Sagehorn is the VP of Finance & Operations at LISNR.
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About LISNR: LISNR enables secure and seamless data transmission using the most advanced ultrasonic data technology
Jake Engwerda
SVP Global Sales & Partnerships of LISNR
Jacob Engwerda is the SVP Global Sales & Partnerships at LISNR.
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About LISNR: LISNR enables secure and seamless data transmission using the most advanced ultrasonic data technology
Shankar Chandran
Vice President, Catalyst Fund of Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center
Shankar Chandran is vice president at Samsung Electronics and head of the Samsung Catalyst Fund, at the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC). The SSIC is based in Menlo Park, California and is focused on accelerating innovation for Samsung Electronics. Shankar is responsible for early stage and disruptive venture capital investments in technologies targeted at high growth sectors such as cloud infrastructure, mobile technology and security, digital health, next-generation user interfaces, and the internet of things. Previously, he was part of the founding team at Panorama Capital and has been an active venture investor for 12 years at Panorama Capital and JP Morgan Partners. Shankar has held various engineering, business development and management roles at Applied Materials, Inc., and has been granted eight patents as the primary inventor. He also serves on the Advisory Board at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Santa Clara University, and has served as a director or observer on the boards of over ten companies. Shankar holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), India, an MS in Materials Science from Arizona State University, and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
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About Samsung Catalyst Fund, Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center: SSIC is a global organization within Samsung’s Device Solutions division focused on identifying and nurturing new technologies
Curtis Sasaki
VP of Ecosystems and iOT General Manager of Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center
Curtis Sasaki is the vice president of ecosystems for Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC). He leads new business creation and is responsible for driving growth and innovation through product, technology and ecosystem development. He works with entrepreneurs and startups in Silicon Valley and other global technology hotspots, focusing on Smart Health, Big Data and the Internet of Things. Prior to SSIC, Curtis was Senior Vice President of Samsung Media Solutions Center America (MSCA), where he oversaw the development of Samsung’s media services that work with Samsung Smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and other connected devices to deliver the best apps and content to the connected consumer. At MSCA, he also lead the Innovation Lab, a team that focuses on developing pioneering cloud services, the Developer Relations team that drove the Samsung Developer Conferences, as well as the North American Content Services team, which focuses on content partnerships and strategic partner relations.
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About Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center: SSIC is a global organization within Samsung’s Device Solutions division focused on identifying and nurturing new technologies
Joseph Tou
Vice President / US Investment Manager of Sony Innovation Fund
Joseph Tou is Vice President / US Investment Manager at Sony Innovation Fund.
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About Sony Innovation Fund: Sony Innovation fund is the corporate venture capital arm of Sony that invests and engages in early-stage companies.
Eric Hauser
Vice President of Engineering of DroneDeploy
Eric Hauser is the VP of engineering at DroneDeploy.
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About DroneDeploy: DroneDeploy is a cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform to help businesses get things done.
Wesley MacLaggan
SVP, Marketing of Marin Software
Wesley MacLaggan has been working with Marin Software since 2008. He is currently Head of Marketing at Marin Software. Previously he lead the Product team where he was responsible for driving Marin’s roadmap and working closely with engineering to deliver innovative advertising solutions to the market. He has over a decade’s experience developing and delivering analytical enterprise SaaS applications, including four years with Applied Predictive Technologies working on their platform to help retailers maximize the return on their promotional spending. Mr. MacLaggan began his career providing strategic guidance to companies in a range of industries with Mercer Management Consulting. He holds an Economics degree from Dartmouth College.
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About Marin Software: Marin Software Incorporated (NYSE:MRIN) provides a leading cross-channel performance advertising platform used by advertisers and agencies.
Vidya Subramanian
Vice President – Emerging Technologies of Roambee
An energetic leader and results driven executive with over 15 years of solution delivery experience, Vidya Subramanian is the Vice President of Products and Co-founder of Roambee. He is responsible for product strategy, product delivery, and product management with a singular focus on product-market fit. Prior to Roambee, Vidya was Co-Founder and VP Professional Services at KeyTone Technologies Inc, a RFID technology company focused on providing a technology enabled service for real time asset monitoring through an enterprise scale sensor based platform. KeyTone was successfully acquired by Global Asset Tracking UK Ltd. He has also held influential and leadership roles at Plexus Technologies Inc., KPMG Consulting, Unisys, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Vidya holds a Masters in Computer Science from Temple University and dual Bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Economics from Calvin College, Michigan.
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About Roambee: Better Supply Chain Visibility & Intelligence
Shailesh Mangal
VP of Engineering of Roambee
Shailesh Mangal is Roambee’s Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, he is responsible for company’s technology strategy, development direction and future initiatives. Shailesh has been developing enterprise and web applications for more than 20 years. His passion spans from nurturing highly productive and nimble development teams, to steering through fast-paced ever-changing development landscapes, and maintaining code quality & performance. His main areas of interest include object-oriented design, system and cloud architectures, big data, real-time search and analytics. Shailesh holds a Masters in IT from The University of Texas and a Bachelors in Engineering from MNIT, Jaipur, India.
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About Roambee: Better Supply Chain Visibility & Intelligence
Jerry Miller
VP of Operations at ChargeLab
Jerry Miller, Fuqua MBA ’14, is a Tech Industry leader and currently serves as the VP of Operations at ChargeLab, a rapidly growing Electric Vehicle SAAS solution Start-up. Prior to ChargeLab having the honor of Jerry joining the team in April 2022; he had quite an impressive journey.
Jerry began his career after matriculating from the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Japanese Language and Cognitive Science. He has been the Head of Strategy and Operations at Particle, a Series-C Start-up in San Francisco. He has also spent a significant time at Apple for a sum of five years prior to joining Particle as a Business Operations Manager for Apple Watch and iPod, owning the relationship between the China-based factories and Apple. Prior to his MBA, Jerry was with Deloitte in San Francisco for over seven years as his service line’s lead Global Manager on the Oracle, Disney, HP, Intel, and Apple accounts.
Jerry is currently the CFO of the Board of Directors of Home for a Home, a 501c3 non-profit focused on providing homes for families in Guatemala. Jerry has been a musician since the 3rd grade and continues to artistically express himself as a Science Fiction/Fantasy writer. Jerry hails from Compton, California and now calls the city of San Francisco his home.
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About ChargeLab: ChargeLab is the Android of EV charging. Our hardware-agnostic software runs on the world’s most popular EV chargers.
Sharon Rechter
EVP of Business Development and Marketing of BabyFirstTV
Sharon Rechter, along with business partner, Guy Oranim, conceptualized and co-founded BabyFirstTV. In her role as executive vice president, she leads the business development and marketing activities for the company – with a clear passion to bring quality, new educational programming to families of babies and toddlers. Rechter has a broad background in television programming and recently served as the vice president and head of operations for The Israeli Network (the Israeli television channel in the U.S.). She was responsible for the general management of the network, and focused on areas including business development, advertising and subscriptions. Before entering the television broadcast industry, Rechter headed the strategic planning department at GNS Advertising in Israel where she was responsible for developing strategic plans for a variety of lifestyle brands. Rechter received her B.A. in business administration from the Arison School of Business and her L.L.B in law from the Radziner School of Law, both at The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel.
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About BabyFirstTV, First Media: BabyFirstTV is an online platform offering satellite TV, games, and smartphone apps for infants, toddlers, and parents.
Katherine Philpot
VP, Product Marketing of Minted
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About Minted: Minted is a design marketplace that connects users with artists to help them create something one-of-a-kind.
Asaf Shen
VP Products of Sansa Security
Mr. Shen joined Discretix in 2005 and has accumulated extensive engineering and marketing experience in security related IP products. Previously, he served as Director of Product Management and Product Marketing for the company’s IP product portfolio. Prior to that he served as Discretix’ VLSI team manager and IP projects manager. Before joining Discretix, Mr. Shen was a VLSI team manager at Tioga Technologies, a spinoff of its parent company, Orckit Communications. Mr. Shen holds a BSc (Cum Laude) in Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University.
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About Sansa Security, Tioga Technologies: Sansa Security is the only comprehensive Internet of Things (IoT) security platform securing everything from chipsets to the cloud.
Michel Langlois
SVP Products of Calix
Michel is responsible for all systems and cloud product development and strategy. He has more than 25 years of experience in networking technologies, large-scale software development, and engineering management. Before joining Calix, Michel was Senior Vice President Junos software at Juniper Networks. Prior to Juniper, he served as Senior Vice President-Network Software and System Technology Group (NSSTG) responsible for the IOS software/platform at Cisco Systems. Michel has a BSEE from the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada.
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About Calix: Calix provides the cloud, software, systems and services for service providers to simplify business, excite subscribers and grow value
Ed Chuang
Vice President, Marketing and Business Development of ClearCare
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About ClearCare: ClearCare is a web-based software solution that helps home care agencies efficiently focus on what’s important: providing better care.
Vidhya Ranganathan
VP of Engineering of MOJIO
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About MOJIO: Scalable, secure and hardware-agnostic, Mojio is the platform and SaaS provider of choice to build and scale connected mobility services.
Kyle MacDonald
VP of Marketing of MOJIO
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About MOJIO: Scalable, secure and hardware-agnostic, Mojio is the platform and SaaS provider of choice to build and scale connected mobility services.
Nina Qi
VP, Finance & Strategy of VSCO
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About VSCO: VSCO is a creative channel that builds creative tools, spaces, and connections driven by self-expression.
Roberta Gamble
Partner and VP of Frost & Sullivan
Roberta Gamble has over 17 years expertise consulting Global 1000 companies on market entry and expansion strategy, brand and demand, geographical expansion strategies and new market entry. She oversees a team of analysts and consultants with expertise across the energy and environment value chain, including oil & gas, power generation, power grids, energy storage, buildings, and water infrastructure. Her own research and expertise has focused on: •Thee convergence of IT and OT across oil & gas and power •Digital transformation of power grid and manufacturing •Smarter cities Roberta has headlined numerous key industry events and has been quoted and interviewed in national publications including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and NPR. She is a Partner and Vice President at Frost & Sullivan, and Global Business Unit Leader for the Energy and Environment team, which has over 100 analysts and consultants worldwide covering global energy, environment and infrastructure markets.
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About Frost & Sullivan: Frost and Sullivan is a business growth consultation company focused on increasing brand demand.
Alpa Shah
Global VP, ICT Research of Frost & Sullivan
Alpa Shah has been managing research and consulting projects at Frost & Sullivan for over six years. She oversees the development process of several market service teams – including areas such as Conferencing, Contact Center/CRM & Communications Infrastructure – to ensure timely delivery of high-quality materials. As a manager of these teams, Ms. Shah is also responsible for ensuring the success of projects undertaken. Ms. Shah is also involved in annual and quarterly business planning, from which goals and strategies are designed for the growth of all three teams. Throughout the years, Ms. Shah has been involved in various consulting projects involving unified messaging, conferencing, premises wiring, speech recognition and contact center products. These projects have been strategic in nature as the primary focus was to help clients successfully meet their business goals. Prior to joining Frost and Sullivan, Ms. Shah worked for Smith Barney for 5 years in its accounting division handling incentive compensation plans. In this position she was responsible for the capital accumulation and deferred compensation plans of top management and account executives. Thereafter, she worked as an account executive at Edward Jones. In these positions, Ms. Shah learned much about the operations of a financial company, financial instruments, and sales techniques. Ms. Shah received an MBA in Marketing from Hofstra University and a BS in Accounting from New York University.
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About Frost & Sullivan: Frost and Sullivan is a business growth consultation company focused on increasing brand demand.
Corina Davis
EVP Business Development and Chief Legal Officer of Redbubble
Corina Davis is the Chief Legal Officer at Redbubble.
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About Redbubble: Redbubble, an online art community, features stationery, apparel, wall art, cases and skins, housewares, and bags made by artists worldwide.
Adam Goldband
SVP of Technology of Brit + Co
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About Brit + Co: Brit + Co is a media company that inspires, educates, and entertains real women with a creative spirit.
Tawn Albright
EVP, Corporate Development of Leaf Group
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About Leaf Group: Leaf Group is a diversified Internet company that builds platforms across its media and marketplace properties.
Darren Hudgins
Vice President, Software Engineering of Breathometer
Darren Hudgins is the Vice President, Research & Development of Hillrom.
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About Breathometer, Hill-Rom: Breathometer develops a breath analysis technology that helps people make smarter decisions and improve their lives.
Curt Schacker
Vice President & Managing Director, Connected Products of EVRYTHNG
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About EVRYTHNG: EVRYTHNG develops an IoT platform for consumer product brands, articulating data with real-time insights for billions of things.
Curt Schacker
Vice President & Managing Director, Connected Products of EVRYTHNG
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About EVRYTHNG: EVRYTHNG develops an IoT platform for consumer product brands, articulating data with real-time insights for billions of things.
Heather Friedland
Vice President Of Product Management of Ancestry
Heather Friedland is a Vice President Of Product Management at Ancestry. She is a former chief product officer of Glassdoor, a career marketplace that helps people search for jobs and companies recruit suitable individuals. Previously, she was the vice president for local and seller experience at [eBay](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ebay#/entity). Friedland served as a principal program manager at [Microsoft](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/microsoft#/entity) before she joined eBay. She has also been employed as a marketing manager at Jump.com. Friedland obtained her bachelor’s degree in communications from [Cornell University](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cornell-university#/entity). She lives in San Francisco, California, United States.
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About Ancestry: Ancestry is a web-based platform that helps its users to create their own family tree and help them preserve and share their family history.
Dipti Vachani
Senior Vice President and General Manager of Automotive and Embedded Line of Business of Arm Holdings
Dipti Vachani is vice president in the Internet of Things Group and general manager of the Strategy and Solutions Engineering Division at Intel Corporation. Vachani’s organization is responsible for driving the overall strategy, technology direction, industry standards and IoT Edge product portfolio for IOTG.Prior to joining Intel, Vachani served as vice president and general manager of Power, Lighting and Display at Skyworks, maker of analog semiconductors. In that role, she managed product development, applications and operations.Before that, Vachani worked at Texas Instruments for 17 years, where her most recent position was vice president and general manager of the Single Core Processors group , a multinational business unit consisting of ARM MPU, video security and DSP. Also, while at Texas Instruments, Vachani led the creation of the company’s Sitara brand of ARM MPUs.Vachani holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Texas A&M University and an executive MBA degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a graduate of the executive education program at both the Harvard and Cambridge business schools.
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About Arm Holdings: Arm Holdings is a multinational semiconductor company that designs, produces, and licenses IP for digital electronic product development.
Surajit Datta
Vice President of Arm Holdings
Surajit Datta is the Vice President of Corporate Development at Arm since 2017. His role includes leading merger and acquisitions transactions and investments across multiple sub-sectors in technology, including emerging memory, IoT and security. Prior to joining Arm, Surajit was Managing Director at Evercore Partners in New York. He has over 15 years of investment banking experience on Wall Street, leading origination and execution of advisory and capital raising transactions in technology, media and telecom sectors at JPMorgan and Evercore. He has closed over $100 billion of M&A and over $20 billion of financing transactions. Surajit has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a Bachelors of Technology (Honors) from the Indian Institute of Technology.
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About Arm Holdings: Arm Holdings is a multinational semiconductor company that designs, produces, and licenses IP for digital electronic product development.
Drew Henry
SVP, IPG Strategy and Operations of Arm Holdings
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About Arm Holdings: Arm Holdings is a multinational semiconductor company that designs, produces, and licenses IP for digital electronic product development.
Hassan Parsa
VP of Global Head of Corporate Development of Arm Holdings
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About Arm Holdings: Arm Holdings is a multinational semiconductor company that designs, produces, and licenses IP for digital electronic product development.
Carolyn Herzog
EVP and General Counsel of Arm Holdings
Carolyn Herzog has over 20 years of global business and legal experience. She has extensive expertise in cybersecurity and privacy, ethics and compliance, corporate governance, regulatory compliance, crisis management, stakeholder engagement, and strategic planning. Carolyn is the Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Chief Compliance Officer at Arm, the world’s leading semiconductor IP company. At Arm, Carolyn leads a team of legal and public affairs professionals, and is responsible for all legal matters in the company. Prior to joining Arm, Carolyn was the VP, Chief Compliance Officer and Deputy General Counsel at Symantec Corporation, the global leader in cybersecurity, based in the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. She held various roles at Symantec, leading the company through significant transformation in 3 major offices. Carolyn was instrumental in leading numerous acquisition integrations for Symantec and, notably, the company’s sale of Veritas in 2016, creating a separate, privately held company. As Head of Legal for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, Carolyn was based in Symantec’s European headquarters in the U.K. She joined Symantec through the AXENT Technologies acquisition in December 2000, where she successfully led the public company acquisition of AXENT by Symantec, as General Counsel. Carolyn had been based in the Washington DC area prior to moving to the UK, having worked in the international development arena, both in the non-profit sector and with The World Bank. Carolyn has served on the European Board of the Association of Corporate Counsel, the Board for the National Cyber Security Alliance, and is an Advisory Board member to IPWatch System Corporation. She has been recognized as a Distinguished General Counsel by the Director’s Roundtable, and an Attorneys Who Matter by Ethisphere Magazine. Carolyn graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a JD and received her B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis.
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About Arm Holdings: Arm Holdings is a multinational semiconductor company that designs, produces, and licenses IP for digital electronic product development.
Brigham Hamlin
VP of Sales of Vim
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About Vim: Vim is a technology company building digital infrastructure for healthcare.
Brett Dunst
VP, Corporate Communications of DreamHost
Brett Dunst is VP of Corporate Communications at DreamHost, a web hosting and managed WordPress service provider. A passionate communications strategist and fierce brand advocate, Brett believes that you shouldn’t keep your culture to yourself. The best, most effective organizations use their culture to form the basis of a brand voice and tone that is truly authentic. A brand marketing and public relations professional, Brett can often be found speaking at marketing conferences, consulting for small businesses to understand and surface their brand’s strengths, and being quoted in outlets including VentureBeat, Fast Company, and NPR.
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About DreamHost: DreamHost provides web hosting, domain registration, and cloud services for individuals, small businesses, and developers.
Andrea Silas
VP of Technical Support of DreamHost
Andrea Silas As VP of Technical Support at DreamHost, a web hosting company, her team’s main focus is assisting customers 24/7, through various channels, including email and all the known social media ones. She has actively participated in creating and scaling a team to handle a growing workload from an increasingly connected customer base. She was integral part of creating and then overseeing the Social Customer Care team as part of the efforts to provide ‘support everywhere’ and align customer service with the company’s brand. As part of that same brand strategy, she and her team have directly engaged with customers throughout DreamHost’s numerous community events. Under her direction, DreamHost has received a string of accolades for its forward thinking-approach to providing cross-channel support.
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About DreamHost: DreamHost provides web hosting, domain registration, and cloud services for individuals, small businesses, and developers.
Brian Deignan
VP Corporate Sales of FastSpring
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About FastSpring: FastSpring is the trusted ecommerce partner for companies that sell software around the world.
Raymond Liao
Managing Director & Vice President of Samsung NEXT
Raymond Liao is a Managing Director at Samsung NEXT Ventures, with a special focus on Security, Big Data, Cloud, and AI. Previously Raymond was the founding CTO of Siemens Industrial Communications business in Germany. He started as an innovator at Siemens Berkeley to commercializing his PhD into a startup but failed post dot-com bubble, then as a spin-in and grew into the market-leading industrial WLAN business
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About Samsung Electronics, Samsung NEXT: Samsung NEXT invests in transformative early-stage software and services startups.
Brendon Kim
Vice President & Managing Director of Samsung NEXT
VP and Managing Director of Samsung NEXT Ventures, Brendon Kim has been investing in early stage startup companies for over 20 years. He is currently a Vice President/Managing Director of Samsung NEXT Ventures. The Ventures team invests in compelling early stage software and services startups, bringing the power of the Samsung platform to accelerate their growth. Prior to joining Samsung, Brendon was a co-founding general partner of Altos Ventures where he was a lead investor and board member in numerous early-stage software and services companies. Before co-founding Altos Ventures, he was a strategy and management consultant in the media, consumer and technology industries. Brendon received his MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and his BA from Princeton University.
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About Samsung Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Samsung NEXT: Samsung NEXT invests in transformative early-stage software and services startups.
Travis Bogard
SVP, Head of Product of Samsung NEXT
Travis Bogard is the Global Head of Uber Enterprise where he manages enterprise sales, product strategy and development, partnerships, and go-to-market initiatives, internationally. Prior to Uber for Business, Travis spent eight years at Jawbone as the Vice President of Product Management and Strategy. He oversaw the company’s product roadmap, research and analytics teams, customer service program, and business development activities, globally. While at Jawbone, Travis helped scale the company’s product offering from a single wireless headset to a portfolio of human-centered products designed to make everyday life better through a combination of hardware, software, and data. Before Jawbone, Travis spent almost a decade at Tellme Networks helping to grow a variety of teams ranging from engineering and product management to sales and business development. He also spent four years at AOL where he was a founding member of the AIM development team. During that time, he worked closely with the strategy and business affairs teams to direct AOL’s integration options for partners and lead the technical due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, such as Netscape. Today, Travis is focused on leveraging Uber’s ability to bring people and technology together in ways that save organizations time and money. He aims to launch a full-fledged business platform that extends the Uber for Businesses value proposition beyond ground travel in a variety of ways, including through partner integrations with companies like Concur, and native integrations with Uber products such as like UberEats.
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About Samsung NEXT, Whisk: Samsung NEXT invests in transformative early-stage software and services startups.
Bill Wilson
VP, Product Management of Finxera
Bill Wilson has over 14 years of experience bringing new technologies to market and managing the creation of web-based products. He headed product for lead generation products at Yahoo managing product integrations into core technologies such as their payments platform. More recently, he has consulted with several Silicon Valley ventures, including managing portfolio products for Monvia, a consulting and start-up incubation firm. Bill graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelors degree in Economics.
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About Finxera: Finxera offers an API-driven approach that enables clients to seamlessly integrate banking services into their applications.
