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 Director operating in the Internet space. If you think a Director 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.
Aya Miyaguchi
Executive Director of Ethereum Foundation
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About Ethereum Foundation: Ethereum is a platform and a programming language that helps developers to build and publish next-generation distributed applications.
Danielle Leong
Director Of Engineering of GitHub
Danielle Leong is the Director Of Engineering at GitHub.
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About GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Giovanni Gardelli
Senior Director, Ad Targeting Products of Verizon Media
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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.
Mozan Totani
Director, Head of Data Center Development and Delivery of Verizon Media
Mozan Totani is the Regional Manager, Amazon Web Services Infrastructure Operations.
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About Amazon Web Services, Verizon Media: Verizon Media offers services in content, advertising, and technology with its brands such as Yahoo, TechCrunch, and more.
Niranjan Nagar
Sr. Director, Product Partnerships of Verizon Media
Niranjan is the Sr. Director of Product Management at Verizon Media focused on product partnerships. He is an accomplished entrepreneur and a business leader with over 20 years of experience in digital entertainment and software services. He has extensive experience in software engineering, strategic planning, partnership and digital marketing working for leading software companies like Facebook, Electronic Arts, Listen.com/RealNetworks. Prior to Samsung, he was at Facebook focused on the growth of the games business, developing marketing strategy for mobile and console game publishers, and driving the integration of the Facebook platform on Playstation and the Xbox game consoles. He also co-founded SingShot, a karaoke based social networking service and a founding team member and VP of Engineering at Listen.com that created the Rhapsody music service. Niranjan has a MS in Computer Science from Drexel University and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Karnatak University in India. He is also a graduate of the SEP at Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
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About Meta, Samsung NEXT, Verizon Media: Verizon Media offers services in content, advertising, and technology with its brands such as Yahoo, TechCrunch, and more.
Alison Bellach Sonderegger
Director of Engineering of Verizon Media
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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.
Christopher Vincelli
Director, Global Partnerships of Verizon Media
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About Millennial Media, Verizon Media: Verizon Media offers services in content, advertising, and technology with its brands such as Yahoo, TechCrunch, and more.
Faith Murphy
Sr. Director, SMB Partnerships of Verizon Media
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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.
Faith Murphy
Sr. Director, SMB Partnerships of Verizon Media
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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.
George Bonaci
Director of Growth Marketing & Campaigns of Samsara
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About Quartzy, Samsara: Samsara helps businesses in harnessing IoT data to develop actionable business insights and improve their operations.
Marcus Chan
Director of Content of NerdWallet
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About NerdWallet: NerdWallet develops a financial platform to help people find the right credit cards and mortgage rates.
Christian Oestlien
Director, Product Management of YouTube
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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.
Shimrit Ben Yair
Senior Director of Product Management of YouTube
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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.
T Jay Fowler
Director of Product Management, Music of YouTube
T. Jay Fowler is a product manager with experience at KPMG Consulting, Wired, Yahoo, Inc., and design consultancies. T. Jay Current holds the Vice President of Product and Engineering role at MOG.
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About Yahoo, YouTube: YouTube is a video-sharing platform, allows users to upload, view, and share videos, including movie and music clips and amateur content.
Andy Berkheimer
Director of Engineering of YouTube
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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.
Will Aldrich
Director of Product Management, YouTube Premium of YouTube
Will joined Smule in January 2017. Previously, he was SVP of Product at SurveyMonkey from April 2011 to May 2016. Prior to that, he was VP of Product at TripIt, a Webby-award winning travel service that was acquired by Concur Technologies in January 2011. At TripIt, Will was responsible for product management, design and customer care. Prior to that, Will was Senior Director of Product at Yahoo!, responsible for the Profiles, Mash and Photos teams. Before Yahoo!, Will co-founded and ran product for vVault (now part of Biscom) and spent 3 years before that at CNET. Will received a BA in Foreign Affairs from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
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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.
Prachi Gupta
Engineering Director of YouTube
Prachi Gupta is an engineering director at YouTube.
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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.
Oona King
Global Director Diverse Marketing of YouTube
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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.
Erika Rottenberg
Member of the Board of Directors of Wix
Erika Rottenberg has served as a member of our Board of Directors since October 2014. From July 2008 until September 2014, Erika was Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of LinkedIn Corporation, the world’s largest professional networking company on the internet. Prior to LinkedIn, Erika served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for SumTotal Systems, Inc., a talent management enterprise software company, from March 2004 to July 2008. Prior to SumTotal, Erika served in several roles, including most recently as Vice President, Strategic Development and General Counsel, at Creative Labs, Inc., a computer peripheral and digital entertainment product company. Erika was also an attorney with the Silicon Valley-based law firm of Cooley LLP and, prior to law school, was a school teacher in Anchorage, Alaska. Erika serves on the board of directors of the Girl Scouts of Northern California and the Silicon Valley Law Foundation. She holds a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and a B.S. in Special and Elementary Education from State University of New York at Geneseo.
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About : Wix provides a platform for the development of cloud data services for millions of registered users worldwide.
Henry Pickavet
Editorial Director of TechCrunch
Henry Pickavet is the Editorial Director at TechCrunch. Prior to joining TechCrunch, Henry had a hand in a number of online and print publications, including InternetNews.com as chief copy editor and Government Technology Magazine as managing editor. He also did a stint in Sydney as group editor of RBI Australia’s manufacturing group, which is when he also developed an affinity (a love, really) for cricket. He has a bachelor’s in English from California State University, Chico, and a master’s in Liberal Studies from the New School for Social Research in New York.
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About TechCrunch, TechCrunch: TechCrunch is an online magazine reporting on technology opinions, news, and analysis.
Jessica Brunner
Director of Brand Marketing of TechCrunch
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About TechCrunch: TechCrunch is an online magazine reporting on technology opinions, news, and analysis.
Emma Comeau
U.S. Director of Events of TechCrunch
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About TechCrunch: TechCrunch is an online magazine reporting on technology opinions, news, and analysis.
Travis Bernard
Senior Director, Subscriptions and Audience Insights of TechCrunch
Travis Bernard is a Senior Director at TechCrunch, focusing on subscriptions, audience insights, and audience development. Travis has been with AOL and TechCrunch since 2013. Prior to joining AOL and TechCrunch, Travis worked on the agency side of marketing and advertising with LM&O and New Media Strategies (now Meredith Xcelerated Marketing) in Arlington, VA. Travis is originally from Maryland, and he graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.
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About TechCrunch: TechCrunch is an online magazine reporting on technology opinions, news, and analysis.
Floris Bauer
Member of the Board of Directors of Cut.com, Inc.
Floris Bauer is a Member of the Board of Directors at CUT.COM.
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About : Cut makes little stories of some interest.
Catherine J. Friedman
Board of Director of Yahoo
Catherine J. Friedman has served as an independent consultant serving public and private growth companies since 2006. Prior to that, Ms. Friedman held the position of Managing Director at Morgan Stanley from 1997 to 2006 and Head of West Coast Healthcare and Co-Head of the Biotechnology Practice at Morgan Stanley from 1993 to 2006. Ms. Friedman has been a director of Board of XenoPort Inc., a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company, since 2007 and also serves on its Audit and Governance Committees. Ms. Friedman joined the Board of Enteromedics, a publicly traded medical device company in 2007 and also serves as the Chair of its Audit Committee. She has been a Board member of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula for seven years, where she serves on the Executive and Program committees.
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About : Yahoo is a technology and media company that serves users through its portfolio of digital platforms, products, and services.
Eric Brandt
Board of Director of Yahoo
Eric Brandt has served as a member of their Board since March 2016. Mr. Brandt served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Broadcom Corporation (“Broadcom”), a global supplier of semiconductor devices, from February 2010 until February 2016, and he served as Broadcom’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from March 2007 until February 2010. From September 2005 until March 2007, Mr. Brandt served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Beginning in 1999, he held various positions at Allergan, Inc., a global specialty pharmaceutical company, including Executive Vice President of Finance and Technical Operations and Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining Allergan, Mr. Brandt spent ten years with The Boston Consulting Group, a privately-held global business consulting firm, most recently serving as Vice President and Partner. Mr. Brandt is a director of Lam Research Corporation, a wafer fabrication equipment company, and Dentsply Sirona Inc., a dental products company.
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About : Yahoo is a technology and media company that serves users through its portfolio of digital platforms, products, and services.
Mike Shebanek
Sr. Director, Accessibility of Yahoo
Mike Shebanek is the Head of Accessibility at Facebook.
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About Meta, Yahoo: Yahoo is a technology and media company that serves users through its portfolio of digital platforms, products, and services.
Cecile Lal
Snr. Director, Business Operations and Strategy 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.
Michael Natkovich
Director Engineering/Senior Principal Engineer 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.
Shira Kates
Director of Product Design, Yahoo Ad Products of Yahoo
Shira Kates has worked in tech since 1998, but can sometimes pass for a millennial. She leads design on Yahoo’s ad management platform. Previously, she was a content strategist for Google. She has held a variety of other exciting jobs including running covered-wagon cookout tours in Yellowstone Park. Shira has an MBA in Design Thinking and loves designing experiences that improve life. You should check out Shira’s talk because she can show you how to run your own design sprints, contribute to product vision without stepping on your project manager’s toes, and win a hackathon, even if you were an English major.
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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.
Seth Sundberg
Director of Sales of 70 Million Jobs
Seth is a California Bay Area native, a former NBA basketball player, a former branch manager of a national mortgage company and a former inmate in a federal prison. He was incarcerated for tax fraud and served 5 years for his offense, and is now committed to making the transition back into society better for other formerly incarcerated men and women.
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About 70 Million Jobs, Commissary Club, Inside Out Goodness, SEVEN FOOT FINANCE: 70MillionJobs is the first national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records.
Spencer Rosen
Director of Global Business Development of Zendrive
Spencer Rosen helps executive teams make decisions about strategic partnerships and investments to drive exponential revenue growth and enhance product market fit. Over the past two years he has supported the launch and dramatic growth of Verizon Telematics’ connected car consumer aftermarket product, Hum — which now counts more U.S. subscribers, miles traveled, and driver behavior data points than all competitors combined. Rosen has thrived as an automotive/mobility industry specialist with Verizon for the past 8 years by applying his prior experience and ongoing passion for helping tech startups grow. He loves working with top talent from across the auto-tech ecosystem, from start-ups to multinationals, to solve hard problems while bridging the adoption of technology for safer driving today to driverless vehicles in the future. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their six year old son.
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About Verizon Telematics, Zendrive: Zendrive leverages mobile sensor data to provide actionable insights that improve safety for passengers and drivers worldwide.
Marissa Bowman
Senior Director, Customer Success 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.
Jay Harris
Director of Product Management 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.
Albert Pereta
Executive Creative Director of Pinterest
Albert Pereta is a Creative Director of product design at Pinterest and a Creative Advisor for a few startups. He oversees design quality and leads innovation initiatives within the company. He’s originally from the beautiful town of Barcelona where he studied design and bounce between design studios and advertising agencies. He moved to New York to get his MFA Design as Entrepreneur at SVA. After returning to his hometown he founded UnitCo: a product design agency consulting for companies between NY and BCN. After a couple of years, he founded Icebergs: a visual organization app for creatives. Icebergs got acquired by Pinterest in 2014 and he moved to San Francisco to join the Product Design team. When he’s not working you can find him in the woods, baking bread or cooking a mean paella.
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About Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas.
Tim Belonax
Design Director of Pinterest
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About Double Issue, Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas.
Ryan Bell
Marketing Director at Comcast SportsTech of Boomtown Accelerators
Ryan A Bell is recipient of the Presidential Award for his volunteer work with Special Olympics and the youth in Oakland. He is a writer for The Good Men Project and a branding/marketing specialist for companies of all sizes. He also happens to be the most connected man on Periscope.
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About Boomtown Accelerators: Boomtown’s bespoke accelerator programs help startups turn ideas into profitable, scalable businesses.
Romain Serman
Executive Director Bpifrance USA of Bpifrance
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About Bpifrance: Bpifrance provides financial solutions for companies that are booting up the listing on the stock exchange and credit equity.
Charlotte Ginsburg
Member of the Board of Directors of Save the Redwoods
Charlotte Ginsburg serves as Director for Catalina Sea Ranch, LLC. The health of the environment has always been important to her and the future of our planet. Charlotte also serves on the board of the Aquarium of the Pacific, and is active with the Cabrillo Aquarium, the Palos Verdes Land Conservancy, Save the Redwoods and other environmental projects. Charlotte lives in Rancho Palos Verdes and has always had a love for the ocean and its inhabitants.
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About : Save the Redwoods is an organization that protects and restores redwood forests and connects people with their peace and beauty.
Evan Sawyer
Director, Growth & Operations Strategy of Fair
Evan Sawyer is the director of growth and operations strategy at Fair.com.
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About Fair: Fair is a car leasing company that is revolutionizing the car-as-a-service concept.
Baek Kyoum Kim
Principal, Director of Investments of Hashed
Lead strategic investment initiatives at Hashed. formerly at AWS and co-founder of a logistics startup
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About Hashed: Hashed is the crypto assets fund and community builder.
Kieran Campbell
Managing Director of Wilbur Labs
Managing Director at Wilbur Labs
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About Wilbur Labs: Wilbur Labs is a startup studio that builds companies and helps teams to accelerate their growth.
Robin Pam
Director of Product Marketing of Optimizely
Robin Pam is the director of product marketing at Optimizely.
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About Optimizely: Optimizely is a platform that provides digital experience solutions.
John Lagerling
Director and CBO of Mercari
John Lagerling is the Director, Android Global Partnerships at Google.
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About Mercari: Mercari is a community-powered shopping app from Japan allowing anyone to buy and sell anything from anywhere.
Alexei Ilinykh
Director Product & Engineering of VentureBeat
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About Condorly, VentureBeat: VentureBeat is an online technology news platform that is engaged in technology publication and events business.
Vlad Kachur
Co-Founder, Director of Promolta
Vlad Kachur create strong marketing directions to help musicians be seen and establish new fans. Promolta’s co-founder believes every musician deserves to be recognized for his or her talent and hardwork.
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About Promolta: A self service advertising platform to promote videos in targeted blogs, websites, mobile apps, games and social networks.
Peter Van Camp
Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Equinix
Peter Van Camp has served as the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors at Equinix since April 2007. Prior to becoming Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors, Peter served as Equinix’s Chief Executive Officer and as a Member of the Board of Directors since May 2000 and as President since March 2006. In addition, in December 2005, Peter was re-elected as Chairman of the Board of Directors, having previously served in that capacity from June 2001 to December 2002. From January 1997 to May 2000, Peter was employed at UUNET, the Internet division of MCI (formerly known as WorldCom), where he served as President of Internet Markets and as President of the Americas region. During the period from May 1995 to January 1997, Peter was President of Compuserve Network Services, an Internet access provider. Before holding this position, Peter held various positions at Compuserve, Inc. during the period from October 1982 to May 1995.
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About : Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
David Fonkalsrud
Director, Global Public Relations of Equinix
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About Equinix, Racepoint Global: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Andrew Bruckner
Senior Director, Marketing Insights & Analytics of Equinix
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About Equinix: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Ramchandra Koty
Director Of Engineering of Equinix
Ram is a technology leader at Equinix who has held variety of roles in the areas of Enterprise/B2B Integration, Web & Mobile Development, Continuous Delivery Ecosystem, APIs & Developer Experience. He has a long and varied history of working with different technology stacks, a passion for solving niche technology challenges and enjoy bringing new and disruptive solutions and services to the organization.
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About Equinix: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Rao Lingampalli
Director, Global Network Architecture of Equinix
Rao Lingampalli is currently Director of Network Architecture at Equinix leading optical network architecture and solutions development for Equinix global data center network interconnection services. His group is responsible for inter data center optical connection networks architecture and designs, intra data center optical interconnects, submarine cable landing station termination solutions, and optical transport SDN. He has nearly 25 years of experience in service provider and optical networking industries. He is a frequent invited speaker and panelist at optical networking conferences and customer events. He holds Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology with fiber optical communications specialization and Executive MBA from Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University.
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About Equinix: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Carson Kahn
Co-Founder & Board Director of Spindle (www.spindle.app)
Named a Goldman Sachs 100 Entrepreneur for his innovations across AI and Natural Language Processing, Carson Kahn is currently the co-founder of Spindle (www.spindle.app), a no-code AI startup backed by Accel Partners (Slack/Dropbox/Facebook), Caffeinated Capital (IFTTT/Notion/Airtable), and diverse Fortune 100 executives. Previously, he served as President of Brainspace AI (acquired by Reveal with $200 million from K1 Capital), the world’s leading natural language analytics engine, originally backed by the CIA. Mr. Kahn is also a Member of the Board of Advisors for Computer Science at the University of Colorado; Stanford University AII; UC Santa Cruz Center for Excellence in Data Science Research; and Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC); and advises venture-backed startups in AI/ML, PaaS, FinTech & InfoSec as a Techstars Mentor and angel investor. Mr. Kahn also invests with the $100 million Pandemic Impact Fund (PIF), Thiel-backed VC firm SI Capital, and Transpire Ventures. His work has been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, and elsewhere; and he has been tapped for expertise in AI, cybersecurity, and Future of Work by members of the Congressional Caucus on AI & National Economic Council. Previously, Mr. Kahn served as CEO (promoted from CTO) of JPMorgan In–Residence business Volley ML, saving Fortune 500 firms >$52 million in real labor annually with the first fully autonomous training & sales enablement platform for financial & health services. Named a Goldman Sachs 100 Entrepreneur for Volley’s innovations, Mr. Kahn designed, built, and sold Volley’s machine learning platform alongside an NLP team from Google, the NSA/CIA, Carnagie Mellon, and Goldman Sachs, seeded by $10 million from JPMorgan, Silicon Valley Bank, Zuckerberg Ventures, and execs from Goldman, Apple, and Facebook; before being recruited to lead Brainspace AI prior to its acquisition. Formerly, as Head of Product and co-founder at Keystone Learning Systems (KLS), the first LMS to offer cloud-native analytics and ML features for U.S. secondaries supporting >355,000 accounts, Mr. Kahn helped pioneer its now widely-imitated “extended enterprise” deployment model, before co-leading the entity sale to SPPEF Stirup Partners. On the heels of an externship at Google (via the ATLAS Institute), he formerly spanned product & technical marketing on the founding team at Vetica.com, whose real-time collaboration product Draftboard garnered users like Adobe & AOL while generating revenue from day 1. When the product was acquired by UK investors, Vetica launched Chalk.com, today the one of the 10 most popular learning analytics platforms in North America. A Black Belt in Karate and avid sportsman, Mr. Kahn can frequently be found training in a racquetball court or behind the wheel of an ATV. In his spare time, Mr. Kahn also moonlights behind a jazz piano near his home in the East Cut, San Francisco. Media Contact: Stacey Murray (stacey.murray.consulting@gmail.com) Press Kit: carsonkahn.com/press-kit
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About Spindle (www.spindle.app), Stanford University, Techstars, University of Colorado: An intelligent Decision Analytics platform for generating apps that simulate the ROI of business decisions without statistics or code.
Laura Oppenheimer
Marketing Director of Quizlet
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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.
Charles Prober
CEO, Board of Directors of Tile
Charles “CJ” Prober is CEO of Tile. He is an entrepreneurial leader who has a broad mix of operational, strategic and transactional experience with a strong track record of success over the past 20 years. I have a passion for building and operating consumer experiences that are at the cutting edge of hardware, media and technology.
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About Tile: Tile creates devices connected to a mobile app, helping users locate their personal items.
Ulysses Davalos
Director, Advertising Monetization of Pluto TV
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About Pluto TV, Pluto TV: Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service in America.
Anand Vijay
Director of Engineering of eBay
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About eBay: eBay is an online marketplace that connects a global network of buyers and sellers.
Jimmy Su
Head of JD Security Research Center and Senior Director of JD.com
Jimmy Su leads the JD security research center in Silicon Valley. He joined JD in January 2017. Before joining JD, he was the director of advanced threat research at FireEye Labs. He led the research and development of multiple world leading security products at FireEye, including network security, email security, mobile security, fraud detection, and end-point security. He led a global team including members from the United States, Pakistan, and Singapore from research to product releases on the FireEye’s first machine learning based malware similarity analysis Cloud platform. This key technology advance was released on all core FireEye products including network security, email security, and mobile security. He won the Q2 2016 FireEye innovation award for his seminal work on similarity analysis. He earned his PhD degree in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. After his graduation, he joined Professor Dawn Song’s team as a post doc focusing on similarity analysis of x86 and Android applications. In 2011, he joined Professor Song in the mobile security startup Ensighta, leading the research and development of the automatic malware analysis platform. Ensighta was acquired by FireEye in December of 2012. He joined FireEye through the acquisition. JD security research center in Silicon Valley focuses on these seven areas: account security, APT detection, bot detection, data security, AI applications in security, Big Data applications in security, and IoT security.
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About JD.com: JD.com is an internet company and online consumer electronics retailer in China.
Robert Jadon
Co-Founder & Director of Startup UCLA Accelerator
Robert is a technology investor and entrepreneur in Los Angeles for the past 15 years, with experience founding and scaling businesses, along with multiple, successful exits. Robert’s passion is working with great entrepreneurs and product developers, adding value both as an investor and an operator. Prior to joining Altpoint and leading it’s LA office, Robert co-founded ScaleFunder, the leading crowdfunding and online giving SaaS platform in higher education. ScaleFunder has helped numerous nonprofit institutions raise tens of millions of dollars through the platform, in addition to acquiring new donors and retaining existing ones. ScaleFunder was successfully acquired by Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a leader in the nonprofit fundraising and enrollment space. Robert’s first company, Micro Memory, was a leader in the signal processing and storage networking markets. . Split primarily between storage and mil-aero verticals, the company’s customers included EMC, Network Appliance, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and many others. Micro Memory was acquired by Curtiss-Wright Corporation (NYSE: CW). Robert has also worked with early stage companies for many years. Robert co-founded the Startup UCLA entrepreneurship and accelerator program at UCLA. The first of it’s kind in Los Angeles, the Startup UCLA program took best practices from the private sector, and applied them to UCLA students and alumni. The summer accelerator has spawned numerous companies, and has been the basis for best-practices at universities across the country and internationally. Robert has been an angel investor for many years, helping entrepreneurs with product and fundraising from the earliest stages. He formed the Dauntless Fund to focus on investments in consumer-facing startups. Robert is also an investor in and advisor to the Amplify.LA startup accelerator in Venice, Calif, and a former member of the Tech Coast Angels. Robert holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from UCLA.
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About NeuralX, Presence.Fit, Startup UCLA Accelerator: Startup UCLA Accelerator provides a workspace, guidance, legal services, and mentors to early-stage companies.
Ram Jambunathan
Managing Director & Founder of SAP.iO
Ram Jambunathan is the Managing Director & Founder of SAP.iO & he Attended University of Michigan.
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About SAP.iO: SAP.iO helps innovators start-up and scale with SAP.
Alexander Komarov
Director of Mobile of MyEtherWallet | MEW
Alexander Komarov is the Director of Mobile at MyEtherWallet | MEW.
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About MyEtherWallet | MEW: MyEtherWallet is a free, open-source, client-side tool for easily and securely interacting with the Ethereum blockchain.
Darnell Holloway
Senior Enterprise Account Director of Yelp
Darnell Holloway is Director of Local Business Outreach at Yelp.
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About Yelp, Yelp: Yelp operates an online platform that connects people with local businesses.
Vikas Tandon
Director of Product Management Mobility and IoT 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
Robert Brisco
President, Chief Executive Officer, Director of Internet Brands
Bob Brisco is the President & CEO at Internet Brands.
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About CarsDirect.com, Internet Brands: Internet Brands is an internet media company that operates online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets.
Senior Director, Business Operations 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.
Patrick Dietzen
Director of Operations of Orchid Labs
Patrick Dietzen brings many years of early stage tech venture executive experience and expertise. He is passionate about building businesses that apply cutting edge technology and innovation to create positive social impact. Patrick has played founder and executive roles in a variety of technology companies including founding and serving as President of advanced materials company Sirigen, which successfully commercialized flagship technology developed at the University of California Santa Barbara that applied novel conducting polymer materials for fluorescent biomarker detection in healthcare diagnostics and was subsequently acquired by Becton, Dickinson & Co. The inventors of Sirigen’s technology included Alan J. Heeger, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of conductive polymers. Sirigen serves as a notable success story for commercialization of a materials innovation out of a university lab. In addition to other roles he has led business development at SaurikIT, a software company that grew from a start to $10MM in revenues and 30+ million users of its mobile app store in just a few years. Patrick specializes in launching and building new enterprises involving the commercialization of cutting edge science and technology.
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About Orchid Labs, SaurikIT LLC: Orchid Labs is an open-source project committed to ending surveillance and censorship on the internet.
Yaniv Kopelman
Networking CTO, Sr. Director 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.
Jamie Fiore
Sr. Director, Marketing of Match Group
Jamie Fiore is the Sr. Director of Marketing at Match.com.
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About Match Group: Match Group is a division of IAC & online dating portfolio that comprises over forty brands around the world.
Ramanand Reddi
Senior Director of Product Management of Match Group
Ramanand Reddi is the Senior Director of Product Management at Match.com.
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About Match Group: Match Group is a division of IAC & online dating portfolio that comprises over forty brands around the world.
Inga Bereza
Business Development Director of Musical.ly
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About Musical.ly: Musical.ly is a video social network for creating, sharing, and discovering short videos.
Konstantin Guericke
Member of the Board of Directors of StartX (Stanford-StartX Fund)
Konstantin Guericke is a Partner at Earlybird. He is based in Silicon Valley. Konstantin is Co – Founder of LinkedIn, where he has led marketing activities from launch to first six million members and profitability as Vice President of Marketing. Previously, he has been CEO of jaxtr (social communications start-up, over ten million registered users, purchased by SabSe Technologies). Konstantin has long-time entrepreneurial experience as founder of successful startups and he has helped established companies towards increased growth. Currently, he is Board member of several startups and Mentor of student entrepreneurs at Stanford University. Konstantin holds a B.S. and M.S. in Engineering from Stanford University.
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About : StartX is an educational non-profit that helps Stanford’s top entrepreneurs.
Dan Ha
Co-Founder, Sr. Managing Director of StartX (Stanford-StartX Fund)
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About StartX (Stanford-StartX Fund): StartX is an educational non-profit that helps Stanford’s top entrepreneurs.
Gabriel Ionita
Director, Group Partnering and Business Development, US of Deutsche Telekom
Director, Group Partnering and Business Development at Deutsche Telekom Inc.
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About Deutsche Telekom: Deutsche Telekom is a telecommunications company that offers a range of fixed-network services.
Austin Noronha
Managing Director of Sony Innovation Fund
Austin Noronha is Managing Director of the Sony Innovation Fund which makes early stage investments using Sony’s balance sheet. In this role, he and his team are dedicated to investing in and engaging with promising early-stage companies. He is also Managing Director of Innovation Growth Ventures, a joint venture between Daiwa Securities and Sony that invests in later stage companies. Austin joined Sony in 2001 as Director of Strategic Investments. Prior to joining Sony, Austin was founder and CEO of TrueScope Technologies, an immersive video product and services start-up. He has spent over 25 years in Silicon Valley at both large multinational corporations and start-ups. Austin holds a master’s degree from Michigan Technological University, and a bachelor’s degree from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, India.
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About Innovation Growth Ventures, Sony, Sony Innovation Fund: Sony Innovation fund is the corporate venture capital arm of Sony that invests and engages in early-stage companies.
Ludovic Copéré
Senior Director, Sony Innovation Fund of Sony Innovation Fund
Investor at Sony Innovation Fund (Sony’s Corporate Ventures fund). Notably actively investing in FinTech/InsurTech, Drones, Industrial, Mobility, AgTech and FoodTech sectors
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About Sony, Sony Innovation Fund: Sony Innovation fund is the corporate venture capital arm of Sony that invests and engages in early-stage companies.
Konrad Augustin
Investment Director and Head of ECI US of Future Energy Ventures
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About Future Energy Ventures: Future Energy Ventures is a Venture capital and collaboration platform that brings together corporate partners and start-ups.
Gunthar Hartwig
Director of User Experience of DroneDeploy
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About DroneDeploy: DroneDeploy is a cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform to help businesses get things done.
Fernando Oliveira
Senior Director, Sales & Partnerships of Canonical
Fernando Oliveira is a Tech Entrepreneur with Global experience in U.S., Latin America and Emerging Markets He has developed new businesses in Cloud Computing, Networking and Data Center space. Actually, He is based on Silicon Valley in charge Sales & Partnership @ Canonical and Board Advisor @ BWGStrategy. Previously, Fernando Oliveira was Head of Cloud and Internet of Things Strategy at Cisco, also led various sales positions in his previous career at Cisco He is very passionate about change, innovation and start-ups which he has been very engaged with ventures in areas such as Cloud, OpenStack, SDN, Application Container, Object Storage and PaaS
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About BWG Strategy, Canonical: Canonical is a computer software company that markets commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects.
Vijith Reddy Bheemireddi
Director of Customer Success and Support Engineering of Armory
Director of Customer Success and Support
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About Armory: Armory is an enterprise software company commercializing the open-source continuous delivery platform, Spinnaker.
James Chapman
Director of Platform Development of Zazzle
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About Zazzle: Zazzle.com enables users to receive a commission on products that they design, create and sell.
Jesse Osborne
Director of Sales of ZeroCater
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About ZeroCater: ZeroCater is a provider of office meals and snacks, bringing employees together to build culture and foster community.
James Barrese
Member of the Board of Directors of Marin Software
Barrese is a technologist with more than 25 years of experience spanning the military, the academic world, business consulting, and enterprise platforms and infrastructure. He currently serves as CTO of PayPal, and previously spent nearly 10 years in executive technology roles at eBay, where he was most recently VP of Technology. Earlier in his career, he was VP of engineering at Charitableway, a manager at Andersen Consulting, and programmer in the Materials Science Department at Stanford University. He got his start in technology with the Signal Corps in the U.S. Army. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
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About : Marin Software Incorporated (NYSE:MRIN) provides a leading cross-channel performance advertising platform used by advertisers and agencies.
Donald Hutchison
Member of the Board of Directors of Marin Software
Since 2002, Don’s principal employment has been as an angel investor in start-up technology companies. From June 2006 to July 2008, Don was the Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Recurrent Energy, a solar energy provider. Prior to that, Don served as the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of work.com, a joint venture established by Dow Jones and Excite@Home. Don previously served in senior positions at Excite@Home and Netcom Communications. Don has previously served as a member of the board of directors of many privately-held companies, including, W&W Communications, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, which was acquired by Cavium, Inc. Don holds a B.A. in Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.B.A. in Finance and Organizational Development from Loyola Marymount University. Don brings to our board of directors significant experience analyzing and investing in other technology companies, as well as management and leadership experience as a former founder and executive of technology companies.
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About : Marin Software Incorporated (NYSE:MRIN) provides a leading cross-channel performance advertising platform used by advertisers and agencies.
Robert Chaplinsky
Co-founder and Managing Director of Link Ventures
Rob Chaplinsky is the Co-founder and Managing Director Link Ventures. He previously worked at Bridgescale Partners as the Managing Director.
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About Kiite, Link Ventures: We invest in early stage direct-to-consumer companies.
Chjango Unchained
Director of Community Development of Tendermint
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About Tendermint: Tendermint brings simplicity, security, and speed to the world’s blockchains.
Shintaro Asako
Executive Officer, CFO, Strategic Investment Director Commerce and Incubation Business Division of DeNA
Shintaro Asako is the CEO of the West Region business unit at DeNA, a global leader in developing and publishing mobile games. He leads the company’s operations and corporate strategy in North America, Europe and the rest of the West. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, DeNA has offices and studios in 12 cities across eight countries with over 2,000 employees and has delivered nearly a dozen titles that hit the top 30 grossing charts on US App Store and US Google Play. In addition to launching hits such as Blood Brothers and Rage of Bahamut, DeNA currently develops and publishes mobile games for popular entertainment franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel, Transformers and Final Fantasy. DeNA reported revenue of 1.8 billion dollars and operating profit of 524 million dollars in the fiscal year ending March 2014. Shintaro joined DeNA West in 2011 serving as Chief Financial Officer before moving to the role of CEO in 2013. Previously, Shintaro was Chief Financial Officer at MediciNova, Inc. from 2005 to 2011. Prior to MediciNova, Shintaro worked at KPMG LLP and Arthur Anderson LLP.
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About DeNA: DeNA is a platform providing social games, e-commerce, and other web services for PCs and mobile devices.
Shanna Jade
Director of Brand Strategy of Stem Disintermedia
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About Stem Disintermedia, Stem Disintermedia: Stem Disintermedia helps creators, artists, and musicians collect digital revenue and enables them to track and share their earnings.
Demeita D’cruz
Sales Director of Leadbook
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About Leadbook: Global Leads Database with 64 million verified executive contacts from 7 million organisations across 145 countries.
Alex Fishman
Board Director of Dealpath
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About : Dealpath is the intelligent software solution empowering smart investment decisions with data-driven insights and digital collaboration
Jennifer Skene
Director of Operations of Mixmax
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About Mixmax: Mixmax is a sales engagement platform that helps sales and customer success teams accelerate revenue at every stage of the customer journey.
Peter Watridge
Senior Director Analytics & Decision Science of Calix
VP, Strategic Alliances & Platform Peter’s role is to identify and develop relationships with key partners in the cloud software and hardware infrastructure ecosystem. The relationships support Joyent’s sales of SmartDataCenter cloud enabling software to telco’s and service providers globally. Focus of effort is in two main areas: 1) Relationships with hardware vendors in the compute, networking, and storage areas upon which the Joyent software runs; And 2) ISV’s that enable richer support for the Joyent software as the premier platform for providers to profitably sell IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS products. Prior to taking on his current role Peter served as CFO during Joyent’s formative early stage start-up growth years. In his role as CFO, Peter help grow Joyent from a revenue funded company with an annualized revenue run rate in the hundreds of thousands per year to a venture backed company with a run rate in the tens of millions of dollars per year. Managed company growth from 14 employees to over 90 employees. Developed financial model that enabled Joyent to raise a round of funding led by Intel Capital. Continued to run Operations, Support, HR, IT and back office support teams until Joyent hired up. Expanded operations into Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. via: [Joyent](http://www.joyent.com)
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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
Christopher Kryzan
Founder & Managing Director of Brilliant Things
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About Brilliant Things: Marketing & Product Strategy for the Internet of Things
James Merson
Director of Product of ClearCare
James began advising ClearCare in 2010 while working for a Home Care and Care Management organization in the Bay Area. He formally joined as an employee in November of 2012 after ten years in the Home Care and Home Healthcare fields and leads the Customer Success team at ClearCare, the largest of its kind in the home care industry. He holds a BS in Industrial Technology and an MBA.
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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.
Bobbi Jo Price
Sr. Director of U.S. Sales 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.
Dave Godin
Sr. Director of Customer Success 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.
Veerender Kaul
Director of Frost & Sullivan
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About Frost & Sullivan: Frost and Sullivan is a business growth consultation company focused on increasing brand demand.
Farah Saeed
Research Director, Digital Grids of Frost & Sullivan
Farah Saeed is an industry expert with nearly 20 years of consulting, project management and fulfillment expertise focused on power and energy equipment and services. Saeed currently serves as Research Director Digital Grid. In her current role, Saeed works closely with OEMs to validate market opportunities and assess risks, providing a deep understanding of business issues facing mature as well as emerging energy markets and technologies. She also specializes in forecasting models and customer survey designs centered on regional and geographic trends, while keeping a pulse on disruptive trends and technologies that are influencing the competitive environment. Saeed’s industry expertise includes extensive experience in high-growth and emerging power and energy devices, such as transmission and distribution equipment. This includes IT/OT, power distribution equipment, demand side management, home automation, smart meters, related network infrastructure, and distributed generation.
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About Frost & Sullivan: Frost and Sullivan is a business growth consultation company focused on increasing brand demand.
Michael Raftery
Senior Director of Manufacturing and Quality of Breathometer
Mike has over 20 years’ experience in engineering and management. His roles have spanned a variety of areas including engineering, quality, operations, product development, and customer support.
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About Breathometer: 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.
David Bishop Media
Board of Directors of Parrot Analytics
David Bishop is a visionary entertainment and digital media industry leader, adept at building customer-centric organizations to high levels of employee engagement and profits. David has a proud history of success anticipating market demands and launching new products to maximize revenue. He claims a substantial talent for devising solutions to complicated challenges. David Bishop is passionate about identifying and creating new distribution technologies and highly successful business models. He is articulate, analytical, and intuitive.
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About : Parrot Analytics is a data science company that measures and predicts global demand for content, across all platforms, around the world.
Larraine Segil
Board Of Director of Frontier Communications
Larraine D. Segil is CEO of Larraine Segil Inc., consulting with companies on global strategy, management and alliances. Since 1991, she has been a senior research fellow at the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. She is a 25-year member of the Board of Advisors of the Price Center for Entrepreneurship at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and an Adjunct Professor of the Southwestern School of Law and a member of its Board of Trustees. Ms. Segil presented a two-day Executive Education program on Strategic Alliances at Caltech for 24 years. She is partner emeritus at Vantage Partners, LLC., a strategic alliances and conflict resolution firm, where she was a partner and member of the Board. Ms. Segil was a partner/co-founder of The Lared Group, a consulting firm on strategic alliances, until its acquisition by Vantage Partners in 2003. She serves on the International Advisory Board of APCO Worldwide, the Advisory Board of Kandela Inc., and the Board of the National Association of Corporate Directors, Southern California. Ms. Segil served on the World Health Organization Tropical Diseases SAAG in Geneva. Ms. Segil is a member of The Committee of 200, an organization of the world’s most successful women CEOs, past Chair of the C200 Foundation, and past Vice Chair of the C200 Governing Board. She has published six books. She received B.A. & B.A. Honors (master’s equivalent) from The University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, a J.D. from Southwestern School of Law, and an M.B.A. from the PKE Program of Pepperdine University, Los Angeles.
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About : Frontier Communications Corporation is an independent provider of telecommunications services that offers voice, data, and video services.
