Harry Kellogg, Chair
Robert R. Ackerman
James Alexander
Ralph (Buddy) L. Arnheim
Jim Atwell 
Gregory M. Avis
Steven P. Bird
Court Coursey
Dixon Doll
Joe Horowitz
David Lam 
Warren Lazarow
Tracy Lefteroff
Alan C. Mendelson
John Montgomery
Joe Muscat
Cindy Padnos
Bob Pavey 
Harshul Sanghi
Ian Sobieski
Don Wood

Harry Kellogg, Vice Chairman of Silicon Valley Bank, Head of Strategic Relationships | SVB Financial Group | Steering Committee Chair

Harry Kellogg is vice chairman of the board of Silicon Valley Bank and head of strategic relationships for SVB Financial Group. Prior to joining the company in 1986, Kellogg was the group manager of Corporate Banking at Bank of the West for five years and started that bank’s technology lending group. He was also with Wells Fargo Bank for 13 years, including four years in the Wells Fargo Special Industries Group, a high-tech lending unit within Wells Fargo Bank.

Kellogg is actively involved in many civic and industry organizations and serves on many of their boards and advisory boards, including TechNet, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, Financial Executives International, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, The Computer History Museum, California/Israel Chamber of Commerce, The Tuck Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship, Pacific Community Ventures, Grameen Bank of America, and is an emeritus board member of the Technology Museum of Innovation. He was also named one of Upside Magazine’s “100 People Who Changed Our World.” He has a BS (Management & Industrial Relations) from San Jose State University.

Robert R. Ackerman, Managing Director & Founder | Allegis Capital

Robert Ackerman uses his more than fifteen years of general management, venture capital and strategic mergers and acquisition advisory experience to support the firm's technology start-up companies. Prior to Allegis Capital, his operating experience includes, CEO of UniSoft Systems (a world leading UNIX systems house) and a founder and Chairman of InfoGear Technology Corporation (the first internet appliance company; acquired by CISCO in 2000).

Ackerman was a member of the 2007 Forbes MIDAS list of the world's leading venture and technology leaders. He has been a keynote speaker at the Investors Business Forum on Corporate Venturing & Strategic Investing and has spoken numerous times at the Red Herring and Montgomery Investment Banking Conferences. Ackerman was also a member of the Board of Directors of The Entrepreneur's Foundation, a non-profit organization in Silicon Valley that develops and facilitates community support programs within the high-technology community. He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco-based Asian Art Museum. Ackerman has a BS (Computer Science) from University of San Francisco.

Ralph (Buddy) L. Arnheim, Partner | Perkins Coie

Buddy Arnheim focuses his practice on the representation of emerging growth companies, venture capital funds and investment banks. He is widely acknowledged as a leading practitioner in the areas of corporate and securities law and corporate governance matters. He has been involved in hundreds of transactions such as public equity and debt offerings, merger/acquisition transactions, private equity and venture capital financing transactions, and complex restructurings and spin-off transactions. His clientele includes startup and well-established emerging growth companies, primarily in the software, information technology, Internet, fixed and mobile communications technology, cleantech and life sciences sectors.

Arnheim heads the firm's Emerging Company practice and Co-Chairs both the firm's Israel and Cleantech practice groups. Recently, he became an Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, where he teaches a course on entrepreneurship. Arnheim has lectured at various professional and industry seminars as well as at nationally recognized universities. He co-authored “The Public Company Handbook: A Practical Guide for Officers and Directors,” published by Bowne Financial Printing. Arnheim has a BS (Economics) from Wharton School of Business and a JD from University of Illinois.

Jim Atwell, Managing Partner, U.S. Venture Capital Practice | Deloitte

Jim Atwell is a well-known industry leader in the Silicon Valley venture capital community. At Deloitte & Touche, he leads a team of partners and managers focused on venture capital firms, early stage technology companies, and rapidly growing companies. Before joining Deloitte & Touche, Atwell was a general partner at Summit Partners, and prior to that, worked at Pricewaterhouse Coopers from 1983 to 2000. Most recently at PwC, he served as the Global Managing Partner, Private Equity, which was an 80 partner practice focused on venture capital firms and venture funded technology companies. He has a BS from Santa Clara University.

Gregory M. Avis, Founding Managing Director | Summit Partners

Greg Avis cofounded Summit Partners in 1984. Prior to Summit, he worked for McDonald & Company and Goldman, Sachs & Co. He has served as a director of many public and private companies. His past directorships include Digital Link Corporation, IMPAC Medical Systems, Integrated, NxTrend Technology (acquired by Infor Global Solutions), Powerwave Technologies, RightNow Technologies, Splash Technology Holdings and TGV Software (acquired by Cisco Systems).

Avis is chair of the Williams College Board of Trustees, and serves on the boards of the James Irvine Foundation, Antioch College, New Profit and ARTSTOR.  He has also served on the boards of Silicon Valley Community Foundation (chair), the National Outdoor Leadership School and the San Jose Repertory Theatre (chair). Avis teaches mathematics at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto. He has a BA (Political Economy) from Williams College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Steven P. Bird, Co-Founder & General Partner | Focus Ventures

Steve Bird is a co-founder and General Partner of Focus Ventures. He focuses on investments in the enterprise software and electronic commerce areas. He has led successful investments in Broadbase (acquired by Kana), FrontBridge (acquired by Microsoft), Mimosa (acquired by Iron Mountain), and Entropic, Interwoven and ShoreTel, all of which became public companies. Bird currently leads the Focus investments in Buzz Media, Hara Software, MarkMonitor, RGB, SAYMedia, Sojern, Turn and WebVisible.

Prior to cofounding Focus Ventures, Bird was a Managing Director at Comdisco Ventures. Previously he was a General Partner at First Century Partners, a $100 million venture capital fund affiliated with Smith Barney. Successful investments at First Century and Comdisco included Aspect Development, Elantec, Summit Design Technology, SuperMac Technology, and US Web. He was a Manager at Bain & Company, a management consulting firm where he worked in the communications, software, and semiconductor industries. He began his career as a Senior Development Engineer working in software development at Battelle Northwest Laboratories. Bird has a BS and and MS (both Mechanical Engineering, with distinction) and an MBA, all from Stanford University.

Court Coursey, Managing Partner | TomorrowVentures

Court Coursey, born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, is the Managing Partner of TomorrowVentures, LLC. Coursey is an innovative entrepreneur having founded his first business at the age of fourteen and is now helping other entrepreneurs realize their dreams.  Coursey serves on the Board of Directors of Prosper, BondFactor, CX, and Raine. Previously, Coursey co-founded Rundell, Coursey & Company (“RCC”).  Founded in 1998, RCC is a strategic consulting firm with focus towards development and strategic planning of companies in the financial, media, entertainment and technology industries.

Coursey is involved in several philanthropic organizations and serves on the Board of CitizenEffect and the Advisory Board for ArtsNOW. Coursey has lectured on entrepreneurship at University of California-Los Angeles, University of Virginia, and New York University. Coursey has also been a member of the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization, the leading organization of business professionals devoted to supporting young entrepreneurs in building companies and themselves. In addition, Coursey was a nominee for the "1998 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year" award. Coursey attended the University of Colorado at Boulder – Leeds School of Business.

Dixon Doll, Co-Founder & General Partner | Doll Capital Management

For more than 35 years, Dixon Doll has influenced and guided entrepreneurs, investors and executives in the computer telecom and internet industries. Forbes Magazine named him as one of the top 100 venture investors on its Midas List from 2004 to 2007. In 2005, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). He also served as NVCA Chairman from 2008-2009 where he architected a 4-Pillar plan to enhance U.S. capital markets liquidity for innovative companies. This plan led to the JOBS Bill of 2012 which President Obama signed into law earlier this year.

Doll has led DCM’s investments in About.com, Clearwire, Force10 Networks, Foundry Networks and Roamware, among others. Dixon currently serves on the Board of Directors of DIRECTV (DTV), where he also serves on the Compensation and Nominating/Corporate Governance Committees. Prior to becoming a VC, Doll was the founder and CEO of a strategic technology firm.

Doll has traveled extensively to six continents to serve on advisory boards and give highly sought after lectures and conference presentations. He also serves on the Executive Committee and Advisory Board for the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), is a member of the Board of Overseers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and also is a San Francisco City Commissioner.

Doll received his B.S.E.E. degree (cum laude) from Kansas State University as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, where he was a National Science Foundation scholar.

Joe Horowitz, Managing General Partner | Jafco Ventures

Joe Horowitz, Managing General Partner, was instrumental in launching Jafco Ventures with its current team in 2003, bringing 25 years of experience working with early-stage companies as a venture capitalist, advisor and entrepreneur. He is passionate about the value-creation process and loves working with talented entrepreneurs. Horowitz's venture capital experience includes a 10-year tenure at US Venture Partners (USVP) from 1982 to 1992 and three years with Exxon Enterprises. At USVP, the first deal that he worked on was the seed financing of Sun Microsystems.

At Jafco, Horowitz is on the Board of or actively involved with Attributor, Avnera, Cortina Systems, Devicescape Software, FireEye, KIXEYE, Oodle, RedSeal Systems, SocialVibe, SiTime, and TuneIn. Prior Jafco investments include Aster Data Systems (Teradata), Clicker (CBS), Infinera (INFN), Meebo (Google), Mimosa Systems (Iron Mountain), Ocarina Networks (Dell), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Posterous (Twitter), PostPath (Cisco Systems) and Proofpoint (PFPT). He has a BA (Economics) from Columbia University and an MBA from Wharton Graduate School of Business.

David Lam, Managing Director | WestSummit

David Lam has more than 15 years of private equity, technology, and investment banking experience in software and technology-enabled services. Prior to WestSummit, Lam was the Managing Director and Head of US operations for WI Harper, a leading China focused technology venture capital firm where he was involved in the firm’s investments in Innovation Works and Quixey. Prior to joining WI Harper, Lam was a Vice President at The Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm, where he led and managed investments in telecommunications and technology-enabled business services sectors for its US venture and growth capital fund. Previously, Lam served as Director of Business Development at Panasas, a leading provider of scale-out parallel data storage systems and a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group.

Lam also spent several years in marketing and business development roles at CIENA Corporation, ONI Systems, Cisco Systems, and Proxim, and worked in the M&A group at Robertson Stephens & Company. Prior to Robertson, Lam served as an Executive Fellow in the California Governor's Office. He holds a BS (Industrial Engineering) and an MA (Organizational Sociology) from Stanford University and an MBA from MIT.

Warren Lazarow, Partner | O’Melveny & Myers

Warren Lazarow is nationally and internationally recognized as one of the market’s leading advisors to technology-focused companies and investors. Lazarow’s practice is primarily focused on the corporate representation of public and private technology companies, venture capital and private equity firms, and investment banks.  He is a boardroom-level advisor who frequently serves as outside general counsel, helping management teams, boards of directors, and investors shape and execute their business strategies, and providing experienced counsel on legal issues ranging from day-to-day corporate and regulatory matters to high-stakes strategic matters.

Lazarow has been chosen four times to be on Forbes Magazine’s prestigious MIDAS List of the technology industry’s Top 100 Dealmakers Worldwide.  Over the course of his career, he has handled more than 150 M&A transactions ranging from US$1 million to more than US$5 billion; more than 100 public offerings of equity, debt, and convertible securities, raising more than US$2.6 billion; and more than 750 private financings spanning initial seed financings, venture capital financings, private equity financings, and recapitalizations. Lazarow has a BA (cum laude) from Princeton University and a JD from Brooklyn Law School.

 

Tracy Lefteroff, US Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences Practice | Pricewaterhouse Coopers

Tracy Lefteroff, national Life Sciences partner, leads services to publicly held, privately owned, and venture-capital-funded life science companies. He has helped develop strategic collaboration agreements with many of the world’s major international pharmaceutical companies and has assisted in several high-profile industry mergers. Lefteroff has been significantly involved with services provided to a number of the firm's life sciences companies and venture capital firms, including Scios Inc., Kleiner Perkins & Caufield & Byers, Institutional Venture Partners, Affymax, Gynecare, ArthroCare, Indigo Medical, Symphonix Devices and General Surgical Innovations. Lefteroff has been key to the development of strategic collaborative agreements with many of the major international pharmaceutical companies and has recently assisted in several high profile industry mergers. He also co-authored the firm's Practice Standards and Aids for the Life Sciences Industry.

Lefteroff currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Stanford Venture Laboratory. He is also a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the California, Washington and Idaho Societies of CPAs.

Alan C. Mendelson, Partner | Latham & Watkins

Alan Mendelson is the Co-chair of the firm’s Emerging Companies Practice and Life Sciences Industry Groups. Mendelson’s practice is primarily targeted toward the representation of emerging and public growth companies, with strong emphasis on companies in the life sciences industry.

Mendelson currently serves as a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California, the Board of Trustees of The Scripps Research Institute, the Board of Trustees of the UC Berkeley Foundation and the Board of Advisors for the UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry. From 2005 to 2011, he served on the Board of Directors of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and is currently a member of the BayBio Board of Directors. He serves as the corporate secretary for many public and private companies. Since 1993, Mendelson has been listed in editions of The Best Lawyers in America and IPO Vital Signs, was named by the Daily Journal as one of the top 25 biotech attorneys in California (Aug 2011, and was also recognized as one of America’s 100 most influential lawyers in the 1994, 1997, 2000 and 2006 editions of the National Law Journal. He has a BA (Political Science) from UC Berkeley and a JD (cum laude) from Harvard Law School.

John Montgomery, Partner | Montgomery & Hansen

John Montgomery is a corporate attorney, entrepreneur, executive coach and writer. He is the founder of Montgomery & Hansen, LLP, a Silicon Valley based corporate law firm. He is also the founder of Startworks, a technology incubator. He works primarily with high-potential entrepreneurial teams to help them translate their visions into successful companies.

John recently received a California Lawyer of the Year award from California Lawyer magazine for his work as a co-chair of the legal working group behind California’s new benefit corporation law. A frequent speaker on venture capital, he has produced professional education programs for the State Bar on benefit corporations and for SmartPros/Cognistar: Understanding the Venture Capital Term Sheet Process and Introduction to Venture Capital Financing Agreements. Prior to founding Montgomery & Hansen in 2003, John was co-chairman of the venture capital practice at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, LLP. John is a student of non-dual philosophical systems, neuroscience, developmental theory and organizational development. In 2010, he co-founded Chrysallis, a human development company that aims to change the human development paradigm and support healthy, full, productive lives for billions of people.  His book, Great from the Start: How Conscious Corporations Attract Success, was published in May 2012. Montgomery has a BA (Studio Art) from Stanford University and a JD from Northwestern College of Law.

Joe Muscat, Partner & Strategic Growth Markets Leader | Ernst & Young

Joe Muscat is the Strategic Growth Market's leader as well as an audit partner with 20 years of experience serving technology, life science and cleantech clients. His clients have included public and private life sciences and technology companies such as Affymax, Alza, Ashmore Energy, Boston Scientific, Codexis, eHealth, MIPS Technologies, Molecular Devices, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, SolarCity and Yahoo! in audit and advisory capacities

Previously, Muscat was the co-founder and Americas Director of the Ernst & Young Cleantech Network. The Network is a multi-disciplinary team of professionals across the US, Canada, Israel and Brazil to service Cleantech companies. Joe has also served as a member of the Global task force to develop Ernst & Young’s Climate Change and Sustainability Services. Prior to his role in Cleantech, Joe was a Managing Director of the Ernst & Young Corporate Finance LLC - practice based in Palo Alto and served in strategy and implementation of the Firm’s markets approach. He holds a BC, Accounting from Santa Clara University.

Cindy Padnos, Founder & Managing Partner | Illuminate Ventures

Cindy Padnos is the founder and Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures. Illuminate invests in startups in the fast-growing B2B cloud computing sector, with a particular emphasis on SaaS applications and platforms, big data-based solutions and creative applications of consumer technologies to the enterprise. Padnos currently serves as a director of privately held portfolio companies BrightEdge, CalmSea, Hoopla and Xactly.  Recent exits include Wild Pockets (Autodesk), Red Aril (Hearst Corporation) and Digital Fuel (EMC). Previously, as an operating executive, Padnos was founder and CEO of Vivant (acquired by Evolve/Oracle), CEO of Acumen and VP of marketing at Scopus Technology (IPO).

Padnos is an advisor to non-profits Astia and Project Olympus and sits on the Business Board of Advisors for Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business where she received her MBA/MSIA.  She is the author of the widely cited whitepaper "High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High-tech” and has been named to Fast Company’s list of Most Influential Women in Technology and the New York Times’ list of Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley.  She gained her BA (magna cum laude) from the University of MI.

Bob Pavey, Partner | Morgenthaler Ventures

Bob Pavey is based in Cleveland and Menlo Park. He joined Morgenthaler in 1969 and has been a Partner since 1971. From 1990 to 1992, he served as President and then Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association.

His major focus is on wireless, semiconductors, materials, devices and energy. He sits on the Board of Directors of CLK Design Automation, OmniPV, Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation and R2 Semiconductor. He is also an observer on Cortina Systems. During his tenure, Pavey has been involved in many of the firm’s successful investments – Apple Computer, Applied Intelligent Systems (acquired by Electro Scientific), Aptis Communications (acquired by Nortel Networks), Atria Software (acquired by Rational Software), Endwave, Gliatech, Illustra Information Technologies (acquired by Informix), Intrinsa (acquired by Microsoft), New Focus, Synernetics (acquired by 3Com), and Synopsys. From 1967 until 1969, Bob held several management positions with Foseco, Inc. He has a BS (Physics) from The College of William and Mary, an MS (Metallurgy) from Columbia University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Ian Sobieski, Founder & Managing Director | Band of Angels Fund

Ian Sobieski is a founder and managing director of the Band of Angels Fund, a $50M venture fund raised in 1999 exclusively from major institutions, and has helped lead the Band of Angels since 1997. Immediately prior to joining the Band, Sobieski served as an executive and director at internet start-up Evite.com and in engineering positions at medical device company Enact Health Management and Kaman Aerospace.

Sobieski has managed more than 40 direct investments totaling $30M, has served on fourteen boards of directors, and currently serves on three. Ian is a founding board member of the Angel Capital Association and is a member of the Young Venture Capitalists Association, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the National Ski Patrol. He is the author of a dozen technical publications and is an appointed Lecturer in the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley, where he teaches a course in Entrepreneurial Finance. He has a BA (Philosophy) and a BS (Aerospace) from Virginia Tech and an MS and PhD (Aeronautics) from Stanford University.

Don Wood, Managing Director | Draper Fisher Jurveston

Don Wood's primary investment focus is consumer web, enterprise IT, and cleantech. Wood also leads DFJ's Global Network of Funds which has grown to include 16 firms managing over $7B on four continents, with 140 professionals, and hundreds of active portfolio companies. He has been a venture investor for 15 years. Prior to joining DFJ, Wood was a General Partner at Vanguard Ventures where he invested in IT, consumer internet, and cleantech. Some of Wood’s investments and Boards include VoceraCommunications, ZipRealty, Reflectivity (acq. by TI), BroadSoft, Cooking.com, MySoftware, ArrayPower, JIBE, Konarka, Oasys, PowerAssure,WaterSmart, and the EntrepreneursFoundation, a non-profit community organization.

Wood co-founded Wood-Howard Products with his patent for a laminated publishing format which he later licensed to Simon and Schuster, FastMark, Rand McNally, and others; more than 100 million products have been sold under these licenses. He served on the Board and was President of Metricom (MCOM), which provided wireless smart grid systems to utilities and pioneered the first wireless mesh-network Internet service known as Ricochet. Wood won the "Nonprofit Board Leader Award" from The Volunteer Center of San Francisco.  Wood has a BA (Economics) and an MBA from Stanford University.