Culture

Noam Wasserman is a professor at Harvard Business School. For more than a decade, his research has focused on founders' early decisions that can make or break the startup and its team. At HBS, he developed and teaches an MBA elective, "Founders' Dilemmas," for which he was awarded the HBS Faculty Teaching Award and the Academy of Management's 2010 Innovation in Pedagogy Award. In 2011, the course was also named one of the top entrepreneurship courses in the country by Inc. magazine. His book, The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, was published in March 2012 by Princeton University Press. Within two weeks, it had become Amazon's #1 book on the Management bestseller list, #1 in New Business Enterprises, and #2 in Popular Economics. The book integrates Wasserman's research results, quantitative data collected over the last decade from 10,000 founders, case studies and conceptual frameworks. Since 2000, Wasserman has been the lead researcher on the annual CompStudy survey of technology and life-sciences startups, which has become the most comprehensive survey of compensation for top management at private companies in the U.S. Wasserman is one of three members of the core faculty of the Kauffman Foundation's Global Scholars program, and he has delivered numerous keynote addresses to meetings of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), venture capital retreats, startup incubators, entrepreneurship conferences, and other groups. His research has been published in Harvard Business Review (his 2008 article on "The Founder's Dilemmas" became an HBS Publishing best seller), the Academy of Management Journal (2006), Organization Science (2003, 2008), the Best Paper Proceedings of the Academy of Management (2004, 2006), and other publications. He won Harvard's George S. Dively award for dissertation research and the Aage Sorensen Memorial Award for sociological research, and for four straight years won the Outstanding Reviewer award from the Academy of Management (Business Policy and Strategy division). Wasserman received his PhD from Harvard University in 2002, and received an MBA (with High Distinction) from Harvard Business School in 1999, graduating as a Baker Scholar. Despite being voted "Most Likely to Become a CEO" by his MBA section, he decided to pursue academia as a career and to enter the PhD program. Before coming to Harvard, he was a Principal and Practice Manager at a management-consulting firm near Washington, D.C., where he founded and led the Groupware Practice. He also worked as a venture capitalist at a firm in Boston. He received a BSE (magna cum laude) in Computer Science and Engineering from Penn, and a BSEcon (magna cum laude) in Corporate Finance and Strategic Management from Wharton.

Olivia Fox Cabane is the former Director of Innovative Leadership for Stanford StartX and the bestselling author of "The Charisma Myth." In addition to being a keynote speaker and executive coach to the leadership of Fortune 500 companies such as Google, MGM and Deloitte, she lectures at Harvard, Yale, MIT and the United Nations.

Drew Houston is CEO and co-founder of Dropbox, and has led Dropbox's growth from a simple idea to a service relied upon by millions around the world. Drew leads all of Dropbox's activities, and is actively involved in its business and product decisions. Before founding Dropbox, Drew attended MIT's Course 6 (Computer Science). He took a quick leave from school to form Accolade, an online SAT prep startup, and also worked as a software engineer for Bit9. After graduating from MIT, Drew recognized that people needed a way to bring their files with them without sending email attachments or carrying USB drives. He began writing a solution to this problem in early 2007 before demo-ing an early version to Arash Ferdowsi in Boston. The two of them then began working on the project that would eventually become Dropbox. Drew has been named one of the top "Twentysomething Entrepreneurs" by Businessweek. He was also a 2010 Crunchies finalist for Top CEO and was also named Inc. Magazine's "30 under 30" for 2011.

Adam Lashinsky covers Silicon Valley and Wall Street for FORTUNE and is the author of Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired - and Secretive - Company Really Works. He has been on the magazine's staff since 2001, and for two years before that was a contributing columnist. In addition, Lashinsky is a contributor to the Fox News Channel, appearing weekly on the network's "Cavuto on Business" program on Saturday mornings; co-chair of FORTUNE's annual Brainstorm Tech conference; host of the Fortune.com video interview series "Connected"; and a seasoned speaker and panel moderator. Lashinsky's cover-story subjects in FORTUNE have included Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Google. He also has written in-depth articles on Wells Fargo, Intel, Oracle, eBay, Twitter, and the venture-capital industry, as well as on topics ranging from San Francisco politics and oil-exploration technology to the post-Katrina economic recovery of New Orleans. Prior to joining FORTUNE, Lashinsky was a columnist for The San Jose Mercury News and TheStreet.com. Before moving to California, he was a reporter and editor for Crain's Chicago Business. As a Henry Luce Scholar, he worked for a year in Tokyo as a reporter for the Nikkei Weekly, the English-language version of Japan's main economic daily. He began his career in the Washington, D.C., bureau of Crain Communications. 

A native of Chicago, Lashinsky earned a degree in history and political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.

Daniel Ek is the co-founder of Spotify, a global music discovery service that attracted tens of millions of users with an innovative business model that features access to music across multiple devices over the traditional model of file ownership. Prior to Spotify, Ek served as chief technology officer of Stardoll, a fashion and entertainment community, and as CEO of uTorrent, the popular BitTorrent client.

Rebeca Hwang focuses on network-building to connect entrepreneurs and innovators around the world through YouNoodle's online platforms and products. Formally trained as a chemical, civil and environmental engineer at MIT and Cambridge, Hwang has been awarded for her work in the sciences and is the holder of multiple patents. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford, focusing on the role of social network structures on the performance of water cooperatives.

Prior to founding StorWatts, Elizabeth led multiple teams that achieved breakthroughs in product affordability, reliability and commercial adoption. As Director of Energy Markets and Products at Danaher, she led Corporate Breakthrough Innovation, taking products from R&D through Scale targeting the new Smart-Grid Global Electric Utility sector. She also secured $1M in funding for product development. At HP, where Samara-Rubio led product management, strategic marketing and research, she and her team developed and launched the HP Global Integration and Installation Operations business unit. She has also held leadership positions at early stage companies including Vice President of Marketing at ARX and Director of Product Management and Marketing at YY Software. Samara-Rubio earned her M.B.A. from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was honored with a Fellowship from the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Business Administration.  She earned her Bachelor's Degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was born in Colombia, S.A. and speaks fluent Spanish.

Andy Kurtzig is CEO of JustAnswer, which he established in 2003. Under his management, JustAnswer has increased in popularity such that it is now a top 200 website, according to Quantcast.com. The driving force behind JustAnswer, Kurtzig invites millions of users to seek personalized answers from Experts, which include licensed doctors, attorneys, veterinarians, and car mechanics, among a host of others. With a diverse array of topics ranging from legal issues to relationship questions, Kurtzig has built JustAnswer into the go-to resource for anyone looking for Expert answers. Kurtzig has pursued several other entrepreneurial interests over the course of his professional career. He facilitated the development of his first company while a student attending the University of California at Berkeley. His first company, ANSER Corp., serviced and developed software to automate calendar listings for the newspaper industry. Having landed several high-profile clients, such as the San Francisco Bay Guardian and The Post Newspaper Group, Kurtzig sold ANSER two years after its inception. His next venture was a web-based human resources management service called eBenefits. Through eBenefits, Kurtzig successfully linked small businesses to a variety of human resources management services, including health benefits, insurance plans, a payroll service, and mutual funds for 401(k)s. After seven years managing eBenefits and partnering with such Fortune 500 companies as Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and Marsh & McLennan, and after raising $8 million of venture capital financing (from NEA, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and WR Hambrecht), he sold the company to an Inc. 500 Company. Kurtzig earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at the University of California at Berkeley. He currently resides in California?s Bay Area with his wife and three children. Kurtzig is also an angel investor (past successful investments: StubHub - acquired by eBay; and iLike - acquired by MySpace), active philanthropist (Co-Founded annual Royal Ball with wife Sara to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), has appeared on CBS, and has been quoted in BusinessWeek, CNN, and many other tech and consumer media.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is Founder and Chairman of JOYUS, the web's first premium video shopping network online. Prior to founding JOYUS in January 2011, she has been a leading consumer internet and media executive with over 18 years of leadership experience at global and early stage companies including Google, Amazon, Yodlee and News Corp. Singh Cassidy served as CEO and Chairman of the board at the leading social commerce site, Polyvore, Inc, and CEO-in-Residence with Accel Partners, a leading global consumer internet venture capital firm, whose investments include Facebook, Groupon, Admob, and Diapers.com. From 2003 to 2009, Singh Cassidy was a senior executive at Google, Inc, where she grew and scaled several leading businesses, including Asia-Pacific & Latin American Operations. As President of Asia Pacific and Latin America, she was responsible for all of Google's commercial operations in both regions, and built the company's physical presence from inception to a multi-billion dollar business serving users, advertisers and partners across 40 domains and 103 different countries throughout APAC and Latin America. Under her leadership the company opened 18 sales offices, 9 R&D centers and full cross-functional operations throughout the region and was the fastest growing geography within the company. Prior to running Asia Pacific and Latin America, Singh Cassidy was the first General Manager for Google Local & Maps, helping to launch these innovative new services, then expanding her responsibilities to lead the company's strategic partnerships for Google Books, Scholar, and Video. While at Google, Singh Cassidy also chaired the Women's Leadership Community to help initiate networking and development opportunities among Google's female management community. For her work in the Internet industry, Singh Cassidy has been profiled in numerous publications globally, including Fortune, Business Week, Ad Age, Canada Post, India Today, and the book, Innovation Nation, profiling Canada's most innovative business leaders, Most recently she was named a "Woman to Watch" by Ad Age in 2010, and Fortune in 2008, a Techcrunch Fellow in 2009, and one of the top 100 Women of Influence in the Bay Area in 2010. Singh Cassidy currently serves on the board of Formspring, Inc, and the advisory board of Twitter. Previously she has been a board member of J. Crew Group Inc. (JCG), and also served on the Advisory Board for A Woman's Nation, with Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress (CAP). She is a graduate of the Ivey School of Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and is married with three children.

As a senior fellow for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Ted Zoller performs research and advises Foundation leaders on entrepreneurship strategies and programs. Most recently, Zoller was director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Kenan-Flagler school of business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill., where he oversaw its teaching and outreach programs. He is the founding instructor of UNC's "Launching the Venture" course, which has increased the number of companies to spin-off from the university. Zoller also taught in UNC Kenan-Flagler?s GLOBE Program for undergraduate students and the European Summer School of Advanced Management in Denmark. He has developed venture academies in Europe with INITs, the leading new venture accelerator in Austria, and with the Symbion Research Park, the leading research park system in Denmark. He founded CommonWeal Ventures, a venture accelerator and private equity firm, and is a small business owner. He serves on the boards of several entrepreneurial ventures, including Idea Fund Partners, Southeast TechInventures, and CollectiveIQ Private Equity. Zoller is a former associate dean, high-tech entrepreneur, and a principal of American Management Systems, Inc. He was founding director of economic development at the College of William & Mary, where he developed Jefferson Park, an advanced technology research park. He received his PhD from UNC, his master's degrees from Syracuse University and the University of Virginia, and a dual bachelor's degree from the College of William & Mary.

Deborah Hopkins has served as Citi's Chief Innovation Officer since 2008. Her mission is client-focused innovation. Based in Palo Alto California, Hopkins focuses on building partnerships with venture capitalists, start-ups, corporations, universities and thought leaders to support the incubation of emerging technologies in the design, development, and implementation of disruptive customer-centric business models. In this role she works across all of Citi's business units to maximize creativity and to ensure operating efficiencies globally, across products, regions and the enterprise as a whole. Further, she serves as Chairman of Citi Venture Capital Initiatives seeking investment opportunities that support and enhance her mission. Hopkins has held several senior roles at the company since joining Citi in 2003. From 2003 to 2005, she was Chief Operations & Technology Officer. Prior to that, she was Head of Corporate Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions. She has also served as Co-Chair of Citi's Women's Initiative. Before coming to Citi, Hopkins' leadership roles included Chief Financial Officer for The Boeing Company and for Lucent Technologies. Prior to that, she was Vice President of Finance for General Motors Europe. In addition to her positions at Citi, Hopkins is a Board Member at QlikTech Inc and also serves on the Advisory Board of Riverwood Partners. She was a member of the Board of Directors for DuPont between 2000 and 2005. Fortune magazine has twice named her one of the most powerful women in American business and in 2011 she was named to Institutional Investors top Tech 50 list.

As co-founder and chief of inDinero, Jessica drives the development of inDinero?s product strategy, software development, and design efforts. She and her partners built the core product over the Summer of 2009, and the company has since raised funding from investors such as Y Combinator. Mah was the founder and technical lead behind internshipIN.com, which helped match students with internships. She?s been programming since age 9, building businesses since age 12, and finished high school at age 15. Mah holds degrees from Simon?s Rock the Early College, and from U.C. Berkeley, where she studied computer science and was president of the computer science undergraduate association. Mah has been mentioned in publications ranging from Inc. magazine to the Wall Street Journal, and has been featured on PBS to encourage students to pursue science and entrepreneurship.

Adam Lowry is the co-founder and Chief Greenskeeper of Method Products, Inc., the leading innovator in hip, healthy home care products. Lowry believes that business is our greatest vehicle for positive social and environmental change and that design, redefined, has the power to change our world. As Chief Greenskeeper at Method, Lowry's focus is bringing sustainable innovations to product design, sourcing, production, and marketing. Prior to founding Method, Lowry worked as a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, developing software for the modeling of climate change, including work on the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Lowry began his career in product design in the automotive industry. He has been honored as a Vanity Fair Global Citizen and Man of the Year by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In 2006, Method ranked #16 on Fast Company?s Fast 50, the 50 most innovative companies in the world. Lowry holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University, and lives in San Francisco with his wife Mara and daughter Kenning.

Marten Mickos builds global disruptive businesses. As CEO of MySQL AB for seven years, Mickos grew that company from a garage start-up to the second largest open source company in the world. After the acquisition by Sun Microsystems of MySQL AB for $1bn, he served as Senior Vice President of Sun's Database Group. Previously, Mickos held multi-national CEO and senior executive positions in his native Finland. He is a member of the board of Electrosonic. Mickos holds a M.Sc. in technical physics from Helsinki University of Technology. In 2006 he received the Audemars Piguet "Changing Times Award: European Entrepreneur of the Year 2006" and the Nokia Foundation Award.

Scott Summit is a co-founder of Bespoke Innovations. Summit has been designing consumer products for more than 20 years, including innovations for Apple, Nike, Palm, and other major brands, many of which have earned patents, as well as IDEA and IDSA awards. Summit has held faculty positions teaching design and process at Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon, and Singularity University. Additionally, Summit writes for Time Compression Magazine on the art and technology enabled by additive fabrication. He lives in the mountains of Marin County, California.

Brad Feld has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies. Feld is also a co-founder of TechStars. Feld currently serves on the board of directors of BigDoor Media, Cheezburger Networks, Fitbit, Gnip, MakerBot Oblong, Orbotix, Standing Cloud, and Zynga for Foundry Group. Previously, Feld served as chief technology officer of AmeriData Technologies. AmeriData acquired Feld Technologies, a firm he founded in 1987 that specialized in custom software applications. He had grown Feld Technologies into one of Boston's leading software consulting firms prior to the acquisition. He also directed the diversification into software consulting at AmeriData, a $1.5 billion publicly-traded company which was acquired by GE Capital in 1995. In addition to his investing efforts, Feld has been active with several non-profit organizations and currently is chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Feld is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship and writes widely read blogs at www.feld.com and www.askthevc.com. Notable companies that Feld has invested in and/or sat on the boards of include Abuzz (acq. NYT), Anyday.com (acq. PALM), Critical Path (CPTH), Cyanea (acq. IBM), Dante Group (acq. WEBM), DataPower (acq. IBM), FeedBurner (acq. by GOOG), Feld Group (acq. by EDS), Gist (acq. by RIM), Harmonix (acq. VIA), NetGenesis (IPO), ServiceMagic (acq. IACI), and ServiceMetrics (acq. EXDS). Feld holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also an avid art collector and long-distance runner. He has completed eighteen marathons as part of his mission to run a marathon in each of the fifty states.

Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, is an entrepreneur and executive who has led two Internet companies from the very beginning to proven commercial success, and helped three others through rapid growth. Prior to joining Evernote, Libin founded and served as president of CoreStreet, currently one of the top companies providing smart credential and identity management technologies to governments and large corporations throughout the world. Previously, he was founder and CEO of Engine 5, a leading Boston-based Internet software development company acquired by Vignette Corporation in early 2000, where he went on to serve as principal architect and chief technologist for applications. Phil has a degree in Computer Science from Boston University.

Prior to founding The Climate Corporation (formerly WeatherBill), Friedberg was with Google, where he joined as one of the founding members of the company's Corporate Development team. He managed a number of strategic projects for Google, including identifying and leading several of Google's largest acquisitions. Friedberg also served as a Business Product Manager for AdWords?Google's primary revenue source. Before Google, Friedberg spent several years working in private equity and investment banking. He has invested in and advised dozens of companies in the technology industry. Earlier, he worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he led several projects as a mathematical programmer. He has a degree in Astrophysics from UC Berkeley.

Prior to co-founding Instagram, Kevin Systrom graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a B.S. in Management Science & Engineering. While at Stanford, Systrom was a Mayfield Fellow with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. With a passion for social products that enable people to easily communicate, Systrom got his first taste of the startup world as an intern at Odeo, which later became Twitter. He also spent two years at Google, the first of which he spent working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products, and the latter working on the Corporate Development team.

Michael Krieger graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Symbolic Systems with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction. During his undergraduate studies, Krieger interned at Microsoft's PowerPoint team as a PM and at Foxmarks (now Xmarks) as a software developer. Krieger wrote his Master's thesis on how user interfaces can better support collaboration on a large scale. After graduating, he worked at Meebo for a year and a half as a user experience designer and as a front-end engineer before joining the Instagram team doing design and development.

Born in Israel and raised in El Paso, Texas, Ori Brafman has been a lifelong entrepreneur in business, government and the nonprofit sector. His projects include launching healthy fast food restaurants, leading political and advocacy campaigns and co-founding Courtroom Connect, a wireless network company. In 2001, Brafman co-founded a network of more than 1000 CEOs working for peace and economic development projects. The network was supported by the likes of venture capitalist John Doerr and the Ford Foundation and has catalyzed projects in the Middle East, Africa, North America, Europe, and Asia. Most recently, Brafman has facilitated a course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Following his first book, The Starfish and the Spider, Brafman wrote his second book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, with his brother, Rom. Their latest book is Click: The Magic of Instant Connections. Brafman has appeared on the BBC, National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal/MarketWatch video, Fox News, CSPAN, and AP Video among others. He has presented before audiences at Microsoft, Amazon, Televisa, Stanford Business School, Harvard Business School, and many others. Brafman holds a BA in peace and conflict studies from UC Berkeley and an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Jennifer Morris is Executive Vice President of the Ecosystem Finance and Markets Unit of Conservation International (CI) and co-chair of the Resource Management Group of Conservation International. Morris has over 15 years experience in international conservation program development with a specific focus on innovative financing, sustainable economic development and corporate partnerships. Jennifer has a BA in Political Science from Emory University and a Masters in International Affairs with a focus on business development from Columbia University. As Executive Vice President, Morris is responsible for leading a team of 80 professionals to develop and implement conservation initiatives which support CI's mission of sustainable development in 60 countries with over 1600 partner organizations. She leads both the Ecosystem Finance Division and the Center for Environmental Leadership and Business and is a member of CI's Executive Management Team. Jennifer has served on the board of several organizations including the SEED Initiative, the Conservation Finance Alliance and the Finance Alliance for Sustainable Trade.

Mark Forchette serves as president and CEO of OptiMedica. Forchette has more than two decades of experience in ophthalmic sales, marketing and business unit management. Immediately prior to OptiMedica, he served as vice president of global marketing and sales for the vitreoretinal business unit of Alcon. In this position, he led the vitreoretinal unit through a period of substantial portfolio enhancement, infrastructure development and a significant increase in market share. Prior to Alcon, Mr. Forchette was vice president of sales and marketing at Grieshaber & Co. Inc., where he led the privately-held Swiss company's domestic operations through major infrastructure and revenue expansion. Grieshaber, which was acquired by Alcon in 1998, remains a significant contributor to Alcon's successful vitreoretinal portfolio of products. Mr. Forchette received a B.S. in marketing from Auburn University and completed the Harvard Program for Management Development.

Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Square, a service that enables anyone to accept credit cards anywhere. Dorsey is also the creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter. He was recognized as one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people and was named an "outstanding innovator under the age of 35" by MIT's Technology Review.