Culture

Eric Ries is the author of the blog Lessons Learned. He was the co-founder and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU, his third startup. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups including pbWiki, Smule, 750i and KaChing.

Robin Li is the Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Baidu, Inc., and oversees the company's overall strategy and business operations. Since founding Baidu in January 2000, Li has turned the company into the largest Chinese search engine, with over 70% market share, and the third largest independent search engine in the world. In 2005, Baidu completed its successful IPO on NASDAQ, and in 2007 it became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 Index. Prior to Baidu, Li was already regarded as one of the world's top search engine experts. His hyperlink analysis, patented in 1996, is among the inventions that shaped today's search engine technology. Li worked as a staff engineer for Infoseek, a pioneer Internet search engine company, from July 1997 to December 1999, and as a senior consultant for IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997. Robin Li received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Management from Peking University in 1991, and a Master of Science Degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1994.

Steven A. Ballmer is Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer of software for personal and business computing. Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 and was the first business manager hired by Bill Gates. Since then, Ballmer's leadership and passion have become hallmarks of his tenure at the company. Ballmer was born in March 1956, and grew up near Detroit, where his father worked as a manager at Ford Motor Co. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics. While in college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on the Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the university literary magazine, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. After college, he worked for two years at Procter & Gamble Co. as an assistant product manager and, before joining Microsoft, attended Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.

Sheryl Sandberg is Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. She oversees the firm's business operations including sales, marketing, business development, legal, human resources, public policy and communications. Prior to Facebook, Sandberg was vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google, where she built and managed the online sales channels for advertising and publishing and operations for consumer products worldwide. She previously served as Chief of Staff for the United States Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton and began her career as an economist with the World Bank. Sandberg is the author of the book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. She also serves on the boards of Facebook, ONE, The Walt Disney Company, Women for Women International, the Center for Global Development and V-Day.

Mari Baker is the CEO of PlayFirst and the former CEO of Navigenics. Previous to that, she was an executive-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which she joined in 2006. Prior to that, she was president of BabyCenter, LLC, a Johnson & Johnson company. Under her leadership, BabyCenter became the world's leading Web site for new and expectant parents, winning numerous online health awards and expanding significantly offline and internationally. Prior to her tenure with BabyCenter and Johnson & Johnson, she was a senior vice president at Intuit, Inc., which she joined in 1989 as product manager for Quicken. Baker led Quicken to grow into the number one personal finance product in the world, along with international expansion and the launch of Quicken.com. Baker also held executive or product management positions at Now Software, Migent Software, and E.F. Hutton. Mari Baker attended Stanford University, graduating with degrees in economics and sociology. She served on the board of trustees of Stanford University from 1996 to 2003, where she oversaw the Stanford Medical Center, and she continues to serve as a trustee emeritus. Baker currently serves on the board of directors of the Cozi Group and she is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization.

Teresa Briggs currently serves as a Managing Partner at Deloitte's Silicon Valley office. Over the past two years, Briggs has worked to double the firm's staff to at least 1,300. She joined the firm when only seven percent of the partners were women. She arrived at Deloitte & Touche as one of the youngest partners in the company. Rising quickly, she moved to Deloitte's New York office working to redesign the company's corporate strategy at a national level, which then led to her current position. On top of all her accomplishments at Deloitte, Briggs has served on the Management Board of Advisors at her alma mater, the University of Arizona, and she spent eight years serving on the board of the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco. Teresa also recently participated in the Leadership Group's Annual CEO/Elected Official Cycle‐To‐Work Day Challenge to help curb climate change, riding from Redwood Shores to downtown San Jose and back. She was also recently named a "Woman of Distinction" in the San Jose / Silicon Valley Business Journal, and she has been added to the Business Journal's "Who's Who in Silicon Valley" list. Briggs holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Arizona.

Mr. Martin joined Pacific Biosciences in 2004 as a seasoned executive with a 25-year track record managing leading edge technologies, new ventures, and high growth businesses. Previously, Mr. Martin was Chairman, President and CEO of ONI Systems?a high-speed optical telecommunications company he founded in 1998 and took public in 2000. Named the Fastest Growing Company in Silicon Valley in 2001, ONI was sold to Ciena in 2002. After its sale, Mr. Martin served as a consultant to Ciena, a CEO in residence at the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and was a Director at Cloudshield Technologies. Prior to ONI, Mr. Martin was President and Director of 3DO?an interactive gaming company. His earlier experience includes running desktop engineering for Apple Computer and founding Ridge Computers?designer of the world's first commercial reduced instruction set computing (RISC) minicomputer. Mr. Martin received a BS in Electrical Engineering at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Mr. Martin currently serves on the Board of Directors of Pacific Biosciences and Infinera.

Tom Kelley is currently General Manager at IDEO, a firm that helps its clients create innovative products, services and environments. Tom is a frequent speaker on managing innovation for U.S., Asian and European audiences, and has appeared on international news programs for BBC Television and Nikkei Satellite News. As the co-author of three books, including The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm, Tom illuminates the strategies for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation. Prior to joining IDEO, Tom was a management consultant for Towers Perrin, advising senior executives on organizational and operational issues in North America, Asia and Australia. Tom holds an MBA in Marketing from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, where he received the Delbert J. Duncan citation as the year's top marketing scholar.

Chip Conley is the founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, California's largest boutique hotel company now celebrating its 20th anniversary. Starting out with virtually no industry experience, Chip opened his first hotel, The Phoenix, in San Francisco's edgy Tenderloin district on a wing and a prayer. The company now consists of over 40 award-winning hotels, restaurants and spas across the state with over 2,500 employees and revenues close to 200 million dollars. Each unique property is designed to produce what Chip calls "identity refreshment" for his guests. The company gleans inspiration for each hotel from popular magazines such as Rolling Stone (The Phoenix), The New Yorker (Hotel Rex), Dwell (Vitale), Wired (Avante) and others. Chip and his company's time-tested techniques have been featured in Business 2.0, TIME, Fast Company, Fortune, People and other leading publications - so many magazines, so many new hotel possibilities! A popular speaker and innovative leader, Chip is regularly consulted by corporate, civic and academic institutions for his opinions, guidance and wisdom on building and maintaining a successful and transformative enterprise involving areas such as organizational leadership, creative business development, corporate social responsibility and spirit in business. In his new book, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow, Chip shares his unique prescription for success based on the iconic Hierarchy of Needs. His new theory illustrates how Employees, Customers and Investors are ultimately motivated by peak experiences, and he demonstrates how to create these for each using real-world examples from his own company and others. Chip has been honored with the top hospitality industry awards and is recognized as a committed and creative philanthropist. He is the founder of San Francisco's Annual Celebrity Pool Toss, which has raised over 3 million dollars for inner city youth programs now thriving in the troubled neighborhood where he launched his first hotel. He is a member of the Global Business Network and Young President's Organization and received his BA and MBA from Stanford University. He was recently named Bay Area's Most Innovative CEO by the SF Business Times.

John G. Melo is the Chief Executive Officer of Amyris Biotechnologies, a synthetic biology company working to reduce the cost of curing malaria and producing lower carbon, second generation bio-fuels. He was previously president of U.S. Fuels for BP, where he led one of the world's largest petroleum marketing, logistics, and trading businesses. While in this role he successfully grew revenues from $25 billion to $34 billion and increased net cash by $1 billion. During this time his team developed one of the world's most successful ethanol blending and marketing businesses. He also worked on the development of BP's "Helios" re-branding. Prior to his eight years with BP, Mr. Melo was a director with Ernst & Young in San Jose, California, and a management team member for several Northern California start-ups, including Computer Aided Services and Alldata Corporation. John serves on the Board of Directors for U.S. Oil, a $1.6 billion energy company, and Cilion, a leading low-cost ethanol manufacturer. John is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, The Chicago Club, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and YPO. He enjoys visiting his home country of Azores, Portugal, as well as skiing, biking, tennis, golf, and time with his children.

Jeffrey Housenbold is President & CEO of Shutterfly, Inc., an internet-based social expression and personal publishing service. Shutterfly provides a full range of products and services that enable consumers to manage their digital photographs. Housenbold has a successful track record of building online consumer franchises by combining commerce and community. In June 2006, he received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Retail and Consumer Products category for the Northern California region. Previously, Housenbold was Vice President of Business Development & Internet Marketing at eBay, where he managed customer acquisition and retention. At eBay he also held positions as Vice President & General Manager of its Business-to-Consumer Group and Vice President of Mergers and Acquisitions. Formerly, he held senior management positions with AltaVista, including Vice President & General Manager, and was the Chief Operating Officer of Raging Bull, the community finance portal. He also served as Vice President of Corporate Development at WinStar Communications and as Manager and Founder of Accenture's Media & Entertainment Strategy Group. Housenbold completed his undergraduate degree with High Honors at Carnegie Mellon University in Economics and Business Administration and was also a Presidential Scholar. He went on to earn his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Dean's Fellow. Housenbold is the co-author of The Shutterfly Guide to Great Digital Photos, an instructional book published by McGraw-Hill on the essentials of digital photography and managing images. He is an avid photographer with his Canon 30D.

Dan Springer brings over 20 years of executive leadership and strategic sales and marketing consulting experience to Responsys, with proven success in interactive marketing, e-commerce, and finance. As Chief Executive Officer, Dan is responsible for charting Responsys' strategic direction and extending the company's leadership into new realms of digital marketing. Prior to Responsys, Dan was Managing Director in the San Francisco office of Modem Media where he was responsible for general management of the agency's western United States operations. Dan led the development of the agency's Performance Marketing capability by leveraging database marketing, web site analytics and search engine marketing techniques. Prior to Modem Media as the CEO of Telleo, Inc., he refocused the business from online advertising to business partnerships with leading brands like Taco Bell. Previously, Springer was also the Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager for NextCard, where he built the fastest-growing credit card in history by creating one of the Internet's top five advertisers. He started his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and DRI/McGraw-Hill. Dan holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Occidental College. He also sits on the board of directors for ITI, E-LOAN and The Randall Museum.

Before joining the d.school at Stanford University, Michael Dearing spent nearly seven years at eBay serving most recently as Senior Vice President & General Merchandise Manager. In that role, he led category management, product marketing, seller development, eBay Stores, and direct-to-consumer marketing for eBay North America. While at eBay, Michael and his colleagues were also responsible for the launch and growth of many new merchandise categories, and new businesses such as Buy-it-Now, the listings upgrade business, eBay Stores, and ProStores. Prior to eBay, Michael held leadership positions at Bain & Company, Filene's Basement, The Walt Disney Company (NYSE-DIS), and Industrial Shoe Warehouse. Michael holds an AB in Economics with a focus in economic history from Brown University, and an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School. His current interests include process design for new product development, "productizing" emerging technologies, web-based businesses, product marketing, and pricing. Michael founded Harrison Metal in 2006, where he invests in seed-stage companies and educates founders to help them succeed. His focus is on general management, business leadership, and product development. The Harrison Metal endowment fund makes direct venture capital investments in exceptional founders.

Ken Wilcox is president and CEO of SVB Financial Group. Since January 2000, when he took on the role, Wilcox has successfully pursued a strategy of expansion and diversification, while remaining focused on the company's core niches of technology, life sciences, private equity and premium wineries. Wilcox joined Silicon Valley Bank in 1990 when he co-founded the company's East Coast Technology Division. In this role, Wilcox managed the first regional office of Silicon Valley Bank and was responsible for all lending activity east of the Mississippi River. Upon promotion to chief banking officer in 1997, Wilcox moved from Massachusetts to California and became president and CEO within four years. Prior to joining Silicon Valley Bank, Wilcox spent two years as a member of the Technology Lending Group with the Bank of New England and five years at Shawmut Bank in Boston. Prior to his banking career, Wilcox was a professor of German at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wilcox received a bachelor's degree in German studies from Oakland University and a Ph.D. in German Studies from The Ohio State University. He also earned a master's of business administration from Harvard Business School. Wilcox is a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Prior to joining the B Lab network of private enterprise for public benefit, Bart Houlahan, 39, was CFO, COO, and President of AND 1, a basketball footwear, apparel, and entertainment company. Houlahan joined AND 1 in its second year, when revenues totaled just $4 million. Over the course of the next 11 years, Houlahan helped to finance, operate, and scale the business to $250 million in brand revenues with distribution in 85 countries. Before AND 1, Houlahan was an investment banker with Stonebridge Associates, BNY Associates, and Prudential-Bache Securities. He grew up in Chicago, and is a graduate of Stanford University. Houlahan currently resides in Devon, PA with his wife, Chrissy, and his two daughters.

Despite having no game, Jay Coen Gilbert co-founded and sold AND 1, a $250 million basketball footwear and apparel company based outside Philadelphia. Coen Gilbert led AND 1's product and marketing for most of his 13 years with the company, and served as AND 1's CEO during its period of most rapid growth. Coen Gilbert is now co-chairman of Investors' Circle, a national angel network dedicated to "Patient Capital for a Sustainable Future" that has invested over $107 million in 171 companies since 1992. Coen Gilbert is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and serves on the boards of the Philadelphia chapter of KIPP, a national public charter middle school; City Year, a leading Americorps youth service program; and Monteverde Friends, US. He grew up in New York City before heading west to Stanford University, graduating with a degree in East Asian Studies in 1989. Coen Gilbert lives with his yogini wife, Randi, and their two children in Berwyn, PA.

Mir Imran founded InCube Laboratories in 1995 to focus on his passion: creating medical device solutions that change the standard of care in critical healthcare markets. Mir began his career as a med-tech entrepreneur in the late 1970's. Over the decades, he has become one of the world's most successful inventors, entrepreneurs and investors in healthcare. Mir now holds more than 200 issued patents - and is perhaps most well known for his pioneering contributions to the first FDA-approved Automatic Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator. Mir's current crop of inventions includes advanced treatments for neural aneurysms, epilepsy, ulcerative colitis, obesity and chronic pain, among others. Most of these will enter clinical trials in the 2008 to 2010 timeframe. As an entrepreneur, Mir has founded over 20 medical device companies, including: Vidamed (acquired by Medtronic), Physiometrix, Cardiac Pathways, Advanced Cytomextrix (acquired by Oncotech 1997), Percusurge (acquired by Medtronic 2001), Reflow, Inc. (acquired 1999), Safeview (acquired by L3 2006) Intrapace (founded 2001), Spinal Modulation (founded 2005) and Zonare (founded 1999). As an investor, Mir serves as the Life Science Venture Partner for DFJ ePlanet, where he has led 9 investments in a range of promising ventures around the globe. Mir is also an active angel investor, with a portfolio based around both medical and pharmaceutical ventures. Mir currently holds board seats with Bodymedia, Cardiovasc, Intrapace, Egeen International, Spinal Modulation, ZARS and Zonare. Mir holds an MS in Bio-Engineering and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers, where he spent three years as a Research Specialist.

Christine has been President of Humane Society Silicon Valley for the past 13 years. During her tenure, Christine has led a progressive spay/neuter program that has dramatically reduced the number of incoming animals to the shelter from 45,000 in 1993 to approximately 9,000 in 2006. Under her leadership, the shelter instituted a spay/neuter at adoption policy, pediatric spay/neuter, an affordable spay/neuter vaccination clinic, and encouraged local municipalities to offer discounted spay/neuter voucher programs. Christine has also instituted policies that have substantially increased the number of animals adopted. Today, 99 percent of the animals available for adoption find new homes; ten years ago, less than 15 percent found new homes. Under Christine's management, the Humane Society's volunteer base increased from 50 to more than 700, and the shelter's donor base increased from 300 to 30,000 donors. In addition to her passion for animals, Christine has a strong business background, having spent four years as an auditor with Arthur Andersen & Co. and 15 years with Hewlett Packard Corporation. At HP, Christine held several managerial positions both domestically and in Europe. Christine is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University. She serves as a board member of the State Humane Association of California and is a volunteer consultant to various nonprofit boards. In 1989, Business Month magazine named Christine to its list of "100 Women to Watch in Corporate America." Christine owns four dogs, all of which were adopted from Humane Society Silicon Valley.

Steve Blank is an adjunct professor in the Department of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. A retired eight-time serial entrepreneur, Blank's insight that startups are not smaller versions of large companies has reshaped the way startups are built and how entrepreneurship is taught. His observation that large companies execute business models, but startups search for them, led him to realize that startups need their own tools, different than those used to manage existing companies. Blank's first tool for startups, the customer-development methodology, spawned the lean startup movement. The fundamentals of this methodology are detailed in his books, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" and the "The Startup Owner's Manual." Blank teaches customer development and entrepreneurship at Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley and Columbia University. In 2011, he developed the "Lean LaunchPad," a hands-on class that integrates business model design and customer development into practice through fast-paced, real-world customer interaction and business model iteration. In 2011, the National Science Foundation adopted Blank's class for its Innovation Corps (I-Corps), training teams of the nation's top scientists and engineers to take their ideas out of the university lab and into the commercial marketplace. In 2014, the I-Corps program was expanded to include the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Departments of Energy and of Defense. Over 750 teams have gone through the I-Corps program.

Mike Maples Jr. has been on the Forbes "Midas List" since 2010 and was also named one of "8 Rising Stars" by Fortune Magazine. Before becoming a full-time investor, Maples was involved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back startup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (IPO TIVS, acquired by IBM) and Motive (IPO MOTV, acquired by Alcatel-Lucent). Some of Maple's investments include Twitter, Twitch.tv, ngmoco, Weebly, Chegg, Bazaarvoice, Spiceworks, Okta and Demandforce. And he is known for coining the term "thunder lizards," which is a metaphor derived from Godzilla that describes the tiny number of truly exceptional companies that are wildly disruptive capitalist mutations. He holds an engineering degree from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. His interests include calligraphy, cinematography and sporting clays.

Mitch Kapor has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist. Most recently, Mr. Kapor founded Foxmarks, an upcoming search engine based on bookmarks and related metadata. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1971 and studied psychology, linguistics, and computer science as part of a major in Cybernetics. He attended the Sloan School of Management at MIT before leaving for a Silicon Valley startup. Mr. Kapor founded Lotus Development Corp. in 1982 and with Jonathan Sachs created Lotus 1-2-3, which made the PC ubiquitous in business in the 1980's. In 1990, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He founded the Mitchell Kapor Foundation in 1997 and the Open Source Applications Foundation in 2001. He became the founding Chair of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 and is a trustee of the Level Playing Field Institute. From 1994-1996, he served as Adjunct Professor at the MIT Media Lab. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Kapor was a partner at Accel. In 2006, he became an Adjunct Professor at the School of Information at Berkeley. Mr. Kapor has contributed pieces on information infrastructure policy, intellectual property, and antitrust in the digital era topublications such as Scientific American, The New York Times, and Forbes.

Andy Freire is Axialent's co-founder and CEO. Entrepreneur in the business and social domains, after working at Procter & Gamble, he founded and led Officenet, a company that revolutionized the industry of distribution (retail) of office supplies in Latin America growing from one to almost a thousand employees in a 4 year span. When he was 18, he created the Fundacion Iniciativa, for the promotion of leadership among the Latin American youth. He collaborates weekly with CNN in Spanish as "Expert Entrepreneur." He was distinguished by the World Economic Forum as "Global Leader for Tomorrow", by the Endeavor Foundation as "Latin American Entrepreneur of the Year" and he was one of two finalists who received awards as "World Young Business Achiever" in the Philippines in 2002. Andy has a Licensure in Economics magna cum laude from the University of San Andres in Buenos Aires, Argentina and an OPM from the Harvard Business School. His several projects got funded by world recognized financial institutions such as GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, George Soros, KKR, Santander Bank, Bank of America, Warburg Pincus, Louis Vuitton, GP Investimentos and Tommy Lee Putnam.

Tom Friel was elected non-executive Chairman of the Board of Heidrick & Struggles in September 2006. Heidrick & Struggles is a publicly traded company listed as HSII on NASDAQ. Previously he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company since June 2003. In this role, he had overall responsibility for the firm's activities worldwide, delivered through a global network of more than 50 offices located in over 32 countries. Since joining Heidrick & Struggles in 1979, Tom has played an important role in developing the firm's leadership position in key markets. He established the firm's Silicon Valley presence in 1984, serving as Managing Partner of the Menlo Park office for its first five years. He was co-founder and then later assumed the responsibility of managing the firm's International Technology Practice, which serves clients in the computer, software, telecommunications, instrumentation, electronics, and related high technology industries. He led the practice from 1987 to 1995, during which time the practice became the recognized world leader in the senior-level search in the high technology marketplace. From 1992 to 1999, Tom undertook the additional role of Managing Partner, Asia Pacific. Under his direction, 10 offices were opened and staffed, as Heidrick & Struggles grew from start-up to its current market position as one of the leading firms in the region. From 1999 through 2001, Tom served as President of Heidrick & Struggles Ventures, the firm's division responsible for all future initiatives, new business strategies, investments and alliances. In his search career he has specialized in recruiting Chief Executive Officers, Chief Technology Officers and Board of Director members. In her book, The Global 200 Executive Recruiters, Nancy Garrison-Jenn listed Tom as among the Top 200 Executive Recruiters in the world. The partners of Heidrick & Struggles honored Tom in 1998 by naming him the recipient of the John E. Struggles Partnership Award, the firm's most significant honor. In March of 2007 the Association of Executive Search Consultants, (AESC) recognized Tom with the "Gardner Heidrick Award" the industry's most prestigious honor for outstanding contributions to the profession. Tom is an honors graduate of Purdue University, where he majored in Industrial Engineering. He also holds an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He currently serves on the Business School Advisory Council. In addition to Heidrick & Struggles, his Board experience includes several private and not-for-profit companies.

Wences Casares is founder and co-CEO of Bling Nation, as well as a founding partner of private investment firm, MECK, Ltd. Bling Nation's mobile technology platform works to connect users' online and offline customer experiences. Businesses can build loyalty programs, while consumers gain seamless integration of smooth checkout experiences integrated with their social media presences. Casares previously founded Lemon Bank, a Brazilian retail bank for the poor, in 2002. He is also the founder of Wanako Games, a US-based developer of console videogames that leverages the creativity of Latin American talent. Wanako Games was sold to Vivendi Universal. In 1997 Casares founded Patagon, an Argentinean online brokerage. Patagon was sold to Spanish bank Santander. In 1994 Casares launched Internet Argentina S.A., the first Internet service provider in the country. He then sold that company, in order to establish Patagon. At age 17 he spent a year in Washington, PA as a member of the Rotary International Exchange program. He then attended the University of San Andres, Argentina's top business school. Casares was selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur, and has been an elected member of the World Economic Forum's Global Leaders for Tomorrow since 2001. As part of his philanthropic and not-for-profit activities, Casres servers on the board of the Viva Trust, and has established the Fundacion Sintesis, with the goal of inspiring the next generation of social and political leaders in Latin America.