Startups

Debbie Sterling is the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, an award-winning children's multimedia company that creates toys, books, apps, videos, animation and merchandise that challenge gender stereotypes and empower girls to build their confidence, dreams and, ultimately, their futures. Sterling is an engineer, entrepreneur and a leader in the movement toward getting girls interested in STEM. She was named Time's "Person of the Moment," honored by the National Retail Foundation as one of 25 "People Shaping Retail's Future," and was recently added to Fortune's "40 under 40" list. In 2015, Sterling was inducted as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship and honored by the National Women's History Museum with a "Living Legacy Award" for her work to empower girls around the world. Sterling holds a degree in mechanical engineering and product design from Stanford University.

Doug Leone is a general partner at Sequoia Capital, working with enterprise and mobile companies. Prior to joining Sequoia in 1988, Leone held sales and sales-management positions at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Prime Computer. He has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, an M.S. in industrial engineering from Columbia, and an M.S. in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tracy Young is the co-founder and CEO at PlanGrid, a leader in construction software that has created an operating system that coordinates the process of building. Young oversees the corporate direction and strategy of the company, focusing on leadership, innovation and customers. Prior to founding PlanGrid, Young helped build several hospitals as a construction engineer. She likes to joke that she went from working for one superintendent to hundreds of thousands through PlanGrid. Young holds a B.S. in construction engineering management from California State University, Sacramento.

Margaret A. Neale is the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management. She was the Graduate School of Business John G. McCoy-Banc One Corporation Professor of Organizations and Dispute Resolution from 2000-2012. Trust Faculty Fellow in 2011-2012 and in 2000-2001. From 1997-2000, she was the Academic Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Professor Neale's major research interests include bargaining and negotiation, distributed work groups, and team composition, learning, and performance. She is the author of over 70 articles on these topics and is a coauthor of three books: Organizational Behavior: A Management Challenge (third edition) Negotiating Rationally (with M.H. Bazerman); and one research series Research on Managing in Groups and Teams. In addition to her teaching and research activities, Professor Neale has conducted executive seminars and management development programs in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Holland, Switzerland, Brazil, Thailand, France, Canada, Nicaragua, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Israel, and Jamaica for public agencies, city governments, health care and trade associations, universities, small businesses and Fortune 500 corporations

Shirzad Chamine is the founder and CEO of executive-coaching program Positive Intelligence. He wrote The New York Times bestselling book of the same name and has trained hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams, as well as business school faculty at Stanford and Yale. Chamine's philosophy is that, by taking command of your mind, you can tackle your greatest challenges with calm, clarity, creativity and laser-focused action. He holds a B.A. in psychology, an M.S. in electrical engineering and an MBA from Stanford University.

Di-Ann Eisnor is director of growth for crowd-sourced navigation and real-time traffic application, Waze, now part of Google. Working across users, governments, international media and local community groups, Eisnor continues to spearhead the company's global initiatives to make connected cities a reality and to grow Waze into new markets and new products. Prior to joining Waze, Eisnor was co-founder and CEO of a collaborative, user-generated, cartographic website that enabled people to map things that are important to them. Eisnor is an active angel investor and speaks widely on mobile, location, connected cities and crowdsourcing. She and rapper Lupe Fiasco co-founded Neighborhood Start Fund, a community-based micro-fund and entrepreneurship center in underserved urban neighborhoods. She holds a B.S. in studio art and business administration from New York University. She is a 2014 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Susan Feldman is the co-founder of One Kings Lane, a popular online destination for the home. Susan was inspired to create One Kings Lane after she moved from an apartment in New York City to a house in Los Angeles and experienced the highly fragmented home-furnishings industry. Joining forces with Alison Pincus, the two women conceptualized the business model in 2008 during the depths of the U.S. financial and economic crisis. Less than six months later, raising no money and totally bootstrapping the operation, One Kings Lane launched in March 2009. In June 2016, it was sold to Bed, Bath & Beyond. Feldman continues to provide strategic oversight to all aspects of the business. Prior to One Kings Lane, Feldman held executive positions in the apparel industry - at Ralph Lauren Swimwear, Polo Jeans, Warnaco/Authentic Fitness Corp., and Liz Claiborne. Feldman holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA.

Adam Grant is a leading expert on how to find motivation and meaning, and live a more generous and creative life. Grant has been recognized as one of the world's 25 most influential management thinkers and one of Fortune's "40 under 40." He is the bestselling author of two books translated into 35 languages, "Give and Take" and "Originals." His 2016 TED talk on the surprising habits of original thinkers received a standing ovation and racked up its first million views in five days. Grant is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, writes for The New York Times on work and psychology, and serves on the Lean In board and the Department of Defense Innovation Board. Grant holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Bob Tinker served as co-founder and CEO of MobileIron from 2008 to 2016, positioning the publicly traded company as a leading provider of mobile security for apps, content, and devices. From 2010 to 2014, MobileIron was named the world's fastest growing technology company and ranked #1 in Deloitte's "Fast 500 Index." Prior to MobileIron, Tinker led the business development team for Cisco's wireless-business unit. Before Cisco, he was the first business executive at enterprise wireless pioneer Airespace, where he was vice president of business development. Cisco acquired Airespace in 2005 for $450 million. Tinker's previous roles include director of marketing at Vertical Networks and vice president at NationsBank, with roles in IT, sales, product management and operations. Tinker is a trustee and foundation board member for the University of California, Merced. He has a B.S. in systems engineering from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Stanford University.

Jeffrey Schox is a registered patent attorney and the founding member of Schox Patent Group, a boutique patent firm devoted to startup ventures. With degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, he has filed over 500 patent applications on a broad range of cutting-edge inventions, including vehicle systems, medical devices, electrical systems, computer software and clean technologies. Before starting his own law firm, Schox worked at Brinks Hofer Gilson and Lione, one of the largest patent law firms in the nation, where he coordinated the majority of patent applications for a Fortune 100 company. Schox teaches the course "Patent Law and Strategy for Innovators and Entrepreneurs" in Stanford's School of Engineering, and the course "Patent Prosecution" at the Stanford Law School.

Tracy Chou is a founding team member of Project Include, an open community working toward providing meaningful diversity and inclusion solutions for tech companies. In 2013, Chou helped kick off the wave of tech company diversity data disclosures with a Github repository collecting numbers on women in engineering, and in doing so she became an accidental activist on the issue of diversity in tech. Prior to Project Include, Chou was a software engineer at Pinterest, working most recently on the home feed and recommendations team. She previously served as a tech lead on the ads and web teams, and worked on infrastructure, API, email and growth as well. Before Pinterest, she worked at Quora, also as an early engineer. She was named to the Forbes "Tech 30 under 30" list in 2014 and has been profiled in Vogue and WIRED for her work. Tracy is an advisor to Homebrew VC and is on reserve with the U.S. Digital Service. Chou earned a B.S. in electrical engineering and M.S. in computer science, both from Stanford University. While there, she was a Mayfield Fellow at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

Gabriel Parisi-Amon is co-founder, chief technical officer and chief operating officer at Nebia. The San Francisco startup launched in August 2015 with a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $3 million to fund the manufacturing of a shower head engineered to be more efficient by atomizing water into millions of droplets. Parisi-Amon previously worked at a startup in Italy and at Apple on the iPhone supply chain. He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 2009 and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Michael Terrell believes true growth happens where insight, effort and a willingness to try something new intersect. As the founder and managing partner of the Terrell Leadership Group, he loves helping his leaders achieve this growth in ways that have measurable impacts on their company cultures, business outcomes, professional and personal relationships, and well-being. In addition to his industry work, Terrell facilitates learning groups for one of the most popular courses at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, called "Interpersonal Dynamics," where he helps MBA students develop awareness and communication skills that serve them powerfully in their next phases of leadership. Terrell holds a degree in management science and engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Mayfield Fellow.

Bonny Simi is president of JetBlue Technology Ventures, the innovation hub for JetBlue Airways' investment and incubation of emerging startups at the intersection of travel and technology. She joined JetBlue in 2003 and has served in operational and strategic roles within flight and system operations, airports and customer support, having developed the award-winning "Voice of the Customer" program. Most recently she was the head of talent for JetBlue, overseeing the hiring of 3,000-plus JetBlue crew members every year, and the launch of an innovative education program called JetBlue Scholars that provides free college education to crew members. Uniquely, she is also a qualified airline captain for JetBlue and flies frequently. Prior to JetBlue, Simi was a captain at United Airlines, flying 727, 737 and 777 jets domestically and internationally. Better known by her maiden name of Bonny Warner, she is a three-time Olympian and 10-time national champion in the sports of luge and bobsled. Simi is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business as well as the Stanford School of Engineering, and regularly facilitates programs at the Stanford d.school.

Michael Ackermann is vice president of neurostimulation for Allergan, a $23 billion global pharmaceutical company and a leader in a new industry model called "growth pharma." He previously served as CEO of Oculeve, Inc., which developed tear-stimulation devices and was acquired by Allergan in August 2015. Ackermann co-founded Oculeve while in the Stanford Biodesign fellowship, and spun it out of the university in 2012. Ackermann received a B.E. degree in biomedical engineering from Vanderbilt University, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University, and is a graduate of the Stanford University Biodesign fellowship. He is a Vision Research Fellow at Stanford and has numerous patents and peer-reviewed publications.

Etosha Cave is co-founder and chief science officer at Opus 12, a startup recycling carbon dioxide into higher value products for both Earth and Mars. At Opus 12, she works with both the engineering and business development team to build the technology and grow the organization.In 2015, she was a speaker at TEDx Stanford and the winner of the 2015 Cool Companies Competition at the Fortune Brainstorm E conference. Cave received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, where she gained the foundational knowledge for this technology and participated in STVP's Accel Innovation Scholars program. Prior to Stanford, she worked in Antarctica at the McMurdo research station. Cave earned her undergraduate degree from Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

Cody Karutz is a virtual reality engineer at STRIVR Labs, a Palo Alto-based startup that uses VR to train athletes. Currently finishing his M.S. in symbolic systems at Stanford University, Karutz has over a decade of experience in virtual-reality content design. He studies the cognitive and perceptual effects of mixed-reality content in applied learning scenarios, and over his years at Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, he has interfaced and led outreach with many of Silicon Valley's leaders regarding the current state and future of the VR industry. The New Yorker once described Karutz as "a mellow, collegiate blond in jeans and flip-flops."

Jonah Greenberger is co-founder of Bright, a Y Combinator and First Round Capital company delivering solar subscriptions to homes in developing countries. According to the company, "Bright allows financiers to understand the consumer and proposed solar project in ways not previously possible." He was most recently a director at Chevron Energy Solutions, where he helped build a renewable energy investment and construction group. Greenberger received his M.S. in thermodynamics and B.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Mayfield Fellow.

Elaine Cheung is a founding team member of GRAIL, a new company formed to enable cancer screenings from a simple blood test. Previously, she was director of strategic partnerships, as well as director of business development, at Illumina, a leading provider of next-generation sequencing technologies. There, she focused on strategy and transactions to enable clinical adoption of new sequencing approaches in oncology, reproductive health and transplant medicine. Cheung also spent six years at Genomic Health, which develops and commercializes various tests that can guide treatment decisions for breast, colorectal and prostate cancer patients. Cheung earned a B.S. in biological sciences and an M.S. in management science and engineering, both from Stanford University, where she was also a Mayfield Fellow at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

Jay Kaplan is co-founder and CEO of Synack, a venture capital-backed startup focused on helping enterprises gain a "hacker" perspective of their technology footprint. Synack was ranked No. 20 on CNBC's annual list of the "50 Most Disruptive Companies" for the second year in a row. Prior to Synack, Kaplan served in multiple cyber-related capacities at the Department of Defense, including the agency's Incident Response and Red Team. Most recently, he was senior analyst at the National Security Agency (NSA), where he supported cyber intelligence operations and received multiple accolades for classified work conducted at the agency. Selected as one of Forbes' "30 Under 30" in enterprise technology, Kaplan holds a B.S. and M.S. from George Washington University studying under a NSA-funded fellowship program, in addition to a number of industry certifications.

Al Ramadan is a co-founding partner at Play Bigger Advisors, a firm that specializes in category design, positioning and marketing for technology ventures ranging from early-stage startups to publicly traded companies. Ramadan has been a company co-founder, pioneered new markets, taken them public, won big and lost big. His mission is to help great technology design and dominate their categories. Born in Australia, Ramadan is also a mentor, father, outdoorsman and passionate surfer. He was named as one of the most influential people in the digital economy by Time Magazine, sailed in the Americas Cup, awarded an honorary aviator by the U.S. Navy and hiked the John Muir Trail.