Ruzwana Bashir
Ruzwana Bashir cofounded Peek Travel, Inc. and also serves as its CEO. Ms. Bashir is a travel junkie, having navigated her way through forty countries. She previously worked at Gilt Groupe, Art.sy, the Blackstone Group, and Goldman Sachs. She was president of the Oxford Union at Oxford University. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and a BA in economics from Oxford University.
Gina Bianchini is the founder and chief executive officer of Mighty Networks, the most powerful, effective organizing platform for interest-based social networks on mobile available today. It’s home to fifty thousand interest networks and growing.
Before Mighty Networks Bianchini and Marc Andreessen cofounded Ning, a pioneering social platform for niche networks online. Under her leadership Ning grew to 90 million people across 3 million social networks and three hundred thousand active communities in entertainment, politics, education and culture. She started her career at Goldman, Sachs & Co. as a financial analyst in the high technology group.
Gina also serves on the board of directors of Scripps Networks (SNI), which owns HGTV, the Food Network, and the Travel Channel, and also cofounded LeanIn.Org, an organization dedicated to supporting women leaning into their ambitions. She grew up in Cupertino, California, graduated with honors from Stanford University, and received her MBA from Stanford Business School.
Courtney Broadus
Courtney Broadus is an adviser and consulting technology executive to startups and cloud computing companies. She has held executive leadership and management positions in technology for over fifteen years at both startups and Fortune 500 companies, most recently as a technology SVP at Salesforce.com, where she worked for ten years. Under her leadership the team grew from two to over three hundred and defined the industry standard for consistently delivering scalable, reliable cloud computing applications with renowned quality that customers love. Prior to Salesforce.com Courtney held technology leadership positions at Oracle and engineering/architect roles at several startups. Courtney is passionate about helping startups execute, deliver, scale, and build excellent teams founded on strong cultures.
Leah Busque has fifteen years experience building and creating technology products that have reached millions of people around the globe. She started her career at IBM as a software engineer in the software group, working on Lotus Notes and Domino. In 2008 Leah founded TaskRabbit, the leading on-demand service marketplace in the world. She served as the CEO for eight years and now is the executive chairwoman of the company. In 2014 Leah was inaugurated into the Forum of Young Global Leaders, a prestigious group of fewer than one thousand people around the globe recognized for their bold, brave, action-oriented entrepreneurial ventures. The arts and creating opportunities for women in technology are important to her, and she also serves on the board of the Silicon Valley Ballet.
Leah resides in the Bay Area of California with her husband, two children, and highly energetic black Labrador retriever. She graduated magna cum laude from Sweet Briar College, where she earned a BS in mathematics and computer science.
Lara Druyan
Lara Druyan is a managing director at RBC, where she is the head of Innovation on the West Coast. She is responsible for identifying and working with startups on the bank’s behalf, creating partnerships, establishing relationships with the Silicon Valley ecosystem and new product creation, and investing in startups that are strategic to the bank. Previously she was the founding partner of G&B Partners, an investment and advisory firm focused on technology companies. She also served as a venture partner for Almaz Capital, an adviser to Pilot Growth Equity, and as a venture adviser to SRI, where she helped them conceive of, launch, and incubate new ventures. Ms. Druyan served as vice chair of the board of trustees and chair of the investment committee for the City of San Jose’s Federated Employee Retirement System (a $2 billion pension plan) for six years. Previously she was an investor in residence at U.S. Venture Partners and a general partner for over a decade with early-stage venture capital firm Allegis Capital. Lara also worked at Silicon Graphics as a product manager in its heyday and released a dozen software products while at SGI. In 2016 she was named as one of the Silicon Valley Investors You Need to Know by Inc.
Jennifer Fonstad is a cofounder of Aspect Ventures, an early-stage, mobile-focused investment firm with $150 million under management. Prior to Aspect Jennifer was a managing director with Draper Fisher Jurvetson for almost two decades as a part of the team that grew that firm from $150 million under management to over $3.5 billion before she left to found Aspect. While at DFJ Jennifer led the formation of and sat on the investment committees of several DFJ affiliate funds, including DFJ Vietnam and DFJ Israel, as well as serving as an adviser to DFJ China.
Jennifer’s success as an investor has landed her on the Forbes Midas List twice as well as an AO Power Player 2012 and 2013. In 2016 she was named Deloitte Venture Capitalist of the Year. Jennifer graduated cum laude from Georgetown University and holds an MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School. Before joining Bain & Company she spent a year teaching math to high school students in sub-Saharan Africa. She spends weekends running around with her four children.
Theresia Gouw
Theresia Gouw is an engineer, experienced entrepreneur, and successful investor in the new mobility space, focused primarily on security, data analytics, and consumer opportunities.
She recently cofounded Aspect Ventures, where she led the firm’s early investments in Cato Networks, Exabeam, ForeScout, the Muse, SelfScore, BirchBox, and BaubleBar. Prior to Aspect Theresia was a partner at Accel, where she championed many successful companies through IPOs or acquisitions, including Imperva (IMPV), Trulia (TRLA), LearnVest (Northwestern Mutual), Jasper Design (CDNS), and Kosmix (WMT).
As an entrepreneur Theresia was founding vice president of business development and sales at Release Software, a venture-backed company that provided SaaS to enable digital rights management and payment technologies for the software industry. Earlier she worked at Bain & Company and as a product manager at Silicon Graphics. Theresia holds a ScB in engineering from Brown University, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Stanford University.
As chief executive officer of International Game Technology (IGT) from 2009 to 2015, Patti S. Hart led one of the most innovative and profitable gaming companies in the world. Ms. Hart has served on IGT’s board of directors since June 2006. Following the 2015 sale of IGT to Gtech, Ms. Hart assumed the role of vice chairman of the board.
Prior to joining IGT she was the chairman and CEO of Pinnacle Systems, Inc. from 2004 to 2005 and of Excite@Home, Inc. from 2001 to 2002. Ms. Hart was previously chairman and CEO of Telocity, Inc. and held various executive positions at the Sprint Corporation from 1986 to 1999. Hart has served shareholders through her numerous appointments to public company boards of directors. In addition to IGT, she has served on many boards, including Plantronics Corporation, Korn Ferry, Yahoo, Spansion, Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD, Inc.), Vantive, Premisys, Excite@Home, Telocity, and Pinnacle Systems.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing and economics from Illinois State University.
Julia Hartz
Julia Hartz is an entrepreneur, investor, and the cofounder and CEO of Eventbrite, which powers over 2 million events around the world each year. Under her leadership the company has generated billions in gross ticket sales, processes over 2 million tickets per week to events and experiences in 180 countries, and is consistently recognized for their award-winning culture and workplace. Julia has been honored as one of Fortune’s 2015 40 Under 40 business leaders, Inc.’s 35 under 35 in 2014, and Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs in 2013, and she has been profiled for her leadership and impact in top publications around the world. Julia landed in Silicon Valley via Hollywood, where she began her career as a development executive at MTV and FX Networks.
Deborah Hopkins is Citi’s chief innovation officer and CEO of Citi Ventures. Ms. Hopkins founded and built Citi Ventures recognizing the critical role innovation must play in driving growth at Citi amid accelerating disruptive forces and heightened customer expectations. A lifelong change agent, Ms. Hopkins partners with Citi’s businesses to shepherd creativity and implement breakthrough solutions. Based in Palo Alto, her team works to connect Citi to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem through their work in venture investing, identification of transformative trends, sponsorship of a network of labs and accelerators across the company, and bringing the adoption of Lean Start Up to the enterprise.
Since joining Citi in 2003 Ms. Hopkins has served in a number of executive roles, including head of corporate strategy as well as mergers and acquisitions and chief operations and technology officer. She continues to act as a senior advisor to Citi’s Global Investment Bank. Her experience prior to Citi spans multiple industries—automotive, aerospace, telecommunications and information technology. Previous roles include chief financial officer at both Boeing and Lucent Technologies, vice president of finance at General Motors Europe, and general auditor at General Motors.
Jennifer Hyman
Jennifer Hyman is the cofounder and CEO of Rent the Runway, a fashion company with a technology soul that is disrupting the way women get dressed. In her role she sets the strategic priorities of the business and leads the company in growing all areas of the business, including marketing, technology, product, and analytics. She cofounded Rent the Runway in 2009 with Jennifer Fleiss and has since raised over $190 million in venture capital, growing the business to over 6 million members, eleven hundred employees, and 450 designer brands. Jennifer has been honored with numerous recognitions, including Tribeca Film Festival’s Disruptive Innovation Awards; Fortune’s Trailblazers: 11 People Changing Business in 2013, Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, and 40 Under 40; Inc.’s 30 Under 30; and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology.
Lynn Jurich is chief executive officer and cofounder of Sunrun (RUN), the largest dedicated residential solar company in the United States. With Sunrun cofounder Ed Fenster Lynn invented the business model “solar as a service” that unlocked consumer demand for clean, affordable energy direct from residential rooftops. Today, with more than $3 billion in installed solar systems across fifteen states, Sunrun is revolutionizing how consumers get electricity. Before Sunrun Lynn worked at Summit Partners, where, as one of few female venture capitalists, she completed investments with an aggregate market value of over $900 million in the financial services and technology sectors. Lynn was named Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business in 2013 and Forbes’s Women to Watch in 2015. Lynn earned her BS in science, technology, and society and MBA from Stanford University. In her free time Lynn brings her competitive spirit to the tennis court and nurtures her appreciation of nature with long walks. As a new mom, she also loves spending time with her daughter and husband.
Lynne Laube
Lynne Laube, the founder and CEO of Cardyltics, is an accomplished executive who has been leading step change innovation for over twenty years. In 2008 she founded Cardlytics, an analytics platform that makes marketing more relevant and measurable. Cardlytics uses its proprietary analytics to help advertisers’ better target customers and “close the loop” using actual purchases to measure marketing effectiveness. In 2016 Cardlytics was named one of the fastest growing companies in America by Deloitte Fast 500 and Inc. 5000.
Before founding Cardlytics Lynne held multiple executive positions with Capital One and played a key role in the formation and growth of the US credit card business and expansion and in the UK as well as several new US business lines including small business, cobrand partnerships, and payments. Lynne holds a BS in finance and marketing from University of Cincinnati’s College of Business and is a graduate of Darden’s Executive Leadership program at UVA.
Kate is a cofounder of Scale Venture Partners, which invests in early-in-revenue technology companies. She and the ScaleVP team have backed successful, high-growth companies, including Box, Docusign, ExactTarget (SalesForce), Omniture (Adobe), and RingCentral. Kate is past chairman and current board member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and remains active in policy matters that impact startups and innovation. She coauthored the IPO section of the 2012 JOBS Act and currently cochairs the NVCA Inclusion & Diversity Task Force, which focuses on advancing opportunities for women and minorities across the venture ecosystem. Mitchell received the NVCA Outstanding Service Award in 2013 for her policy work on behalf of the venture industry. She serves on the board of SVB Financial Group (SIVB), Fortive Corporation (FTV), and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Kate is also a member of the NASDAQ Private Market Advisory Board and a commentator on technology trends for CNBC Squawk Alley.
Claudia Fan Munce
Claudia Fan Munce joined NEA in 2016 after thirty years of service with IBM, where she held many technical and business leadership positions. She founded the Venture Capital Group within IBM, where she served as its managing director and vice president of corporate development. The Venture Capital Group is a unit in IBM that drives nonorganic growth through partnerships and M&A activities globally, focusing on growth markets and disruptive technology and business models. Prior to that position she headed the licensing and commercialization group in the IBM Research Lab.
Claudia is frequently cited as a pioneer and leader in the corporate venture community and contributed to many articles on corporate venture innovation published in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and others. In the March 2015 issue of the Worth magazine she was named one of the twenty most powerful players in Silicon Valley.
Claudia was born in Taiwan and grew up in Brazil. She holds a master’s degree in computer science from Santa Clara University School of Engineering and a master’s degree in management from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Tanja Omeze
Tanja Omeze is the head of marketing for the Amazon Video Store. She has more than fifteen years experience in digital and traditional marketing, e-commerce, and mobile tech, with more than ten years leading teams at both early-stage and F500 companies. She is the former head of marketing and analytics for Verizon Wireless, where she launched the Smart Home showcase and AppFinder. She has deep expertise in IoT, apps, tech, mobile, retail, education, health, financial services, and publishing, and she has worked for and with many leading brands.
Lynn Perkins is CEO and cofounder of UrbanSitter, a mobile and online service that is reinventing the way parents find trusted childcare. After launching in 2011, Lynn quickly grew UrbanSitter into a national marketplace in less than a year. To date, more than 2 million hours of babysitting have occurred on the platform across sixty cities.
An Internet startup veteran, Lynn’s work with UrbanSitter is her third startup experience. Previously she served as founder and CEO of Xuny.com and vice president of business development at Bridgepath.com. She also held roles focused on real estate strategy, services, and transactions for Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the Gap, and LaSalle Partners.
A successful “mompreneur,” Lynn relies on many things to keep her energized, including a daily 6:30 a.m. wake-up from her three kids, a good cappuccino, working with a great team, solving real-world problems, and, of course, great babysitters!
Sonja Perkins
Sonja Hoel Perkins is considered one of the best-performing and most senior women in venture capital. Investing broadly in all stages and areas of information technology throughout her career, she has been able to move successfully with the times—from the PC to networking to the Internet to mobile and consumer. Her career “home runs”—where she was the start-up investor—include AcmePacket (APKT), F5 Networks (FFIV), McAfee Associates (acquired by Intel), and Q1 Labs (acquired by IBM). Several of Sonja’s companies have achieved multibillion-dollar valutions. In 2015, Worth magazine ranked Sonja #98 among the 100 Most Powerful People in Finance in the World.
Sonja focuses also on her family and community. She is the founder of Project Glimmer, a non-profit organization that inspires at-risk teenage girls and women to believe in themselves by letting them know their community cares.
Meaghan Rose is founder and CEO of Rocksbox.com, a technology-driven jewelry retail company. Prior to starting Rocksbox, Meaghan was with McKinsey & Co., where she led product innovation and retail strategy for consumer packaged goods, beauty, and technology clients across the United States and Asia. It was in this role that Meaghan began to realize that the traditional retail experience was simply not built to serve today’s woman. Meaghan started Rocksbox with the mission to serve and inspire women— and the aspiration to create a jewelry retail experience that allowed women to discover and experiment with jewelry without the commitment of buying.
Meaghan learned to code and launched Rocksbox beta from her living room and with her own jewelry collection. Today Rocksbox serves women across the country, supported by a distribution team in Ohio and an HQ team in San Francisco.
Debra Rossi
Formerly Debra Rossi was the executive vice president at Wells Fargo and CEO and member of the board of directors of Wells Fargo Merchant Services, LLC. Rossi was responsible for the overall business strategy and management of Wells Fargo Merchant Services, which provided payment services for retail and corporate customers and processed nearly $300 billion in payments annually. Under her leadership Wells Fargo Merchant Services has generated double-digit growth in sales volume for the past five years.
A twenty-nine-year veteran of Wells Fargo, Rossi has held multiple leadership roles across the company, including Merchant Services, Business Internet Services, and eCommerce Payments. She was responsible for leading many of the payment innovations that are commonplace today. Under her guidance Wells Fargo launched the first US point-of-sale debit and credit solution for a grocery store in 1988 and for a quick-service restaurant in 1989. In 1995 Rossi led Wells Fargo in becoming the first bank to process a secure credit card transaction on the Internet.
In 2001 she was named one of the year’s Most Influential Executives by Future Banker magazine. In 2011 Rossi was the first woman to receive the Electronic Transactions Association’s highest honor, the Distinguished Payments Professional Award.
Clara Shih is CEO and founder of Hearsay, whose predictive analytics technology helps salespeople reach out to clients at the right time with the right message while staying in compliance with industry regulations. A pioneer in the social media industry, Clara developed the first social business application in 2007 and subsequently authored the New York Times–featured best-seller, The Facebook Era. Her latest book, The Social Business Imperative: Adapting Your Business Model to the Always-Connected Customer, was released in April 2016.
Clara has been named one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, Fast Company’s Most Influential People in Technology, BusinessWeek’s Top Young Entrepreneurs, and both Fortune’s and Ad Age’s 40 Under 40. She is a member of the Starbucks board of directors and previously served in a variety of technical, product, and marketing roles at Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com.
Caroline Simard
Caroline Simard is passionate about building better workplaces for women through evidence-based solutions. As research director for Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, she is responsible for leading research designed to build more effective and inclusive organizations. Previously she was associate director of diversity and leadership at the Stanford School of Medicine, where she implemented innovative models for increasing work-life integration to increase faculty satisfaction and retention.
Prior to joining Stanford University Caroline was vice president of research and executive programs at the Anita Borg Institute (ABI) for Women and Technology, where she led the creation and dissemination of research-based solutions to increase gender diversity in scientific and technical careers, working with leading technology companies and academic institutions. She drove ABI’s first collaborative research project with the Clayman Institute, Climbing the Technical Ladder, receiving global media attention. She founded and designed the first industry benchmarking initiative for women in technical roles across levels and created executive programs designed to accelerate change in companies.
Debbie is the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox. Her award-winning children’s multimedia company is disrupting the pink aisle in toy stores globally and challenging gender stereotypes with the world’s first girl engineer character. Debbie is an engineer, entrepreneur, and one of the leaders in the movement to get girls interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). Debbie was named TIME’s Person of the Moment, honored by the National Retail Foundation as one of twenty-five People Shaping Retail’s Future, and was recently added to Fortune’s prestigious 40 Under 40 list. In 2015 Debbie 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. Debbie received her degree in engineering at Stanford University in 2005.
Julie Wainwright
Julie Wainwright is the founder and CEO of TheRealReal.com, the world’s premier online luxury resale store. Julie is recognized as a strong CEO with deep experience in building consumer technology companies domestically and internationally. In 2013 she was voted one of the Most Admired CEOs in the San Francisco Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times. Known for business creativity and her ability to focus the management team toward aggressive, high-performance goals, she has helped companies she has run generate returns of over twenty times for investors.
Julie is a featured speaker at major industry conferences and universities, including Harvard University and Purdue University. Previous boards include Baker and Taylor, Wizards of the Coast, Berkeley Systems, Pets.com, Reel.com, The San Francisco Art Institute, Magic Theatre, and Headlands Center for the Arts.
Heidi Zak is the cofounder of ThirdLove, an innovative bra and underwear brand based on the belief that fit should come first. In addition to offering signature half-cup sizes to provide a more precise fit, ThirdLove has developed a Fit Finder™ that empowers a woman to measure herself from home. Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, the company has raised over $13 million from investors, including NEA and Lori Greeley, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret. Prior to ThirdLove Zak cut her teeth in retail at Aeropostale, where she quickly rose to director of the retail giant, launching and running the International Division before moving over to marketing at Google. Zak holds an undergraduate degree in economics from Duke University and an MBA from MIT Sloan. In her free time she loves spending time with her two kids, breaking a sweat in boot camp class, and cooking with ingredients from San Francisco’s farmers markets.
Michelle Zatlyn
Michelle Zatlyn is cofounder and COO of Cloudflare, the web performance and security company. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks: powering more than 10 trillion requests per month, nearly 10 percent of all Internet requests, for more than 2.5 billion people worldwide. Michelle holds a BS in chemistry and a minor in management from McGill University as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Lucy Zhang is a software engineer at Facebook. She is the cofounder of Beluga, a cross-platform mobile messenger that Facebook acquired in March 2011. Prior to Beluga Lucy helped design and develop products such as Google AdWords, Google News, and Google Docs.
Since leaving Google she has specialized in mobile app development. Lucy has a computer science degree from UC Berkeley.