Girls In Tech

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Mari Baker; CEO, PlayFirst, Inc.

Mari Baker is currently CEO of PlayFirst, Inc. With over 20 years of experience in consumer technology, including roles as CEO of Navigenics, Inc., President of BabyCenter, LLC (a Johnson & Johnson Company), and as a Senior Vice President and General Manager at Intuit, Inc., Baker has demonstrated her ability to grow and develop successful organizations and products. Baker played a significant role in the success of BabyCenter.com and Quicken, including expanding these products internationally. Baker has been involved in several start-ups, including product marketing roles at Migent, Inc. and Now Software, Inc., and board roles with BigWake, RuleSpace, and currently, Cozi Group. Baker served on the board of trustees of Stanford University from 1996 – 2003, Peninsula Habitat for Humanity from 1999-2002, was named to the San Mateo County Women’s Hall of Fame in 2001, and as one of Silicon Valley’s Most Influential Women in 2009. A graduate of Stanford University, Baker lives in Portola Valley with her husband and three young daughters.

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Maya Baratz; Product Manager, MTV Networks

Maya Baratz is a product manager for MTV Networks, focused on growing social and platform gaming initiatives. Prior to her work at MTV, she was the head of developer relations at Mochi Media, and, prior to that, product manager focused on monetization efforts at Flickr (Yahoo!). Before her time at Flickr, she spearheaded content and social product initiatives at Monster (including her skunkworks “Toxic Boss Contest”), for which she accepted the Webby Award in 2006. A gaming, technology and media aficionado, she’s dipped her quill in a variety of inks, ranging from The Huffington Post to SF Weekly and VentureBeat — to drafting Congressional Statements for Senator and former presidential candidate John Kerry. A Wellesley College alum, she’s also written about the evolving presence of women in tech. You can follow her on Twitter here.

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Katherine Barr; Partner, MDV

Katherine Barr is a member of the investment team at MDV focused on Internet-enabled companies. Prior to joining MDV, she was a Negotiator at Vantage Partners (spin-off of the Harvard Negotiation Project), helping high tech clients such as IBM, Cisco and HP to negotiate with customers, service providers, suppliers, and partners. Before Vantage, she led a development team as a Senior Product Manager at HSA, an education technology startup in Boston. Katherine teaches a yearly Professional Education Negotiation program for the School of Engineering at Stanford. During her graduate studies at Stanford, she was involved in running the E-Challenge business plan competition for BASES (Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students). Katherine received her B.A. from McGill University, and completed an M.A. and the M.S. core curriculum in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

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Nina Bhatti; Principal Scientist, HP Labs

Bhatti is a technologist by training, an innovator by practice leading HP Labs’ Customer
Innovation team focused on new products, new markets, new consumer experiences and
the transformation of these technologies into commercial offerings. A thought leader, Bhatti has worked as in Intrapreneur within HP since 1996, delivering the design and creation of web, consumer, and lifestyle mobile technologies for some of HP’s largest customers. She has also done extensive research in networking systems, quality of service and network application performance. Bhatti holds a Ph.D. and MS degrees in computer science from the University of Arizona, and has published 40 papers and has 30 patents filed .

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Susan Bratton; Co-founder & CEO, Personal Life Media

Susan Bratton is the co-founder and CEO of Personal Life Media, Inc., where she produces 40 weekly online shows and is a publisher of nearly 20 direct-to-consumer online information products. The company provides automated platforms for podcast and information product publishing to serve experts who deliver talk shows and downloadable training systems. Susan has hosted her popular weekly show “DishyMix: Success Secrets from Famous Media and Internet Executives” for six years running. She is the creator of two books, “Talk Show Tips: 72 Secret ‘Master Host’ Techniques,” and “Masterful Interviews: Creating Profitable Content.” She sits on the boards of a number of companies and has been on the founding team of many Silicon Valley start-ups in the consumer web services sector. She has been recognized as a digital marketing expert by numerous tech and advertising publications and is Chair Emeritus of the ad:tech conference.
 

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Cathy Brooks; Founder, Other Than That

Cathy Brooks has spent most of her life saturated in media – ranging from print to broadcast and, of course, myriad on-line platforms. Today, in addition to blogging for BitchBuzz and The Huffington Post, Cathy operates Other Than That, a strategic firm helping companies navigate the murky waters of strategic relationships and social media. Most recently Cathy ran business development for Seesmic, a technology company enabling threaded conversations online using video as the conduit. Prior to Seesmic, Cathy worked with Guidewire Group – a global analyst firm focused wholly on emerging markets and technologies. Cathy produced and hosted two podcasts “I of Innovation” and “Six Minutes With…” and also produced two of the firm’s conferences – Innovate!Europe and Leadership Forum. Cathy also headed the talent and booking departments at TechTV, curated content at LeWeb for several years and has held several executive positions with PR agencies.
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Joyce Chung; Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures

Joyce Chung has over 10 years of operating experience in technology companies and 10 years of venture capital investing experience. She is a Managing Director at Garage Technology Ventures, a seed and early stage fund focused on emerging technologies. Prior to Garage, she was a founding partner of Cardinal Venture Capital, a $125 million early stage venture fund. At Cardinal, Joyce was responsible for investments in Chipcon (acquired by Texas Instruments), Mobilygen, Valista, and Zilliant. She continues to co-manage the current Cardinal portfolio. Prior to forming Cardinal Venture Capital, Joyce managed venture investments for Adobe Ventures. Her portfolio companies included Vignette (Nasdaq: VIGN), DigitalThink, Digimarc (Nasdaq: DMRC), and Virage. Joyce also held operating roles at Adobe Systems, Sony Corporation, and Cambridge Technology Group. She received an S.B. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Joyce is active at the Stanford Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and is on the board of the Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA), Chair of the Northern California chapter of AMITA and Member of the Executive Council of Astia.
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Leah Culver; Product Manager, Six Apart

Leah Culver was a co-founder and the lead developer of the social network and micro-blogging website Pownce, which was acquired by blog juggernaut Six Apart in November 2008. Now a software engineer at Six Apart, Leah uses her experience with Pownce to develop large scale social applications for future Six Apart projects. While creating the Pownce API she co-authored both the OAuth and OEmbed open API specifications and now maintains the popular Python OAuth library. Leah promotes open source, APIs, and the Django web framework on her blog at leahculver.com. In her free time she likes to play around with new technology and try new restaurants near her home in San Francisco.
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Jennifer Fonstad; Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Jennifer Fonstad is a Managing Director of DFJ. Considered one of the most senior women in venture today, Ms. Fonstad invests broadly in early stage companies. Recent investment successes include Athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), Lumenos (acquired by Wellpoint, NYSE: WLP), and NetZero (NASDAQ: UNTD). In addition, Jennifer sits on the investment committees for DFJ VinaCapital, DFJ’s partner fund in Vietnam, DFJ Tamir Fishman, DFJ’s partner fund in Israel, DFJ Frontier, and serves as adviser to the DFJ China team. She began her career with Bain and Company after spending a year teaching math to high school students in sub-Sahara Africa. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and the Harvard Business School . Jennifer is married with four children.
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Jeanette Gibson; Director, New Media, Corporate Communications, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Jeanette Gibson leads Cisco’s New Media Communications group where she is responsible for extending Cisco’s leadership and innovation with new media and overseeing the vision and direction of Cisco’s award winning online newsroom, News@Cisco (http://newsroom.cisco.com). In her role as head of new media strategy, Gibson is responsible for developing and communicating the direction of Cisco’s corporate blogging (http://blogs.cisco.com), multimedia (video, podcasts, video podcasts) and social networking initiatives and driving its web strategy for communications websites, News@Cisco, Investor Relations and Analyst Relations Websites. Prior to working with the News@Cisco team, Gibson ran the Corporate Technology PR team at Cisco where she was responsible for promoting Cisco’s technology vision and strategy and securing top-tier business press for Cisco and its senior executive team. Gibson is a founding member of the Social Media Business Council (www.socialmedia.org) and member of the Society for New Communications Research. News@Cisco has received numerous awards for its excellence in online communications and was named #1 website for serving media by the Financial Times-Bowen Craggs 2009 global index of corporate websites. Gibson holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
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Eileen Gittins; Founder & CEO, Blurb, Inc.

Eileen Gittins is the founder and CEO of Blurb, the creative publishing and marketing platform that enables anyone to design, publish, market and sell professional-quality books. She has been at the intersection of the Internet, consumer and enterprise software, imaging systems, search, and digital photography throughout her career. A passionate advocate for enabling technologies that offer new ways to do valuable things, Eileen is democratizing publishing for the rest of us with Blurb, which has published more than 1.5 million book titles since the company launched in 2006. In February 2009, Eileen was named by Fast Company as one of the Most Influential Women in Technology.

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Julia Hartz; Co-Founder & President, Eventbrite, Inc.

Julia serves as Co-Founder & President of Eventbrite and is responsible for the overall vision and strategy of the company. Julia is a reformed Television Network Executive and comes to Eventbrite by way of Hollywood. During her tenure in the television industry, Julia was a creative executive at FX Networks and helped supervise The Shield, Nascar Drivers: 360, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me and It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia. Prior to FX Networks, Julia worked in creative development at MTV Networks where she was fortunate enough to work on several prolific shows such as Jackass. Julia brings the creativity and energy of the entertainment business to Eventbrite, leading the company with innovative thinking and a keen sense of the consumer audience. Julia holds a BA from Pepperdine University. Julia lives in San Francisco with her husband, Kevin, and young daughter.

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Maha Ibrahim; General Partner, Canaan Partners

Maha Ibrahim is a technology trend spotter with deep operational experience. She joined Canaan in March of 2000 and focuses on digital media, networking and wireless investments. Maha has won numerous industry awards and is frequently invited to speak at digital media conferences. Maha holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT. She currently sits on the boards of eBillme, MiNO Wireless, SenSage , Virsto and Watercooler. Maha is an active member of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab.
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Sudha Jamthe; Social Media Strategist, PayPal

Sudha Jamthe is the Social Media Strategist at PayPal, She is passionate about innovative energy of communities, and specializes in partnerships that build ecosystems. She has built social media infrastructure and developer programs for AOL/Bebo, Intuit, Network World. She is a venture mentor at MIT and at NUSEA leads the Bay Area Facebook meetup and Twitter meetups. She has a MBA from Boston University. She blogs at coolastory.com and tweets as @sujamthe.
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Sandy Jen; Co-Founder and CTO, Meebo

Sandy is a co-founder of meebo in Mountain View. She majored in Computer Science at Stanford and after graduation, worked as a software developer at Xilinx in San Jose. In 2005, Sandy started meebo with two friends from Stanford, Seth Sternberg and Elaine Wherry. In July of 2007, Nielsen/NetRatings named meebo the fastest-growing IM destination in the US – ahead of Google Talk and Skype Messenger. Investors include Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Sandy climbs, plays ultimate frisbee a couple times a week, and really enjoys a good nap.
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Beth Kuenstler; Director of Partnership Development, CARE

Beth Kuenstler is Director of Partnership Development for CARE, one of the world’s largest international humanitarian organizations, with headquarters in Atlanta, GA and operations in over 65 countries. In her position, Beth leads CARE’s new approach for partnering with Fortune 100 companies to increase brand awareness by engaging consumers and employees in CARE’s poverty-fighting work. Since joining CARE in 2005, Beth has developed marketing partnership strategies that have produced over ten million dollars in media value and increased financial support. Prior to joining CARE, Beth spent over 10 years in consumer and high-tech marketing with Procter & Gamble, Kodak and Adobe. Her nonprofit experience includes the Executive Director role of San Francisco-based Hands On Bay Area, a local affiliate of the national organization Points of Light Foundation/Hands On Network. In her role as Executive Director, Beth oversaw the engagement of nearly five thousand corporate and community volunteers that annually contributed the equivalent of over one million dollars of time to local nonprofits. Beth holds a MBA from Purdue University, where she also garnered national recognition for founding the Management Volunteer Program. The program is in its fifteenth year of engaging graduate students in their local neighborhoods to spark a life-long commitment to community service and philanthropy.

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Lynn Langit; Developer Evangelist, Microsoft

Lynn understands that life rarely travels in a straight line – her own career reflects this notion. She moved from linguistics to business, next launched her own Microsoft-focused software development/training firm, then joined Microsoft (Developer Evangelist). In addition to her ‘day job’, Lynn also designs technical courseware for girls and teaches at Microsoft’s DigiGirlz events world-wide. In her spare time, Lynn does personal technical volunteering – at the Mona Foundation (Redmond, Washington), and for SmartCare (Lusaka, Zambia).
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Wendy Lea; CEO, GetSatisfaction

Wendy Lea is the CEO of Get Satisfaction, the network of customer support communities at the middle of the convergence of social media and customer service. From bootstrap entrepreneur to corporate executive to angel investor for venture-backed startups, Wendy continually strives to apply her gift for business to helping companies stay current, relevant, and go beyond the expected. Wendy is also the founder of The Chatham Group, where she currently serves as an angel investor, board member, and strategic advisor for a long list of startup companies. When not working to improve customer service, she serves as Chair of the Board of The Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives and an active partner with the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund.
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Aaron Lee; Co-Founder, RedBeacon

Aaron works on product design and engineering at Redbeacon. Prior to Redbeacon, Aaron was one of the founding engineers on Google Video. He later became the Tech Lead on YouTube monetization, building products that spanned AdSense, AdWords and YouTube. He was also a Launch Engineer, helping launch many other Google products and mentoring and promoting engineers. Aaron was one of the angel investors in startup Blade3D and also provided technical advice to startup Cooliris. Aaron received his Ph.D. from Princeton and M.A. & B.A. from University of Cambridge.

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Jeanine LeFlore; Founder & CEO, LiveHit, Inc.

Jeanine LeFlore is CEO and Founder of LiveHit, Inc. (www.livehit.com), a Real-Time Data Analytics company that specializes in Social Discovery and Site Optimization and Monetization. Jeanine has over 15-years of experience in operationally running businesses including overseeing product management, engineering, marketing, business development, PR, user experience design, and customer care. Most recently, Jeanine was VP of Products and Marketing at Piczo where she oversaw product development, marketing, PR, user experience design, member services, and engineering cross-functionally. She also led Piczo’s business development efforts closing such deals as YouTube, Yahoo!, and Slide. Reaching 13M active monthly unique visitors, over 28M total unique user accounts, and over 2.5B monthly pageviews, Jeanine successfully lead Piczo to be one of the top 10 teen social networks in the world. Previously, Jeanine created and ran Yahoo! Avatars, a first-to-market business and global 1.0 platform designed to capture youth, generate revenues, and drive engagement cross Yahoo!. As Business and Product Head, Jeanine built out Avatars across 13 countries, integrated into over 20 Yahoo! Properties, grew it to over 10M active monthly users, and over 30M total users. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Jeanine was Product Lead at AOL where she was responsible for creating the next generation AOL media and voice services including Video@AOL, Radio@AOL, Radio@Netscape, and AOLbyPhone. Jeanine is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley with a degree in psychology and a minor in business administration from Haas School of Business.

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Charlene Li; Founder, Altimeter Group

Charlene Li is the Founder of Altimeter Group and co-author of the business bestseller, “Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies“, published by Harvard Business Press in May 2008. She is currently working on her next book, “Open: How Leaders Win By Letting Go”, to be published in May 2010 by Jossey-Bass. She frequently consults and speaks on social and emerging technologies and publishes a blog, The Altimeter. Charlene is one of the most frequently-quoted industry analysts and has appeared on 60 Minutes, The McNeil NewsHour, ABC News, CNN, and CNBC. She is also frequently quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USAToday, Reuters, and The Associated Press. She is a much-sought after public speaker and has presented frequently at top technology conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo, SXSW, Search Engine Strategies and the American Society of Association Executives.

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Jessica Livingston; Founding Partner, Y Combinator

Jessica Livingston is a founding partner at Y Combinator, a seed-stage venture firm based in Mountain View, CA. She is the author of Founders at Work, a collection of interviews with founders about the early days of their startups. Previously, she was vice president of marketing at investment bank Adams Harkness. In addition to her work with startups at Y Combinator, Livingston organizes Startup School (www.startupschool.org)

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Kirsten Mangers; CEO & Founder, WebVisible, Inc.

An entrepreneur, philanthropist and a dedicated small business advocate, Kirsten Mangers was an early innovator behind the development of local online advertising for small-to-medium sized businesses, long before it became the billion dollar business it is today. Kirsten has been instrumental in making “local” a part of online advertising’s global vernacular. Kirsten is an internationally renowned industry speaker and lobbyist, frequently recognized by the media among a prestigious list of “women innovating technology.” In 2009, she won the “Outstanding Woman in Technology” award from TechAmerica. Additionally, she is on the board of directors for the Alzheimer’s Association of Orange County and is vice chairwoman of the Southern California Technology Political Action Committee. Currently, WebVisible is an international leader in local online advertising, utilizing its Geneva Software Platform™ to help local businesses acquire new customers across a vast network of advertising options.

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Dave McClure; Partner, Founders Fund

Dave McClure has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years as a software developer, entrepreneur, startup advisor, angel investor, blogger, and internet marketing nerd. Dave currently runs FF Angel, a seed-stage investment program for Founders Fund, and also manages the fbFund REV incubator program on behalf of Facebook, Accel Partners, and Founders Fund.
Dave’s passion is helping startups with marketing, product strategy, and startup metrics, and he is an advisor or investor for over 30 companies including: Canopy Financial, CreditKarma, KissMetrics, Mashery, Mint, RichRelevance, Simply Hired, SlideShare, TeachStreet, and Twilio.
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Sarah Mei; Co-Founder, RailsBridge

Sarah Mei has been doing cutting-edge software development for more than 10 years. In 2009 she co-founded RailsBridge, a nonprofit dedicated to keeping the community around the Ruby programming language and the Rails web framework open and welcoming to all. As the lead of the Open Workshop project at RailsBridge, she organizes and teaches free workshops in San Francisco for women who want to learn Ruby on Rails. Last year over 200 women and girls learned Ruby through
her efforts, and in 2010, her goal is to reach 500 more.
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Donna Novitsky; CEO, BigTent

Donna is CEO of Big Tent Design, www.bigtent.com. Capitalizing on a rapidly growing social marketing trend, BigTent delivers creative “engagement marketing” campaigns connecting brands with consumers, in particular household decision makers and trend setters. BigTent can do this because of its nearly million member-strong base of women in groups such as parenting clubs, schools, non-profits and professional associations. As the next generation “Yahoo! Groups,” BigTent is the trusted platform groups rely on for enterprise-class membership management tools combined with the best of social networking for discussions, calendaring, photos, profiles and classifieds. BigTent’s members are very committed to their groups, and BigTent is the platform that allows members to connect to each other 24×7 online, by email and, coming soon, on Facebook. Donna joined Big Tent from Mohr, Davidow Ventures (MDV) where she was a Partner for nine years, serving as VP Marketing in sixteen MDV-funded start-ups. Prior to MDV, Donna was VP Marketing at Clarify Inc., a CRM pioneer that she helped establish, grow, take public and grow some more. Her career began at Sun Microsystems in product management. Donna holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering with Distinction from Stanford University and a Harvard MBA, and also teaches Entrepreneurial Marketing in the Stanford School of Engineering. In her free time she enjoys playing with her husband and two kids and volunteering in her kids’ school.
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Lisa Padilla; CEO, Communicate.io

Lisa Padilla is the CEO of Communicate.io, a digital marketing agency based in Silicon Valley and host of Lisacast a podcast with a following of over 20,000 listeners. Lisacast has been following influencers in Silicon Valley (and other technology capitals of the world) for over a decade. In her role as CEO of Communicate.io, Lisa has been helping businesses reach customers and partners with effective marketing campaigns and visibility programs. Lisa’s strategic and hands-on experience offers specialization in advertising, search marketing, social media, micro-media and channel marketing. In addition, Lisa is a pioneer user of many social networks and new media, and an avid photographer with over 6,000 or her photos posted on Flickr, one of the many tools she considers a must have for niche marketers.
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Cindy Padnos; Managing Partner, Illuminate Ventures

Ms. Padnos is the founding Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures, an early-stage, high-tech venture capital firm and continues to serve as a Director of Outlook Ventures. Cindy’s experience and focus encompasses Internet/Web 2.0, SaaS, digital media, technology-enabled services, mobile communications and other software sectors. Before entering the venture capital community Ms. Padnos was a successful serial entrepreneur including as founder and CEO of Vivant Corporation (EVLV); as President and CEO of Acumen, as vice president of marketing at Scopus Technology (SCOP); and at privately held companies IDE and Ingres. Her hands-on operational skills were initially developed in the telecommunications sector at AT&T. Early in her career Cindy also served as a management consultant in the information technology sector with Arthur D. Little and Booz Allen & Hamilton. Ms. Padnos earned her undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, at the University of Michigan and received her MBA/MSIA with honors from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.

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Elisa Camahort Page; COO, BlogHer

As BlogHer’s COO, Elisa Camahort Page leads events, marketing, public relations and research for BlogHer, while working to ensure that all company operations deliver on our vision. A longtime Silicon Valley marketing executive, Elisa was at the vanguard of professional and business blogging. Prior to co-founding BlogHer, Elisa was running a marketing consultancy, Worker Bees, and was among the first to integrate corporate marketing strategies into the social media environment. Worker Bees followed a successful career as in the cable broadband sector. Her most recent corporate position was Senior Director of Product Marketing at Terayon Communication Systems, where she managed multiple product lines and senior product management staff. In addition to her many personal blogs, Elisa is widely read as BlogHer’s conference leader and reality television editor. Elisa is a frequent public speaker, bringing research data about women and online communities to life in recent keynote sessions at MediaBistro Circus, Fem 2.0, New Comm Forum and WOMMA Marketing Summit. Elisa is a founding Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and serves on the Board of Directors of the 42nd Street Moon Theatre in San Francisco, the programming advisory committee for SXSW Interactive and the Board of Advisors of the Anita Borg Institute.
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Rebecca Parsons; CTO, ThoughtWorks

Dr. Rebecca Parsons is ThoughtWorks’ Chief Technology Officer. Prior to her 10 years at Thoughtworks, she was an assistant professor of CS at the University of Central Florida teachning and researching in computational biology, evolutionary computation and programming languages. As the Director’s Post Doctoral Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory she researched issues in parallel and distributed computation, genetic algorithms, computational biology and non-linear dynamical systems. Rebecca’s vast experience leading in the creation of large-scale distributed object applications and the integration of disparate systems intersects industries ranging from telecommunications to emergent Internet services. Rebecca received a BS degree in CS and Economics from Bradley University, an MS in Computer Science from Rice University and her Ph.D. in CS from Rice University. Rebecca enjoys scuba diving, bicycling, hiking, live music and snow skiing. Her current reading interests include murder mysteries, behavioural economics, physics, and the dark ages.
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Eve Phillips; CEO and Co-Founder, Empower Interactive

Eve is a technology entrepreneur and investor with a passion for building great products. Prior to Empower, Eve was the co-founder and CEO of Chirp Interactive, a social media applications company, and a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, focused on the consumer internet sector. In addition, Eve has served in business development at Zazzle, corporate strategy at Microsoft, and product management at Trilogy. Eve holds a BS and M.Eng in computer science from MIT and an MBA from Stanford.
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Ben Rattray; CEO and Founder, Change.org

Ben Rattray is the founder and CEO of Change.org, an online hub for social change that raises awareness about major issues and empowers grassroots action. He was previously a political consultant and co-founder of GFS, a social entrepreneurship venture that provides software to help nonprofits automate the federal grant application process. Ben is a frequent public speaker about how organizations and activists can use the social web to advance social change and is a graduate of Stanford and the London School of Economics.

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David O. Sacks; CEO and Founder, Yammer, Inc.

David O. Sacks is the Founder and CEO of Yammer, Inc. He has been involved in the internet space for ten years as an entrepreneur, executive and investor, starting with PayPal in 1999. David was PayPal’s Chief Operating Officer and product leader, taking the company from startup to IPO and eventual sale to eBay for $1.5 billion. Subsequently, he founded Geni.com, which is creating a family tree of the whole world, enabling millions of family members to connect, share, and preserve their lives. He also produced and financed the movie “Thank You For Smoking”. He has a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.
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Clara Shih; CEO, Hearsay Labs

Clara is founder and CEO of Hearsay Labs, which helps brands convert their Twitter and Facebook presence into actionable engagement opportunities and measurable sales. In 2007, Clara created the first business application on Facebook with her Faceconnector application, which integrates Facebook and Salesforce CRM. She is author of the newly released bestseller, The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff about Facebook and Twitter for business, which has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, CRM Magazine, and is being used as a textbook at Stanford and Harvard Business School. Previously, Clara was Product Line Director of the AppExchange at salesforce.com, where she also led the company’s partnerships with Facebook and LinkedIn. She has also worked in corporate strategy and software development at Google and Microsoft. Clara has a BS in computer science and economics and MS in computer science from Stanford University, as well as a MS in internet studies from Oxford, where she studied as a United States Marshall Scholar.
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Anu Shukla; Founder & Board Member, Offerpal Media

Anu Shukla founded Offerpal Media in June, 2007, with the vision of providing social application developers and other social publishers with a viable way to monetize their traffic. She has since grown Offerpal Media into the leading virtual currency monetization platform on the Web, generating significant revenue for social publishers while driving high quality leads and high value customers to online advertisers. A serial entrepreneur, Anu is also the founder and CEO of Mybuys Inc., the leading provider of personalized product recommendations for online retailers. Prior to Mybuys, Anu pioneered the category of Internet Marketing Automation as founder and CEO of Rubric, Inc. Rubric was acquired in 2000 for $366 million. Prior to Rubric, Anu held a variety of executive roles including the VP of Marketing and Product Strategy at Versata (VATA), and Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Product Management at Compuware/Uniface Corporation (CPWR).
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Erin Turner; Founder & CEO, SuperFunLabs

Erin Turner is founder and CEO of SuperFunLabs, a company at the intersection of games and e-commerce, currently in stealth mode. For the last 8 years she has worked in the games industry, beginning at EA as a game producer on franchises including James Bond, The Sims 2, and Battlefield. Subsequently Erin was recruited to EA’s publishing division where she defined the virtual goods platform and launched the digital distribution business for EA games as Director of Global E-Commerce. Most recently she ran Online Publishing for Trion World Network, an MMO publisher and developer. Prior to the games industry,
Erin worked in online music. In 1999, she co-founded and led Gigabeat, an early music recommendation portal, acquired by Napster. Erin holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.S. in Engineering, both from Stanford.

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Jessica Vascellaro; Tech Reporter, Wall Street Journal

Jessica Vascellaro is a reporter for the San Francisco bureau of The Wall Street Journal. In this position, she is responsible for the paper’s news and feature coverage of Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other Internet startups. Prior to assuming this role, she covered media companies like News Corp. and IAC/InterActiveCorp. and wireless company Research in Motion. She also covered Internet trends for the Personal Journal section of the paper, writing about topics such as social-networking, online video and search. She assumed her current duties at the Journal after college graduation in 2005.
Born in New York, N.Y., Ms. Vascellaro received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in Boston, Mass., where she graduated magna cum laude.
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Sangita Verma; Founder & CEO, TAG Networks

As Founder and Chief Executive Officer of TAG Networks, Sangita Verma leveraged 16 years of executive experience in the videogame industry to found TAG – an interactive games-on-demand television network. She has secured over $25M from private equity investors, established exclusive content agreements with leading game suppliers and global brands, and has filed nine patents covering key proprietary technologies for delivering interactive content under the TAG brand. A strategic planner, veteran marketer and business visionary, Ms. Verma has extensive experience in the video game industry, including Midway Games, Panasonic Interactive Media, Psygnosis (a Sony Company), Atari, Capcom, Data East Europe and Data East USA. Ms.Verma was voted one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women In Cable Technology by CableWorld magazine in 2006 and 2008.

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Poornima Vijayashanker; Senior Software Engineer, Mint.com

Poornima Vijayashanker graduated from Duke University with a double degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science. After graduating she headed out to Silicon Valley, where she first worked for Synopsys as an R&D Engineer, and started working towards a Masters in CS at Stanford. She left her Masters to join Mint.com in 2006 as the third employee, and has remained the only female engineer there. As of January 2010 she will be leaving mint to become the CEO and Founder of her own stealth startup. Aside from being a coder, entrepreneur, speaker, and mentor to junior engineers, Poornima blogs on Femgineer.com, is an avid traveler, foodie, and a competitive Bikram yogini.
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Sharon Wienbar; Managing Partner, Scale Venture Partners

Sharon invests in mobile, internet, and enterprise software companies at Scale Venture Partners, which she joined in 2001. Sharon sits on the Boards of Biz360, Facetime Communications, MerchantCircle, PlayPhone, Reply!com and Waterfront Media. Prior to Scale VP, Sharon spent 15 years at Critical Path, Amplitude Software, Adobe Systems and Bain & Company. Among her varied responsibilities, she directed marketing strategies and operations, integrated product and service businesses following acquisitions, managed the application of technology to Pacific Rim and European markets, and negotiated complex intellectual property licenses. Sharon holds a BA and MA in Engineering from Harvard University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Sharon also serves on the Board of Directors of the non-profit Myelin Repair Foundation and on Microsoft’s Venture Advisory Committee.
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Clare Winterton; Executive Director, International Museum of Women

Clare Winterton is Executive Director of the International Museum of Women, an online museum that connects women across the globe with knowledge, ideas and opportunities for activism. Before joining the museum Clare was a Vice President of the Women’s Funding Network, a worldwide network of foundations that raise money to empower women and girls. Clare has held senior staff and consulting roles with organizations including Craigslist Foundation, SF Works and Urban Solutions. She also served as head of communications for Prince Charles’ major UK charity, the Prince’s Trust, where she headed a team of 13, working on media relations, corporate social responsibility and marketing. She is former board chair of Young Women Social Entrepreneurs.
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