Satya Akula
President
IT Nortel Government Solutions

Mr. Satya Akula was the CEO of AC Technologies, Inc. (ACT) with head quarters in Fairfax, VA and several branch offices in US.  He co-founded AC Technologies as an information technologies company in 1993.  AC Technologies, under Mr. Akula?s leadership, has earned the company awards from Inc. Magazine?s 500, Deloitte & Touche?s Fast 500, and, Virginia Technology?s Fast 50 several times.  Mr. Akula was the finalist for prestigious Entrepreneur of Year award for Washington area in 2002. 

AC Technologies finished the year 2004 with more than $55M revenues and 400 employees before he sold the company to PEC Solutions, a NASDAQ traded company. Until last month, Mr. Akula was the President of ISS Sector, Nortel Government Solution, a subsidiary of Nortel Networks of Canada.

He held various positions at NASA prior to founding AC Technologies. Mr. Akula received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering degree from Osmania University in Hyderabad.  Later he received Master of Sciences degrees in Engineering and Management at the University of Maryland.

Naseem Amin
Senior Vice President, Bus Development
Biogen

Dr. Naseem Amin is Senior Vice President Business Development at Biogen Idec. In that capacity, he provides leadership to the business development function at the company. Prior to joining Biogen Idec, Dr. Amin held a number of different executive roles at Genzyme Corporation (Cambridge, MA) and at Baxter Healthcare. At Genzyme, he served as Vice President of Clinical Research, Vice President Business Development, and in his last role as Head of International Business Development, he led the International business development activities for the company. Dr. Amin was trained and practiced as a medical doctor at the Royal Free School of Medicine and the University of London (London, UK). He received his MBA at Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston, IL.

Jeff Andrews
Partner
Atlas Venture

Edward Benz
President
Dana Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Benz graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1973 and received his training at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the National Institutes of Health. He is president of DFCI, CEO of Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare, director and principal investigator of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and a member of the Governing Board of Dana-Farber/Children's Cancer Center. Dr. Benz is also a clinical hematologist and an active NIH-funded investigator. 

Benz's early work, done in collaboration with Prof. Bernard Forget when Benz was a medical student, was the first to show that analysis of gene DNA and its messenger RNA products could be used to study a human disease, beta-thalassemia. More recently, his group has shown that a key red cell membrane protein, protein 4.1, has novel and unexpected roles in cell division and growth control in other tissues, and may be involved in tumor suppression.  

Benz's ties to the Harvard medical community are strong. A 1968 graduate of Princeton University (where he did his undergraduate thesis with Dr. Arthur Pardee, who is now at Dana-Farber), Benz was graduated from the Harvard Medical School, magna cum laude, in 1973. He did his award-winning medical school thesis at Children's Hospital in the division of Dr. David Nathan, the current Dana-Farber president. He also served as an intern and resident at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.  

Benz received further training at the National Institutes of Health and then joined the faculty in the Department of Medicine at Yale University, where Dr. Samuel Thier (currently the president of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Partners Healthcare System) was chief of the Department of Medicine. Benz became chief of the Division of Hematology at Yale in 1987. In 1993, Benz became chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine before joining Johns Hopkins in 1995.  

Benz, past president of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is married to Margaret Vettese, Ph.D., R.N., who has been a member of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She is an expert in qualitative research and end-of life decision-making. Each has two adult children by previous marriage.

Josh Boger
Founder and CEO
Vertex Pharmaceuticals

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Dr. Joshua Boger is a founder of Vertex. He has been Chief Executive Officer since 1992. He was Chairman of the Board from 1997 until May 2005. He was President from Vertex’s inception in 1989 until December 2000, and was again appointed President in 2005. He was Chief Scientific Officer from 1989 until May 1992. Dr. Boger has been a director since Vertex’s inception.

Prior to founding Vertex in 1989, Dr. Boger held the position of Senior Director of Basic Chemistry at Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey, where he headed both the Department of Medicinal Chemistry of Immunology & Inflammation and the Department of Biophysical Chemistry.

Dr. Boger holds a B.A. in chemistry and philosophy from Wesleyan University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Harvard University.

Ian Bowles
Secretary
Executive Office of Environmental Affairs

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Ian Bowles has nearly 20 years of experience in the energy and environmental sectors. He was a Director or Advisor to three clean energy technologies companies and has broad leadership experience with environmental policy. Bowles served in the Clinton Administration as Associate Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and as Senior Director of the Global Environmental Affairs directorate at the National Security Council. In these positions, he played a key policymaking role on climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, on the negotiation of bilateral clean energy agreements between the United States and India and China and on numerous other areas of environmental policy. President Clinton also appointed Bowles to serve as the White House representative on the Enterprise for the Americas Board.

Following his service in the Clinton Administration, Bowles held appointments as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and as Senior Advisor at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a multibillion dollar charitable foundation established by Intel Corporation co-founder Gordon Moore. He oversaw the foundation’s strategic analysis of energy and climate change issues.

In 2003, Bowles was appointed President & CEO of MassINC, a Boston-based research institute, and as Publisher of CommonWealth magazine. MassINC is a unique, nonpartisan organization that brings together leaders from labor and business and other sectors to focus on long term economic, educational and quality of life challenges and opportunities in Massachusetts. Bowles more than doubled the organization’s base of members/sponsors, expanded its statewide media presence and built up MassINC’s role as a community opinion leader.

Earlier in his career, Bowles served for eight years in key leadership positions at Conservation International, a national environmental organization focused on biodiversity conservation. Bowles played a key role in the creation of one of the world’s largest tropical forest national parks: the four million acre Central Suriname Nature Reserve. His work also led to the creation of the $100 million Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund. Bowles began his career as a Legislative Assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Bowles serves on the Board of Overseers of the Museum of Science, where he chairs a board committee on green building issues, and on the Governing Board of the John Adams Innovation Institute, the economic stimulus grant-making agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. He is co-author of Footprints in the Jungle (Oxford University Press) on the energy and natural resource industries and environmental practices. In 1996, Bowles was a Democratic candidate for Congress from the Massachusetts 10th District.

A Cape Codder, Bowles grew up in Woods Hole and is a graduate of Falmouth High School. He holds an A.B. in economics cum laude from Harvard College and a Masters degree from Oxford University, where he remains an adjunct member of the teaching faculty at the graduate school of the Environment and Geography. He lives in Charlestown with his wife Hannah and one-year old daughter, Margaret.

Bob Brown
President
Boston University

Jim Cabot
Senior Vice President-Energy & Environment
Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications

Jim Cabot manages Rasky Baerlein’s energy & environment practice where he works closely with large and small energy and clean-tech companies, overseeing integrated communications programs including media relations, public affairs, project management, and regulatory strategy.   

Cabot spent twelve years with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), New England, serving most recently as Director of Strategic Planning, managing the launch of new strategic planning, program evaluation, and accountability systems.  Prior to that, Cabot also served as Director and Founder of EPA’s first environmental technology development and commercialization center. At EPA, Cabot was also engaged with technology development policy, environmental performance and the role of capital markets, shareholder proposals, corporate governance, and environmental reporting, accounting and disclosure. 

Prior to EPA, Cabot was an entrepreneur as part of the founding team of the environmental publications company; Green Book, Inc., Mr. Cabot also has previous work experience in financial services, national political campaigns and non-profit organizations. 

Cabot holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Kris Canekeratne
Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO
Virtusa Corporation

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Kris Canekeratne is the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Virtusa Corporation, one of the fastest growing global software development and IT services firms in the IT outsourcing industry.  Virtusa grew by 74% in fiscal year 2004 and has achieved thirteen consecutive quarters of revenue and headcount growth.  Today, more than 2,200 Virtusa professionals in the US, UK, India and Sri Lanka serve Fortune 1000 enterprises and leading software product companies in the Financial Services, Communications, and Retail industries.

Kris was also a co-founder of edocs Inc., a leading provider of customer self-service and e-billing solutions, which was recognized as one of the 50 Fastest Growing Technology Companies by Deloitte three years in a row.  Prior to Virtusa and edocs, he was on the founding team of INSCI Corporation, a document management and archival solutions provider, and was on the executive management team that took that company public in 1994.  Kris is a graduate of Syracuse University with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science.

Kris has been a featured speaker at numerous events hosted by Network World, Ernst & Young, TiE, and world-renowned business schools such as MIT, Harvard, and Babson.  He is quoted regularly in industry publications on such topics as building disruptive and innovative business models in the midst of a commoditized global IT outsourcing industry.

Ashraf M. Dahod
President
Starent Networks Corporation

Ashraf Dahod is CEO and President of Starent Networks Corporation. Dahod co-founded Starent based on his vision of enhancing mobile wireless networks and the services offered. Prior to Starent, Dahod co-founded NetCore Systems, Inc., in 1996, a producer of innovative large-scale, high-performance switching products targeting major telecommunications carriers and ISP's. In August 1999, Tellabs acquired NetCore.
In 1988, Dahod co-founded Sigma Network Systems, Inc. an industry leader in multi-layer, multi-protocol switching systems. Standard Microsystems Corporation (SMC) acquired Sigma in 1992, where Dahod continued to lead the team and develop further innovations. SMC sold the Sigma business to Cabletron in 1996.
In 1981, he founded Applitek Corporation, another technology pioneering company that developed the first cable modem. Applitek was later renamed LANCity and was acquired by Bay Networks, now part of Arris International.

Dahod received his MBA from Harvard in 1981. He has engineering degrees from Stanford (MSEE), Northeastern (MSEM) and Michigan (BSEE) and a BS degree in Physics from the University of Bombay. He holds several networking technology patents.

Bob Davis
Founder/ Managing Partner
Lycos/ Highland Capital Partners

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Bob Davis is Managing General Partner at Highland Capital Partners focusing primarily on digital media and the internet, and has been with the Highland team since 2001. He currently represents Highland on the boards of Navic Networks, Performix Technologies, Quigo, Turbine and YesDirect, and previously served on the board of Fastclick until its successful merger with Valueclick.

 
Bob is the best-selling author of "Speed is Life: Street Smart Lessons from the Front Lines of Business (Currency)." Prior to joining Highland, Bob served as the Chief Executive Officer of Terra Lycos and was responsible for all aspects of the company’s business. Before the October 2000 combination of Terra and Lycos, Bob was President and Chief Executive Officer of Lycos, Inc. since its inception in 1995. In just five years, Bob led Lycos from a start-up with $2 million in venture capital funding to a multi-billion dollar profitable business. Under his leadership, Lycos jumped from the fastest IPO in Nasdaq history, a mere nine months from inception to offering, to an esteemed member of the Nasdaq 100. 
 
Bob has served on the boards of several public and private sector companies including John Hancock, Ticketmaster, Terra Lycos, Lycos and Lycos Europe. He also serves as a Trustee for Children’s Hospital Trust Board and The Rivers School. Bob has advised former President Clinton on matters relating to internet commerce and regulation and has addressed Congress, The United Nations, The National Press Corps and the U.S. Council of Foreign Relations on similar matters. 
 
Bob received his B.S. from Northeastern University and an M.B.A. from Babson College. He also holds honorary doctorates from Bentley College and Northeastern University. Bob has been inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs and received the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mike Grandinetti
Senior Lecturer in the Practice of Entrepreneurship
MIT Sloan School of Management

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Mike Grandinetti has helped lead 4 VC-backed software companies to successful exits (2 IPO, 4 M&A) for his investors as a senior operating executive, and is now engaged in his newest venture, Virtual Iron. Previously, he worked at McKinsey & Co, where he advised senior executives on a broad range of strategic engagements.

He holds a long-standing appointment at the MIT Sloan School of Management, with a strong focus on global entrepreneurship. He has taught the course, “Starting and Building a Successful Tech Venture” for several years, plays a leading role in MIT’s annual Entrepreneurship Development Program, and is a core member of MIT’s Global Entrepreneurship team. He holds a faculty appointment at the Danish Technical University, an advisory board role at SEED Capital in Copenhagen and is a veteran judge of the MIT $100K global entrepreneurship competition.

He has extensive experience providing strategic counsel to international new business development executives, entrepreneurs, VCs,  economic development agencies and governments on how to incorporate world - class best practices in entrepreneurship into their companies, portfolios and regions.  He has keynoted numerous international entrepreneurship conferences and has also lectured at many universities on subjects including successful global technology commercialization and best practices in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education.

Mike was elected to the National Engineering Honor Society.

William H. Guenther
President and Founder,
Mass Insight Education and Mass Insight Corporation

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Bill Guenther is a respected expert in organizing initiatives to support the implementation of complex education reform issues in Massachusetts, with a particular emphasis on standards-based school improvement. Guenther brings over 25 years of experience with public policy issues and communications to his work. He has worked on the management side of Newsweek magazine in New York, and he has participated in or managed six political campaigns. Guenther is a graduate of Harvard College and received a J.D. from New York University Law School.

Reed Hundt
Board Member, Intel; Senior Advisor
Information Industries, McKinsey & Company [Former Chairman, FCC]

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Reed Hundt is a senior advisor on information industries to McKinsey & Company, a worldwide management consulting firm in Washington, D.C. He serves on the board of Intel Corporation and other high-technology start-ups and is former chairman of the FCC. He is the author of You Say You Want a Revolution (Yale University Press, 2000) and In China's Shadow, The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship (Yale University Press, 2006).

Reed Hundt was named Chairman of the FCC by President Clinton and was sworn in by Vice President Gore on November 29, 1993. As Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Reed Hundt was guided by two principles: first, that the FCC should make decisions based on the public interest and second that the FCC should write fair rules of competition for the communications sector. In his first two years as Chairman, he was recognized for his leadership on issues ranging from spectrum auctions to children's education and programming to access for people with disabilities.

 Under Chairman Hundt, the FCC conducted the first spectrum auction in U.S. history and, in its first two years of auction authority, the agency has raised almost $20 billion for the national treasury.  

Chairman Hundt was the first Chairman to bring FCC operations into the communications age. He was the first Chairman to make himself accessible to a wide audience by participating in open, online conversations with the public and was the first FCC Chairman to have a personal computer on his desk and to be connected to an electronic network. Under Chairman Hundt's leadership, the Commission established an FCC presence on the Internet, allowing the public to access information about the Commission and to ask questions via this network.  

Before becoming Chairman of the FCC, Mr. Hundt was a partner in the Washington office of Latham & Watkins, a national and international law firm. His work included legal and regulatory issues in emerging technologies, such as cellular telephones, direct broadcast satellite, and interactive television.

In his private legal career he also handled pro bono matters for the U.S. Court of Appeals, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Conservation International, and the D.C. Preservation League.

Chairman Hundt is a graduate of Yale College (1969) and Yale Law School (1974), where he was a member of the board of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for the late Chief Judge Harrison L. Winter of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and is a member of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and California bars.  
 
Chairman Hundt was born in Michigan and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with his wife and their three children, Adam, Nathaniel, and Sara.

Ori Israely
Managing Director
Giza Ventures

Ori joined Giza in their Tel Aviv offices in 1997. In 2003 he relocated to New York to head Giza’s office in North America, and has subsequently moved back to Israel. His expertise is in the sectors of Communications and IT, where he focuses on due diligence, investment valuation and the forging of strategic partnerships. Formerly, Ori provided investment banking services and was an Economist for Giyo International Ltd.  

Israel is long-standing hot bed of innovation, as exemplified as country with second highest number of companies listed on NASDAQ behind US, with many well-known global leaders, including Checkpoint Software.

Giza is a pioneering seed and early stage Israeli venture capital firm, which has done over 80 investments and had 31 successful exits, and was established in Tel Aviv in 1992. Giza has investment professionals with a wealth of expertise and experience in Communications, Semiconductors, Information Technology, Life Sciences, Media, Internet, Gaming and Entertainment.

Dean Kamen
President
DEKA Research & Development Corp. & Founder - FIRST

DEKA is focused on the development of revolutionary new technologies that span a diverse set of applications. As an inventor, physicist, and entrepreneur, Dean has dedicated his life to developing technologies that help people lead better lives. He holds over 440 US and foriegn patents.  Dean is also widely recognized as the inventor of the Segway(r) Human Transporter, which was designed to provide a clean alternative for short distance travel, as well as many break-through medical devices.

One of Dean's newest projects is a water purification system that is being designed to help provide clean drinking water to the estimated 1.1 billion of people in the world who lack access to clean water. FIRST is a global non-profit that seeks to inspire and recognize the science, technology and innovation leaders of the future.

Dean is a recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Prize and the National Medal of Technology.

Tarun Khanna
Jorge Paulo Lemann - Professor,
Harvard Business School

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Dr. Khanna has been a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School since 1993, where he studies, and works with, multinational and indigenous companies and investors in emerging markets worldwide.  He has served as course head of the required Strategy course in the Harvard MBA program, and chaired the executive education program on Strategy, Leadership & Governance.  Currently, he teaches in Harvard’s comprehensive general management executive education programs.  He earned a Bachelors of Science in Engineering degree from Princeton University in 1988, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1993. 

His current research focuses on understanding the drivers of entrepreneurship worldwide. As part of the Emerging Giants project, he seeks to understand how to build world-class companies from emerging markets worldwide. A related project, The Dragon and the Elephant, zeros in on China and India, and identifies best practices for local entrepreneurs and multinationals operating in each of these two countries.  His scholarly work is published in a range of journals over the past fifteen years. During this time, he has continued to serve as a co-editor of several prestigious economics and management journals.  A forthcoming book, Silk Roads to Superhighways: How 2.4 billion Chinese and Indians are Reshaping their Futures and Yours, will be published by Harvard Business School Press (Penguin in South Asia) in 2007. 

Numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review (e.g. Emerging Giants: Building World Class Companies in Emerging Markets, 2006) and Foreign Policy (e.g. Can India Overtake China?, 2003) distil the implications of this research for practicing managers.  Professor Khanna’s work has been profiled in news-magazines around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and newspapers in China, India, and elsewhere in Asia and Latin America. He has been a frequent commentator on ‘Competing in, and from, China and India’ and ‘Building the Developing country Multinational’ on several TV and radio programs recently (NPR, BBC, CNN, CNBC, Voice of America, Bloomberg and local channels).  

He serves on the advisory boards of several multinational and emerging market companies in the financial services, automotive, life sciences and agribusiness sectors.  He is also actively involved in mentoring startups in Asia, and with volunteering time with non-profits in India, e.g. the Parliamentary Research Services in New Delhi, which seeks to provide non-partisan research input to India’s Members of Parliament in advance of legislative sessions with a view to enhancing the quality of democratic discourse. 

In 2007, he was nominated to be a Young Global Leader (under 40) by the World Economic Forum.

Gloria Larson was recently named the 7th President of Bentley College. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the Government Practices Group at Foley Hoag. Her practice includes a broad array of federal, state and local regulatory and business development issues, including real estate development, energy, insurance, environmental permitting, transportation, advertising and internet privacy matters.

Appointed Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Affairs by Governor Weld from August 1993 until she resigned in February 1996, she was responsible for promoting economic growth and fostering employment opportunities in Massachusetts. Prior to her appointment to the Office of Economic Affairs, she served as Secretary of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, a post she was appointed to in January 1991. In this position, she managed a $30 million secretariat with broad regulatory responsibilities in areas such as banking, insurance and energy, as well as myriad consumer protection matters.

Served as Deputy Director of Consumer Protection for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in Washington, D.C. from February 1990 until she assumed the role of consumer affairs secretary in the Commonwealth. Prior to her 1990 return to the FTC, she spent two years working as an attorney in private practice, representing clients before numerous federal and state regulatory and legislative authorities.

Between 1981-1988, she served as attorney advisor to FTC Commissioner Patricia P. Bailey. In that capacity, she advised the commissioner on consumer protection and antitrust matters and acted as a liaison to Congressional committees on a wide range of consumer protection issues, including advertising, credit, health care, franchising and consumer fraud. Gloria worked from 1979 to 1981 as a senior staff attorney in the FTC's Division of Professional Services and served as director of a statewide program in Virginia that provided legal services to low and moderate income senior citizens from 1977-1979.

Gloria is on the board of many corporations. She was appointed by Governor Paul Cellucci in February 1998 and reappointed in December 2003 by Governor Mitt Romney to chair the newly reconstituted Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA). She is also on the board of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
She takes an active interest in education and community affairs, and is on the boards of Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston History Collaborative, University of Massachusetts Center for Collaborative Leadership and the Harbor Island Alliance among others.

She has been awarded multiple titles, the most recent being Lawyer of the Year, by the MASSACHUSETTS LAWYERS WEEKLY (December 2005) and the Academy of Distinguished Bostonians Award, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce (May 18, 2005.)

Gloria graduated from Vassar College with a BA (with honors), and got her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. She has passed the bar in Massachusetts and Virginia and is admitted to appear in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Gregory Manuel
Special Advisor to the Secretary of State
and International Energy Coordinator

Gregory Manuel currently serves as Special Advisor to the Secretary of State and International Energy Coordinator charged with providing strategic oversight, developing new policy approaches and initiatives, and fully integrating energy issues into the decision making process at senior levels of the State Department.  Mr. Manuel was last in government at the National Security Council working on energy and international economic issues from 2001-2003.   

Greg has worked as a venture capitalist for Atlas Venture; founded E-DOX, a technology startup in New York City; was a member of the board of Jadoo Power, a startup fuel cell company; and an investment banker working in the technology and energy sectors at J.P. Morgan. 

Mr. Manuel received an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA in International Relations with Honors in the Humanities from Stanford University. 

Terry McGuire
Co-Founder and Managing General Partner
Polaris Venture Partners, Co-Founder, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, AIR

Co-Founder and Managing General Partner of Polaris Venture Partners, Co-Founder of Inspire Pharmaceuticals, AIR (Advanced Inhalation Research, Inc.) and MicroCHIPS.

Terry is the world’s premiere Life Sciences investor, representing Polaris on the boards of many new ventures. He is the recipient of the 2005 Albert Einstein Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Life Sciences, and serves on the Board of the MIT Center for Cancer Research; the Advisory Board of Harvard Business School’s Healthcare Initiative and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research among others.

Claudia Fan Munce
Global Managing Director IBM Venture Capital Group and
Vice President of IBM Corporate Strategy.

Prior to assuming her current position, Claudia was the executive in IBM Research responsible overseeing technology transfer and licensing activities. Born in Taiwan, Claudia grew up in Brazil and came to the U.S. for graduate studies at  Santa Clara and Stanford Universities. Claudia is the Chairman of NVCA Corporate Venture Advisory Board for 2007/2008 and she also serves on the board of Latin America Venture Capital Association.

In her global MD role, Claudia interacts regularly with several hundred new technology ventures across the globe, and is especially engaged in the emerging Latin American and Asian markets. She also has a deep perspective on IBM’s own internal innovation strategy and efforts.

Sanjay Puri
President and CEO
Optimos Inc

Sanjay Puri is the President and CEO of Optimos Inc. based in Chantilly, Virginia.  Since founding the company in 1993, Mr. Puri has led Optimos to national prominence as a comprehensive enterprise computing Solutions Company.  Optimos provides state-of-the-art information technology solutions to the public sector and Fortune 500 firms.

 Company Description

Optimos Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, providing state-of-the-art information technology solutions to both business and government.  Started on a shoestring budget, Optimos now is a multi-million dollar international operation.

Contributions and Leadership to the Community

Lifetime learning and mentoring those in need are personal and professional commitments of Mr. Puri.  This vision is reflected in the core culture of Optimos. He is a recognized leader for the Northern Virginia business community and an authority on information technology, e-government and technology education. In 2004, Mr. Puri was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council for “his solid commitment to community involvement.”  The Council cited the creation of Olliance under Mr. Puri’s direct leadership, which is an innovative program within Optimos that assists select minority and disadvantaged technology companies across the nation seeking to do business with government and commercial firms.  In 2005, he was nominated by Accenture as the Small Contractor Executive of the Year.  Optimos is also an active participant in the Small Business Administration’s Mentor Protégé program, where Optimos mentors Tyonek Technologies, a Small Disadvantaged Alaska Native Corporation.

Mr. Puri continues to pursue ways that technology can be used to make a positive impact on the daily lives of individuals.   Optimos recently developed C3, a clinical case management solution that enables substance abuse and rehabilitation clinics to improve patient care by allowing busy case managers to track patients, quickly perform assessments and create treatment plans.  In the field of human resources, Mr. Puri pioneered the use of computer training to help career professionals facing layoffs.

Mr. Puri is also active outside the world of technology.   In 2002, he founded USINPAC, a bipartisan political action committee for the growing Indian American community. With over 27,000 members nationwide, the mission of USINPAC is to impact policy on issues of concern to the Indian American community in the United States.  USINPAC represents the concerns of Indian Americans on Capitol Hill and the Executive Branch and supports candidates for federal, state and local office who support issues that are important to the Indian American community.  He is also the founder and CEO of the US India Business Alliance (USIBA), dedicated to strengthening commercial, economic and financial ties between the United States and India.

Recently, Mr. Puri was appointed to the Virginia Governor-Elect’s 2006 Transition Committee, as well as the Virginia Attorney General-Elect’s 2006 Transition Committee.  He is also serving on the Virginia Governor-Elect’s Technology Transition Policy Committee and is Co-Chairing the Virginia Attorney General-Elect’s Policy Committee on Internet Fraud and Identity Theft.  Previously, he served on the Virginia Lieutenant Governor’s Commission on Small Business Health Insurance Costs.

Prior to founding Optimos, Mr. Puri worked at the World Bank.  Mr. Puri received his MBA in Finance from the George Washington University School of Business.

 Speaking Engagements

March 2007 – Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
April 2006 – Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs
February 2006 – National Governors Association
November 2005 – Wharton India Economic Forum
October 2005 – George Washington University
February 2005 – Harvard Business School
February 2005 – Wellesley College
April 2004 – Columbia Business School

 Numerous speaking engagements with the Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council.

 Awards/Nominations

November 2005 – Nominated for Regional Leadership Award by Leadership Fairfax, Inc.
October 2005 – Corporate Citizenship Award by Arlington Small Business Development Center
September 2005 – Nominated by Accenture as the Small Contractor Executive of the Year
December 2003 – Entrepreneur of the Year, Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council

Amar Sawhney
Founder, President & CEO
Confluent Surgical, Waltham

Amar Sawhney, Ph.D. is one of the inventors of the hydrogel technology, which forms the core of Confluent's technology platform. Founded in August 1998, Confluent Surgical is a privately held medical device company that is pioneering the development of in-situ polymerized biomaterials. The company has been sold to Tyco Healthcare in August 2006 for $245 Million.

Dr. Sawhney's inventions have formed the basis for the founding of several medical device and biotechnology companies and their products. In addition, other companies that are pursuing technologies that have been co-invented by Dr. Sawhney include Access Closure, Inc. (ACI), Novacell, and Azopax. Dr. Sawhney holds over 55 patents and has authored over 100 publications and scientific abstracts. Prior to co-founding Confluent, Dr. Sawhney was Director and Technology Founder at Focal, Inc. (acquired by Genzyme). In addition to Confluent, he serves on the board of MarketRx Inc. (an Incept company specializing in sales and marketing effectiveness, planning, and analytical products and services) as well as ACI.

Jit Saxena
CEO
Netezza Corp

Jit Saxena is the co- founder and CEO of Netezza. Netezza has created the world's first purpose-built, tera-scale data appliance that delivers 10 to 20 times the performance for large, complex and constantly growing Business Intelligence (BI) efforts at half the cost of existing systems.

Previously, Jit was founder, chairman and CEO of Applix Inc., a leading provider of BPM software that he took public in 1994. While at Applix, Saxena guided the company to a leadership position in it’s markets and achieved an eight-fold increase in market value subsequent to the IPO. Through his vision, the company was continually an innovator in new high growth markets.

Prior to founding Applix, Saxena was a senior director at Data General where he was responsible for the development of the company's software products. At Data General, he held several other senior management positions in pre-sales and marketing organization.

Saxena graduated from Indian Institute of Tecnology, Mumbai, has an MS in EE from Michigan State University and an MBA from Boston University.

Raj Sharma
Charter Member and Platinum Sponsor
Merrill Lynch

Raj is a Senior Vice President of Investments with nineteen years of experience in financial planning and asset management. He holds a Master’s degree in Business Management, with a specialization in finance, and a Master’s degree in Mass Communications. Raj is a member of Merrill Lynch’s highest recognition club, The Circle of Champions. In addition, Raj is on the National Speakers Bureau at Merrill Lynch, and is a former member of the Wealth Advisory Council to Management. To build on his industry knowledge, he has attended advanced investment programs at The Wharton School of Business and the INSEAD in France. He is a Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA), a certification awarded by the Institute of Investment Management Consultants. For four consecutive years (2004 - 2007), he has been recognized by Barron’s and Registered Rep, leading industry publications, as one of America’s top Financial Advisors; as well as being named one of the elite advisors in the United States by Research Magazine in 2005 and the #1 Financial Advisor in the Boston area by Boston Magazine in March 2006. In June 2006, he was featured in The Boston Business Journal as one of Boston’s premier wealth advisors. Raj was also selected for inclusion in a book by Cahner’s Publishing:“The Winner’s Circle - How 30 Financial Advisors Became The Best In The Business.” He is a regular contributor to local radio and television programs on the current market environment and financial planning related topics. Raj is an active member of the community and is involved in many organizations. He is a Board member of The Island Alliance and is a member of the Board of Overseers for Museum of Science in Boston. Raj is also a Charter member of TiE, a global organization supporting entrepreneurship and business formation, and he is on the Leadership Council of the American Indian Foundation, an organization devoted to accelerating social and economic change in India. Raj resides in Sharon, Massachusetts with his wife Lynn and four children - Meara, Neil, Jay and Tara.

Ram Shriram
Member of the Board
Google

Ram Shriram started Sherpalo in January, 2000, with the goal of applying his wealth of operating and company building experience to promising early stage ventures. As a technology industry insider for over 25 years he has worked in companies large and small across all functional areas and through fluctuating business cycles. He is always eager to roll up his sleeves and work closely with founding teams on the challenging issues that confront and sometimes confound early stage ventures.

Ram's knowledge of and advice on issues ranging from raising venture capital, key management hiring, making the right product choices and defining and adapting the business model to changing market conditions can help you to secure early customer wins, build momentum from a standing start, and generate international growth.

A hallmark of Ram's success is the ability to create the right DNA for a young growth company with a focus on revenue and profitability, by establishing a virtuous cycle of talented employees/owners and happy customers/users. Ram enjoys the process of turning founders' dreams into successful businesses and takes a long term view that serves as a guidepost for decision making. Ram is thoughtful, cerebral, easy to communicate with, deeply committed to the tasks he undertakes, and has a keen intuitive sense for what works in the marketplace.

Ram has partnered with the venture capital industry and its many famous and successful members all across Silicon Valley. Because of his domain and market expertise, he brings a unique value to the building of companies with successful outcomes that fits well with the value offered by venture capital firms.

This year Ram was named one of the top 3 dealmakers in high-tech by Forbes magazine.

Immediately prior to founding Sherpalo, Ram served as an officer of Amazon.com working for Jeff Bezos, founder & CEO. Ram came to Amazon.com in August, 1998, when Amazon acquired Junglee, an online comparison shopping firm of which Ram was president. While at Amazon, Ram helped grow the customer base during its early high growth phase in 1998/1999. Before Junglee and Amazon, Ram was a member of the Netscape executive team, joining them in 1994, before they shipped products or posted revenue. He drove the many partnerships and channels that Netscape employed to get massive distribution for its browser and server products during those now legendary early days of the Internet.

Ram is a founding board member of Google Inc., 247customer.com and Frontline Wireless. Ram also serves on the boards of Plaxo, Zazzle.com, PodShow and Prana Studios. Ram serves on the advisory board of Naukri.com, a leading classifieds site in India which has leading marketplaces in jobs, matrimony and real estate serving the Indian market.

Sumeet Shrivastava
Managing Director
Keane

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Sumeet Shrivastava is currently Managing Director in Keane, Inc.?s Public Sector Vertical, a $200M operation.   Keane, Inc. is a $1 billion IT services firm that helps clients transform their business and IT operations to achieve demonstrable, measurable, and sustainable business benefit. As a trusted advisor and partner for its clients, Keane solves real business issues through the development and implementation of cost-effective, change-oriented, industry-specific solutions.  Keane?s clients include Global 2000 corporations, healthcare institutions, State and Local organizations and Federal agencies.  In his role, Mr. Shrivastava has responsibility for the growth of Ke ane?s Federal sector practice as well as driving the vision and strategic direction of the Public Sector vertical.

Prior to this role, Mr. Shrivastava was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of ANSTEC, Inc., a Federal and State government contractor .   Mr. Shrivastava?s responsibilities included delivery of all client solutions, as well as oversight of human resources and business development. 

Under Mr. Shrivastava?s leadership, ANSTEC grew to be one of the pre-eminent small businesses in the public sector community with revenues exceeding $65 million.  In addition, Mr. Shrivastava helped navigate ANSTEC out of the 8(a) set-aside program for Federal Government contractors.   Mr. Shrivastava lead the effort, on behalf of Shareholders and Employees, for ANSTEC?s acquisition by Keane in December of 1999.

Mr. Shrivastava has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Northern Virginia Technology Council  and the Diversity Advisory Board of George Mason University.

Mr. Shrivastava received his MBA from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

Jurrien Timmer
Director of Market Research
Fidelity Investments

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Jurrien Timmer is director of market research for Fidelity Investments. He recently joined Fidelity's Asset Allocation group, where he specializes in tactical asset allocation. Mr. Timmer's research directly impacts the portfolio strategy of Fidelity's asset allocation funds and is also widely used by Fidelity's portfolio managers and analysts. As an investment strategist, his work includes fundamental, technical, and quantitative disciplines. Mr. Timmer joined Fidelity in 1995 as a technical research analyst in the fixed-income department and his responsibilities were later broadened to include equity research. Since 1998, Mr. Timmer has been responsible for Fidelity's Chart Room research content. Prior to joining Fidelity, he was a vice president and manager of a fixed-income trading desk at ABN AMRO Bank in New York, where he worked from 1985 to 1995. Mr. Timmer received a BS from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Ganesh Venkataraman
Scientific co-founder and Vice President- Research
Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a leading biotechnology company focused on the detailed structural analysis and design of complex sugars for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. As the co-founder of Momenta, Dr. Venkataraman played a key role in building the scientific and management teams and in establishing and growing the research and development operations. Momenta has enjoyed considerable success, growing to over 60 employees and successfully completing its initial public offering in June 2004, less than two years after its labs became operational. Momenta's current market capitalization approaches $200 MM.

Prior to founding Momenta, Dr. Venkataraman was a research faculty member at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and later at the Division of Biological engineering at MIT. Dr. Venkataraman served as the Director of Bioinformatics for the Consortium for Functional Glycomics, a multi-million dollar NIH initiative to study the role of complex sugars in biology.

Dr. Venkataraman won the 1999 and 2000 CaPCure Research Award to study the role of complex polysaccharides in prostate cancer. He is also the recipient of the Boston Business Journal's "40 under 40" award for the most promising entrepreneurs in the Boston area (2002) and the Global Indus Technovator award (2004) for endeavors at the frontiers of technological innovation. Dr. Venkataraman received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA and his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India.

Sanjeev Verma
Co-founder, VP of Business Development
Airvana

Prior to founding Airvana, Sanjeev was most recently Director of Marketing and Business Development for Broadband Networking at Motorola, responsible for wireless and wireline broadband residential gateway solutions. Sanjeev has an extensive software development background, which includes leading the development of Motorola's first V.34 modem. He was also a senior manager in Motorola's strategy group responsible for the Internet and Networking Group's broadband networking strategy. Sanjeev holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island.

Robert Weisman
Technology and Business Writer
Boston Globe 

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Robert Weisman is a business and technology writer for the Boston Globe, covering high-tech startups, venture capital, defense, research and development, and business schools. He joined the Globe in 2000 and served as the newspaper's technology editor until 2003. From 1995 to 2000, Rob was business editor at the Seattle Times. There he was part of the editing team working with reporter Byron Acohido on Boeing 737 safety stories that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for beat coverage. Before that, Rob was business editor and reporter at the Hartford Courant and the New Haven Register in Connecticut.

Jack Wilson
President
University of Massachusetts

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Dr. Jack Wilson is the 25th President of the University of Massachusetts system, serving since September 2, 2003. He became interim President on September 1, 2003 and then was selected as the 25th President on March 24, 2004.  Prior to becoming President, he served as the Vice President for Academic Affairs of The University of Massachusetts system and CEO of UMassOnline.   Formerly, Dr Wilson was the J. Erik Jonsson '22 Distinguished Professor of Physics, Engineering Science, Information Technology, and Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he had also served as a Dean and interim Provost. Prior to that he served as the head of a scientific society (AAPT) in Washington, DC and as a Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. 

Wilson has authored over 55 scholarly articles, wrote or edited five books, and given over 200 invited lectures. He has enjoyed over $23 million in funding for his research and scholarly activities.  Dr. Wilson is nationally and internationally known for his leadership in the reform of higher education programs.   He has also been a successful entrepreneur, as he founded a software company and took it through several rounds of venture capital and two mergers into a public company on the NASDAQ exchange. 

In recognition of his leadership in educational reform, he was honored with the Theodore Hesburgh Award, the Boeing Award, and the Pew Charitable Trust Prize for programs that he led.  He was awarded an Outstanding Civilian Service Medal by the United States Army for service to the Army Education program. He is a Fellow of American Physical Society, and has served as a national officer of the Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Assn. of Physics Teachers.  He has served as either a member or chair of several National Academy of Science and National Research Council study committees and task forces.

He was appointed in 2005, by Governor Mitt Romney, as a Massachusetts Commissioner to the Education Commission of the States.

As the founding CEO of UMassOnline, he helped to build UMassOnline into one of the largest externally directed online programs in the United States with 40+ graduate and undergraduate degree and certificate programs over 21,000 enrollees in FY 2006.

Dr. Wilson was the founder, CEO, and Chairman of the LearnLinc Corporation, founded in 1993 as a spin off of his university research and built through three rounds of venture capital from Exponential Investors, Intel Corporation, the New York State Science and Technology Foundation, and GeoCapital Investors.  LearnLinc merged with Allan Communications and Gilat Communications to form the publicly traded (NASDAQ) Mentergy Corporation.

His strong interest in the links between higher education and economic development led to becoming the co-founder of the Paul Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship,  the creator of a national workshop series for technology enhanced entrepreneurship education for university faculty, a national advisory committee member for the Kauffman Entrepreneurship Fellowship Program, and a member of the Massachusetts Legislature's Science, and Technology Caucus.  He served on the core internal steering group with MassInsight, the Mass High Technology Council, and other organizations in the development of a Science and Technology Roadmap for Massachusetts. He has served as a consultant to many computing and communications firms including IBM, AT&T, Lucent, Hewlett Packard, and Boeing Flight Safety International. 

He presently serves on the national Board of Directors of the Alliance for Research in Science and Technology for America (ASTRA) and is a member of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness.  He is presently serving on the National Leadership Council of the Association of American Colleges and Universities program on Liberal Education and America's Promise.  Dr. Wilson also serves on several regional boards including: the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education organization, the John Adams Innovation Institute, the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative, and the New England Council.