Silicon Valley Executive Business Program Faculty

	*Mitchell Levy* is Director and Chief Strategy Officer of the innovative Silicon Valley Executive Business Program and the Chairman and partner of CEOnetworking. His latest company is Happy About® a quick-to-publish book publisher. He is also President and CEO of the Strategic Consulting firm ECnow.com, author of the books Happy About Knowing What to Expect in 2006, Happy About Outsourcing, and E-Volve-or-Die.com, creator of the Value Framework®, and on the Board of Directors of Rainmaker Systems (NASDAQ: RMKR). Mr. Levy was the conference chair for four Comdex conferences and was at Sun Microsystems for 9 years, the last 4 of which he managed the e-commerce component of Sun's $3.5 billion supply chain. He is a popular speaker, lecturing on business and management issues throughout the U.S. and around the world.
	*Avery Lyford* is responsible for assessing investment opportunities at Signal Lake Ventures. Prior to this he was the CEO of Linuxcare, which delivers software that manages Linux in the corporate data center. Prior Mr. Lyford was part of McKinsey&Co's business building practice. His early career was at IBM where he was initially part of IBM's personal computer independent business unit and later was responsible for product planning, business development, and strategy for the Intel based server product line as it grew from $475M to $1.4B.
	*Suzette Cavanaugh* has over 25 years of experience in product marketing, brand development and positioning, and marketing communications. She started her career with American Hospital Supply Corporation and spent 10 years in consumer marketing with Kentucky Fried Chicken and Stouffer's. Joining high tech in 1985, she has launched over 100 products and services for companies such as Ashton-Tate, Aldus, Macromedia, and Oracle Consulting and for start-ups. She currently provides marketing consulting services. She has a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from Northwestern University and completed the UCLA Graduate School of Management Executive Program.
	*Mike Griego* is President of MXL Partners. He has 23+ years of practical high-technology sales and management experience at companies ranging from IBM, StorageTek/XLDatacomp, and Dataquest/Gartner Group. Mr. Griego has served as VP of sales and marketing for Zona Research and Active Decisions, a CRM decision-support software company, and M3 Learning. He's authored Strategic Sales Execution - the Next Generation Process for Effective Selling, an effectiveness-training program for sales people and management. A popular sales trainer, motivational speaker and consultant to VCs and CEOs, Mr. Griego has advised numerous start-up companies and has spoken to and trained hundreds of sales people and executives. He has a BA degree from Occidental College and an MBA from Stanford University.
	*Gwen Hanna* is an organizational consultant in the Silicon Valley. In her most recent corporate role, she was the VP of People for an internet-based company. Over the last 10 years, she has focused on organizational development. Her positions have led to assignments in the U.S., Asia, and Europe focusing on the facilitation of organizational development and strategic planning initiatives across multi-cultural constituencies. Ms. Hanna frequently lectures, presents, and facilitates to diverse audiences on topics regarding organizational development, change management, leadership development, and effective cross cultural communication.
Our CFO Facilitators
	*Rich Brenner* is CEO of the Interim Executive Management firm, The Brenner Group. Rich has more than 30 years of experience in general and financial management and has assisted many emerging companies in the roles of President, VP and CFO. Mr. Brenner's contributions have centered on helping companies establish the infrastructure to manage growth, raise capital, and grow through acquisition. His accomplishments include: establishing operational controls to support annual revenue growth from zero to more than $60 million in less than two years; negotiating m&a’s; and driving successful public and private debt and equity placements. Mr. Brenner is a founder, director and Chairman of the Audit Committee of Bridge Bank, NA. Mr. Brenner holds a BS in accounting with a minor in management information systems from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
	*John Beck* joined The Brenner Group in 2003 and brings over 25 years of experience in financial management, strategic planning and execution for technology firms. He has held full-time CFO positions with both public and private companies, and, in addition to finance, has broad experience managing cross-functional areas such as IP management, legal, treasury, risk management, HR, IT and facilities. John's background also includes managing the accounting, finance and reporting requirements of European and Asian offices.
Our CSO Facilitators
	*Mitchell Levy* (see above)
	*Phil Hood,* Phil Hood, Partner, Transcend Strategy Group, is an author, consultant and publisher. For the past fifteen years he as consulted and written on the development and use of digital media and pervasive computing technologies. He is the former executive editor of NewMedia Magazine, and a contributing columnist to Wired. As the former CEO of Digital 4Sight, he directed a series of multi-year research studies that explored the links between emerging technologies and business ethics and strategy. Prior to that he was a Publisher and Editor at CMP where he developed a series of music magazines. He is a founder of Enter Music Publishing, Inc. and a consultant and advisor to music industry sites such as Synthesis.net.
	*Alex Sloan* joined Expansion Capital Partners as a Principal in 2006. He is a member of the investment committee and is involved with sourcing, closing and monitoring the firm's Cleantech investments. Prior to joining Expansion, Alex co-founded and was a partner at Blackwolf Partners, an early stage Cleantech venture capital firm. Alex serves as Chairman and President of National Youth Leadership Forum, a leading non-profit company that organizes career-oriented educational programs for high school students. Alex often lectures on venture capital financing, entrepreneurship and sustainable technologies.
Our COO Facilitators
	*Peter Ostrow* is President and CEO of Testmart, a San Bruno based business-to-business e-commerce company specializing in the development of on-line commerce and community for technical equipment marketplaces. Prior to his current position, Mr. Ostrow was a senior executive at Narrowline, a San Francisco based Internet advertising transaction and research company. From 1988 to 1997, Mr. Ostrow held various positions at The New York Times. Mr. Ostrow holds an MBA from New York University and a BA in Chinese Language from Washington University in St. Louis.
	Sheila Baker is VP, Marketing at Kace Networks, Inc. She has more than 20 years experience bringing technology products to market with a very broad senior management background. Since starting her career as a software engineer, she has gained experience running marketing, operations, and sales teams as well as in business development. Sheila has worked in public and private companies all sizes including VA Software, MontaVista Software, The Santa Cruz Operation, Apollo Computer (through the HP acquisition), and Raytheon. Baker graduated with an MS in Management from Northeastern University, and a BS in Computer Science and Economics from the State University of New York at Albany.
Our CTO Facilitators
	*Michael Abbott* is the founder and CTO of Composite Software where he pioneering the development of a next-generation enterprise information integration product called the Composite Information Server. Prior to founding Composite Software, he was CTO of Electron Economy, a supply chain software company named to Upside's list of Top 100 companies of 2001. He has published widely and speaks regularly on data integration and has co-authored the book 'Java P2P Unleashed'. He participates in the Java Community Process (JCP), W3C, and has chaired groups at the Software Development Forum. Abbott completed Ph.D. research at the University of Washington and is a member of IEEE and ACM.
	*Greg Brown* is the VP of Engineering and Technology, having started at the Tech in 1994 managing many different aspects of the museum's operation. He has acquired $32M worth of donated high-tech equipment for use in the museum, and initiated The Tech Challenge, an exciting design contest for youthful engineers. During his 20-year career in research, Greg worked on robotics, computer vision and other advanced engineering areas at FMC's Corporate Technology Center. In addition, Greg put on popular workshops on creativity and brainstorming. He holds two patents. Greg earned his BS and Master's degrees in Engineering at Stanford University.
	*Axel Kloth* is the founder and CTO of Parimics, Inc. Axel has more than 15 years of experience in high performance computing, networking, and low latency switching as well as experience in designing and implementing large chips. He has contributed to and authored many patents. Throughout his career, he worked for system and semiconductor companies. He has written several books and technical articles, covering basic technologies and applications and deployments of these. As an IEEE member he was a crucial part of clarifying the feasibility of XAUI. Axel was on the Technical Advisory Boards of HotRail, Z-Force and Zedix. He finished his post-grad studies in physics and informatics at University of Kiel in Germany.
	*Peter Rosberg* is a director at eBay managing the merchant integration group for PayPal. His merchants have included Apple iTunes, Yahoo, Napster, Lycos, and GoDaddy. Previously, he worked as CTO for SawyerMedia, a company founded by Forrest Sawyer to provide rich media business communications solutions. Peter has also worked as a consulting CTO helping seed stage and 1st round startups in both the bay area and southern India attract venture capital, develop technical strategies, create budgets, hire technical management teams, and execute technology plans. Peter has spoken on web development and ecommerce at various conferences including BEA eWorld, Windows Solutions Tokyo, Windows Solutions San Francisco, and VBITS.

Instructors

Silicon Valley Executive Business Program Instructors Bios