Speaker Biographies
Biographies for speakers at the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium, May 18, 2011:
Yavuz Ahiska, Founder 3Dlabs
A successful, serial entrepreneur, Dr Ahiska co-founded DuPont Pixel Systems, (acquired by DuPont in 1994) and Visioprime (acquired by Novar). He then backed the management buyout of 3Dlabs from DuPont Pixel Systems, which was then listed on the Nasdaq and acquired by Creative Technologies in 2002.
Steven Bernard
Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Steve is a partner at Wilson Sonsini, where he specializes in representing US and non-US companies in domestic and cross-border public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and SEC compliance. Steve has extensive experience in cross-border corporate transactions, including the initial public offering of Trintech Group Plc, which was the first simultaneous dual-listing of American Depositary Shares on Nasdaq and the Neuer Markt and the acquisition of Applied Learning Limited, an Australian Stock Exchange-listed company, through a scheme of arrangement.
Prior to joining Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Steve practiced law with Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson in New York.
Gerald Brady
Managing Director, Silicon Valley Bank
Gerald is responsible for leading SVB's Entrepreneur
Services Group as well as the company's work with corporate venture and
corporate development groups.
Prior to joining SVB, Gerald served as the director of investor relations for
Siemens AG, where he was responsible for all aspects of investor communications
in North America. Before that, Gerald was an acquisition director in the
Strategic Planning Group at Siemens Corporation, and served as a managing
director of Siemens Acceleration USA, which is the early stage venture capital
arm of Siemens. He has also served as chairman of the NVCA's Corporate Venture
Group from 2006-2007.
Brady previously worked at 3i in London and Palo Alto, where he was a director,
investing in a number of technology businesses, including ActiveCard (ACTI),
Bitfone (acquired by HP), Raw Communications (acquired by Thomson Financial)
and Winery Exchange.
Kevin Brown
Partner, Reed Elsevier Ventures
Kevin was one of Reed Elsevier Ventures founding partners in late 2000, joining from SOFTBANK/News Corporation's European joint venture fund, eVentures.
While at Reed Elsevier Ventures, Kevin has overseen a number of important deals including iPhrase (acquired by IBM) and Babylon (TASE: BBYL) and he is currently on the boards of Healthline, Fina Technologies, Intelligize, Recruiting.com and Martini Media and led the fund's investment in Palantir.
Prior to that he was an entrepreneur, having founded a risk management technology company selling derivative pricing and management software to the banking and energy industries and previously spent a number of years at Arthur Andersen's European strategy consulting practice.
Mike Brown
Partner, AOL Ventures
As Founder and Partner at AOL Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of AOL, Mike is focused on seed and series A, non-strategic investing in technology-centric consumer internet companies since its launch in February last year.
Previously, he spent 2.5 years helping start companies for Virgin Group and invest Richard Branson's money in interesting things (primarily early stage consumer services + digital media).
Chris Coburn
Executive Director, Cleveland Clinic Innovations
Chris is Executive Director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, Cleveland Clinic's corporate venturing arm, since it was established in May 2000. He has built a high-performing team of more than 36 professionals guided by some of the nation's top venture capitalists. Cleveland Clinic's 35 spin-off companies have raised more than $450m in equity investment.
Chris serves on the board of directors of Autonomic Technologies, Cleveland HeartLab, Explorys, PeriTec, and BioEnterprise and is a former Vice-President and General Manager of Battelle Memorial Institute, director of the U.S. Enrichment Corporation (NYSE:USU) and author of the only comprehensive profile of public sector commercialization initiatives as well as numerous articles and book chapters.
Dr. Gary Dushnitsky
Associate Professor of Strategic and International Management & Entrepreneurship, London Business School
Gary works on all aspects of entrepreneurship and venture capital with specific expertise in corporate venture capital. His publications include Entrepreneurial Finance meet organizational reality: Comparing Investment Practices by Independent and corporate VCs (with Z. Shapira), Strategic Management Journal (2009); and Limitations to inter-organizational knowledge acquisition: The paradox of corporate venture capital (with J.M. Shaver) Strategic Management Journal (2009).
Formerly, Dushnitsky was Assistant Professor, The Wharton School, and gained his BA MSC (Tel Aviv) and PhD (New York University).
Neil Foster
Partner, Field Fisher Waterhouse
Neil joined Field Fisher Waterhouse as a corporate partner in 2006 from a large US law firm, where he was a partner and founding member of the UK Corporate Practice in London.
Neil's practice covers mergers & acquisitions, venture capital & private equity and corporate finance. His principal sector specialisations are technology & telecommunications, media & entertainment, life sciences & healthcare. As well as advising UK companies, banks, venture funds and intermediaries, Neil represents many large US, Middle Eastern and Asian corporations and institutions on their UK and European deals, including transactions for Liberty Global, Vernalis, Echostar Satellite Corporation, Chellomedia, Zonemedia, Exclusive Media, CKx Inc, Daewoo Motors, Pacific Crossing, Arcadia Biosciences and Creative Technologies.
Andrew Gaule
Founder, H-I Network
Andrew was the founder of the H-I Network in 2000 and is now the leader of the team that brings the power the Network to leading global organisations.
He is the creator of several management concepts now in use at organisations such as BAE Systems, E.ON, Health Protection Agency, KLM, Philips, Unilever etc such as:
The "Five Ps", a methodology for ensuring innovation
strategy and processes are sufficiently holistic and aligned to achieve
significant value
The New Business Cube, a methodology for evaluating business ideas throughout
their development, from a holistic perspective, to prevent wastage and maximise
the chances of successful deployment.
Andrew is the author of ‘Open Innovation in Action - How to be strategic in the search for new sources of value' which includes case studies from H-I Network clients P&G, QinetiQ, Shell, DSM and Tate & Lyle. Andrew has also been an author on many reports and is a frequent conference speaker in Europe, USA and China.
Abdul Guefor
Assistant Treasurer for Intel and Managing Director for Intel Capital Treasury for the Greater European Region.
As Managing Director for Intel Capital Treasury, his responsibilities include advising on investment strategies, reviewing investment proposals and deal structuring. He is also a member of the regional investment committee.
Before joining Intel in 1999, Abdul spent 7 years with PricewaterhouseCoopers Transaction Support. Before PwC, Abdul was a design engineer at Plessey Semiconductors in UK and at the Ikerlan research centre in Spain.
Shelley Harrison
Adviser to Coller Capital,
Shelley was the former chairman of venture firms Harrison Enterprises and PolyVentures, co‑founder of Symbol Technologies, a bar code laser scanner company acquired by Motorola for $3.9bn, and former chairman at Spacehab. He has also helped create the Israel venture capital industry.
Martin Kelly
Partner, IBM Venture Capital
Based in Ireland, Martin is Partner with IBM Venture Capital. Martin established the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) group in 2007 and currently has responsibility for www.ibmsmartcamp.com which is now being rolled out globally.
Previously, Martin was a business development executive at IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
James Mawson
Founder and Editor, Global Corporate Venturing
James was editor of Private Equity News, part of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal in London, for nearly four years until May 2010 when he launched Global Corporate Venturing as an independent title from his own publishing company.
Previously, James had freelanced for a host of national and trade media titles, including the BBC, Financial Times, Economist, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Express and Dow Jones Newswires; provided research for Nick Davies's book, Flat Earth News; was a foreign correspondent in central and eastern Europe; and was international editor for FT Business.
He is also a director of the London Press Club and acts as a pro bono editor for the European Venture Philanthropy Association's monthly newsletter.
Stuart McKnight
Managing Director, Ascendant
Prior to forming Ascendant in 2003, Stuart worked for Hill Samuel, Nomura, Regent Associates and Cobalt Corporate Finance since the mid-1980s. Having focussed on the technology sector since 1995, he has raised many millions of pounds for high growth technology companies and advised on M&A transactions in the UK and throughout the world and, since 1997, he has been one of the key researchers in the area of Venture Capital Investment in Technology Companies. In the past three years Stuart has led Ascendant's expansion into the clean-tech and green energy space advising ACAL Energy, EVO Electric, Redeem plc and SPARK Energy.
Paul Morris
Director, Dow Venture Capital
Since joining Dow in 1983, Paul has built The Dow Chemical Company's corporate venture capital (CVC) activities in Europe and Israel from scratch and today manages a portfolio of over 25 fund and direct investments. This represents a key part of Dow's global CVC commitment of over $400m. Portfolio performance has consistently exceeded targets and includes high-multiple exits from investments in start-up companies including FillFactory (Belgium) and DRI (UK). Morris has spoken on CVC at international conferences and on CNBC television and has chaired the annual EVCA CVC workshop.
David Phillips
Managing Partner, SR One
As Managing Partner in SR One (GlaxoSmithKline's corporate venturing fund), David leads SR One's investment activities as well as pioneering a new function to incubate and spin-out technologies from GSK. He brings a range of experience to SR One, including senior management roles in sales and marketing, commercial strategy and business development at Glaxo Wellcome, Cephalon, Medical Venture Management, The Automation Partnership and Galapagos.
Payman Saebi
Head of Innovation, Royal Mail
For the past two years, Payman has been responsible for teams developing and delivering new business ventures - part of Royal Mail's drive to develop a further £500m of new revenue. Prior to this, he was working in the £4bn retail division of Royal Bank of Scotland delivering new revenue streams and also at Unilever for 10 years managing global brands for growth. Payman was also the founder and managing director of Future Reach - a company focused on helping corporations in relation to their organisational development.
Danny Truell
Chief Investment Officer, Wellcome Trust
Danny joined the Wellcome Trust biomedical research charity in 2005 as Chief Investment Officer of what is now its £14bn ($25bn) endowment.
Danny had previously spent 20 years in the City as a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) and as the co-Head of GSAM's Global Investment Strategies team. In this role, Danny advised charitable foundations, pension funds, insurance companies and governments and acted as GSAM's Chief Investment Officer for a number of major clients. His publications include "UK Charities: Bridging the Gap" and "UK Pensions: Improving Investment Returns".
Previously, he was the Chief Asian Equity Strategist and Head of HK & China Research for Warburg, having begun his career at CIN Management as an Asian Portfolio Manager. He is the co-founder of the Truell Charitable Foundation and has a wide range of charitable interests.
Matthias Ummenhofer
Head of Equity Fund Investments, EIF
Matthias is responsible for European Investment Fund's Venture Capital operations. Besides managing EIF's VC team he is focussing on business development and shaping EIF's strategy in the early stage technology market.
Prior to joining EIF, Matthias worked at European Investment Bank (EIB) as adviser to an Executive Board member and doing project financing transactions in the infrastructure sector. He has also worked in France as a consultant in the transportation and logistics sector and founded the research unit "Logistics & Environment" at the University of Aix-Marseille II. He was Director for the "Environmental Application Division" of the Society of Logistics Engineers (Hyattsville, USA).
Eric van der Kleij
Chief Executive, Tech City
Eric took on the Chief Executive role at the UK's Tech City programme to boost innovation and entrepreneurialism in the capital and country earlier this year. Previously, in 2009, Eric was appointed Chief Adviser to UK Trade & Investment department and has been a Senior Dealmaker and Chief Adviser, Directorate for Investment, the UK's principal Inward Investment and Trade organisation with 159 offices and embassies in 99 countries.
He spent the previous six years establishing and developing the UK Government's Global Entrepreneur Programme. Before taking on this role, Eric was a successful technology entrepreneur with over 25 years experience in high-technology and venture capital/equity finance, including raising $40m venture capital for www.adeptra.com, which pioneered the automation of credit card fraud detection and collections, and setting up Leadership Media Advisory.
Stephen Ziff
Partner, Coller Capital
Stephen is a Partner responsible for originating and closing secondary private equity investments in the UK and overseas and currently sits on the advisory boards of Absolute Income Fund, CIP Industries, New Venture Partners and Nova Cross, amongst others.
In addition to private equity fund portfolios, he is responsible for many of the firm's secondary direct transactions with significant experience of structured solutions having transacted with banks, hedge funds and corporates; in this latter area he has closed deals alongside Lucent, AEA and QinetiQ.
Prior to joining Coller Capital in 2003, Stephen was an Investment Manager at an early-stage venture fund listed in London and he started his career by spending five years in the M&A department of Rothschild.
