FountainBlue

FountainBlue's Program Advisory Boards

The richness and relevance of our programs in a broad range of topics is largely due to the volunteers who have designed programs, recruited panelists, provided outreach, and so much more, for past and upcoming events. As program advisory board members, they:

• Assist in developing the topics and themes for our programs, and nominate and recruit speakers;
• Serve as ambassadors for FountainBlue and the series and/or program before the event by spreading the word, during the event in connecting people with each other, and following the event to solicit feedback and help make program and process improvements for the next event;
• Stimulate thinking and conversation between events;
• Make connections between people between events; and
• Generally assist in advancing the sub-industry within and outside FountainBlue and the Silicon Valley.

We would like to recognize and acknowledge members of our program advisory boards and thank them for their contributions to the community.

We Also Welcome You to Informally Support the FountainBlue Cause!

At FountainBlue, we know that most of our community members are too busy to regularly volunteer, yet value the benefits of the quality networking and program experiences provided by FountainBlue. We welcome community members to remain actively involved with our monthly events and with our community, regardless of your availability. Below is a list of ways you can get actively involved:

• Support the marketing, outreach, program, or registration activities for one of our individual communities.
• Outreach: Promote our event invitations to quality people in your network
  
• Program Support: Respond to individual invitations with a suggested speaker - entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs or investors as speakers for our entrepreneur series, or corporate executives for our When She Speaks series.
• On-Site Logistical Support: Supporting room and AV set-up and manning the registration desk for an upcoming event.
• Partner Support: Connect us with sister organizations across the valley as potential partners for a specific event or series, or on an ongoing basis as organizations.
• Feedback: We are always in search of excellence and your positive and constructive feedback helps us keep raising the bar.
  
• Other ideas you might have to get involved regularly.

Jim DiSanto, President and General Manager, Earthrise Technologies Inc.

Jim DiSanto has experience in creating, developing, and introducing new business concepts, models and products; raising capital - over $70M raised in three early stage technology businesses, both equity and debt; building and leading teams, selling to strategic customers and partners, and building distribution channels through acquisitions. The majority of his experience is in enterprise software, mobile/wireless communications and applications, e-commerce, fleet and consumer automotive and telematics industries, and location based services.

Jim is currently serving as Executive Director and General Manager US, Earthrise Technologies, a business unit of Digisec Group.  Digisec is a leading Chinese developer and manufacturer of electronic platforms and devices for automotive telematics services, vehicle emissions monitoring and reduction, and fuel-saving technologies. He is also Executive Director of BBE BioEnergy which is constructing a biofuel processing facility and renewable power generation plant in Colusa County, CA. Jim has BSE degrees in Aerospace and Computer Engineering and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

As a FountainBlue clean energy program adviser, Jim speaks on and recruits for programs related to biofuels and the transportation industry overall.

Christine Hertzog, Managing Director, Smart Grid Library

Christine Hertzog is a consultant, author, and a professional explainer focused on Smart Grid technologies and solutions. As a consultant, she helps clients understand and navigate the intersections of emerging technologies and markets.  She is the author of the Smart Grid Dictionary, the first dictionary that explains the jargon, acronyms, and terminology used by utilities, regulators, standards organizations, and manufacturers. She has two decades of experience working with hardware, software, and services companies that range from small start-ups to multi-national corporations, and has recently been involved in the National Institute of Standards (NIST) initiative on Smart Grid Cyber Security standards requirements. Based in Silicon Valley, she is a regular presenter at industry conferences and blogs about the challenges and opportunities that Smart Grid solutions deliver to the evolving electricity supply chain. 

As a FountainBlue clean energy program adviser, Christine recruits for software, mobile and smart grid presenters for our monthly programs.

Matt Lecar recently joined GE Energy as a Principal in the new Smart Grid Center of Excellence.  During a long career in the energy utility industry, Matt spearheaded new product development for Pacific Gas & Electric Company and developed and managed partnerships between US energy technology startups and the Electricite de France Group. More recently, he held investment positions with two venture capital funds, focused exclusively on clean energy investing.

He is a regular contributor to Greentech Media, Energy Priorities, Smart Grid News, and Metering International magazine, and wrote a chapter of "Inside the Minds: Energy Venture Capital Best Practices".  Matt serves on Advisory Boards for Smart Energy International, FountainBlue, and two environmental non-profits.  He holds a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelor's degree with high honors in physics and political science from UC Berkeley.

As a FountainBlue clean energy program adviser, Matt supports FountainBlue's ongoing clean energy and Tech2Green events with program, outreach and strategic input and advice.

Tom Thayer is the Clean Tech Open Advocate for alumni companies in the transportation segment.  Alumni companies are those that achieved semi-finalist or finalist levels in CTO's annual competitions.  Previously, he has worked for high tech companies, reaching VP/ GM and VP Marketing positions at Covad Communications and Xerox. Currently, he has been providing strategic consulting services to high tech and clean tech companies. He holds graduate degrees in both environmental science and business.

As a FountainBlue clean energy program adviser, Tom supports FountainBlue's ongoing clean energy and Tech2Green events with program, outreach and strategic input and advice and has even stepped in to facilitate programs.

Carl Fricke built a two-person business, Levine Fricke Inc, into a nationally-ranked 250 person environmental engineering firm with $36M+ in revenue using only $2,000 in capital.  He was co-founder and Managing Member of CIMA Capital, becoming the Master Agent for UPS Capital and its international trade finance business in Mexico, Chile and Argentina, successfully processing $200M+ in ExIm Bank loans with <1% default rate. He led early growth of B2C collaborative e-commerce company started by a group of Stanford graduates, Isadra Inc, building some of the earliest online commercial shopping applications, before it was acquired by VerticalNet. Carl has raised tens of millions in funding, led strategic business and financial planning, and delivered dozens of strategic industry partnerships and key senior executive hires for more than 20 early-stage businesses and venture capital portfolio firms.

Carl currently serves as Managing Director for CFSF, a network of business catalysts and developers, an Advisor to Acuity Ventures, Member of CIMA Capital, and Trustee or Director for several non-profits. He is currently focused on large-scale energy storage; alternative energy, fuels and lubricants; electric vehicle development; and cloud-based technology for supply chain management, business intelligence for entertainment media, and image processing intelligence. Carl earned a BA from Augustana College and two MS Degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was awarded the Distinguished Alumni of the Year from the Department of Geology & Geophysics in 2003.

Nina Gerwin, The NRG Group

Nina Gerwin is Principal of The NRG Group, a management and marketing consulting practice that advises start ups on business and product strategies, and develops and executes marketing strategies and campaigns for corporate clients.  As a former start-up COO, Nina's background includes Comcast, Disney, HBO, Bare Escentuals, Architectural Digest and Bon Appetit magazines.

Nina maintains a steadfast, customer-centric foundation on which to build market share and profits.  She drives brand awareness and delivers customers with traditional, digital and social media with an expertise in consumer media and products (tangible and digital). Nina's areas of interest are mobile, virtual worlds / events / learning, social media, TV entertainment, online video and their convergence. She serves as a program adviser for FountainBlue's virtual worlds programs.

Barry Holroyd is currently CTO of Masher Media, which creates, produces, and distributes the highest-quality entertainment that yields long-lasting brands. Barry was instrumental in producing Masher Media’s first original IP property- an evolutionary new virtual world/MMOG, www.MyMiniPeeps.com targeted for kids ages 6-13.

Barry is an accomplished technology executive and serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of systems and product development in Web/Internet technologies, networking, databases, storage and distributed object systems.  Barry possesses a solid mixture of hands-on, management and business experience.

A U.C. Berkeley graduate with dual degrees in computer science and psychology, he spent his first 15 professional years in software development specializing in IT, networking and object-oriented technologies, culminating in a position at Oracle as the lead architect for the object-oriented infrastructure for Oracle's Interactive T.V. project.

In 1995, anticipating the need that almost every company would have for web development assistance, Barry founded and funded his own web development firm, Galatia, which he grew to 18 people, $1.3M in annual revenues and a valuation of $3M. Subsequently Barry managed teams both onshore and offshore (India and China), including software engineers, QA engineers, technical publications writers and user interface specialists. He led the development of a massive, n-tiered ASP aggregator at Jamcracker, a $70M product line at Symantec and a business-quality audio conferencing service at Vello Corporation.

He enjoys tracking the latest Internet, mobile and virtual world technologies, the social trends their evolution drives and the new business models that result. Barry serves on FountainBlue’s virtual worlds program advisory board, helping with program recruit, advice, outreach and strategy.

Sandy Orlando, High-Tech Marketing Executive

Sandy Orlando is the Vice President Marketing at SatoriTech. With more than twenty years of experience in high technology marketing and business development, she is driving the marketing strategy for this early stage IT Financial Management start-up.

Prior to joining SatoriTech, she was the Vice President and General Manager Wind River's JTAG and Compiler business where she led the successful turnaround, growing the business double market rate. Prior to Wind River, Sandy was the General Manager of Nortel's Enterprise Network and Service Management business where she led the strategy and product development for enterprise network and service management, including VoIP quality of service management. Sandy has also held a variety of marketing positions at Optimal Networks, Compuware, N.E.T, Ungermann-Bass, and Novell. Sandy has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara and an MBA from Santa Clara University. She is also a program adviser for FountainBlue's high tech entrepreneur forums.

Mr. Dan Sharoni is a strategic architect and  subject matter expert (SME) in the emerging enterprise mobility ecosystem. He focuses on aligning growing enterprise analytics, productivity and security requirements with transformative smart mobile devices, such as iPhone and iPad. Mr. Sharoni was the Emerging Enterprise Mobility Lead at Accenture Technology Labs as an executive, technology innovator and project manager. He has over ten years of experience in emerging mobility, wireless network, Web 2.0,  multimedia & collaboration and the complete Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).  He has brought wide and deep architectural knowledge in leading enterprises including Accenture, Hewlett Packard and Adobe.  Mr. Sharoni holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel and remains current in technology innovations with his continuing education coursework at UC Berkeley and Stanford University.

Mr. Sharoni serves on FountainBlue's High Tech Program Advisory Board, specifically supporting our annual cloud and security event and our business analytics series.

Dennis Shiao, Director of Product Marketing, INXPO

Dennis Shiao is an evangelist, strategist and practitioner of virtual events. Currently, Dennis serves as Director of Product Marketing at INXPO, the leading provider of privately branded virtual events and virtual business communities.  At INXPO, Dennis is responsible for go-to-market strategy and execution, and for shaping product and platform evolution via the "voice of the customer".

Dennis provides strategic consulting to clients on their virtual events and has managed virtual event campaigns for Cisco, HP, Oracle and Microsoft, among others.  Dennis blogs about virtual events and virtual worlds at "It's All Virtual" and is a frequent author and speaker. Dennis serves on FountainBlue's virtual worlds program advisory board.

Aileen DeSoto has over fifteen years experience in consulting, project management, marketing, business development, and team building and has worked at both large and start-up organizations including IBM, Visa, Children's Hospital Oakland, and start-ups OneDemocracy, Linkify, Neurofluidics and Pelesend.

Aileen holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Duke University and a Masters of Science in Chemical Engineering, Product Development Program and Management of Technology certificate, from UC Berkeley. Away from work, she is Board Secretary for Expanding Your Horizons Network, a non-profit organization promoting math and science to girls, and enjoys hiking, skiing, traveling, and spending time with her two sons.

Dr. Geetha Rao, PhD, CEO, MyMedFax and Springborne Life Sciences, VP Strategy and Risk Management, Triple Ring Technology

Dr. Geetha Rao has over 20 years of experience in high-risk technologies includes being an entrepreneur, executive and strategic advisor to numerous early-stage life sciences ventures. She is the founding CEO of Springborne Life Sciences, providing advisory services and interim management to medical device, biotechnology and other life-sciences enterprises with a focus on emerging business challenges and operational excellence that meets best-in-class, international standards. She serves as Vice President of Strategy and Risk Management at Triple Ring Technologies, a medical device incubator and contract development firm. She is an internationally recognized expert in risk management and liability and has served on several international policy making bodies, and as an invited expert to regulatory agencies, including the FDA.

Geetha chairs the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab's Emerging Business Track for Life Sciences, serves on the Life Sciences Committee for Astia, the leading organization supporting women-founded and women-led start-ups, serves on FountainBlue's life science program advisory board, and has been a guest faculty on Stanford University's Biodesign Innovation Program. She is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, holds a doctorate from MIT and a masters degree from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where she was a Sloan Fellow.