EQUILAR - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Communications
Belen is the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Communications and oversees operations and partnerships related to Equilar's corporate governance research. She also leads Equilar's Diversity Network (EDN) initiative focused on increasing diverse representation in boardrooms across the globe. Through the EDN program, Belen established partnerships with leading ethnic and gender diversity-focused organizations creating a "registry of registries" of board-ready executives. EDN partners include Catalyst, 30% Club, CalPERS and CalSTRS, Committee of Economic Development, among others.
With more than ten years in the corporate governance industry, Belen has extensive experience working with boards and senior executives from Silicon Valley start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Prior to joining Equilar, she managed executive leadership development and board recruitment practices where she worked closely with board leadership and potential candidates to place top board talent.
Belen often speaks publicly on board diversity and corporate governance matters, including events hosted by the Society for Corporate Governance, NASDAQ, Stanford Women on Boards, National Association of Stock Plan Professionals (NASPP), and Global Equity Organization (GEO). Her research on board composition and executive compensation has been cited in several regional, national, and trade publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Directorship, Directors & Boards, and Agenda.
She earned her Bachelor's degree and MBA from Santa Clara University.
Courtney is the Director of Research at Equilar. Starting off as a Research Analyst, he now leads operations related to Equilar's executive and director data research. With more than six years in the industry, he has extensive experience working with senior executives from Fortune 1000 companies on executive compensation and corporate governance issues.
Courtney has been cited in the New York Times and Washington Post for his expertise in retirement packages and golden parachutes. He's spoken at events hosted by E*Trade and Donnelly Financial Solutions related to trends in equity compensation and proxy disclosures. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Managerial Economics, magna cum laude, from UC Davis.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Founder
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Leadership Team
David has led Equilar since its inception to become one of the most trusted names in the corporate governance community. David has been recognized as one of the "100 Most Influential Players in Corporate Governance" by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), the Disruptor Award by 2020 Women on Boards and Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business. David speaks publicly on corporate governance and board diversity matters, including events hosted by The Conference Board, Deloitte, EY, HR Policy Association, KPMG, NACD, NASDAQ, NYSE, The Society for Corporate Governance and Stanford's Directors' College.
David serves on the boards of the Commonwealth Club of California, PGA Reach, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) and is a trustee of Committee for Economic Development (CED). He is on Nasdaq's Center for Board Excellence Advisory Board, Catalyst's Women on Board Advisory Council, the Women on Boards Advisory Council of the California Partners Project and the Advisory Council of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. David is a member of Young Presidents' Organization (YPO), Past Chair of the SF Bay Chapter, a founding member of the Council of Korean Americans (CKA) and former board member of the Wharton Center for Entrepreneurship and the Asian Pacific Fund Community Foundation of San Francisco.
Prior to founding Equilar, David was a Vice President in the Investment Banking Division of Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, a global investment bank that has since merged with Credit Suisse. Prior to DLJ, David was a management consultant with Bain & Company and also Kenan Systems, a telecom software developer acquired by Lucent Technologies.
David earned his M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.
As Engineering Manager at Equilar, Deepa builds and leads teams across 3 different countries in delivering software solutions for Equilar Web, Mobile, and CRM applications. Over the course of 15 years, Deepa has overseen the transition of Equilar codebases to modern component-based architecture. Deepa is passionate about growing teams and building complex scalable distributed systems running on Cloud platforms.
Prior to joining Equilar, Deepa worked as a Software Engineer in Patni Systems developing backend APIs for ESPN and Disney Mobile applications through the Visage Mobile SaaS platform. Previously, she helped build Java backend applications and data feeds for Livewire, Inc., formerly known as Acxiom Corporation. Deepa studied Computer Science Engineering at Bangalore University India.
LiMing is the Director of Engineering at Equilar leading the Insight team, which innovates and improves Equilar's core products. He is responsible for mentoring the Insight team which consistently delivers releases and product enhancements on time at Equilar. LiMing was also a key contributor in Equilar's transition from a traditional Data Center to the Cloud.
LiMing brings over 30 years of experience working on software solutions, and has deep expertise in startup and public companies. Prior to joining Equilar, he worked at InterTrade Systems where he developed the Electronic Data Interchange solution, which allowed clients to easily increase their business potential. Before that, he worked as a Senior Software Engineer for TravelNet (acquired by Reed Elsevier) where he set up travel booking platforms to service small to medium sized travel agencies. He started his career at GE Harris Energy Control Systems where he developed a next-generation power control system for a Finnish company. LiMing earned his Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida.
Linda Crawford has extensive experience driving innovation, employee success and customer success at the world's leading software companies. She previously served as the CEO of Helpshift, a venture backed company focused on AI driven Customer Support Solutions for B-C companies. She also served as the CRO of Optimizely which focused on solutions for Marketing. She spent nearly a decade at Salesforce in several executive positions including EVP of the Sales Cloud. Prior to Salesforce, Linda held executive positions at Siebel Systems, the company credited for creating the CRM industry.
Linda served on the board of Demandware (NYSE). It was acquired by Salesforce in 2016. She currently advises CEOs and leadership teams of venture backed companies.
Job Titles:
- Manager of Corporate Client Services
As Equilar's Manager of Corporate Client Services, Luis focuses on developing relationships within our client base to improve adoption and the client experience for our core Compensation and Governance solutions. He has been focused on elevating client experiences for 7 years, beginning with his time at Enterprise Rent-a-car, then with SolarCity and eventually Tesla. Luis also oversees Equilar's Top 25 Compensation Survey, working with multiple departments to ensure Equilar's Top 25 Survey database is as robust as possible.
Luis holds a BS in Accounting from the University of Redlands, where his senior thesis focused on Say on Pay and CFO compensation.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Finance
- Vice President of Finance and Accounting
Mei is Vice President of Finance and Accounting at Equilar and is responsible for leading finance and accounting operations. Prior to joining Equilar, she was the Director of Finance and Accounting at Camberview Partners responsible for corporate accounting and financial reporting to the firm's executive team and Board of Directors. Previously, she held Finance Director roles at RS Investments and Blackrock where she built and led the business financial planning, analysis and reporting functions, providing insight into business performance and strategic decision-making support. While at Blackrock, Mei also led several projects on finance processes and data improvement. She also worked at PwC in the Audit and Assurance practice, where she conducted and led audits of public and private companies across various industries, with a focus on financial services.
Mei received a B.S. in Accounting from San Francisco State University and is a CPA.
Peter MacDonald is a leader in structuring and managing corporate partnerships. He is currently at Snowflake, where he manages their cloud partnerships-AWS, Microsoft and Google-and oversees the corporate business development function. He previously headed up business development for Microsoft's search and advertising business and worked on a number of Microsoft's mobile initiatives. Prior to Microsoft, Peter held a variety of executive positions at various organizations including Yahoo, Netscape, the Boston Consulting Group and the National Academy of Sciences. Peter is a graduate of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford and Dartmouth College.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President of Products and Engineering
- Founder or VP of Products
Song is the Executive Vice President of Products and Engineering leading the Product and Engineering, IT. With deep experience in startup and public companies, he has a passion for creating products that users love. Prior to joining Equilar, Song was driving the award winning IoT (Internet of Things) platform as the VP of Products for People Power Company; and he built and drove the mobile team that created applications for the managed corporate travel industry at Deem, Inc. That team successfully created over 100 branded mobile applications for 4 mobile platforms in 9 languages; winning the GBTA award for best Business Travel application in 2012.
Song has been a founder or VP of Products in several startup companies addressing complex problems such as document collaboration on mobile devices (Soonr.com); unstructured data mining and categorization (iMiner); digital media management and distribution (Mediabolic); and dynamic website development (QuickSite). He is a named inventor in six (6) technology patents. He started his career at Borland International as a System Engineer and later as the Sr. Product Manager for category defining products such as Quattro Pro Spreadsheet and dBASE for Windows. Song studied Electrical Engineering and Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2016, he completed the Advanced Computer Security Professional Certification at Stanford University.
Job Titles:
- Corporate Secretary
- Vice President of Administration
Steve is the Vice President of Administration at Equilar leading HR and administration as well as contracts management and internal legal functions. Prior to joining Equilar, Steve spent 13 years at Live365, an Internet radio company, building and leading the HR department while also serving as the head of compliance and reporting. Steve brings over 15 years of HR and administrative experience including immigration and crisis resolution along with expertise in contracts management.
Steve also serves as the Corporate Secretary for Equilar and manages all aspects of the corporate governance for the company. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
As Director of Engineering at Equilar, Titu leads the global engineering teams responsible for API and data service. His team's primary focus is researching, evaluating and implementing technologies ensuring that Equilar's technology stack is performant and scalable. Since 2007, Titu has held various engineering roles developing and leading software solutions for data ingestion, visualization, and delivery across web, mobile, and CRM platforms. His expertise including data engineering, cloud, and search technologies enabled Equilar's migration from traditional data centers to a modern cloud platform.
Titu came to Equilar from Exilant technologies where he developed mobile and enterprise applications focused on retail, IT, and HR, for leading Fortune 500 companies. He earned his Master's degree in Computer Engineering from Florida International University, Miami in 2004.
Job Titles:
- Director of Sales
- Director of Sales and Client Services
As Director of Sales and Client Services at Equilar, Will leads the sales organization across new business, strategic partnerships, board services and account management teams. His primary focus is helping the C-Suite and boards of public companies embrace a data-first strategy for tackling executive compensation, director recruitment and other major corporate governance challenges.
Since 2017, Will has held roles leading client services and strategic partnerships while also spending time on the new business team as an Account Executive. He developed extensive experience in governance and compensation through his work with public company boards, C-Suite executives, consultants and institutional investors.
Will came to Equilar from CDW where he spent three years advising high growth companies on technology challenges and strategies focused on data center architecture, cyber security and cloud adoption.