DECODE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Managing Counsel at McKinsey & Company
Dr. Christyna Serrano received her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. (Go Bears!) She has over ten years of teaching, curriculum, and program design experience. Christyna has collaborated with, developed, and managed faculty, technical experts, thought leaders, and content partners to produce dynamic, interactive, and transformative learning experiences and educational solutions (in-person and online) -- most recently as Director, Faculty Engagement at Singularity University, and now as Strategic Content Partner Lead at Udacity. Christyna is also a passionate educator and teaches a Berkeley Changemaker™course in the Graduate School of Education, and, in the coming fall semester, will also be co-teaching EdTech & Entrepreneurship at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET) in the College of Engineering.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Marketing at Capital Group
Job Titles:
- Founder of Moonshots in Education and 'Godmother of Silicon Valley'
Esther Wojcicki is famous for three things: teaching a high school class that has changed the lives of thousands of kids, inspiring Silicon Valley legends like Steve Jobs, and raising three daughters who have each become famously successful. What do these three accomplishments have in common? They are the result of TRICK, Esther's secret to raising successful people: Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness. Simple lessons, but the results are radical. Esther Wojcicki is a leading American educator and journalist. Mother of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Fulbright scholar Janet Wojcicki, and 23&Me founder Anne Wojcicki, as well as a teacher and mentor to James Franco and Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Esther is widely heralded as the most successful parent and educator in the United States. Esther offers essential lessons for raising, educating, and managing people to their highest potential. She is the author of Moonshots in Education (2014) and best seller How to Raise Successful People (May, 2019). She is co-founder of Tract.app (2020) an innovative way to empower students by gamifying education using a peer to peer model. She also is working with UC Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship on a project called WOJ IT to teach engineering and tech skills worldwide using peer-to- peer coaching pedagogy.
Job Titles:
- Ex - Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft US
- Technology Veteran and Most Recently the Chief Technology Officer
Gina Loften is a technology veteran and most recently the Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft US. She is a thought leader with a track record for successfully putting innovation into practice, reimagining businesses, accelerating profitable results and building diverse high-performing teams. Gina has also demonstrated her expertise in mergers & acquisitions by identifying and integrating software and consulting companies, creating portfolios of new products and services, and driving increased market share. Gina has held executive positions in Research, Development, Sales, and Consulting Services at IBM and Microsoft. Her leadership impact has been characterized by leading businesses ranging from emerging to multiple $B enterprises.
Gina is on the board of Foursquare and NASDAQ:TTEC. She has also served on the boards of George Mason Research Foundation, Museum of Life and Science, and Rise Against Hunger. She is a sought-after speaker on diversity, equity and inclusion, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud computing, innovation, and leadership. Gina's work and leadership has been recognized in US Black Engineer, ExecutiveGov and Diversity Woman Magazine, as one of "The Elite 100" in Corporate America. Gina has also been published addressing topics of how AI can help mental health among veterans, the true value of data for government and how open source can bring agencies to the cloud.
Gina is a graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Electrical Engineering.
Job Titles:
- Investor
- Investor and Entrepreneur in Residence at Atento Capital
Hugh is an Investor and EIR at Atento Capital, where he focuses on enterprise SaaS investments in the EdTech, future of work and mobility sectors. Hugh is also the Co-Founder and Chairman of CommunityCode, an EdTech company which teaches computer science principles to thousands of diverse K-12 students, as well as educators and schools across the Southeastern US.
Prior to Atento, Hugh worked under Justice Beatty of the South Carolina Supreme Court, at the law firm of Carl F. Muller, as a management consultant, in the African off-grid solar industry for ZOLA Electric, and in venture capital for Plexo Capital.
Hugh earned his B.A. at Harvard College, J.D. at Columbia Law School, and M.B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business. He has been recognized as a 2015 Hive Global Leader, a 107.3 JAMZ 2015 Upstate Black History Maker, a 2016 Management Leadership for Tomorrow Fellow, a 2017 Consortium Fellow, a 2018 Forbes Fellow by Forbes Under 30, a 2018 Haas Social Impact Fund Award Winner, a 2018-2019 Rankin Fellowship Recipient, and a 2019 Beyond Yourself Fellow.
In his spare time, Hugh is a fitness enthusiast and licensed private pilot who loves to travel. He is passionate about community development, as well as driving economic impact and large-scale social change through technology and innovation in the Tulsa community and beyond.
Job Titles:
- Chief Privacy Officer at Google
- Google 's Chief Privacy Officer
Keith Enright serves as Google's Chief Privacy Officer and leads the global privacy legal team. He joined Google in March 2011. He has more than 20 years of experience in creating and implementing programs for privacy, data stewardship, and information risk management.
Prior to joining Google, Keith served as the senior-most privacy executive at two Fortune 500 online and offline retail enterprises, as senior consultant for a leading global consulting practice, and as General Counsel for a privately held advertising technology company.
Keith has been a featured speaker discussing online privacy and related subjects on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, CNN, NPR Talk of the Nation and other major media outlets. He has been a guest speaker at Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is frequently featured at industry events focusing on technology, privacy and data protection.
Keith serves on the Board of Directors of Zoom Information, Inc., and previously served a 5-year term on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. He is NACD Directorship Certified by the National Association of Corporate Directors, is a member of the Maryland Bar, and holds the Certified Information Privacy Professional certification from the International Association of Privacy Professionals.
Job Titles:
- CEO and Founder at Pulse
- Chief Executive Officer at Pulse Q & a
Mayank is currently the CEO and founder at Pulse. Prior to Pulse, he founded Ambient Technologies, Cooliris, and was most recently VP of Product at Capriza. He has an MBA from Wharton, and a BEng from McGill University. He currently lives in SF with his wife and two daughters.
Mike Grandinetti served as a C-level executive of 8 successful enterprise tech startups. Two went public on the NASDAQ. 7 were ultimately acquired by corporate strategics including IBM( twice), Oracle and Symantec. He's raised over $1B cumulatively. He also served a CMO of a NYSE listed company.
Currently, he's a member of the faculty at Brown, Harvard, and Rutgers, where he teaches Masters degree and Executive Education courses on innovation, entrepreneurship, design thinking, marketing and transformative leadership. He's been affiliated with MIT for over 20 years in a variety of capacities such as senior lecturer, judge, instructor and is part of the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium planning team and a panel moderator. In addition, he has numerous affiliations with UC Berkeley and many cross-Berkeley Innovation programs, most notably Program Development Fellow for the Sutardja Center of Entrepreneurship and Technology and as faculty member and judge for the Engineering Leadership Professional Program.
He's Co-Founder and CEO of Global Venture Catalyst. GVC has created a new educational model that helps professionals and top STEM and MBA students come together to innovate with industry collaborators for professional up-skilling, high impact design and development projects, perspective exchange and talent recruiting, primarily on projects focused on Data Science, AI and ML. Industry collaborators include Applied Materials, Dassault, Elkem, ETS, LearnLaunch, Medtronic and Zimmer Biomet.
He's a speaker on TEDx and has led over 200 hackathons and design sprints globally. He was founding managing director of the Boston Chapter of OpenIDEO and the StartupNext Boston pre-seed accelerator, eventually acquired by techstars.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Engineering at Google
Reza Behforooz has been at Google since 2004 and is currently a VP of Engineering focused on keeping users safe (Privacy, Counter-abuse, Identity, Account Safety). Previously, he spent a decade on product infrastructure to make it easier to build all Google products across development infrastructure, data storage, and shared building blocks. In his early Google years, he was the technical lead for the real-time stack for Gmail Chat. Prior to Google, he held various engineering roles at two Kleiner Perkins startups, Epiphany and Zaplet. He started his career at Microsoft as a PM for Hotmail. Reza holds a BS with Distinction from Cornell University and a MS from Stanford University, both in Computer Science.
Job Titles:
- General Partner at IOVC Faculty at UC Berkeley
Shuo Chen is a General Partner at IOVC (formerly Agile VC), and Faculty at UC Berkeley and Singularity University. She is also the CEO of Shinect (Silicon Valley-based non-profit community of 5,000+ engineers passionate about entrepreneurship), and Advisory Board Member of Yale School of Medicine's Center for Digital Health & Innovation. Shuo was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newson to serve as 1 of 16 voting members on the statewide Mental Health Commission, which includes overseeing $2.6 billion annually in state budget and advising the Governor or the Legislature on mental health policy.
In her venture role, Shuo has invested in companies now acquired by Goldman Sachs, Ford, Caterpillar, Binance and Dialpad. She has also helped 50+ startups globalize and expand into new markets, providing software for clients including Amazon, Apple, Google, Mercedes-Benz, NASA and Unilever among others.
Prior, Shuo worked at Goldman Sachs in investment banking, where she worked with clients including Alibaba and Tencent, as well as represented the firm on the Board of Women in Finance. Before that, Shuo was at PwC, where she worked on Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola and LinkedIn's $119 million acquisition of SlideShare. Shuo has also co-authored one of the leading books on financial regulations published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.
Job Titles:
- Chief Technology Officer at the University of California
- Chief Technology Officer at UC Berkeley
William Allison is the Chief Technology Officer at the University of California at Berkeley. He leads the University's cloud strategy, IT architecture, standards and innovation for the Berkeley campus and helps effect change broadly across the UC-system. He also acts as an adviser to startups at UC Berkeley's SkyDeck accelerator.
Bill serves nationally through participation in the Common Solutions Group and EDUCAUSE. He has been an ECAR expert on mobile computing, a reviewer for the EDUCAUSE Review, the Chair of the Enterprise IT Leadership Conference, and served on the 2015 EDUCAUSE National Conference committee. He attended Yale University where he received his B.A.