Aanand Krishnan currently works in the corporate development and strategic planning group at Symantec. Prior to this he worked at Dolby, where he focuses on evaluating and executing strategic acquisitions and investments, as well as corporate strategic initiatives. Prior to Dolby, Aanand worked as a technology investment banker at Morgan Stanley where he advised a wide variety of semiconductor, hardware and clean tech companies in financing and M&A transactions totaling over $4 billion. Aanand spent five years at Agilent Technologies' Fiber Optics division in various roles in research, product development, pre-sales and product management. Aanand has an MBA from U.C. Berkeley where he was the recipient of the C.J. White fellowship, a Masters in photonics from U.C. Santa Barbara and a bachelors in electrical engineering from BITS Pilani.

Fellow since

Abhinav is the Cofounder of Petasense - the Fitbit for industrial machines. He used to drive strategy for Nokia Messaging, a key service that is driving Nokia’s transformation into a service company. As a business development manager,tunities in BRIC countries and driving operator and retail strategy. Prior to Nokia, Abhinav was an associ he was responsible for partnering with social networking & media companies, scouting for white space opporate at General Catalyst Partners assisting a portfolio company with growth strategy. He has consulting experience at Booz Allen Hamilton, a mobile startup in New Zealand and a European seafood company. He has spent 5 years at Citrix Systems as release program manager leading a team of over 60 for the Internet security business and was awarded the leadership and team achievement awards. Abhinav has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management where he worked on startup ideas in social media and mobile and was a semi-finalist in the MIT $100k competition. He also has a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from University of Florida and bachelors from BITS, Pilani. Besides establishing the Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley, he has also founded the Sparks New Ventures program to mentor, teach & fund student startups.

Fellow since

Abhishek Agarwal is the founder and CEO of Prediken. A company built on an idea that most of the current data analysis does not provide actionable results and is backward looking. Through its innovative decision console Prediken provides a cloud based cost efficient solution to change that and bring a revolution in the way companies make decisions. Abhishek is a veteran of finance industry and has more than 10 years of experience in using data to make strategic decisions. An entrepreneur at heart he has been involved in 3 early stage startups. His first startup was created when his team was placed in the round of finalists at a venture competition organized by McKinsey in India in 2000. Abhishek has an MBA from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with Honors. Abhishek also holds an Engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), in India. He is also an avid mountain climber and can be challenged to speed hiking any day of the year. He is 2013 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley.

Fellow since

Aditya Vempaty, Sales and Marketing, Nutanix Aditya Vempaty currently works at an enterprise storage startup company, Nutanix (www.nutanix.com). Aditya directs the marketing strategy at Nutanix and is the Market Development Manager at Nutanix. Prior to Nutanix, he worked at Crossloop as a Product Marketing Manager. Aditya started his career at Dell where he got the startup itch and co-founded a startup named Medarwin. The product was a translucent LCD’s (40% transparent) that delivered dynamic ads. During this start up phase he realized the impact of meeting like-minded people. By conversing with other startup co-founders he gained broad perspective on a range of topics: how to disperse stock, how to gain early adopters and raise funding. Thus realized moving back to California would assist him in his start up journey by meeting and helping/getting help from other startup founders. Aditya has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Finance and Nano Technology from Georgia Institue of Technology.

Fellow since

Ajay Nilaver is Vice President, Product Mgmt at Fusion-io managing a product portfolio of $400M+ which represents most of Fusion-io revenue. Working part-time on a couple of startup ideas in the infrastructure software/systems space, one related to scale-out software storage systems and another focused on big data/virtualization. He holds BS from Vaishnav College and MBA from Santa Clara University. He is a 2014 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley.

Fellow since

Andrew Chen is Associate Technology Manager at Google Inc.Prior to Google, he worked as Product Owner Intern at Hubspot. He has also worked as software engineering intern at Google and Weiss Asset Management. Andrew was research assistant at MIT Media Lab. He also worked ad business analyst intern at Microsoft. He was Runner up in 2011 Apps for Communities Challenge for PlacesKidsGo web app.Andrew holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering and a B.Sc. in Management Science with a minor in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a 2013 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley.

Fellow since

Ankit is the CEO and Founder at Micello. He was selected to be a Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in 2010 and helped Co-Lead the Silicon Valley Chapter in 2011. Ankit continues to be an active advisor and mentor to new Startup Leadership members.

Fellow since

Azita Gandjei is the founder of Essatory, collaborative content creation platform. She is also designer co-founder for the startup, Innomation— predictive modeling tool for assessing whether a product will be a success with targeted customers. Azita has also worked at Oracle, MAAP Technology and Commerce One. She is an expert in Strategy and Product Management. She holds a degree in Political Science and an MBA in Marketing, Bus. Economics, Finance. She is a 2015 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley.

Fellow since

Ben started working part time as a software professional for a medical database software company named C.K. Software. At this four person company he handled all aspects of product management, development, documentation and customer support for several products. Later, he started his own software consulting business while working on his B.S.E.E.T. degree DeVry University in Phoenix. The projects at this business ranged from control of furnaces for a small semiconductor fab to web site development for small business. Ben spends much of his time traveling internationally for customer visits and vacations. In Jun 2012 he logged his 67th international trip in 10 years, during which time he accumulated over 2 years living outside the US. Besides travel, his other interests include web application development, sailing, photography, music video production and VJ (video mixing) for art installations, night clubs, and bands. He contributes occasionally as a volunteer team leader for San Diego Cares and he is a board member & the information office for the Balboa Theatre Foundation, which has raised nearly $1million to restored a rare vintage silent movie theatre organ in the San Diego Balboa Theatre. One of his lifetime goals is to own and actively manage a software development business. To prepare for this he strives to learn all aspects of software product management, project planning, development, deployment, legal contracts and customer support. He is 2013 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley.

Fellow since

DC Jayasundera, Co - founder, Rural Returns DC Jayasundera is a Social Innovation Fellow of Stanford Graduate School of Business, and co-founded Rural Returns, a hybrid social venture aimed at alleviating rural poverty among small holder farmers in Sri Lanka, by connecting growers of organic and fair-trade products from developing countries, with specialty/fancy food markets in USA. Sl2College.org and MoraSpirit.com are two separate social ventures founded by DC, stemming from his interests in international development and social entrepreneurship. DC entered Stanford University in California in 2005 to obtain his MS in Environmental Engineering, and graduate degree "Engineer," where his research focused on policy and planning in water and sanitation issues in developing countries. DC received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, where he grew up, and started his career as a Structural Engineer working for a company based in Oregon, USA. He also earned the Advanced Diploma in management accounting from Charted Institute for Management Accountants (CIMA)-UK. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in the Silicone Valley, looking forward to launch the for-profit arm of his hybrid venture.

Fellow since

Blind since age seven. Donald Hunter is founder and CEO of iVigital, a technology company based on the premise that Universal Access for the visually impaired means better access for all people. Using innovative application of wireless and smart phone technologies iVigital provides products and services to give visually impaired people around the world access to digital appliances for greater independence and job opportunities. Donald is a technology expert with more than ten years experience in software development and high-tech product management and marketing. He is driven to succeed and, since leaving Sun MicroSystems in 2005, has been running his own business coaching and consulting company, helping organizations and entrepreneurs connect with their passions and reach their goals. He is a frequent guest on the Small Business Advocate radio program, discussing how to increase African American entrepreneurialism. Donald’s favorite weekend activity is to prowl the hilly streets of San Francisco, sniffing out new and interesting places to devour succulent foods. Donald has an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and a BA in computer science from UC Berkeley, where he graduated with honors. He is 2013 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley.

Fellow since

Hari Dhandapani holds BS(Computer Science) from Regional Engineering College, Allahabad, India and MBA, Santa Clara University 2011. He has 10+ years in software development across a wide range of enterprise and system software and 5+ years in technical leadership roles. He is proficient in C, C++, Java and expert in various technologiesluding software development lifecycle, enterprise software development(application servers, databases, compilers), compiler concepts and optimization techniques (parsers, intermediate code, parallel programs), operating systems(UNIX, Linux, Solaris, SVR4), Symmetric Multi-Processing(SMP), multi-threaded concepts, security concepts(DCE, Cybersafe, NTLM),TCP/IP, device drivers, HTTP, HTML, CORBA, IIOP, OO concepts, J2EE(JRun, Weblogic), AWT, EJB, Servlet, JSP, JNI, JDBC, XML, XSL, UML, Clearcase, Sybase, Sybase OpenServer and connectivity libraries, Oracle, Eclipse SWT, JFace. He is 2014 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley.

Fellow since

Hilah is a woman of many talents. Graduating from Duke with a degree in International Studies, Economics and Journalism, she went on to work in video production and development at Discovery Communications. Now, she works at Interlude, an interactive video technology company. Lover of board games, fashion, and, like all good Israeli Minnesotans, competitive barrel racing. She is a 2014 fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in New York.

Fellow since

Hisham Anwar, Founder, E62 Studios Hisham Anwar is the Founder of E62 Studios, that is currently exploring gaming dynamics that increase social interactions during game play on mobile devices. He is also the Director of Global Technology Operations at Zynga, one of the world’s leading online gaming companies. Prior to joining Zynga, he was the VP of Business Development and Technology Operations at Mamapedia, CTO of Giftcast and AuctionHub, SaaS-based companies, and senior Director positions at Dorado.com (aquired by Corelogic), Moodsys and KLM. Hisham holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a Bachelors in Engineering from Boston University.

Fellow since

Huan Ho is the founder of Rallyteam, an employee driven collaboration platform for supercharging engagement, innovation and productivity at large organizations. Prior to Rallyteam, he worked at Microsoft, CGI, Telus and Direct Energy. He has been involved in designing and developing various enterprise financial, trading, risk and forecasting systems from ground up. In addition to software development, Huan spent the last 5 years leading a team of engineers and analysts to manage a multi-million dollar energy portfolio. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Alberta. In his spare time, he enjoys skiing, snowboarding and beach volleyball. Huan is passionate about bringing more innovation and collaboration to the world. He is a 2014 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program of Silicon Valley.

Fellow since