Event Archives

Patty McCord, Principal, Patty McCord Consulting
Date: Friday, February 06, 2015
Location: Santa Clara

Patty McCord, Principal of Patty McCord Consulting, joined us for this Regional Alliance meeting. McCord is an executive coach for CEOs and their teams to help in defining leadership and company culture. In the early days of Netflix, McCord decided to “write down the things we expect in people.” This simple idea led to an infamous document and philosophy now known as, “Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility.” Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook called it “the most important document ever to come out of the Valley.”

Rich Karlgaard, Publisher, Forbes Magazine
Date: Thursday, December 11, 2014
Location: Santa Clara

Rich Karlgaard is an angel investor, board director and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Life 2.0.  He released his second book, The Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Find Lasting Success in April 2014.  He is also the longtime publisher of Forbes magazine and writer of the Forbes column, "Innovation Rules."  Rich has been a regular panelist on television’s "Forbes on FOX" show since its inception in 2001.  He is also a serial entrepreneur, having launched two magazines (Upside and Forbes ASAP), the venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures, and Silicon Valley’s premier business and technology forum, the 7500-member Churchill Club. He is a past winner of the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” award.

Robert Sher, Founding Principal, CEO to CEO
Date: Friday, November 21, 2014
Location: San Ramon

Robert Sher is Founding Principal of CEO to CEO, a consulting firm of former chief executives that accelerates the performance of midsized companies by improving their leadership infrastructure. As a frequent speaker on the successful leadership traits and skills of CEOs of midsized companies, Robert has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, CFO, and other leading publications.

Louis Patler, President, The B.I.T. Group
Date: Friday, November 14, 2014
Location: San Francisco

Award-winning author, speaker and consultant, Louis Patler  brings pioneering technologies for identifying emerging business and consumer trends, organizational culture, and strategic initiatives to Fortune 500 companies, multi-national corporations, and foreign governments.  Louis' message is clear and impassioned: that conventional ways of doing business no longer work in the fast-forward, global economy of today.

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Joe Abraham, Founder, BOSI Global
Date: Friday, November 07, 2014
Location: Santa Clara

Joe Abraham is the founder of BOSI Global – a group of entrepreneurship initiatives including bosiDNA.com, BOSI Fast 50 and The BOSI Growth Fund.  A professional entrepreneur himself, Joe has started up, grown and exited three companies of his own and invested in over 20 small businesses.  He is author of Entrepreneurial DNA: The Breakthrough Discovery That Aligns Your Business to Your Unique Strengths.

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Steve Beck, Founder & Managing Partner, cg42
Date: Thursday, October 09, 2014
Location: Santa Clara

Steve Beck is the Founder & Managing Partner of cg42, a consultancy that was founded on the idea of helping businesses in high pressure situations rise to the challenge; to find growth when current prospects are at the most difficult. Steve's experience as FutureBrand’s Chief Strategy Officer, where he faced the challenge of building a global consulting offering and, as the President of FutureBrand’s North American operations, where he struggled with uniting a fractured culture in the face of mounting economic pressures provides him with the insight into the real and personal challenges his clients face everyday.

Alan Fine, Founder, InsideOut Development
Date: Friday, August 15, 2014
Location: San Ramon

Alan Fine is an author, international performance expert, keynote speaker, and the co-creator of the widely recognized GROW Model. Alan has spent more than 35 years freeing people up to do their best stuff and achieve their highest performance. Considered the pioneer of the modern day coaching movement, Alan has worked with many of the world’s most respected athletes and organizations such as IBM, NASA, Honeywell, Gap, and Coca-Cola. His thought leadership includes his recent New York Times Bestselling book, You Already Know How to be Great.

Mike Robbins, Author, "Nothing Changes Until You Do"
Date: Friday, August 08, 2014
Location: San Francisco

Mike Robbins is an expert in teamwork, communication, and the power of appreciation. He empowers people and organizations to work together effectively and be more successful. Mike has inspired thousands of people to reach new levels of awareness and success, both personally and professionally. Prior to his speaking and coaching career, Mike played baseball at Stanford University. He was drafted by the Kansas City Royals and played three seasons of professional baseball with the Royals before arm injuries ended his playing career.

Curt Carlson, Vice Chairman for Innovation, SRI
Date: Friday, August 01, 2014
Location: Santa Clara

Curt Carlson became President and CEO of SRI International in December 1998. Previously, he spent more than 20 years with Sarnoff Corporation, an SRI subsidiary that was fully integrated into SRI in 2011.  Carlson is widely sought as a speaker and thought leader on innovation and global competitiveness. He advises U.S. governors, prime ministers, economic ministers, and education ministers around the world on innovation, competitiveness, and educational reform. His book, written with William Wilmot, called Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want was selected by BusinessWeek as one of the top 10 business books for 2006.

Regis McKenna,
Date: Thursday, July 10, 2014
Location: Santa Clara

Regis McKenna founded his own high tech marketing firm, Regis McKenna, Inc., in Silicon Valley in 1970 after working in the marketing departments of two early semiconductor pioneering companies. McKenna is included in the San Jose Mercury News' Millennium 100 as one of the 100 people who made Silicon Valley what it is today. McKenna has written and lectured extensively on the social and market effects of technological change advancing innovations in marketing theories and practices.

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Baba Shiv, Professor, Stanford University
Date: Saturday, June 14, 2014
Location: Santa Clara

Stanford Professor Baba Shiv joined us for this Regional Alliance meeting.  Baba's research expertise is in the area of neuroeconomics, with specific emphasis on the role of neural structures related to emotion and motivation in shaping decisions and experiences. His recent work examines the interplay of the brain’s "liking" and "wanting" systems and its implications for marketing, innovation, leadership and decision making.

Russ Harrison, Founding Principal, The Leadership Group
Date: Friday, May 16, 2014
Location: San Ramon

Alliance Director, Russ Harrison, joined us for this Regional Alliance meeting.  During his 40+ year career, Russ has led both Fortune 100 and entrepreneurial organizations.  Russ was one of the early employees at EDS with Ross Perot, the first CIO at McKesson, developed Bank of America’s international banking systems, and was the founding President of American Airlines’ Information business.

Derek Lidow, Professor, Princeton University
Date: Friday, May 09, 2014
Location: San Francisco

Derek Lidow is widely-known as one of the world’s top experts on the electronics industry. His contributions range from patents to value chain applications for companies as diverse as Sony, Samsung, Philips, Goldman Sachs and IBM.  Among his many accomplishments, Derek is a successful entrepreneur who built iSuppli, a leading market research firm. Derek is currently teaching Entrepreneurial Leadership and Creativity, Innovation and Design at Princeton.

Bob Sutton, Professor, Stanford University
Date: Thursday, April 10, 2014
Location: Santa Clara

Famous author and Stanford professor, Bob Sutton, returned to the Alliance to discuss the lessons he has learned through his research into scaling-up excellence with many companies (Apple is a prime example) and writing his new book, Scaling Up Excellence: The Problem of More.

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Tom Kippola, Managing Director, The Chasm Group
Date: Friday, March 07, 2014
Location: Santa Clara

Tom Kippola, a Managing Director with The Chasm Group, joined us for this regional Alliance meeting.  Tom assisted in the early strategy development for several of the most successful tech companies of the last 15 years and also provided consulting and/or training for many well-known and established companies including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola, AT&T, America Online.

Adam Leipzig, CEO, Entertainment Media Partners
Date: Friday, February 14, 2014
Location: San Francisco

Adam Leipzig is the former Senior VP with Walt Disney Pictures and President of National Geographic Films who oversaw some of the most financially successful and iconic films ever – including March of the Penguins, Dead Poets Society, Good Morning Vietnam and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.  Now, as the CEO of Entertainment Media Partners, Adam provides informed guidance, dealmaking intelligence and relevant connections for corporations and prestige media companies to garner greater success in the marketplace.

Joe Saunders, Executive Chairman, VISA
Date: Friday, November 08, 2013
Location: San Francisco

As executive chairman and former chief executive officer of Visa Inc., Joe Saunders led a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories. During his tenure, Saunders strengthened Visa’s position as the world’s leading payments technology company. Under his leadership, Visa transformed from a private association of banks into a public company that completed the largest initial public offering in U.S. history in 2008.

Maynard Webb, Chairman, LiveOps
Date: Friday, November 01, 2013
Location: Santa Clara

From the start of his professional life as an entry-level employee at IBM, Maynard Webb has become one of tech industry’s most respected veterans. After working his way up through increasingly senior ranks at technology firms, he has held executive roles including COO at eBay and CEO at customer service technology firm LiveOps, where he remains chairman of the board. He has recently released a book, Rebooting Work: Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship, in which he talks about the tools needed to build a successful career in the modern age, and how it’s different now than it’s ever been before.

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Guy Kawasaki, Author & Founding Partner, Garage Technology Ventures
Date: Thursday, October 10, 2013
Location: Santa Clara

Guy Kawasaki joined us for this Top Team regional Alliance meeting.  Guy is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

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Christine Comaford, Author, "Smart Tribes"
Date: Friday, October 04, 2013
Location: Santa Clara

For over 30 years New York Times bestselling author Christine Comaford has been helping leaders navigate growth and change. She is best known for helping her clients create predictable revenue, deeply engaged and passionate teams, and highly profitable growth. She delivers these impactful outcomes as a result of her decades of building her own and her clients’ business plus her expertise in human behavior and applied neuroscience.

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