April 4, 2013
Thursday
5:30 pm
Buchanan 1940

Mark Douglas, Founder, President and CEO, SteelHouse

Mark oversees the direction of SteelHouse with his 20 years of product development experience gained through repeated success in helping fast-growth companies with groundbreaking technology transition into emerging markets. He started in Silicon Valley at Oracle, as part of the founding team of the Oracle Applications Division, now a multi-billion dollar business. Shortly after, Mark founded a series of successful startups that resulted in IPOs and acquisitions by Informix Software and VMware.

He was also VP of Technology at eHarmony where he spent almost four years building personality matching technology that enabled eHarmony to become one of the most recognized brands in America. More recently, Mark built new technology for Rubicon Project as VP of Engineering.

April 25, 2013
Thursday
5:30 pm
Buchanan 1940

Chandra Krintz, Co-Founder and Project Director, AppScale;
Professor, Computer Science, UC Santa Barbara

Chandra Krintz is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She joined the UCSB faculty in 2001 after receiving her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Chandra has led a number of different research projects that have advanced the state-of-the-art in programming systems in ways that improve performance and energy consumption, and that ease development and deployment of software. Recently, her work has targeted distributed and multi-language runtime systems and cloud platforms.

Chandra has advised over 60 undergraduate and graduate students, has published numerous research articles regarding the implementation of programming languages in venues that include ASPLOS, ECOOP, HotCloud, IEEE Cloud, PLDI, OOPSLA and others, participates in efforts to broaden participation in computing, and is the progenitor of the AppScale project. Chandra's efforts have been recognized with a NSF CAREER award, the CRA-W Anita Borg Early Career Award (BECA), the UCSB Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, and ACM and IEEE Senior membership.

May 2, 2013
Thursday
5:30 pm
Buchanan 1940

Loren Bendele, Co-Founder and President, Savings.com

Loren Bendele is the CEO of Savings.com. He co-founded the business in March of 2007. Prior to Savings.com Loren ran Teleflora's Partner Marketing business, selling through key relationships including USAA, UPS, American Express, Sears, JC Penney, American Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, and other large partnerships. Loren started his career with Dow Chemical, initially as a chemical engineer.

He then joined The Boston Consulting Group where he provided strategy/management consulting services for industries including airline, health care, software and telecommunications. He has also worked as an Internet technology consultant focusing on strategy, business development, fund raising, product management and M&A for companies ranging in size from emerging ventures to established companies such as Earthlink and WeddingChannel.com. Loren graduated with honors in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University.

May 9, 2013
Thursday
5:30 pm
Buchanan 1940

David Waxman, Managing Partner, TenOneTen

David has nearly two decades of experience as a technology entrepreneur. After graduating with a masters degree from MIT's Media Lab in 1995, David co-founded Firefly, an early pioneer in personalization and privacy technology. Firefly was acquired by Microsoft in 1998 where the company's flagship product became the Microsoft Passport, the web's first unified authentication and identity platform. After Firefly, David co-founded PeoplePC, a company dedicated to simplifying the process of joining the online world. PeoplePC served over 600,000 individual subscribers as well as Fortune 100 corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Vivendi Universal and Delta Air Lines. PeoplePC went public in 2001 and was acquired by Earthlink in 2002.

In 2005, David co-founded SpotRunner, a Los Angeles-based technology company that worked to revolutionize the way advertising was created, planned, bought and sold. Since leaving Spot Runner, David has dedicated his time to helping entrepreneurs realize their goals. He is an active mentor in several prominent Los Angeles accelerators, including Amplify, LaunchPad LA, and MuckerLab. David lives in LA with his wife, three daughters, and a ludicrous number of pets.

May 23, 2013
Thursday
5:30 pm
Buchanan 1940

Bill Grundfest, Writer, Professional Comedian, Producer

Bill has won a Golden Globe Award, and has been nominated for an Emmy Award three times. He has produced a number of television shows, including Mad About You and That's Life. He has been the primary writer on a number of awards shows, including: the Academy Awards, the Emmy Awards, the Grammies and the People's Choice Awards.

Prior to going to Hollywood, Grundfest lived in New York, where he founded The Comedy Cellar, a 150-seat comedy club in Greenwich Village. It opened in 1982 and is still in operation. Grundfest, a former stand-up comedian himself, showcased then-unknown comedians such as Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Rita Rudner, Ray Romano and Dave Atell. Jon Stewart credits Grundfest with discovering him and guiding his early career. Established stars such as Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld would "drop in" unannounced to perform.