Current Advisors:

Jerry Shereshewsky
CEO, Grandparents.com

Jerry Shereshewsky may be the only marketing executive in the burgeoning digital technology field who's invented a new brand of soda pop. Then again, he has been associated with breakthrough marketing ideas in every phase of his distinguished career. In 1981, at the dawn of the modern computer era, Jerry ran the Atari account at ad agency Young & Rubicam. He rose to senior vice president, working on such accounts as General Foods, Frito-Lay, Johnson & Johnson, and Gillette.

As VP/marketing and special products at Bertelsmann Music Group, Jerry ran the company's sales promotion efforts and created one of BMG's first Web sites. During his tenure at direct-response giant Wunderman Worldwide, Jerry developed and launched Gevalia Kaffe for General Foods, the highly successful directly-marketed coffee brand. He even conceived and helped create a soft-drink brand, Mello Yello, for the Coca-Cola Company during a year in Atlanta. Jerry also served as a senior vice president at public-relations powerhouse Burson-Marsteller.

He helped make Yoyodyne the premier direct-marketing promotion company online and made it so attractive that Yahoo! bought it. Prior to joining Grandparents.com, Jerry was ambassador plenipotentiary to Madison Avenue for Yahoo! where he managed the B2B marketing effort behind Yahoo's multi-billion-dollar media sales business.

He is on the board of directors of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and the advisory board for the AdCenter at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, where he received his degree in Russian History as well as serving on the dean's advisory board at the School of Business. Jerry lives in Purdys, N.Y., with his wife, Catherine, and two boxers (Bert & Ernie). He has two daughters, Beryl and Lexi.

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Porter Gale
Vice President of Marketing, Virgin America

Porter Gale is an innovative marketing strategist and out-of-the-box thinker with nearly 20 years of experience working in marketing, advertising and independent filmmaking. Prior to Virgin America, Porter ran the Porter Gale Group where she spearheaded a diverse array of projects. Her clients included Country Music Television, Blue Shield of California and Delta Dental.

Porter also held the post of General Manager at Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners where she worked with a variety of clients including Vegas.com, Coach, Snapple Natural Beverages, Van Cleef & Arpels, Judith Leiber and Grand Marnier to name a few. Porter is a member of the Board of Directors for The San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau. In the independent film world, Porter has produced or directed documentaries that have aired on Lifetime, PBS, Channel 4/England and in film festivals around the globe.

Porter's recent film work has been honored by the Directors Guild of America, The Academy of Motion Pictures & Sciences and an issue of Filmmaker Magazine cited her as one of the top 25 up and coming filmmakers. Porter has a BSBA from Boston University and a master's in documentary film and video from Stanford University.

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Tony Nethercutt
Vice President of Sales, AdMob

Tony Nethercutt is a leader in interactive advertising and considered an expert in both media and creative targeting with more than 20 highly successful years of sales experience. Prior to AdMob Tony was VP of Ad Sales at YouTube (acquired by Google) where he led the hypergrowth of the advertising sales team. Previously Tony was Director of Media Strategies at Yahoo!, VP of Business for Carat Interactive and managed the DoubleClick Network Sales office in San Francisco. His television advertising experience included managing the San Francisco office for New World/Fox Television Sales and doing local sales for both KGO-TV/ABC and KGTV/ABC. Tony earned his BS degree in Business Administration from the University of Southern California.

Augustine Fou
Digital Strategist, Marketing Science Consulting Group Inc.

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Strategist at Marketing Science Consulting Group, Inc. a firm he founded in 1999. He has over 13 years of Internet strategy consulting experience and was most recently SVP of digital strategy at MRM/McCann Worldgroup. He is an expert in data mining, analytics, and consumer insights research, with specific knowledge in the consumer credit cards, packaged goods, food/beverage, retail/apparel, and healthcare sectors. He is an adjunct professor at New York University in the Integrated Marketing Department of the School for Continuing and Professional Studies. He earned a doctorate from MIT at the age of 23 and served with the New York office of McKinsey & Company.

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Jeffrey F. Naughton
Professor, Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Jeffrey F. Naughton's research is in the broad area of database management systems. He received the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991, and was named an ACM Fellow in 2002. He has published more than 130 technical papers and has been awarded 15 patents. He earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a doctorate in Computer Science from Stanford University. He served as a faculty member in the Computer Science Department of Princeton University before moving to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ashok Jain
CEO and Chairman, Teraburst Networks Inc.

Ashok Jain is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Teraburst Networks. He has over a decade of experience with successful business startups in the networking industry. A veteran to the Silicon Valley technology scene, Mr. Jain was the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Internet Devices Inc. (now a division of Alcatel). Prior to Internet Devices, he co-founded NexGen Microsystems Inc. (acquired by Advanced Micro Devices in 1995). Mr. Jain is an Advisor ... at Satwik Venture Capital Partners. He holds an M.S. degree in Computer Technology from IIT New Delhi.

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Rishad Tobaccowala
CEO Denuo
Member of Management Board of VivaKi

Rishad is the CEO of Denuo a Publicis company dedicated to helping getting Clients to the future first by making “tomorrow tangible today”. Rishad is also on the management board of VivaKi which oversees all the digital and media assets of Publicis including Digitas, Starcom, Zenith, MediaVest and soon Razorfish.

Rishad has over 26 years of marketing experience including over 15 years focusing on digital and the future of marketing during which he founded or co-founded a range of companies from Giant Step to Starcom IP to Denuo and served as the Chief Innovation Officer of Publicis Groupe Media. Rishad spent the first decade of his career at Leo Burnett.

In addition to his Publicis duties, Rishad serves on the board of directors or board of advisers of several companies including Audience Science, Recycle Bank, Visible Measures and Feeva.

Rishad has a BA in Math from the University of Bombay and an MBA in marketing and finance from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Munjal Shah
CEO & Co-Founder of Like.com

Munjal Shah is Co-founder and CEO of Like.com. Together with Burak Gokturk, he co-founded the company in August of 2004. Munjal is a serial entrepreneur who focuses on building companies from zero to millions in revenue. Prior to Like.com he was co-founder and CEO of Andale Inc, a provider of software to eBay merchants. While he was CEO, Andale grew from 0 to double digit millions in revenue. Prior to Andale, he held senior managemetn positions at Baan, IBM and startup Blaxxun Interactive. Munjal started his career in artificial intelligence, writing software for Agouron Pharmaceuticals that predicted the efficacy of anti-HIV drugs.

BusinessWeek declared Munjal one of the Top 10 up and coming CEOs in 2001. Munjal has been quoted in hundreds of magazines including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Business 2.0 and many others. Munjal won a Demo God award for the launch of Like.com in 2006. Munjal sits on the advisor board to a number of very early stage startups including: Yousendit, Auyptima (sold to Oracle), Pubmatic and MesmoTV.

Munjal is very active in the Entrepreneurial community. In 1996 he co-founded Round Zero, a popular networking forum during the Internet boom. He is a charter member of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneur) in Bangalore and writes a blog sharing his experiences as an entrepreneur here http://munjal.typepad.com. He received his master's in computer science from Stanford University and his bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California, San Diego.

Yoav Shoham
Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University

Yoav Shoham has served as the Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is the recipient of multiple academic honors. Shoham is an authority on computer science and game theory – both from the academic and commercial perspectives. In connection with the latter, he has consulted widely on electronic commerce and has founded several successful e-commerce software companies – the best-known of which is TradingDynamics (ARBA).

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Advisory Board Emeritii/Alumni:

Rajeev Motwani
Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University

Rajeeve Motwani's research has spanned a diverse set of areas in computer science, including databases, data mining, and data privacy, web search and information retrieval, robotics, computational drug design, and theoretical computer science. He wrote two books including Randomized Algorithms published by Cambridge University Press. He received numerous awards, including the Godel Prize, Okawa Foundation Research Award, Arthur Sloan Research Fellowship, National Young Investigator Award, Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Kanpur, Bergmann Memorial Award from the US-Israel Bi-National Science Foundation, and an IBM Faculty Award. He was a Fellow of the ACM and served on numerous professional journal editorial boards. He served on industry and advisory boards, including Adchemy, Facebook Fund, Google, Jaxtr, and Kaboodle. Rajeev earned a doctorate in computer science from UC Berkeley.

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