
Jeff Saperstein is an author, teacher, consultant, and enabler in how technology can be used to create growth in regional economic development and success for organizations. His just-released book with co-author Hunter Hastings is Bust the Silos: Opening Your Organization for Growth.
His books and case studies are focused upon best practices for innovation. “Toyota: Driving the Mainstream Market to Purchase Hybrid Electronic Vehicles” is one of the top ten most popular case studies published by Ivey Business Cases for Business Schools. He has worked with governments, corporations, and NGOs to use marketing to increase growth. Jeff teaches writing and speaking at San Francisco State University College of Business and on-site at Cisco and other corporations. He teaches seminars on tech clusters and innovation at the European School of Management in Paris.
Moshe Gavrielov, CEO of Xilinx, has 30 years of executive management and engineering experience with semiconductor and software companies. He served as executive vice president and general manager of the verification division at Cadence Design Systems. Before that, Gavrielov was CEO of Verisity, Ltd., where he grew the company from a $4 million startup through to a $70 million publicly-traded company that was acquired by Cadence in 2005. He also held management positions at LSI Logic Corp and National Semiconductor and Digital Equipment. Gavrielov earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in computer science from the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa, Israel. He possesses five patents.
Joshua Fisher has worked for fifteen years in K-12 mathematics education as an editor, writer, researcher, presenter, and project manager. He currently works as managing editor for a middle-school publisher and professional development company serving school districts throughout the United States. In his spare time, he writes about education at his blog Text Savvy (www.textsavvyblog.net). Josh lives with his wife, Vicki, and his three children, Ryan, Corinne, and Benjamin in Cedar Park, Texas. Contact:textsavvyblog@gmail.com.
Shailesh Otari is an MBA student at Boston University. Prior to his MBA, he worked as a project lead at Syntel Consulting Inc. His expertise include systems and business analysis. Shailesh is passionate about new IT ventures and entrepreneurship in emerging economies.
Sai Kiran Kumar is a Business Development Manager for a global IT services organization. His expertise is in outsourcing advisory services and offshore-based technology consulting services. He has an MS in management information systems (MIS) from the University of Illinois and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.
Vaswar Mitra is an undergraduate student of architecture and has worked on conservation and rejuvenation projects as a trainee. He has won awards for his short stories and enjoys writing on and theorizing about architecture, art, and cinema.
Bruce McNamer is president and CEO of TechnoServe www.technoserve.org, a non-profit economic development organization that helps entrepreneurial men and women in the developing world to build businesses that provide jobs, income and economic opportunity. Before joining TechnoServe in 2004, Bruce was a senior executive/founder at start-ups Verified Identity Pass (Clear ID), Appfluent Technology, and Varsity Group. He was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. Bruce was also a White House Fellow at the National Economic Council and a Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay. He has an AB from Harvard and a JD/MBA from Stanford. He is a Montana native.
Narayanan Raman is a graduate student at Boston University School of Management. He previously worked with Wipro Technologies both in India and in the United States on information systems analysis and development roles. His interests include IT strategy and IT business analysis and development.