Gold Sponsors
Silver Sponsors
Contributing Sponsors
Speakers

Chuck Erickson

Principal of CECO Innovation, LLC

Chuck Erickson is active in Business Incubation in Silicon Valley. Over the past 18 years, he has assisted over 150 companies in achieving market entry and in raising over $750,000,000 in growth capital. He is currently
working with a number of start-up technology ventures in agriculture, bio-science, alternative bio-fuels,
software, and transportation.

Erickson has had an active Executive Coaching and Mentoring practice since 1996. He has over 30 years of
international business experience. Currently, he is coaching and mentoring business owners in
construction and civil engineering.

Mr. Erickson holds a BSEE from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Judges

Brian Fitzgerald

Irish Innovation Center

Most recently, Brian was General Manager of Powells.com. He was responsible for the P&L and all business operations supporting Powell’s direct to consumer sales. Prior to his position at Powell’s, he spent 6 years as a full-time consultant specializing in organizational management, global operations and strategic planning.

Brian has held several operations management positions at Apple. He was a key member of the operations management team responsible for Apple’s substantial revenue growth during its first decade of business. Brian was Vice President of Worldwide Operations for Apple’s software company Claris/Filemaker where he was responsible for the company’s worldwide manufacturing, distribution, localization and service. He served as Vice President of Worldwide Operations at Intuit where he was responsible for the company’s global supply chain management, logistics, retail operations and direct-to-consumer fulfillment. Brian is a certified Kauffman FastTrac Facilitator, and is the Kauffman Program Director for the Steinbeck Innovation Cluster.

Gary Golomb

Gary Golomb currently leads New Technology Research and Development for stealth-mode information security start-up Cylance, Inc. Prior to this role, Golomb was the CEO of Proventsure, Inc. a company founded on technology he developed to provide objective and continual Risk Assessment for Fortune 5000 enterprises. Proventsure achieved a large and international customer base prior acquisition by NetWitness Corporation in 2009. Golomb helped advanced the technology portfolio of NetWitness through their subsequent acquisition to RSA, the security division of EMC. He has also served as the Director of Research and Development for the Dragon Network Intrusion Detection System and several other roles in the computer forensics industry.

Golomb served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a Recon Marine in a direct action platoon in 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company and deployed internationally as part of the Special Operations team of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Brooks McChesney

Brooks McChesney has been an entrepreneur and senior executive in technology companies spanning multiple vertical markets and industries. He has demonstrated repeated success in developing market-based competitive advantage in emerging technology markets. Combining a legal and business background he fully understands how to negotiate win-win agreements and turn them into meaningful, long-term strategic relationships with clear performance metrics and defined success factors.


Most recently he served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Intel and previously as the President & CEO of Vidient Systems, a Company he founded and whose core technology he successfully spun out of NEC’s Multimedia Research Lab, which produces intelligent video surveillance software used to secure critical infrastructure both civilian and military, transportation hubs and other sensitive facilities worldwide.

Marylou Shockley

CSUMB Business School Chair

Dr. Marylou Shockley is currently the chair and an associate professor at CSUMB Business School. She has been teaching at CSUMB since fall 2006. Professor Shockley was previously at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Her focus is on management, leadership, diversity, and corporate governance from a social responsibility perspective. Professor Shockley holds several degrees. In addition to attending Oxford University to obtain her doctoral degree at the Said School of Business, she also holds an M.S. degree in business from Stanford University as a Sloan Fellow. Dr. Shockley has also attended the University of Southern California for her MBA and the University of Hawaii for her BBA.

Jim White

CEO of JL White, International, Inc.

Jim White PhD is CEO and Founder of JL White International, Inc., the best selling author of What’s My Purpose?, A Journey of Personal and Professional Growth, and the creator of the What’s My Purpose Life Mastery Course. He is also the creator of The Circle of Success®, Jim White’s Classic Movie Series®, and The “Red Carpet” Tour™. These innovative events have attracted more than 100,000 participants worldwide, including Fortune 500 CEOs, management teams, entrepreneurs, governments, and trade associations.

Jim helps people measurably increase their success in as little as 90 days. By 1991, White achieved international recognition as CEO of Blount World Trade Corporation, owner and Managing Director of ACEC Centrifugal Pumps NV, Belgium, and as Vice President and Division Manager of Ingersoll Rand Equipment Corporation. He had bought, grown, and sold twenty-two companies, operating in forty three countries, most of which were failing companies that he revived and developed into thriving, profitable enterprises generating in excess of 1.8 billion dollars in revenue.

Coaches

Brad Barbeau

Assistant Professor

Brad Barbeau is Assistant Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship at the CSU Monterey Bay School of Business. His teaching focuses on the design and funding of startup businesses, and he is coordinator of the school's agribusiness concentration. Dr. Barbeau's entrepreneurship research is on innovative business models and his agribusiness research focuses on water quality regulation. He holds his MBA, and M.A. in economics and P.h.D. in business administration from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Brad is on the board of California Coastal Rural Development Corporation, and lender to agriculture and small businesses, and of GraniteCrete, Inc., a startup company which sells a green paving material. He is a member of the Monterey Rotary Club. He lives with his wife and two children near Salinas, California.

Matthew Coombs

Vice President of Information and Technology Resources

Matthew Coombs currently acts as the Vice President of Information and Technology Resources at Hartnell College, overseeing all administrative systems and new technology advancement. Coombs is leading a state-of-the-art Virtualization and Virtual Desktop Integration initiative at Hartnell that will result in optimizing and increasing access to technology to thousands of Hartnell students throughout the Monterey County Peninsula.

Coombs also currently consults with organizations that anticipate a need for enterprise integration, enterprise business intelligence or enterprise system deployment. He is active in multiple open source projects, such as Kuali, Drupal and Sakai. Prior to Hartnell, Coombs led San Joaquin Delta College to contribute and become active as one of 9 Kuali Founding Partners, serving 25,000 students.

Coombs has contributed his management and entrepreneurial spirit to multiple Higher Education software companies, from the early dot com start-up success Campus Pipeline, which raised over 110 million dollars, to managing product launches for the 800 lb. gorilla in the space, SunGard Higher Education based in Philadelphia, PA. Coombs played an active role in the development and introduction and management of multiple key Kuali and SunGard products including the largest market share portal in higher education. Early in his career, he also co-founded iShopper Inc., one of the first e-commerce experiments of the web.

John Dicconson

President

John Dicconson is the president of Tech Care Now, Inc, which develops, markets, sells and distributes customized technical support and training services for businesses and consumers.

Sharon Forrest

Sharon is a Lecturer in the School of Business, California State University at Monterey Bay and a development consultant with her firm, Global Philanthropic Enterprises (GPE3). As an entrepreneur, she is currently working on a global platform to engender connections amongst faith-based enterprise leaders, PhileoNet. Sharon’s expertise is in International Politics (M.A., Regent University, 2008) and Organizational Leadership (Regent University, M.A., 2010, Ph.D., 2016). Sharon’s research interests are in the nexus of government, business, and civil society to develop leadership for successful multi-sector collaborations. Her graduate research program included two summer semesters at Hertford College, Oxford University and prior study at Georgetown University in executive-level global business leadership and international finance.

Sharon’s professional experience includes over twenty years of development management and communications for high-profile international personalities, events, and specialized programs at the United Nations, the World Bank, NATO, the Organization of American States (OAS), Georgetown (Women in International Security) and Harvard University (Women Waging Peace), as well as, management of the development team at Physicians For Peace, an international humanitarian non-profit, as Director of International Development, the executive offices of the corporate foundation at Freddie Mac, a Fortune 100 corporation, as Chief of Staff, and Commonwealth Scholars, a federal Department of Education project under Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, as a public/private partnerships consultant. Sharon also served as Assistant to the former National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake and the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Donald McHenry at Georgetown University and as assistant to the Senior VP of international energy development at PA Consulting Group, Washington, DC. Sharon continues to leverage her breadth of experience to engineer multi-sector collaborations with a strategic global security focus and is currently developing a paper to be presented on women and collaborative leadership in the national security field at the International Leadership Association’s inaugural conference on women’s leadership.

You can read more about Sharon at www.sharonhathawayforrest.com.

Keith Holtaway

Originally from the East Coast, Keith Holtaway has been a Santa Cruz resident and entrepreneur for the past 35 years. Over time he started a variety of businesses, the last of which he ran for 16 years and employed over 100 people spread out over 5 locations in Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. He sold that business in 1997 and began his work as a consultant. In addition to his private practice he also works with the Small Business Development Centers at Cabrillo College and Cal State Monterey Bay. His focus has been on business planning and development for both startups and businesses in need of turnaround assistance as well as working with established companies on their annual plans.

Chris Khan

Managing Director

As Founding Chair for Joint Venture Monterey Bay and Managing Director for the Monterey Bay Green Chamber, Chris Khan is actively involved in developing the Monterey Bay region as the global showcase for sustainable development and innovation. As Principal of Khan-Bernier, a business services consultancy in the Monterey Bay region, and as Associate Director of the Marina Technology Cluster he has worked with over two hundred incubator clients throughout the tri-county area. A former Silicon Valley CEO and recently retired from CSU Monterey Bay, Chris now serves on a number of boards and steering committees in the region including Leadership Monterey Peninsula, “Loaves, Fishes & Computers”, and the Monterey Bay Regional Business Plan Competition.

Alex Kramer

Regional Director of the BEC

Alex Kramer, Director of the Business & Entrepreneurship Center (BEC) at Cabrillo College, comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Growing up, he recognized the value in being his own boss and launched his first business at age 16. In less than a year he grew his business to over $50,000 in sales and began hiring a team to meet demand. Alex graduated from Humbolt State University with a B.S in Marketing and Public Relations. While at HSU, he founded and served as vice president of the HSU Entrepreneurs Club. During his education, he trekked to many parts of the world -- including Spain, Switzerland and Italy, while he received his certification in International Business and Intercultural Communication. Prior to his role with the BEC, Alex worked as a certified small business consultant and coordinated the Youth Entrepreneurship Program (YEP) at the San Francisco Small Business Development Center, where he helped his clients generate over $500,000 in sales and investment.

Michael Jennings

Vice President

Michael Jennings is Vice President in charge of Government Guaranteed Lending for 1st Capital Bank. His department focuses on the origination, funding and servicing of small business loans which carry guarantees from such federal agency’s as the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Mr. Jennings also holds a seat on the loan committee of California Coastal Rural Development Corporation (Cal Coastal) a California chartered nonprofit public-benefit corporation servicing the financial needs of small businesses and farmers. He is also a retired police officer, having served his community with distinction with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, the Seaside Police Department and the Soledad Police Department. Mr. Jennings received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Molecular Biology from San Jose State University in 1986. He lives with his wife and daughter near Gonzales, California.

Bob Maffei

Business and Accounting Instructor

Robert Maffei is a Business and Accounting Instructor, a Samuel Moore Walton Fellow, and an entrepreneurial champion at Hartnell College. Robert Maffei's passion is sharing over 15 years of both private industry and entrepreneurism experience with his students. His experience includes a family owned business in manufacturing, Maffei Company to the world's largest cooperative, Diamond Walnut, to a pre-public company, Indian Motorcycle to publicly held companies, such as ConAgra and John B. Sanfilippo. He holds a BS degree from Santa Clara University and an MBA in Finance from Golden Gate University. His former business club is a five time Champion.

Lou Panetta

Professor for School of Business

Lou Panetta is a member of the Faculty in the School of Business at California State University, Monterey Bay. Lou is also an adjunct faculty member of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, instructing MBA candidates in International Business Planning.

He served on the Board of Directors of Communications Intelligence Corporation, where he served on the Finance, Compensation, and Audit Committees. Prior to CSUMB, Lou was President and Chief Executive Officer of Fujitsu Personal Systems, Inc., where he oversaw U.S., European, South American and Australian Operations.

Lou graduated from Niagara University with a B.S. Degree in Mathematics and completed the Advanced Management Program at Haas Business School, University of California Berkeley.

Mark Peterson

Principal, Peterson Communications   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Mark Peterson, Peterson Communications. Mark Peterson is a marketing, public relations and strategy consultant who has worked with more than 40 technology companies ranging in size from start-up, venture-backed to industry stalwarts Microsoft, Seagate and Micron. Mark's passion includes inspiring innovation and entrepreneurship and is part of the planning team for the Monterey Bay Regional Business Plan Competition

G. Stearns

G Stearns is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist educated in philosophy, psychology, religion and technology. As Founder of the Monterey Bay Sustainability Fund, he is responsible for funding & developing sustainability-minded start-ups and existing companies plus funding regional sustainability projects while pursing sustainability minded-investors in the Monterey Bay Area, Silicon Valley & Beyond. He is on the board of Joint Venture Monterey Bay. Stearns & More Capital is doing Fundraising & Business Development in Silicon Valley & Hollywood.

Eric Tao

Director

Dr. Eric Tao directs the Institute for Innovation and Economic Development (iiED) and School of Information Technology and Communication Design (ITCD) at California State University Monterey Bay. He teaches and researches in information technology, innovation, e-learning, and globalization. He often speaks at international conferences on global technology, innovation, and education issues. He serves as board member for several startups companies and as judge at business plan competitions. Dr. Tao received his bachelor degree from NSYSU in Taiwan, computer science master from New Jersey Institute of Technology and P.h.D. in Computer Engineering from University of California, Irvine.

Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson is a Business Econ grad from UCLA and a Big 4 (PriceWaterhouse) trained actively licensed CPA by profession. Mark has worked at the CFO level for over 20 years with companies ranging from small, emerging entrepreneurial companies to very large, mature operating and diversified holding companies. Mark’s work includes many years of SEC reporting responsibilities including 10-Q, 10-K and related financial statements and disclosures, sourcing, structuring and closing of debt financings and revolving lines of credit, investing and treasury work, tax planning and compliance, business planning and advising clients on accounting and corporate governance matters. Mark’s recent work with Guardian Global Technologies as COO/CFO includes ongoing hardware and software sales and development efforts in a SAAS model as well as strategic planning.

Mark is leading the Early Growth Financial Services practice in Los Angeles, focusing on the burgeoning Silicon Beach startup tech community. Mark’s current clients include: OUYA.tv, Wallaby Financial, Inc., Doctor Evidence, LLC, Monitor Mask, Inc., Enplug.com, Nevolution Digital, DoubleBeam.com, Mobile-XL.com, MarkedUp.com and PageWoo.com.

Organizers
Mary Jo Zenk
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