Exploration of the Valley - Multiple Perspectives

Event Description

Silicon Valley is made up of many individuals from a wide range of backgrounds. The best entrepreneurs come from diverse countries and backgrounds, and care about a wide range of problems and technologies. Come learn from the wide range of individuals who make Silicon Valley an incredible place to build revolutionary companies.

Panelist Bios – To view the full versions of these bios, please visit our website.

Katie Hughes

Katie Hughes is the talent partner for DFJ and joined the firm in 2012. She works with the firm's portfolio companies on their human capital strategies including executive leadership, team-building, recruiting, compensation, onboarding, management, and retention.

Prior to joining DFJ, Katie was a managing director of Betts Recruiting, a leading provider of go-to market recruiting for venture-backed technology companies. Read more...

Vivek Wadwha

Vivek Wadhwa is a Distinguished Fellow and professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering and a Director of Research at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering.  He is a globally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post and author of The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent, which was named by The Economist as a Book of the Year of 2012, and of Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology, which documents the struggles and triumphs of women. Wadhwa has held appointments at Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, and Emory University and is a faculty member at Singularity University.

Wadhwa is based in Silicon Valley and researches exponentially advancing technologies that are soon going to change our world.  These advances–in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, computing, synthetic biology, 3D printing, medicine, and nanomaterials–are making it possible for small teams to do what was once possible only for governments and large corporations to do: solve the grand challenges in education, water, food, shelter, health, and security.  They will also disrupt industries and create many new policy, law, and ethics issues. Read more...

Tiare Irvine

Tia is an Innovation Architect at Cisco's Hyper-Innovation Living Lab, and an advisor with Stakeholder Ventures.  She has supported innovation efforts at organizations as small as two startup founders with just an idea and as large as multinational Fortune 100 corporations seeking to overhaul their legacy businesses.

Tia has evaluated hundreds of startups on behalf of the organizations she’s led and the corporations they serve, and advised dozens on all aspects of their businesses, from building a team to defining business models and go-to-market strategies.

Tia has also overseen the design and execution of programs that enable corporations to partner with emerging technology startups as a means of supplementing internal innovation efforts. Read more...

About the Silicon Valley Innovation Academy (SVIA)

SVIA exposes students to the Silicon Valley technology ecosystem through lectures, panels, in-person visits, and curriculum that discusses the unique resources for innovative ideas.