Malia Mills is head of her own company, Malia Mills. While the company focuses on swimwear design, it bills itself as a beauty company and the company\'s mission is \"to produce collections of items which inspire women to look in the mirror and see what is right instead of what is wrong.\" In 1993, Mills won the Vidal Sassoon Excellence in New Design award for her innovative designs. Prior to starting her own business, Malia Mills worked as an assistant designer for Jessica McClintock, Inc. Malia Mills is a graduate of Cornell University.
Matt Russo is the Managing Partner of Northwestern Mutual\'s midtown Manhattan office. In 1995, Russo joined the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network as a financial representative, concentrating his market within the medical field and the hospitality industry. As a financial representative, he had achieved Forum honors since 2000, and had been the recipient of numerous individual sales awards. In 1999, Russo was appointed Managing Director of The North Shore Group in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Under his direction, The North Shore Group had been awarded the District Network Office Growth Award for the last 6 years, and the Outstanding Achievement in Recruiting and Selection for the last seven years. Matt Russo received a Bachelor of Science in Hotel and Restaurant Administration in 1990 from Cornell University.
<p>Debbie Marquardt is the Global Franchise Marketing Director for Procter & Gamble Professional, the away-from-home division of Procter & Gamble that provides cleaning products and solutions for the Foodservice, Hospitality and Building Cleaning & Maintenance businesses. </p> <p>Debbie Marquardt has worked at P&G for more than 15 years on a variety of marketing assignments on Crisco, Jif, Charmin, NA Marketing Innovation and P&G Professional. </p> <p>Marquardt graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Education and then from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern with a Masters of Business Management in Marketing and Finance. </p>
Rob Erlichman is the Founder and President of Sunlight Electric. In addition to his role at Sunlight Electric, Erlichman is involved in industry-wide efforts to help accelerate the adoption of solar power. He recently co-authored a white paper featured in the Red Herring entitled, "What the Solar Power Industry Can Learn from Google" and Erlichman also advises The Clean Energy States Alliance on ways their member state solar subsidy program managers can implement standards and practices that level the playing field for manufacturers and solar integrators and ensure transparency for consumers.
Before founding Sunlight Electric, Erlichman was a technology marketing executive and entrepreneur, a management strategy consultant at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, and one of Proctor & Gamble's youngest brand managers at the age of twenty-five.
Rob Erlichman holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University in Applied Economics.
Randy Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon, where he was the co-founder of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). He was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. He has done Sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA), and consulted with Google on user interface design. In addition, he is the author or co-author of five books and over 70 articles and until recently, was the director of the Alice (www.alice.org) software project.
In August 2006, Pausch was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. He pursued a very aggressive cancer treatment that included major surgery and experimental chemotherapy; however, in August 2007, he was told the cancer had metastasized to his liver and spleen, which meant it was terminal. He then started palliative chemotherapy, intended to extend his life as long as possible.
He achieved worldwide fame for his "The Last Lecture" speech on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University. His "Last Lecture" was entitled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," and was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures at the university where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical "final talk."
The eClips team was deeply moved by Pausch's message and felt it would be appropriate to "eClip" the content of his talk into 2-4 minute segments so that educators would be able to incorporate pieces of it into their classroom presentations. In keeping with the video's creative ocmmons license, we are making it available for non-commercial purposes.
Randy Pausch received his bachelors in Computer Science from Brown University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Rhonda Gilmore began her career at the furniture design company Herman Miller. In the mid-1980s Gilmore founded her own sole proprietorship, Rhonda Gilmore Design Consultant, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Gilmore closed her business after six years to return to school and pursue a teaching career. Currently, Gilmore is a lecturer in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell. Rhonda Gilmore received her B.S. from the University of Cincinnati in 1982 and her M.A. in Interior Design from Cornell University in 1994.
Peter del Rio, a former head trader for Merrill Lynch, is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of The Interactive Custom Clothes Company (IC3D). Founded in 1996, IC3D is an Internet-based company selling customized jeans to a new Internet friendly population. The idea was to offer customized clothing online to solve fit problems that most people commonly find when shopping in stores. IC3D's goal was to create a 100% customer satisfaction rate by allowing customers to choose the styles of garments they wanted and fit them with a revolutionary computer generated sizing system.
IC3D is a technology company as much as it is a clothing company. The technological foundation of IC3D is its Artificial Intelligence (AI). Using a Genetically Engineered Neural Network (GENN) as a virtual tailor and patternmaker, IC3D creates custom patterns within minutes. This allows the company to quickly send patterns to a factory where each pair of custom jeans is created and delivered directly to the customer within seven to ten days.
Peter del Rio has a degree in business from Tufts University.
Matthew McCooe is Director of Columbia's Science and Technology Ventures Group. He manages Columbia's portfolio of more than 50 spinout companies and is currently structuring deals with another 15 start-ups.
Prior to joining STV, Matt successfully led several large, rapid growth operations, 3 of which he started from the business plan stage. Today, these businesses generate annual revenues ranging from $30MM-$750MM. Most recently Matt was the General Manager, as well as VP Sales and Marketing for a NYC-based communications and software application organization he co-founded. As GM, he led a team of 70 people, increasing revenues from 0-$30 MM per annum in less than two years. Earlier he managed product development, sales and marketing, and the global launch of numerous technology products for two Fortune 500 companies, Becton Dickinson and MCI. He currently serves as Board Observer for four Columbia portfolio companies.
Matt McCooe earned his B.A. from Boston College and his MBA from Columbia Business School.
Eric Hage is the Founder and CIO of Mohican Financial Management, LLC, with offices in Cooperstown, NY and Wilton, CT.
Eric Hage received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his MBA from Columbia University. Prior to launching Mohican Financial Management with his brother Dan in 2002, he worked for Smith Barney, Bear Stearns and Salomon Smith Barney.
Eric Hage received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his MBA from Columbia University.