Caitlin Strandberg is an Associate at Flybridge Capital Partners whose investment interests and experience broadly cover companies and technologies across the information technology sector including ad tech, digital media, fin tech, and consumer internet.
Caitlin joined the firm in August 2012 from LearnVest, a personal finance start-up in NYC, where she served as Director of Business Development. Previously, she was the Associate Director of Business Development at Behance, a platform for showcasing and discovering creative work online. Caitlin was also the President and Co-founder of Slope Media Group, a student-run media organization based out of Cornell University that includes internet radio, internet television and a digital magazine.
Caitlin Strandberg holds a BA in History from Cornell University with a minor in Science and Technology Studies.
Lalana Janleka-Green is the Owner and President of Acorn Technology which she and her husband founded in 1993. Acorn Technology manufactures industrial drive control systems and has subsidiaries that manufacture marine electrical equipment (under the name METCO) and industrial HVLS ceiling fans (under the name Humongous Fan).
Acorn Technology has won the Weatherhead 100 Award (awarded to the 100 fastest growing companies in Northern Ohio) for four consecutive years with sales of over $5 million.
Lalana Janleka-Green is a graduate of Cornell University.
Cyndi Slothower & Linda VanNederynen are co-founders of Quilters Corner. Quilters Corner was opened by 5 women in the summer of 1995 and the business has been expanding ever since.
In addition to a shared love of quilting, the founders all also have busy families, with a total of fifteen children among them. As a group they came together with varied professional backgrounds and life experiences: math teacher, farmer, paralegal, traffic engineer, arts administrator. None had owned or run a business before but all had a passion for quilting.
Jacqueline Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund. In this role, Jacqueline Novogratz is responsible for the vision behind Acumen Fund's unique approach to using philanthropic capital to invest in scalable businesses that serve the poor with life-changing goods and services.
She has led the Acumen Fund team since its launch in 2001, and under her leadership Acumen Fund has invested $40 million in over 35 companies serving 25 million low-income customers in the developing world (as of April 2009). Prior to Acumen Fund, Jacqueline Novogratz founded and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership program at the Rockefeller Foundation. She began her career in international banking with Chase Manhattan Bank and she founded Duterimbere, a micro-finance institution in Rwanda.
Jacqueline currently serves on the Board of the Aspen Institute as well as the advisory councils of Stanford Graduate School of Business and MIT's Legatum Center. She is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow, a Synergos Institute Senior Fellow and has received honors including Ernst & Young's 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the 2009 CASE Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award and AWNY's 2009 Changing the Game Award.
Jacqueline Novogratz has an MBA from Stanford and a BA in Economics/International Relations from the University of Virginia. She is the author of the bestselling memoir, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, published in early 2009.
Kerry Trueman is an environmental activist who has written about edible landscaping and organic gardening for the Financial Times. She served as food editor for lime.com before becoming a sustainability blogger for Participant Media's takepart.com.
Trueman currently writes about wholesome foods, low-impact living, and sustainable agriculture for the Huffington Post, AlterNet, the Green Fork, Air America, and Open Left. She is cofounder of EatingLiberally.org, an Internet roots organization that promotes sustainable agriculture and progressive politics. Her most recent project is Retrovore.com, a Web site for farmers, gardeners, and eaters who favor conservation over consumption.
Ulla Kjarval is a New York City-based photographer and food blogger who advocates for family farms and grass-fed beef. With B.A.'s in History and Political Science from SUNY Albany, Ulla has worked in politics at both the state and federal levels. Along with her sister, she founded Sheepdog Print & Design, LLC, a company specializing in web design and social media strategy that caters specifically to rural interests. As the respected blogger behind 'Goldilocks finds Manhattan', Ulla has also contributed to blogs such as 'Goodlifer' and 'Civil Eats'. Ulla was the official policy and recipe advisor for the Grass-fed party. Her childhood on a farm in upstate New York sparked her life-long interest in family farms and the sustainability of a rural lifestyle. Ulla believes that social media holds many opportunities for farmers to promote their product and engage with the current food movement.
Susan Parker's comments are from the November 2010 Strategic Marketing Conference sponsored by the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University.
Megan Phillips is a Graduate Research Assistant at Colorado State University. Phillips's comments are from the November 2010 Strategic Marketing Conference sponsored by the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University.
Throughout her career, Pelin Wood Thorogood has been in the forefront of emerging technologies and trends. During her more than 15 years as a high technology marketing executive, Pelin has led the go-to-market strategy for WebSideStory's on-demand online marketing suite (acquired by Omniture), extended Peregrine Systems' enterprise software business (acquired by HP) into the web-based employee self service (ESS) category, and in the mid 90s, launched one the very first mobile B2B applications designed for the Windows CE platform. Her success with venture backed start-ups, rewarding creativity and speed, as well as public companies that thrive on process and fiscal discipline underscore the diversity of her skills and the strength of her approach. Currently Pelin sits on boards and advises new media and cloud computing companies focused on solving sales and marketing problems - Online Marketing and Media Company Online Marketing Connect; Sales Intelligence CompanyInsideView; Inbound Marketing Company Eightfold Logic, Content Delivery Network Limelight Networks; Web Analytics Consulting Company Technology Leaders; - and serves a virtual Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. Pelin was also instrumental in defining theSales 2.0 Movement. She is a regular speaker and author on Social Selling, Establishing a Culture of Measurement, and Sales and Marketing Alignment and is recognized for her passion for the subjects by technology analysts and pundits alike. Most recently, Pelin was the Senior Vice President of Marketing for WebSideStory, a leading provider of real-time, multi-channel analytics solutions. Pelin holds a Bachelor of Science in Operations Research, Master of Engineering and MBA degrees, all from Cornell University. Her comments are from the November 2010 Strategic Marketing Conference sponsored by the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University.