John Ewen is Senior Vice President in Corporate Finance and Investment Banking at Ardour Capital Investments, LLC.
Prior to joining Ardour, Ewen was portfolio manager at Bank von Ernst AG Liechtenstein where he focused on renewables and sustainability. Before that role, he served as Project Manager for New Business-Mining Sensing Systems at Hilti AG which led to filing of a number of German and international patents. Ewen has also worked as a Geophysicist at CGAS Exploration, Inc.
John Ewen holds a BS in Environmental Systems Technology from Cornell University and a MS in Geophysics from Ohio State University.
Jim Lyons is the CTO of Novus Energy Partners. He recently took this position after a 30 year career with General Electric. At GE, he was the corporate champion behind GE's 2002 entry into the wind energy business - the company's most successful startup with estimated 2008 revenues of $6B.
Jim Lyons received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his Masters in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and his PhD from Cornell University.
Mark Stowers is the Vice President of Research and Development for POET Research. At POET, the world's largest ethanol producer, Stowers is responsible for the development and implementation of the company's R&D strategy.
Stowers has spent the past 25 years in the biotechnology field, and has led the development and commercialization of bioproducts and bioprocesses for the agricultural, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
Prior to joining POET, Stowers was the president and CEO of MBI International, the VP of marketing and business development at Seminis; a business director at Monsanto; and a technology manager at Eastman Kodak.
Warren Packard is a Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He currently serves on the Boards of Anagran, CastTV, EoPlex, Media Lario, Microfabrica, Primet Precision Materials, and SeaMicro. Warren also leads the firm's investments in BinOptics, CallGate, Imago Scientific Instruments, ooma, YeePay, and Zon Networks.
Prior to joining the firm, Warren co-founded Angara Database Systems, a main memory relational database company, which was acquired by Personify. Prior to co-founding Angara, he was an Associate at Institutional Venture Partners, investing in early-stage technology companies. Before IVP, Warren was a Senior Principal Engineer in the Advanced Product Development Group at Baxter International.
Warren Packard is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University and holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering: Smart Product Design. He received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.
Kelsey Kohler is the CEO of Digital Certainty, LLC. Digital Certainty is a cyber security and forensics company.
Prior to forming Digital Certainty, Kohler served as the Executive Director of the Watervliet Innovation Center, a business accelerator focused on growing a select group of New York's technology ventures.
Kohler also served in business developmnet at GE's Global Research Center and spent eight years with Accenture.
Kelsey Kohler received her undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University and her MBA from Cornell University.
Kirsten Johnston Barker is President and Co-Founder of digital media company, Prendismo. In addition, she is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at KensaGroup,a conception-stage development group.
Barker has aggressively lead the operational and tactical efforts of Prendismo as it has transitioned from a ten-year academic research initiative within Cornell University called eClips to a high growth commercial enterprise.
Previously, Barker served as Chief Information Officer at NSF International, Senior Director at Solucient (a healthcare software company) and as a consultant at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).
Kirsten Barker received a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University and a M.S. in Business and Information Technology from Johns Hopkins University.
Jay Fluegel is Vice President of Product Development at Event Innovation. In this role, Fluegel shepherds the product roadmap and leads the development team. His responsibilities include crafting detailed product requirements, managing a team of over 50 developers, and defining the architectural direction of the company's platform and products.
Prior to Event Innovation, Fluegel spent ten years at Microsoft in product development, management and strategic planning roles for some of the largest online services on the planet. He played a primary role in architecting and launching "Windows Live", combining the best of MSN web and Windows PC experiences into a single offering. As an international suite of services, Windows Live caters to over 430 million users with 33 languages in over 50 countries including Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger, Spaces and Events. He led strategic partnerships enabling Ebay, ESPN, Citibank, Match.com and several others to achieve their primary goals and business objectives.
Fluegel began his career as Director of Business Operations at Jump Networks which developed the Web's first free, completely-connected calendar, email and address book service, and was later acquired by Microsoft to bring that technology to Hotmail.
Jay Fluegel obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University and a MBA in Technology Management from The University of Washington.
Steve Gilfus is the Chairman and CEO of Event Innovation. Gilfus, together with Event Innovation's President Ron Dinwiddie, developed the idea and software design for Event Innovation, founding the company in 2007 to provide sports, entertainment and arts venues with better information about attendees and attendees with a better overall experience at events.
Gilfus is a serial entrepreneur, business leader, and noted software designer and inventor. Prior to founding Event Innovation Steve was co-founder of D.C based Blackboard Inc. (nasdaq:BBBB). Blackboard's flagship products are used by millions of instructors and students across more than 3,600 institutions in 70 countries. He has been noted as being instrumental to the development of the eLearning market space and making Blackboard a leading provider of e-Learning software and services.
Steve Gilfus received a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University where he was an academic scholar and founder of the Cornell Entrepreneur Organization.
Colleen Wainwright is a writer-speaker-illuminator who started calling herself "the communicatrix" when she hit three hyphens. She consults one-on-one with solopreneurs about their online marketing presence and creates content for an alarmingly large number of online outlets.
Wainwright spent 10 years as an award-winning TV copywriter at Young & Rubicam crafting ads for brands like Wheaties, Gatorade and Jell-O, and another 10 acting in them as a performer. Wainwright now spends her time teaching other creative souls how to talk about what they do in a way that wins them attention, work and satisfaction.
Colleen Wainwright is a graduate of Cornell University.