Robert E. Bixby is a noted authority on the theory and practice of optimization. He is Research Professor of Management in Rice University's Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management and Research Professor and Noah Harding Professor Emeritus of computational and applied mathematics at Rice University's Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics.
Dr. Bixby has held academic positions at Cornell University, University of Kentucky, and Northwestern University. He has held visiting faculty positions at University of Wisconsin-Madison; Institut fur Operations Research in Bonn, Germany; Institut fur Mathematik der Universitat Augsburg, Germany; and, he received a Humboldt Foundation Senior Scientist Award which supported his work at the Konrad-Zuse Zentrum fur Informations Technik and the Technische Universitat in Berlin, Germany.
Dr. Bixby is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Matheon DFG Research Center, Mathematics for Key Technologies (www.matheon.de). He is formerly Vice President and President of the Mathematical Programming Society and co-founder of CPLEX Optimization. CPLEX Optimization was sold to ILOG, Inc. in 1997. Dr. Bixby was an ILOG board member from 1997 to 2000, President of the ILOG Technical Advisory Board, and ILOG's Chief Scientific Officer. In 1997, Dr. Bixby was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and is a charter member of The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST).
Robert Bixby earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of California-Berkeley and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University.
Patrick Meyers is the chief legal officer and managing director for Cervantes Capital, parent company of Quiznos.
Meyers is a founder of Quiznos, the second-largest sandwich chain in the United States. Launched in Denver during the early 1980s, Quiznos grew from 18 units in 1990 to 40 in 1993, when the company went public. Quiznos' founders took the company private in 2001 at 1,400 units, and it has since grown to over 5,000 restaurants in the U.S., Canada, and other countries. The chain is all franchised, with the majority of franchisees being single-unit owner-operators.
Meyers has helped drive Quiznos' growth through his service in a range of leadership positions. At various times since its founding, he has led the company's Finance, Information Technology, Human Resources and Law functions. He is also a member of the Board of Directors.
Under Meyers' lead, Quiznos has earned tremendous recognition for its growth and innovation. For five years in a row, Nation's Restaurant News has ranked Quiznos as the top restaurant chain in growth in number of units. In the Mystery Shopping Providers Association's 2007 Wait Time Study, Quiznos led the quick-service restaurant industry in wait time performance. And in a recent Zagat's restaurant study, Quiznos ranked in the top five in food, facilities, service and overall quality.
Meyers joined the company in 1997. Previously, he had been an associate with the Denver law firm of Moye , Giles , O'Keefe , Vermeire & Gorrell since September 1991 , and was selected as a partner of that firm in 1996. Before that he served as a judicial law clerk to a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court from July 1990 to September 1991.
Meyers spoke on Thursday, April 17th in the "Conversations with Entrepreneurs" series at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration which was presented by the school's Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship.
Patrick Meyers received his undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado-Denver and his law degree from the University of California, Hastings Collee of Law.
Mark Milstein is a Lecturer at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University and Director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise. He teaches and conducts research on strategy, decision-making, technology management and innovation.
Milstein is also the Business Research Director for the Sustainable Enterprise Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a non profit, non partisan think tank located in Washington, D.C. His responsibilities at WRI include leadership on a number of projects and initiatives in the United States, Latin America, and China that are related to strategy and innovation in the private sector.
Mark Milstein earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics and Japanese from the University of Michigan. He later earned both an M.B.A. in general management and an M.S. in natural resource policy from the University of Michigan's dual-degree Corporate Environmental Management Program. Milstein received his PhD in strategic management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Andrew C. Meehan is the founder of The Virtual Billboard. The Virtual Billboard is an outdoor direct marketing company that utilizes digital projections to produce stimulating, mobile, and cost-effective visual displays. The company is planning to introduce vivid, Hi-Def digital projections to allow advertisers to replace lifeless billboard ads with moving and dynamic ads that can be altered on-demand to capture different target demographics.
Andrew Meehan is an undergraduate at Cornell University and expects to graduate in 2009.
Levindo Coelho Santos is a partner with Jardim Botâaico Partners in Brazil. He is responsible for the Novarum Fund and has over 20 years of work experience, particularly as an advisor in merger and acquisition processes.
Santos worked as Executive Director of Morgan Stanley's Investment Banking Group, in Brazil and in the United States (1996-2002); as a Director in Lloyds Bank's Corporate Finance area in Brazil (1995-1996) and worked at Banco Pactual investment bank (1993-1994) and Arthur Andersen (1986-1991).
Levindo Coelho Santos holds a BA in Business Administration from FUMEC/MG in Brazil and an MBA from Northern Arizona University.
Luciana Aguiar is a former partner with Data Popular, a market research firm established in 2000 in Sao Paulo, Brazil with the mission to build unparalleled knowledge on low-and medium-income consumers. Currently, Aguiar is a senior partner of Plano CDE a new consulting and research company aiming at understanding business models focused on BOP markets (www.planocde.com.br) and has been in charge of introducing cutting edge ethnography methodology into market research in Brazil.
Aguiar worked as a Program Officer for UNESCO sponsored programs for low-income population in Brazil coordinated by The Comunidade Solidaria Initiative and Sebrae (1998-2003), as a Curator for art exhibits and educational programs at museums including Museu Virtual A Casa, Museu da Casa Brasileira, and Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo (1998-2003), and as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) (1993-97).
Luciana Aguiar holds a BA in Social Sciences from UnB in Brazil a MA in Anthropology and a PhD in Social and Visual Anthropology , both from Cornell University. She is the author of Spinning Lives (1996, University Press of America), a book based on her doctoral research.
Luciana Aguiar holds a BA in Social Sciences from UnB in Brazil a MA in Anthropology and a PhD in Social and Visual Anthropology , both from Cornell University. She is the author of Spinning Lives (1996, University Press of America), a book based on her doctoral research.
Alex Gartner has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade as a producer as well as senior executive at two major studios and has most recently concentrated on producing.
In 2004 Garter joined Atlas Entertainment as a producing partner with Mosaic partner and Atlas Entertainment founder Charles Roven. Gartner produced New Line's critically acclaimed The Upside of Anger, directed by Mike Binder and starring Joan Allen, Kevin Costner, Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Alicia Witt and Keri Russell. Previously he produced MGM's Barbershop 2: Back in Business, which starred Ice Cube and Cedric The Entertainer, and was Executive Producer on Out of Time, starring Denzel Washington.
Prior to that Gartner was President of Production at MGM Studios where he supervised the entire production slate, including such movies as Die Another Day, Barbershop, Legally Blond and Heartbreakers.
After producing Indecent Proposal for Paramount in 1993, Gartner became Executive Vice President at Fox 2000, having started the division with President Laura Ziskin. At Fox 2000 he worked on such films as Soul Food, Fight Club, Courage Under Fire and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line.
Gartner has also worked in production in television commercials and with directors such as Martin Brest on production for Scent of a Woman.
These clips are from a panel presented by the Cornell Entrepreneur Network entitled, "Changes in the Content, Marketing, and Distribution of Entertainment".
Alex Gartner is a graduate of Cornell University.
Donald Katz is founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of Audible, Inc., the Internet's premier audio information and entertainment service. Founded in 1995 and based in Newark, NJ, Audible developed audible.com, the popular ecommerce web destination and the first system for distributing audio via the Internet for playback at or away from the PC. The Company also commercialized the first portable digital audio player in 1997. Audible (ADBL) is listed on the NASDAQ exchange and has been consistently included in the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 and Fast 500 listings. In 2006, Audible was once again included at the top of the Fast 50 and Fast 500 lists for attaining a 1,218% five year growth rate.
Katz, winner of the 2004 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for New Jersey, was a successful author and journalist for twenty years before founding Audible. He is the author of Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears, winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction; and Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World. Katz served as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, Esquire, Outside, Sports Illustrated, Men's Journal, and Worth, and his writing won or was nominated for several National Magazine Awards. A two-volume collection of Katz's award-winning magazine stories, King of the Ferret Leggers and Other True Stories and Valley of the Fallen and Other Places was published in 2001.
Donald Katz graduated from New York University's honors program in English in 1974. He also attended The University of Chicago as well as The London School of Economics, from which he holds an MSc Economics.
Kevin Warner is the Senior Director of the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute. Focused on transforming economies in the Emerging Markets theater, the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute will provide business skill education to small and medium business via a blended learning model; using technology to connect the in-person learning environment with a community of business support. Warner leads the global team responsible to implement this iniative.
Warner joined Cisco in July 1996, and began to focus his team on the Cisco Networking Academy Program. Launched by Cisco in October 1997, the program is located in more than 10,000 organizations worldwide, in 152 countries.
Prior to joining Cisco, Warner held a number of positions at Apple Computer during an eight-year period. Most recently, he was Program Manager, Education Marketing, Customer Programs where he developed and implemented demand generation campaigns for Apple's individual education customers through the Educator Advantage (K-12), Apple Campus Direct (College), and Campus Computer Reseller (College) channels.
Warner holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Davis with an emphasis in management and public policy.