Saeed Amidi is the President and CEO of Plug and Play Tech Center. Plug and Play is a large incubator in Sunnyvale, CA which offers a range of services from full service office space to strategic advice to direct investments to start-up companies. In addition, Amidi is the Founding General Partner of Amidzad which he co-founded in 2000. He is a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned executive with over 23 years of experience in founding, operating, and growing successful companies.
Amidi has been closely involved with more than twenty new emerging growth companies, of which 2 became public companies (PayPal (acquired by eBay) and Preview Systems).
Saeed Amidi co-founded the Amidi Group in 1980, a conglomerate of privately-held business enterprises consisting of several domestic and international entities with significant manufacturing, distribution, trading, retail, and real estate holdings. For the past 23 years, he has chaired and spearheaded the operations and management of a number of the Amidi Group entities, growing the aggregate value of its assets under management to over $250M.
David Lee is the Chief Executive Officer of Lee Kum Kee (Europe & USA).
Vijay Parmar is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Gainspan Corporation, a recent spinout of Intel.
Prior to Gainspan, Mr Parmar was the General Manager of the same business within Intel. He drove the strategy, business plan, customer engagement and product roadmap taking the wireless sensor network seed to fully funded business in Intel and then to a VC-funded private enterprise.
Parmar joined Intel in 2001 pursuant to Intel's acquisition of VxTel, Inc. where he served as the Vice President of Marketing. At VxTel, he built key strategic relationships with customers and ecosystem including one with Intel.
Parmar held various executive positions at AMD prior to joining VxTel.
Vijay Parmar received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and an MBA from Tulane University.
Lena Kannappan is the Founder, President & CEO of FuGen Solutions, an independent provider of managed identity services.
Lena Kannappan has held both senior technical and managerial roles in various software industry segments including Digital Identity Management systems, Telecommunications Convergence services and applications, and E-Commerce applications.
Before founding FuGen Solutions, Kannappan was the Director for Identity and Messaging group at France Telecom R&D driving the efforts around Address Book, IM, Presence, SMS, Geo Location services and Social Networking looking at subscriber identity and privacy related issues. Kannappan chaired multiple industry standards committees including Liberty Alliance and Open Mobile Alliance in the areas of Federated Identity Management and Web Services Security. Prior to France Telecom, Kannappan was the Technology Strategist at Oblix (acquired by Oracle) where he worked with number of enterprise vendors to bring the architecture integration models including the first enterprise SSO integration for Siebel systems.
Lena Kannappan holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Anna University, Chennai, India and Bachelors in Electronics and Instrumentation from Annamalai University, Chidambaram, India.
Jay H. Shah currently serves as Hersha Hospitality Trust's Chief Executive Officer and as a member of its Board of Trustees. Shah is involved in all areas of the business with a particular emphasis on investor relations, capital transactions and acquisitions.
Previously, Shah served the Company as President and Chief Operating Officer and prior to that he served as the Managing Director of the Hersha Group, a private affiliate of Hersha Hospitality Trust that provides hotel management, development and construction management services to hotel owners.
Prior to joining the Hersha organization, Shah was principal in the law firm of Shah & Byler, LLP, a real estate and construction specialty practice, which he founded. Shah was previously a consultant with Coopers & Lybrand LLP, a legislative assistant to the late Senator John Heinz and worked with the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.
Jay Shah received a Bachelor of Science degree for the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, a Law degree from the Temple University School of Law and an M.B.A. from the Fox School of Business at Temple University.
K.L. Wong is a Managing Director of Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific) Ltd. He is in charge of Merrill Lynch's investment banking businesses in Hong Kong, including assisting clients with strategic and corporate finance advisory and execution. He is the leader of the Merrill Lynch team advising the Hong Kong Government on the privatisation of MTR Corporation and the team leader in advising the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited in relation to the proposed merger between The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited and The Hong Kong Futures Exchange Limited.
Prior to joining Merrill Lynch in 1993, he worked in CS First Boston (H.K.) Limited, Standard Chartered Asia Limited, Chemical Bank and Export Credit Insurance Corporation Limited.
K.L. Wong is a graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
John Lee joined Merrill Lynch in 1996 and is currently a Managing Director in the Asia Origination Group, primarily responsible for origination for companies based in Hong Kong and southern China.
John Lee holds a BBA degree from Southern Methodist University, with concentration in Finance and Real Estate.
Winnie Huang is President of the Americas business for Lee Kum Kee, the leading producer of Chinese sauces. Beginning with their Premium Oyster Flavored Sauce, Lee Kum Kee now markets over 200 different sauces in over 100 countries.
Indra Nooyi is the chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo, the world's fourth-largest food and beverage company. She is the fifth CEO in PepsiCo's 42-year history. Prior to being named CEO on Augst 14, 2006, she had been serving as president and CFO since 2001.
According to the polls Forbes magazine conducted, Nooyi ranks fifth on the 2007 list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. In addition, Nooyi has been named the #1 Most Powerful Woman in Business in 2006 and 2007 by Fortune magazine.
Prior to joining PepsiCo in 1994, Nooyi worked at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Motorola and ABB.
Indra Nooyi received a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Madras Christian College and immediately entered the PGDBA (Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Administration) program at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. She also received a master's degree in Management from the Yale School of Management.