Megan Gentilesco is an Associate at JP Morgan in New York City. Megan Gentilesco is a graduate of Cornell University.
Patricia Frishkoff founded the Family Business Program at Oregon State University in 1985 and served as its director until her retirement in 2002. The Family Business Program's mission is to foster healthy family businesses. Frishkoff was a professor of accounting in Oregon State University's College of Business and the first holder of the A.E. Coleman Chair in Family Business. In 1988, Frishkoff and her husband founded a consulting practice, Leadership In Family Enterprise, which provides consulting in the area of Family-run businesses. Patricia Frishkoff received her undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University. She also holds a Doctorate in Business Administration from Kent State University
Pat Govang is a co-founder of e2e Materials, LLC. e2e Materials, LLC is a spin-off from Cornell University and is a 'clean technology' start-up company that produces petroleum-free, biodegradable composites.
While Govang currently works full-time at e2e, he was previously the Director of Industrial Partnerships at the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR). In that role, he was responsible for managing and developing the Center's partnerships with Industry. His duties focused on the development of a viable, broad-based and coordinated outreach program to New York state companies involved in commercial materials research and development.
Prior to that role, Govang was at AM&T, one of CCMR's regional Technology Development Organizations, where he worked with the Industrial Partnerships program. Prior to joining AM&T in November, 2001 he worked for Deloitte Consulting.
Pat Govang is a graduate of Bowling Green State University with a degree in Product Design and Development.
Theresa Mazzullo is the Chief Executive Officer at Excell Partners. Prior to joining Excell, Mazzullo spent six years as President & Principal of EPIC Advisors, Inc a 401(k) retirement plan company with $1.5 billion in retirement plan assets. As a former banker, Theresa held various positions within financial institutions, including a Senior Vice President of First National Bank, where she established and built a Trust and Investment Division while the bank was under a Consent Order by the office of the Comptroller of the Currency. She managed to grow the Trust & Investment Division to $125 million in five years and at the same time built and managed the infrastructure to support the broker-dealer business unit for the bank. Theresa Mazzullo received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama and a Graduate Degree in Banking from Stonier.
Judy Albers is the Chief Operating Officer at Excell. Albers has been instrumental in the establishment of many start-up companies based upon technologies spun out of Upstate NY universities and corporations, particularly in analyzing the commercial potential of the new technologies, developing commercialization strategies, positioning and planning early business operations, and providing seed stage capital. Her current focus is on co-managing the Excell Partners Fund and structuring equity-based deals.
Prior to joining Excell, Albers was a Vice President at Trillium Group, another Rochester-based Venture Capital firm, where she co-managed the University Technology Seed Fund, now fully invested. Albers also previously taught Environmental Chemistry at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Her classes were the largest in the department, teaching over a hundred non-majors every semester in lectures and laboratory. Prior to that, she served for several years at the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington, D.C. as a defense analyst. Her job was to develop and link analytical conclusions on Navy systems, tactics, and operations to practical recommendations for implementation by the Navy's top-level decision makers at the Pentagon.
Judy Albers holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Duke University, a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Brandeis University, and completed her post-doc in Chemistry at Princeton University.
David Rickerby is a Partner at the law firm of Choate Hall and Stewart in Boston, MA. He heads the Technology Licensing practice area at Choate and has particular areas of focus in intellectual property counseling, emerging companies, university licensing, distribution channel strategy and open source law.
Rickerby has worked in the technology licensing area for more than a decade. Prior to joining the firm, Rickerby was an associate in the Patent and Intellectual Property Group at Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault, an associate in the Corporate and Venture Capital and Emerging Companies Group at Edwards & Angell, a Contracts Manager in the Technology Management Group at Computer Sciences Corporation, and the Legal Manager for PSI International, Inc.
David Rickerby received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his law degree from the University of Connecticut.
Mark Wilson has over 15 years of experience solving the complex design and process issues involved in launching new products that have generated over $600 million in annual sales. Prior to launching Initiatives Consulting, LLC in 1997, Wilson served in management roles at Bausch & Lomb, Inc, Baxter Healthcare, Inc., and Opkor, Inc, an optics company. His experience includes design, production, quality control, and marketing for a wide range of new health care and optical products for consumers and businesses.
As Principal of Initiatives Consulting, Wilson leads a team of experts that advise clients on the 'fuzzy front end of innovation' - determining whether ideas should move forward and how to move them towards commercialization. Clients include Baxter Healthcare, Xerox, numerous smaller companies, and universities such as Cornell, University of Michigan, and Rochester Institute of Technology.
Mark Wilson received an M.S. and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute.
Robert Frank is a Professor of Economics at Cornell University's Johnson School. In addition, Frank is a monthly contributor to the "Economic Scene" column in The New York Times.
Until 2001, he was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences. He has also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Nepal, chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board, fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and was Professor of American Civilization at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Frank's books include Choosing the Right Pond, Passions within Reason, Microeconomics and Behavior, Luxury Fever, and What Price the Moral High Ground? The Winner-Take-All Society, co-authored with Philip Cook, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, and was included in Business Week's list of the ten best books for 1995.
Frank holds a BS in mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an MA in statistics from UC Berkeley and a PhD in economics, also from UC Berkeley.
Deborah Streeter is the Bruce F. Failing, Senior Professor of Personal Enterprise in the Department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University.
Entrepreneurship and small business management are the focus of Streeter's research, teaching, and outreach programs. She is part of the university-wide Entrepreneurship@Cornell Program, which offers courses in entrepreneurship in almost all of Cornell's schools and colleges. Her research interests include the role of entrepreneurship and small business in economic development, with a particular focus on the effectiveness of business training and planning for start-ups.
Streeter has developed eClips, a database of digital video interviews, with entrepreneurs across the country. The in-depth interviews are digitized, cut into clips by topic, and are used in a multimedia format to teach entrepreneurship and small business management. The entrepreneurs she interviewed range from early start-ups to established companies and from high-tech Internet companies to manufacturing and service firms.
Streeter is also involved in helping to train start-up businesses in New York State. As part of the Entrepreneurial Education and Outreach Program, she is currently involved in a variety of programs aimed at helping New York entrepreneurs make informed choices about entrepreneurial ventures.
Deborah Streeter received her undergraduate degree from the University of Connecticut and her Master's and PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.