Press Release

Following up on an exceptional conference last year with over 200 attendees, SDForum is pleased to announce our fourth annual Teens Conference! This event highlights the teenagers of a generation that has influenced and adopted technologies like never before.

Today’s American teens live in a world enveloped by technology; the internet, Facebook, email, twitter, and cell phone communication have become a central force that fuels the rhythm of daily life.  This year we will focus on what teens are doing to be more socially responsible, from greening of the environment, to how they stay informed through social media. Get ready for another captivating day filled with brilliant teens and the adults who are trying to guess which way this generation will lead them.

Agenda:

Online Registration Price: $110 Non-Members, $85 SDForum Members, $25 Platinum Pass; $25 Students (Must present student ID at the door) $25 more at the door (except for students)

There are a limited number of free passes for full time students on a first-come basis. Please email Julie Welch at julie@sdforum.org and include a copy of your student ID.

Location:
Microsoft
1065 La Avenida Street
Mountain View, CA

Twitter:
@SDForum #SDFTeens

Click Here for Sponsorship Opportunities!

Event Sponsors:

Host Sponsor:

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 Speaker Bios:

Josh Becker, Co-Founder, New Cycle Capital. Josh is a Green Energy Entrepreneur who for over 20 years has worked at the nexus of community activism, technology, environmentalism, and social justice. Uniting entrepreneurial expertise with a passion for social change, Josh co-founded New Cycle Capital, a pioneer in building socially responsible businesses. Josh earned a joint MBA and Law Degree from Stanford University in 1999. While a student, Josh co-founded and managed the Stanford Board of Fellows program, which trains students to serve on the boards of local non-profits, engaging them in social progress at the beginning of their careers, rather than the end.

James Bickford, Tigo Energy. After graduating from Santa Clara with a degree in mechanical engineering, James Bickford co-founded Valence Energy (ValenceEnergy.com), a company that develops energy efficiency software. After getting the company launched and introducing the first generation product, James moved on to Tigo Energy to pursue his passion in solar energy.  James is now the Marketing Manager of Tigo Energy (Tigoenergy.com), an innovative startup in Silicon Valley focusing on solar innovations. Tigo Energy is developing a technology that significantly boosts the amount of energy harvested from any solar panel.

Daniel Brusilovsky, Teens in Tech Networks. Daniel is a 17 year-old entrepreneur. He is currently the Founder and former CEO of Teens in Tech Networks, a company he started in February 2008. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Teens in Tech Networks. Daniel also works at Qik as the Special Projects Team Lead. Daniel has worked with several other startups including atebits (acquired by Twitter), Apture, Wonder Warp Software and most recently, TechCrunch, on various other projects.

Mike Cassidy, Business Columnist, San Jose Mercury News. Mike is a business columnist at the San Jose Mercury News who writes about the distinctive culture of Silicon Valley. His Silicon Valley Dispatches column has for years looked at the entrepreneurship, diversity and risk-taking tradition that make the valley a place like few others in the world.

Eli Chait, Alsop Louie Partners. Eli is a Campus Associate at Alsop Louie Partners, an early stage, IT focused venture capital firm.  He spends most of his time looking for talented entrepreneurs at college campuses including Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech, and UT Austin. He is a senior at Berkeley where he leads the entrepreneurship group Startup at Berkeley (startup.berkeley.edu).

Diana Chen, Mountain View High School. Diana is currently a senior at Mountain View High School. Last summer her and her friend Veronica Hume started working on a tech girls site with help from their mentor Sonja London. Since then, the two of them have attended SDForum Panels and interviewed many amazing women in the tech field. Currently on the site, there are articles on inspiring women in tech, fun quotes, an event calendar with descriptions of each event, and a blog where girls can communicate with other girls around the world and share their knowledge in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. They plan on launching their site soon. You can view their site at www.girlsfortech.org.

Ken Elkabany, University of California at Berkeley. Ken is a newly-minted entrepreneur from the University of California at Berkeley. He graduated with honors from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, and received the department's William Everitt Award for Excellence in 2007. He previously co-founded HotSwap, a venture-backed pioneer in video ecommerce, where he served as VP of Research. Currently, he is the CEO of PiCloud, which seeks to provide true utility computing in the cloud. He is also a published academic researcher in biomedical engineering.

Emily Gran, Menlo-Atherton High School. Emily is a sophomore student at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California. In addition to academics she is a member of the varsity girls water polo, and swim teams at M-A High.  She is also a life guard during the summer.  And for 2010 will be travelling to Guatemala in a volunteer outreach program that participates in Guatemalan reforestation and the building of primary schools.  Through her leadership course at M-A High School, she has become involved in the environmental movement and spreading the message to her peers through teaching about climate change and encouraging people to get involved.

Gamiel Gran, Sierra Ventures. Gamiel joined Sierra Ventures in 2008 as Vice President of Business Development.  Gamiel leads the Business Development Strategy for the firm including the development of external advisory boards such as the Sierra Ventures CIO Advisory Board, Sierra Strategic Advisory program, partnerships with services providers, recruiters, venture banking,law firms,and the Entrepreneur-in-Residence program. Gamiel develops lead sources for the firm and is focused on the broader software sector including cloud computing, open source, collaboration, and application enabling software.  He holds a BA in Economics/Social Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Anne Hardy, Vice President Technology Strategy (SAP Labs, US). Anne leads Technology Innovation initiatives for SAP’s Technology Strategy group. In this position she assures SAP’s early awareness and planning with respect to all critical enabling technologies that might disrupt SAP’s platform business. Until February 2010 she managed Platform Research for SAP Research Americas. From July 2003 to December 2006 she managed SAP Research Center Sophia Antipolis, France. She holds an engineering degree from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications, Paris, France and a Master of Business Administration from EDHEC, Nice, France.

Natalie Hon, Los Altos High School. Natalie is a senior at Los Altos High School and Freestyle Academy.  Next year she will study photography and journalism so she can combine her loves of art and traveling.  She is excited to be here representing Freestyle and young digital artists.

Veronica Hume, Saint Francis High School. Veronica is a senior at Saint Francis High School and is interested in studying engineering, science, and history.  Since last year, Veronica has been an intern for SDForum Tech Girls and is working with Sonja London, co-chair of the SDForum Tech Women’s Program, and Diana Chen, a co-intern, to create the Tech Girls site.  The site, www.girlsfortech.org, has just gone live and will feature content revolving around women and girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) while also allowing girls interested in STEM to contribute to the site and communicate with each other.  Another activity she enjoys is the Tech Museum’s annual Tech Challenge, where she is working with her team to build a device that will be able to attach two D-sized batteries to a rotating satellite.    

Shreya Indukuri, The Harker School. Shreya is a sophomore at The Harker School in San Jose, CA. She co-founded SmartPowerEd, a network seeking to connect schools with smart energy-tracking systems to cut carbon emissions and energy costs, in November 2009. She was youth climate representatives at the Governor's Global Climate Summit and her project was filmed by UNICEF as part of a youth climate action documentary. She is currently on the Youth Advisory Board for Alliance for Climate Education, who awarded her project a $5,500 grant for on-campus green initiatives in 2009. In her spare time, Shreya plays lacrosse on her school team and enjoys oil painting and playing piano.

Bruce Klafter, Senior Director, Applied Materials. Bruce is the Sr. Director of Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) for Applied Materials, Inc. in Santa Clara, California.  Bruce also serves as Head, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability for the company.  Applied Materials is one of the leading suppliers of equipment and services to several industries, including the semiconductor, flat-panel display and solar photovoltaic industries. Bruce is a lawyer by training and practiced environmental and natural resources law for many years in private practice and with the State of California.

Allison Leopold Tilley, Partner, Pillsbury Winthrop. Allison focuses on the representation of technology companies in securities and venture capital transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, private placements, public offerings, venture funds and joint ventures. She has significant experience representing acquirers and target companies. Ms. Leopold Tilley is co-leader of the firm's Emerging Growth & Technology practice, leader of the Silicon Valley Business and Technology Group and co-leader of the Southeast Asia team.

Chris McCann, Startup Digest.  Chris is an entrepreneur, writer, and general activist in the entrepreneurial community of Silicon Valley and San Luis Obispo. He has led the entrepreneurial programs at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, started Innovation Quest an alumni led incubator at the University, and is the co-founder of [Startup Digest], and leads social media strategy for TEDx Silicon Valley. As the founder of the [Startup Digest], Chris is recognized worldwide for thinking about startup events as an entry point to a life of entrepreneurship and realizing the full potential of the human spirit.

Corey McGuire, Santa Clara University. Corey is a graduating senior at Santa Clara University, majoring in Business Marketing and Entrepreneurship. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and working in collaborative environments. He is the Marketing Manager for Ecosphere Technologies, Inc. (www.EcosphereTech.com), a diversified water engineering and services company that is primarily involved in the Oil & Gas Industry. Corey is currently working on a startup called JamJudge (www.JamJudge.com), that allows independent musicians to distribute and sell their music to fans through its online platform.

Simon Montford, Founder & CEO, Vibio. Simon is a British serial entrepreneur born in London. Some of his ventures were Corsellis-Montford Interactive, acquired by New Media Industries Group in 2000 and icollector Plc, purchased in 1999 by Able Auctions Inc. He left London to become an Entrepreneur in residence at Edinburgh University in 2007 and is currently founder and CEO of Vibio (UK) Ltd and Vibio Inc.

Emily Munoz, Mountain View High School. Emily is a senior at Mountain View High School and film student at Freestyle Academy. Freestyle Academy is a co curricular digital media program offered to students within the Mountain View Los Altos Union School District. Emily co produced a documentary film promoting The Imagine Bus Project, a non-profit based out of San Francisco, determined to bring arts education to underserved schools in the Bay Area.

Ben Narasin, TriplePoint Capital. Ben started his first business when he was twelve and didn’t stop until he was 37.  Early into the Internet space, he started fashionmall.com in 1993 which became one of the first e-commerce companies in the world and the first cost-per-click portal.  After taking fashionmall.com public in 1999, Narasin spent much of the early 2000s acquiring companies in the space, including the infamous boo.com and providing liquidity back to his shareholders. Narasin joined TriplePoint Capital in 2007 to oversee the firm’s Seed Equity investment activities and to support the company’s continuing growth. 

Katherine Nasol, Notre Dame High School. Katherine is currently a junior at Notre Dame High School and a member of the Girls For A Change Steering Committee and the National Board of Directors. She is also involved in student and youth leadership by participating in the Santa Clara County Youth Task Force and the Peer Ministry Leadership Team at school. For the past year, she and her friend Alyssa Remulla have been planning and implementing a community service initiative called the Pagkabata Project. The Pagkabata Project aims to eradicate child trafficking in the Philippines through awareness, youth leadership, and education. Katherine hopes to continue using her passion for social justice after college and throughout her career.

Jenna Nicolas, Stanford University. Jenna is an undergraduate student at Stanford University. She is passionate about social entrepreneurship and strategic philanthropy, which has led her to take on various responsibilities in the Stanford community. These include being part of the social entrepreneurship challenge coordinating team of the Business Association’s Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) Social Entrepreneurship competition and an editor for the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Jenna is also an active member of the Bahai Faith which is the inspiration for much of what she does.

Matthew Roeckel, Santa Clara University. Matthew is a current student at Santa Clara University majoring in Operations and Management Information Systems. He has worked for Tricipher, Inc. in Los Gatos and has been an IT Analyst intern at Cisco Systems in San Jose. Matt is also the founder and operator of MKR Consulting (www.mkrconsulting.net) and the founder of HS Light (www.hslight.com).

Spencer Schoeben, Teens in Tech Networks. Spencer is a 15 year old entrepreneur living in Palo Alto, CA. He is the CEO of Teens in Tech Networks, the parent company of Teens in Tech, Yazzem, Youth Bloggers Network and the Teens in Tech Conference. Spencer is also the founder of Twitloc, a geo-location application built to let users explore tweets by their location. Spencer is currently a sophomore at Palo Alto High School where he is the webmaster of The Paly Voice, the school’s award-wining online journalism website.

Hildy Shandell, Venture Partner, Opus Capital. Hildy focuses on sourcing and evaluating investment opportunities. Hildy brings to the firm unique expertise in leading corporate growth, operations, finance and legal. Before joining Opus Capital, Hildy was senior Vice President of
Corporate Development at Genesis Microchip. In that role, she accelerated the realignment of corporate strategy and was instrumental in the acquisition of the company by STMicroelectronics, the world's fifth largest semiconductor company. The transaction was achieved with the largest premium for the sale of a semiconductor company in recent years.

Amy Strande, Student Audience Marketing. Amy, a Director with the Student Audience Marketing team, has lead the digital strategy for higher education students for the last year.  She has launched a connected digital experiences (bringing together website, mobile, competitions and more) to reach students and give them low cost software, career advice, and school success tips.  Prior to working in the Student Audience Marketing team, she worked in a variety of marketing roles at Microsoft over her 11 years with the company.

Matt Thompson, General Manager, Developer and Platform Evangelism, Microsoft
As General Manager of Microsoft’s developer & platform evangelism efforts Matt Thompson has the first hand opportunity to both observe and work with many of Silicon Valley’s top technology start ups. His time is split between supporting this influential community of technologists as they adopt Microsoft technologies (including Microsoft's new cloud offering, Azure) and exploring the next generation of platform technologies yet to emerge. Previously, As Sr. Director of Sun's Developer Cloud engineering organization Matt was responsible for Sun's developer platform in the emerging cloud space. In his previous role, Matt was responsible for Sun's developer program and technology outreach worldwide.

Sol Tran, Santa Clara University. Last year at SD Forum's Tech Titans of Tomorrow, Sol showcased a website he help found called Campuskiwi. In addition to Campuskiwi, Sol has worked at Box.net, Kace Networks (Acquired by Dell), Morgan Stanley, and Wachovia Securities. Although not currently working in a true start-up, he still keeps up to date in the entrepreneur community by attending many entrepreneur events and being the Co-President of Santa Clara University's Santa Clara Entrepreneurs Organization. His long-term career ambitions include working in Venture Capital and being in a start-up that IPOs. You can find him on Twitter @soltran.

Alvin Tse, Stanford University. Alvin hails from Hong Kong and is currently a senior at Stanford University studying organizations, technologies and entrepreneurship. He expects to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in the Management Science and Engineering Department in 2010. Apart from going to school,Alvin loves thinking about cool ideas and ways to make people happy. Think Bulbs is his first venture. He previously worked at Slide as a creative marketing intern and is currently the Co-President of BASES and founder of CEO (Chinese Entrepreneurs Organization) at Stanford.

Nima Wedlake, UC Berkeley. Nima is a senior at UC Berkeley, majoring in Business Administration and Operations Research. He is actively involved in Startup at Berkeley, an undergraduate entrepreneurship group on campus. In addition, Nima is working on a startup called Sponge (http://getsponge.com), which provides a white-label question and answer platform.

Alison van Diggelen, Fresh Dialogues. Alison is a Silicon Valley based journalist and commentator. Her interview series, Fresh Dialogues, features exclusive interviews with venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and leaders in the green economy, including Tom Friedman, Vinod Khosla, Paul Krugman, Martin Sheen, KR Sridhar, and Kevin Surace. She has taught classes and workshops in green entrepreneurship at the University of Edinburgh Business School and the She's Geeky Conference in Silicon Valley. She has a BSc. from Paisley University and a Master’s in Land Economics from Cambridge University.

Crystal C. Yan, Monta Vista High School. Crystal is the Founder of Torque Media Group (design agency with nonprofit branch that offers pro-bono design packages to startups/nonprofits), Co-Founder of Social Startup Summit (high-impact social entrepreneurship unconference for youth), Co-Curator of What's Next: 25 Big Ideas from 25 Gen-Yers Under 25 (e-book with big ideas from under-25 entrepreneurs/activists), and Founder of EconForAll (media campaign to with tools to make learning fun for K-12 educators and nonprofits). She is a trilingual Chinese American student entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay Area. She blogs at crystaly.wordpress.com, tweets @crystalcy, and connects communities at linkedin.com/in/crystaly.