Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students

Feeling Entrepreneurial?

Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar is a weekly speaker series that brings innovation leaders from business, finance, technology, education, and philanthropy, to share their insights with aspiring entrepreneurs from all over the world.

Winter 2010 Speaker Lineup

January 13 Skilling Auditorium	John Adler (Founder, Accuray) and Trip Adler (Founder/CEO Scribd) Dr. Adler was a founder of Accuray, a company which manufactures the Cyberknife, an image-guided radiosurgical instrument that noninvasively ablates tumors almost anywhere in the body. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Accuray from 1999 to 2002, and the Chief Medical Officer up until 2007. Dr. Adler founded the CyberKnife Society in 2002 and served as its President until 2009. He presently serves as a member of the Accuray Board of Directors. John R. "Trip" Adler III is an American entrepreneur who started the social publishing company Scribd. Adler grew up in Palo Alto, California, and then attended Harvard University where he studied biophysics and graduated in June 2006. Trip is also Dr. Adler's son.
January 20 Skilling Auditorium	David Heinemeier Hansson Ruby on Rails, 37 Signals David Heinemeier Hansson is a Danish programmer and the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki. He is also a partner at the web-based software development firm 37signals. In 1999 Hansson founded and built a Danish online gaming news website and community called Daily Rush, which he ran until 2001. In 2005 he was recognized by Google and O'Reilly with the Hacker of the Year award for his creation of Ruby on Rails. After graduating from the Copenhagen Business School and receiving his bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Business Administration, he moved from Denmark to Chicago, Illinois, U.S. in November 2005.
January 27 Skilling Auditorium	Elisabeth Pate Cornell Chair of MS & E Dr. M. Elisabeth Pate-Cornell was born in Dakar, Senegal, in 1948. She attended public high schools both in Dakar and in La Rochelle, France. Her undergraduate degree is in mathematics and physics (BS, Marseilles, France, 1968), and her first graduate degrees are in applied mathematics and computer science (MS and Engineer Degree, Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, France, 1970; 1971). In 1971 she came to study and live in the United States, where she has been a citizen since 1986. She received a Masters degree in Operations Research (OR) in 1972 and a Ph.D. in Engineering-Economic Systems (EES) in 1978, both from Stanford University. She then was an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at MIT, before joining the Stanford faculty in 1981, where she became Professor (in 1991) and then Chair (in 1997) in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM). In 1999, she was named the Burt and Deedee McMurtry Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University.
February 3 Skilling Auditorium	William Hagstrom, CEO, Crescendo Bioscience Mr. Hagstrom has over 25 years of leadership experience in the healthcare industry. Prior to joining Crescendo Bioscience, he was President of Alpha BioPartners, a strategic consulting firm for early stage biotechnology companies. While at Alpha BioPartners, Mr. Hagstrom co-founded Altheus Therapuetics and Biolytx Pharmaceuticals. Previously, he served as President and CEO of UroCor, a specialty diagnostic services company focused on urological cancers, which he built from start-up through market launch, product expansion and penetration of over 35% of the U.S. Urology market. Mr. Hagstrom has also held a variety of management positions in large, multinational healthcare companies including Becton Dickinson, American Hospital Supply and Baxter International.
February 10 Skilling Auditorium	Panel of Young Entrepreneurs A panel of young entrpreneurs discuss their experiences starting companies, including Jeff Seibert, Kimber Lockhart, Clara Shih, Steve Garrity, Joshua Reeves, and Tristan Harris. These entrepreneurs will be interviewed on stage as part of the presentation
February 17 Skilling Auditorium	Rashmi Sinha and Jonathan Boutelle, SlideShare Rashmi Sinha is a designer and entrepreneur. She is co-founder & CEO for SlideShare, the best place to share your presentations on the web. Jonathan Boutelle is a cofounder of Slideshare, a site for the online social sharing of slideshows. Previously, he was a principal at Uzanto, a UI consulting company. At Uzanto he was the software architect behind MindCanvas, a rich web application that provided game-like surveys for design research.
February 24 Skilling Auditorium	Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford - Steve Case Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford Univerisity takes place every year in the month of February. EWeek events are free and open to all students, parents, alumni and members of the public. This year E-week kicks off with Steve Case, best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online (AOL).
March 3 Skilling Auditorium	Polly Sumner (Salesforce) and Elizabeth Tinkham (Accenture) Polly Sumner is president of global Services and chief adoption officer at Salesforce.com. She has a 20-year career in executive management in the technology industry. Most recently, she was president of global services at Telecordia. She also served as president and CEO of Alphablox, where she grew the company from $5 million to $25 million in two years. Elizabeth Tinkham is managing Director at Accenture Ltd. Chicago.