Mentors
Sondra Orozco
Senior Product Manager: Looker
Sondra is a senior product manager at Looker, working with the Administration engineering team to build a great user experience for admin users of Looker. After her early career as a data analyst, she spent a few years running her own company and discovered a passion for building great products.
Toby Corey
Zentrepreneur
Toby successfully managed three $1b+ businesses (one as co-founder/President), completed two successful IPOs, raised over $300m in private and public financing, and is a former President of leader in clean energy services with successful IPO and successful Tesla merger.
Craig Vachon
Entrepreneur
Craig Vachon wrote his first business plan at 12 years old, sold his first company at 25 years old, and has been a relentless entrepreneur/angel investor ever-since.
Stephen Beitzel
Software Engineer
Stephen Beitzel has been developing software for over 20 years at all stages of the product lifecycle, including ten years' experience developing high-performance Java server applications for LinkedIn and Netflix.
Drew Meyer
Product Marketer/Manager: Amazon
Drew Meyer is a product marketer/manager with years of experience leading teams in Silicon Valley startups and public companies. He leads the storage product marketing team at Amazon Web Services.
Jose Caballer
Entrepreneur, UX designer, Design Chef: ConsenSys
Jose is the co-founder of The Skool, an education company that teaches solopreneurs, design agencies and startups how to collaborate, execute, and thrive in the digital economy.
Jessica Groopman
Industry Analyst & Founding Partner: Kaleido Insights
Jessica is an Industry Analyst & Founding Partner at Kaleido Insights, leading the automation practice and specializing in user experience and data integrity.
Doug Erickson
Vice President of US West Coast Sales: Nanigans
In addition to running West Coast sales for Nanigans, Doug invests in Santa Cruz tech companies including Buoy Labs and Inboard Technology. Doug is cofounder and president of UC Santa Cruz’s hackathon — this year renamed CruzHack — and founder of the popular Santa Cruz New Tech Meetup.
Catelyn Orsini
Product Architect: Plantronics
As a Product Architect, Catelyn is charged with transforming innovative ideas and features into real products. After more than a decade of designing audio devices to help connect people to each other, Catelyn's current focus is on utilizing voice communications to connect people to the technology around them.
Danielle Davenport
Founder & CEO: Big Deep Digital
With over 20 years of experience at high technology companies and a key thinker and contributor in the launch of several innovative start-ups, Danielle provides capital, strategic analysis and capacity building to high potential ideas with a focus on disruptive models and technologies.
Andrew Van Valer
Entrepreneur, Mentor, Investor
Over the past 35 years, Andy has been either on the founding team of a major startup, connecting people, or helping early-stage startups, small businesses, non-profits, and entrepreneurs by using his diverse experience and business strategies. He has served as a consultant, managing member, CEO, CFO, COO, and board member across a variety of industries
Frances Corpuz
Marketing and Communications Project Manager
Frances likes watching things grow. With over 15 years of marketing communications, strategy, and design experience. Frances has led teams to support small and large businesses develop their brands. She currently supports 25 of 35 of the largest brands in the world enhance their strategic communications through the power of story.
Keri Waters
CEO & Co-founder: Buoy Labs
Keri is a startup veteran and the leader of Buoy Labs, an IoT startup that is changing the way homeowners manage their water. She serves on the Board of Directors for Santa Cruz Works.
Molly Ressler
Writer & Content Strategist
Molly crafts copy that establishes authority and creates community. Insatiably curious, she’s always searching for the stories that will set her clients apart and multiply their impact.
Keith Holtaway
Business Consultant
A Bay Area business consultant who for the last 16 years have taken seeds of ideas and transformed them into award-winning, successful and recognized small businesses.
Susan Cannon
Susan is experienced in lean startup methodology and a veteran software architect, manager, and UX designer. Her experience spans the gamut from secure content distribution systems to UX design of consumer products for companies like Sony, Disney, and SanDisk.
Tyler Young
UX/UI Designer
Tyler Young is a commercial artist and entrepreneur with experience producing professional journalism, action photography, illustration, typography, information and ecommerce web sites, product and brand name creation and identity design, and more.
Bill Richter
Corporate Lawyer
A seasoned solo corporate lawyer with a passion for cross-border, as well as cross-town transactions. Enjoys working closely with corporations -- large or small, domestic or foreign, boot-strapped or funded -- to help execute business objectives, launch new technologies and improve lives and those of the next generation.
Alex Cowan
CTO
Alex Cowan is the founder & CTO of Leonid Systems, a leader in enterprise 2.0 solutions for cloud communications.
Sol Lipman
Entrepreneur
Sol Lipman is an experienced entrepreneur and mobile developer who recently joined AOL as a part of the company’s acquisition of Rally Up, maker of the popular Rally Up and FacePlant mobile applications.
Patrick Reilly, JD
Intellectual Property Lawyer
Patrick is the Founder of the Intellectual Property Society, Associate Publisher of the Personal Data Journal, and a practicing intellectual property attorney. Patrick has a special commitment to encourage civic engagement with the evolution of Patent Law, personal data rights and Internet identity.
Alumni Mentors
Darrin Caddes
Vice President of Corporate Design: Plantronics Inc.
Prior to his arrival at Plantronics, Darrin Caddes worked as a Senior Designer for Fiat Automotive and BMW before becoming the Design Director for Indian Motorcycle Inc., and has taught or guest lectures at Art Center College of Design in California, Stanford, Facebook, UC Santa Cruz, University of Michigan, Art Center College of Design, Istituto Europeo, and Scuola d’Arte Applicata.
Wilson “Win” Farrar
Sales Executive
Enterprise Sales and Business Development Expert. Over 15 Years of Success. Co-Founded, Built, and Sold Two Technology Companies, Instrumental in Acquisition Negotiations. Excellent Record of Achieving and Surpassing Revenue Goals and Creating Additional Revenue Streams. Proven ability to initiate and optimize long-term strategic C-Level relationships.
Tatyana Kanzaveli
Founder and CEO of Open Health Network
Seasoned entrepreneur, thinker, leader, mentor, advisor and investor. Held senior executive roles at large enterprises and startups. Have experiences in B2B and B2C areas.
Margaret Rosas
Director of Customer Love
Margaret connects people to each other and to ideas, exposing previously unforeseen possibilities. Her toolkit includes user interface, user experience, brand identity, social media, search engine optimization, and web protocols.
Nadine Schaeffer
UX Director, Designer & Organic Farmer
Over 20 years experience in the software world, focusing on building and leading teams to create usable and enjoyable user experiences.
Lloyd Tabb
Founder, Chairman & CTO - Looker
Lloyd Tabb spent the last 25 years revolutionizing how the world uses the internet and, by extension, data.
Frank Bien
CEO - Looker
Frank brings more than 20 years of experience in business intelligence, big data, analytics, and data storage to expand Looker’s reach and capabilities.
Ben Cox
Owner and CEO - Startup Ready
An advisor and hands-on participant in early-stage startups providing product development, planning, budgeting, MVP refinement and system architecture.
Danielle Lanyard
Founder & CEO - Big Deep Digital
Her life and work experience blends environmental study, community action, business development, and being at the right place at the right time. Her activism work began as a child in her own backyard and now spans two decades and four continents, including a B.A. in Community Psychology and a minor in Environmental Studies.
Bob Cagle
CEO - productOps
Bob brings years of software industry management expertise to productOps. Prior to cofounding productOps, he spent two years at Krugle, where he built and managed the team that created a vertical code gathering and information management tool designed for software developers.
John Marshall
Founder, CEO - Algorithmic Ads
A software entrepreneur with much experience building software/tech/internet companies, designing products, acquiring customers and engineering an exit
Ted Holladay
Designer
Creative visionary with over twenty years of experience producing successful marketing solutions for some of the world’s most recognized brands. Expert in concept and strategy development, with a proven ability to motivate and inspire creative teams to deliver outstanding creative work.
Bart Teeuwisse
Full Stack Developer
A full-stack developer with experience developing for the Internet on 3 continents. From tiny startups to Yahoo! and anywhere in between. Currently at Twitter as part of the Growth team. Hands on Ruby, PHP, JavaScript coder who is equally at home in Emacs on a remote server as a well as in a modern IDE on a shiny MacBook Pro.
Peter Jennings
Entrepreneur and Investor
High technology entrepreneur and investor with 30 years experience in Silicon Valley, Canada and Europe. Founder Gavilan Corporation, designed and marketed the first notebook computer.
Steve Hill
Director of Strategic Services
Over the past fifteen years, Steve has directed strategic initiatives for leading technology, consumer, and entertainment companies including AFLAC, AMD, BEA, Disney Pictures, HP, NetApp, Netflix, Sun, TiVo, TIBCO, Twentieth Century Fox, VISA, and Universal Pictures.