The School of Information this week introduced a new Advisory Board, made up of respected business leaders, technologists, and creative thinkers from Silicon Valley and beyond. The board members come from a wide variety of backgrounds — including finance, computer science, anthropology, economics, and art — but they share a track record of success and a sense of excitement about the future of an information-driven world.
The Advisory Board met for the first time Wednesday in South Hall. The board will provide external perspective, vision, and support for the school's programs, strategic direction, and overall objectives.
Advisory Board Members
Carl Bass is the president and chief executive officer of Autodesk, Inc., a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Bass co-founded Ithaca Software, the developers of HOOPS, which was acquired by Autodesk in 1993; he previously served as Autodesk’s chief operating officer, responsible for worldwide sales, marketing, and product development.
Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist and researcher and the director of Intel Corporation's Interaction and Experience Research. She is an official "Thinker in Residence" of South Australia, and has been named one of the top 25 women in technology to watch and one of the 100 most creative people in business.
Caterina Fake is the co-founder of Flickr and Hunch. Before founding Flickr, Fake was the art director of Salon.com; after Yahoo's acquisition of Flickr, she ran Yahoo's technology development group. She is also on the board of directors of Creative Commons and the chairman of the board of Etsy. She has been named one of BusinessWeek's Best Leaders of 2005, Forbes 2005 eGang, Fast Company's Fast 50, Red Herring's 20 Entrepreneurs under 35, and Time Magazine's 100 most influential people.
Reid Hoffman is a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur, executive, and investor who has been integral to building many of today's leading Internet-based consumer technology businesses, including LinkedIn and PayPal. He co-founded LinkedIn and served as CEO for four years, and he served as executive vice-president and a founding board member at PayPal. Hoffman is currently a partner at Greylock Partners.
Ellen Levy is the vice president of strategic initiatives at LinkedIn. Previously, she was a venture capitalist, both as a managing director at NeoCarta Ventures and at Softbank Venture Capital. Levy was also the director of industry collaboration & research with Stanford University's Media X Program. She has a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University.
Qi Lu is the president of Microsoft's Online Services Division, where he leads the company's search and online advertising efforts. Prior to joining Microsoft, Lu spent 10 years as a Yahoo! senior executive, serving as the executive vice president of engineering for the company's Search and Advertising Technology Group and vice president of engineering. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.
James Manyika is a director (senior partner) at McKinsey & Company and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey & Company's business and economics research arm. Before McKinsey, Manyika was on the engineering faculty at Oxford University and a research fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. He was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to serve on a 15-member Innovation Advisory Board, and has also been a visiting scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a faculty exchange fellow at MIT, and a Rhodes Scholar.
Biz Stone was a co-founder and creative director of Twitter, Inc., and also helped to create and launch Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious. Stone launched the journaling service Xanga in 2000, and Google invited him to join a recently acquired Blogger.com team in 2003. Biz helped relaunch the service and grow Blogger significantly worldwide. He has been named Nerd of the Year by GQ, one of the most influential persons in the world by Time Magazine, and "Most Useless" by Valleywag.
Hal Varian is currently the chief economist at Google, and was the founding dean of the School of Information (then the School of Information Management and Systems) from 1995 to 2002. An economist specializing in the economics of information, he holds joint appointment on the faculty of Berkeley's School of Information, Haas School of Business and department of economics.
Photo of Caterina Fake courtesy of Richard Morgenstein; photos of Biz Stone and Genevieve Bell courtesy of JD Lasica.