20MinuteLeaders

Lisandro is one of the pioneers of the venture capital industry in Latin America (J-Ventures LP for Latin American Community, AxiaVentures, AltaVentures – México & USA -, OIKOS AgriFoodTech. He is focused on creating and investing in companies that improve the lives of people around the world, especially in developing areas, and his investments have amounted to multiple exits and IPOs. He holds a BA in Economics (Cum Laude) from University of Buenos Aires, and a MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Shmuel is the SVP, Storage Engineering at Hitachi Vantara and was previously CTO and SVP Engineering of BlueArc, the leading provider of the most scalable and the highest performing network storage solutions (acquired by Hitachi). He previously led technology and strategy and 3 other startups that were acquired, and joined Quantum Technology Ventures as a general partner. Shmuel is passionate about mentoring, coaching, and advising young entrepreneurs.

Laura is a social entrepreneur and venture philanthropist in Silicon Valley, focusing on Signature Initiatives that she has designed and launched with experts and other philanthropists. Her initiatives include the Center for Media and Democracy in Israel: (A ProPublica model in Israel), DeLeT: A Jewish Teach-for-America and a Jewish Teen Philanthropy program worldwide.. She serves on 11 nonprofit and foundation boards, is an avid cyclist and, in 2009, won a bronze medal in the Maccabi Games in Israel!

Taly is VP of Global Business Development & Alliances at Ayehu Software, a high growth startup transforming Enterprise IT Process Automation through leveraging AI and ML. Previously, she was VP of Business Development at Uptima and held leadership positions at IVN, CaesarStone, Unilever, and Super-Pharm. Taly is an LP at J-Ventures, an executive member at HighPowerWomen and a three-time windsurfing champion and a bronze medalist in the World Windsurfing Championship!

Gil is the Founding Partner of UpWest, the only Seed fund that's purposefully designed to help Israeli startups break into the US market. UpWest was the first investor in "unicorn" SentinelOne and its portfolio companies have raised well over $1B in follow-on funding from top US VCs. Previously, Gil was part of the Corporate Development group at Yahoo! and served as a consultant advising Fortune 500 companies for the Boston Consulting Group in New York.

Julie gew up in a town with a population of 262, and came to Stanford for her undergraduate degree. Upon graduating she joined Steve Jobs at NeXT in 1989 and continued with Apple on the MacOS X team. She later fell in love with teaching and became a full-time Stanford lecturer, providing inspiration to thousands of students. Julie also served on the Computer Science Advancement Placement development committee, writing and grading an exam for 20,000 students (AP Computer Science).

David is a Stanford Business School Professor and has held numerous executive positions in communications and strategy. He was an assistant to President George H. W. Bush and member of the White House senior staff, was head of communications at Bank of America, head of brand management at Visa and most recently Stanford’s senior public affairs official.

Cindy is the founder and Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures, a seed stage firm investing exclusively in Enterprise/B2B software startups. Previously, she was founder/CEO of SaaS startup Vivant (now part of Oracle), CEO of Acumen and VP marketing at Scopus (IPO then acquired by Siebel). Cindy has been recognized as one of the Most Influential Women in Tech (Fast Company), Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley (New York Times) and dubbed ”Queen B2B” (VentureBeat).

Irina is a director, adviser and often majority stake investor in the fund's portfolio companies. Fluent in 6 languages, Irina is working with ventures in Switzerland, Israel, US and China. Irina's core expertise is in development and promotion of new technologies in digital media and interactive entertainment. She is an active member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Emmys Foundation. Irina is a recipient of the 2011 Emmy for the Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Media

Isaac “Yitz” Applbaum is a co-founder of MizMaa Ventures, a $200M fund which invests in Israeli startup companies. He is an advisor to EIGHT VC Partners and Owl Ventures, and is on the advisory board of Vintage Investment Partners. Previously Yitz was the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Concorde Solutions Inc., which he sold to Bank of America where he held an SVP position. Applbaum was a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.