About Us

Joseph W. Goodman Ph.D.

Joseph W. Goodman received an A.B. Degree from Harvard, M.S. degree and a Ph.D. degree, both from Stanford University. He joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford in 1967, chaired the department from 1989 to 1996, and served as Senior Associate Dean of Engineering until 1999. He retired from Stanford in January of 2001. Dr. Goodman is the author of the books Introduction to Fourier Optics (now in its 3^rd edition), Statistical Optics, Speckle Phenomena in Optics. He has received numerous awards from the I.E.E.E., the A.S.E.E., the O.S.A., the S.P.I.E., including the highest awards given by the latter two societies.

Carolina Huaranca Mendoza

Carolina Huaranca Mendoza has over 15 years of tech, entrepreneurship, and investment experience. She is currently a Scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners, a multi-stage Silicon Valley venture fund, and was a former Principal at Kapor Capital, an early-stage fund. Carolina also  serves on the Board of Directors for Latinas in Tech, a network of 13,000 women worldwide. She is passionate about investing in values-driven founders who are reimagining how technology can democratize access to services for low to moderate income communities in the Americas (the United States and Latin America). Carolina loves film and dreams of one day having one of her screenplays optioned.

William (Bill) Krause

Bill Krause has been President of LWK Ventures, a management consulting firm since 1991. Also, Mr. Krause served as Chairman of the Board of Caspian Networks, Inc., an IP networking systems provider, from April 2002 to September 2006 and as CEO from April 2002 until June 2004. Previously, Mr. Krause served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Exodus Communications, Inc., from September 2001 until February 2002 where he guided Exodus through Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a sale of assets valued at $750M by Cable & Wireless, PLC. Mr. Krause was President and Chief Executive Officer of 3Com Corporation from February 1981 to September 1990 and Chairman of the Board from September 1987 to September 1993 when he retired. Under his leadership 3Com grew from a venture capital funded start-up to a $1B+ publicly traded, data networking company with operations worldwide. Also, Mr. Krause was employed at Hewlett-Packard Company for 14 years from 1967 to 1981 in various marketing and general management assignments. His last position at HP was as general manager of the General Systems Division with worldwide responsibility for the company's personal computer business. Currently Mr. Krause serves as a director of the following public companies: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., Coherent, Inc., and Core-Mark Holding, Inc. Also Mr. Krause serves as a director of the following privately held companies: CommScope, Inc., a $3B+ in sales infrastructure solutions provider for networks; CPU Technology, Inc., a system-on-a-chip (SOC) company; and Power Assure, a power management company. In addition, Mr. Krause was elected to serve as Chairman of the American Electronics Association in 1989. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from The Citadel in 1963 and received an honorary doctorate of science in 2000. 

Judy C. Miner, Ed.D.

Effective August 1, 2015, Judy C. Miner was appointed Chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District which is headquartered in Los Altos Hills, California. She has worked as a higher education administrator since 1977 and in the California Community Colleges since 1979 where she has held numerous administrative positions in instruction, student services, and human resources at City College of San Francisco, the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, De Anza College, and lastly, at Foothill College where she served as President from 2007 to 2015.

Regionally, she serves on advisory boards for the Los Altos Library Endowment; San Francisco Opera Education Programs; WestEd’s Reading Apprenticeship Community College STEM Network; and the Pebble Beach Authors and Ideas Festival. She is also on the Board of Directors for Year Up Bay Area and the Board of Trustees of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. She has been appointed an expert advisor by Hewlett Packard and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) to their Silicon Valley initiative aimed at increasing underrepresented student enrollments in computer science. Miner is also the Silicon Valley CEO representative to the Economic Development and Program Advisory Committee for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

Nationally, she serves on the External Advisory Committee for the University of Wisconsin-Madison National Science Foundation Study on Financial Aid Impact on STEM Students; Board of Directors for the League for Innovation in the Community College; Board of Directors for the American Council on Education (ACE); Board of Directors for the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the CHEA International Quality Group (CIQG). Miner currently serves as the chair of the planning committee for the 2016 American Council on Education national conference.

Internationally, she has been an invitee to present on American community colleges to the Fundacion Ciencia y Vida (Santiago) and on workforce training to the International Conference on Community Colleges (New Delhi).

In 2011, under the auspices of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), she served on the Working Group that produced Report to the President, Engage to Excel: Producing One Million Additional College Graduates with Degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The White House published the report in February of 2012. On March 23, 2012, Science magazine published her editorial entitled “America’s Community Colleges” with an accompanying podcast that highlighted the science initiatives at Foothill College.

Recent awards include Hillel Pillar of the Community; Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence; Year Up Core Values: Engage and Embrace Diversity; and Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow.

She earned her B.A., summa cum laude, in history and French at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco; her M.A. in history at that same college; and her Ed.D. in organization and leadership (with a concentration in education law) from the University of San Francisco. She also holds an honorary A.S. from Imperial Valley College.

Armand Neukermans, Ph.D.

Armand Neukermans holds EE and ME Degrees from Louvain University, and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University. Since 1962, he has held various research and senior management positions within the organizations of KLA-Tencor, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox and General Electric. He founded Xros, an optical switch company where he served as Chairman and CTO, which was acquired by Nortel Networks in 2000. He is the author of 40 publications, and is the inventor of over 75 patents in diverse fields. He was named Silicon Valley "Inventor of the year" in 2001. He serves on the board of both public and private companies, and as a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Louvain University. Since his retirement, he has been involved in various environmental projects (including the foundation of the Big Sur Environmental Institute) and in fostering the causes of various social entrepreneurs, such as D-Rev, Jaipur Foot, and Benetech's Landmine Project. He was instrumental in setting up the Portola Valley Solar Community project, which became a landmark model for community buying of solar power. He now leads a group of scientists and engineers doing technology research for application in marine cloud whitening with seawater nuclei, an innovative climate mitigation effort.

William J. Rutter, Ph.D.

Bill Rutter is Chairman and founder of Synergenics, LLC, which owns/controls a portfolio of biotechnology companies at various stages of development. Bill, with two colleagues, founded Chiron Corporation in 1981, a pioneering biotech firm that developed the first recombinant vaccine (for Hepatitis B), the first sequencing of the HIV genome in 1984, and the discovery, cloning, and sequencing of the Hepatitis C virus (1987). Chiron also developed quantitative diagnostic tests for determination of "viral load", a new concept that opened the way for development of therapeutic drugs and vaccines against these viruses. In 1995, the Swiss Pharma Company Ciba-Geigy acquired 49% of Chiron in a transformative transaction. Subsequently, Sandoz merged with Ciba-Geigy to form Novartis. Rutter joined the Novartis Board of Directors, and remained with Chiron until 1998. Novartis purchased the remaining portion of Chiron in 2005. Bill played a key role in developing UCSF into a major scientific institution. He joined UCSF as head of its new department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in 1968, and helped build the science enterprise during the period of major developments in recombinant DNA technology, based on discoveries of colleague Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen of Stanford. After the formation of Chiron, Bill became director of Use's Hormone Research Institute, a post retained until 1989, when he joined Chiron full time. Bill has published more that 380 scientific articles and holds over 25 patents. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received numerous awards for his contributions to science and the biotechnology industry.

Richard Swanson, Ph.D.

Richard Swanson was born in Davenport, Iowa in 1945. He received his BSEE and MSEE from Ohio State University in 1969 and the PhD in Electrical Engineering from Sanford University in 1975. After completing his PhD, he joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at Stanford. His research investigated the semiconductor properties of silicon relevant for better understanding the operation of silicon solar cells. These studies have helped pave the way for steady improvement in silicon solar cell performance.

In 1991 Dr. Swanson resigned from his faculty position to devote full time to SunPower Corporation, a company he founded to develop and commercialize cost-­‐effective photovoltaic power systems. Today, SunPower produces the highest performance photovoltaic panels available. Dr. Swanson has received widespread recognition for his work.

In 2002, he was awarded the William R. Cherry award by the IEEE for outstanding contributions to the photovoltaic field, and in 2006 the Becquerel Prize in Photovoltaics from the European Communities. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2008 and a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2009.

He received the 2009 Economist Magazine Energy Innovator Award. In 2010 he was awarded the IEEE Jin-­‐ichi Nishizawa Medal for the conception and commercialization of high-­‐efficiency point-­‐contact solar cell technology, and in 2011 the Karl Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Award.

Marc Tarpenning

Marc Tarpenning started building and programming computers as a teenager and earned a B.A. degree in Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley. After graduating, he spent the next five years with Textron in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 1997, he co-­‐founding NuvoMedia with Martin Eberhard, which produced an innovative electronic book reader and the first secure content distribution system accepted by the publishing industry. Mr. Tarpenning was both VP of Engineering and CFO until that company’s sale to Gemstar/TV Guide in 2000 for $170M.

In 2003, he reunited with Martin Eberhard and co-­‐founded Tesla Motors, a company shaking up the automotive industry with the first production battery electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster. At Tesla Motors, Marc ran the electrical engineering group in addition to being acting CFO for the first three years.

Since leaving Tesla Motors in 2008, he has been Entrepreneur in Residence at Mayfield Fund, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm and is a Mentor at Greenstart in San Francisco. Marc sits on several company Advisory Boards and is an elected School Board Trustee for the Woodside School District.