Helen Bulwik President of New Market Solutions Committees: Committee on Directors (Chair), Development, & Executive
Helen has a long and distinguished career in successfully identifying, developing and executing strategies for top line growth, new business development and enhancing shareholder value for leading retail and consumer product/services companies. She is recognized as a leading retail strategist and analyst. Helen has served as CEO or Executive Chairman of six middle market retailers or consumer product companies, successfully developing and implementing strategies for growth and competitiveness. In addition, as a senior level retail strategist with three of the most retail sophisticated consultancies in the world - IBM, Accenture and the Tom Peters Group, she has advised senior management of more than seventy of the top 100 US retailers and consumer product companies in the development and execution of strategic initiatives for growth and a sustainable competitive advantage. Helen has served on many Boards of Directors and is a past President of the Association for Corporate Growth. She earned both her undergraduate degree and MBA from the University of California – Berkeley, Haas School of Business where she also served as a lecturer on subjects of Strategic Retailing, Consumer Demand and Marketing. She is a sought after speaker frequently and widely quoted in top business publications and the news media.
Paul J. Carney Private Investor Committees: Audit (Chair), Development
Paul J. Carney is a private investor and former financial management executive and consultant for early-stage technology companies. He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting and information systems from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a M.B.A. from Suffolk University.
Carney, a CPA originally from Massachusetts, was vice president of finance, treasurer, and corporate controller of NetScreen Technologies Inc. a leading network security solutions company. He was in charge of the company's worldwide financial operations, initially from worldwide corporate headquarters in Silicon Valley and later from international headquarters in Hong Kong. He helped lead the company's extremely successful IPO, participated in a number of successful acquisitions and managed significant growth until its acquisition by Juniper Networks. He was the first corporate controller at Google Inc., where he established and developed this leading Internet search engine's accounting and finance systems and internal controls during its infancy, positioning the infrastructure of the company for its significant growth. He was acting Chief Financial Officer, corporate controller and treasurer at Adept Technology Inc., a leading factory automation and controls company, where he helped lead a successful IPO and a number of company acquisitions. He held various financial management positions at Ampex Corporation of Redwood City, CA and at Xylogics Inc. of Burlington, MA and was an auditor and earned his CPA credential at Laventhol & Horwath, CPA of Boston, MA.
Carney is a member of the University of Massachusetts system Building Authority and is Secretary, Treasurer and Audit Committee Chairman. He is also a Director of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Foundation.
David Cooper COO & CFO of Satmetrix Systems, Inc. Board Treasurer Committees: Executive, Development, & Finance (Chair)
David Cooper is the COO & CFO of Satmetrix Systems, Inc. Over the past twenty years he has led finance teams at Art.com, Agilent Technologies, QRS, AvantGo, PowerBar, Edison Brothers Stores, Del Monte Fresh Produce, and Dole Food Company. David has taken six companies public, and has closed over $20 billion in debt, equity, and M&A transactions.
David enjoys sports and coaching kids, and founded the Piedmont Basketball Foundation in 2005 to promote basketball in the East Bay. David earned his BA in economics from Yale University, and a MBA in finance from New York University.
Bob Lenz CEO and Co-founder of Envision Schools Committees: Executive, Development, & Committee on Directors
Bob Lenz, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Envision Schools, previously founded Academy X, an award-winning leadership and humanities school-within-a school at Sir Francis Drake High School. Bob was a leader in Drake's whole school redesign effort. Under Bob's leadership Drake was named a "New American High School" (1 of 13 in 1999) by Secretary of Education, Richard Riley and featured on the cover of US News and World Report as an example of high school reform that works. He is recognized nationally as a leader in high school redesign, project-based learning, 21st Century skills education and performance assessment. Under Bob's leadership, Envision Schools has put in practice a highly successful redesign model that has opened a path to college and college retention for underserved urban students at Envision's four Bay Area arts and technology high schools.
Bob was the first in his family to receive a college degree, obtaining a B.A. from St. Mary's College and a M.A. in Education from San Francisco State University.
Lawrie Mott Independent Consultant Committees: Development (Chair), Committee on Directors, & Executive
Lawrie Mott is currently an independent consultant specializing in environmental health. From 1982 to 2000, she was a scientist with the San Francisco office of the Natural Resources Defense Council focused on protecting children from environmental hazards including pesticides, lead, mercury, air and drinking water pollutants. Lawrie has served on a wide variety of environmental and educational nonprofit boards in the past. Presently she is a board member at Marin Academy – an independent high school, and Cool the Earth - a school-based program to educate youth on climate change. She received her BA from UC Santa Cruz and her MS from Yale University.
Matt Roche Managing Partner at Watermen Ventures, Philanthropy Hedge Venture Fund Board Secretary Committees: Committee on Directors, Development, & Executive
Matt Roche is the Managing Partner at Watermen Ventures, Philanthropy Hedge Venture Fund. Previously, he was founder and CEO of Offermatica, a marketing technology firm acquired in 2007, and CEO of Fort Point Partners, an internet technology company that was instrumental in the development of the online channels for such brands as J.Crew, Nike, Best Buy and others. Matt also served as a founding Board Member of Habitat for Humanity-Los Angeles. He holds a bachelor's degree in English Literature from Yale University.
Larry Rosenberger Research Fellow at Fair Isaac Committees: Audit, Development
Larry Rosenberger assumed the role of Fair Isaac's first Research Fellow in October 2007 and currently fulfills that role on a half-time basis, continuing a 36-year career with the company that began in 1974. Previously, he led Fair Isaac's Research Unit for over 8 years and served as President and CEO also over 8 years. In the for-profit world he currently serves on three boards - one publicly held and two early-stage privately held companies. In the non-profit world, he served 6 years on the board of the Marin Education Fund, including 3 years as chair, and 5 years on the board of GivingNet. He currently serves on the boards of the Buck Institute for Education (Marin) and Swords-to-Plowshares (San Francisco).
Larry holds a B.S. in physics from MIT, and an M.S. in physics from UC Berkeley. He also holds an M.S. and an M.Eng in Operations Research from UC Berkeley. He co-authored: "The Deciding Factor: The Power of Analytics to Make Every Decision a Winner". Larry and his wife, Diane, have two sons and four young grandchildren.
Amy Vernetti Managing Director of Taylor Winfield Committees: Development, Finance
Amy Vernetti is Managing Director of Taylor Winfield, via the 2005 acquisition of The Vernetti Group. For 16 years, Amy has been instrumental in building management teams of venture capital backed start up technology companies. Previously, she was a General Partner with Technology Crossover Ventures, an expansion stage venture capital firm and at Garage.com, a venture capital investment bank, she was the "Human Capitalist", creating a program devoted to teaching entrepreneurs the importance of recruiting and retaining the right people to drive their businesses.She has worked with several public school reform organizations focused on K-12 education including Picateers, Oakland Unified School District, The New Schools Venture Fund, Teachscape, The Lightspan Partnership and Partners in School Innovation. Vernetti is extensively profiled and quoted in media on the topic of human capital and contributed to the human capital section of Guy Kawasaki's book The Art of the Start. Amy was also a Division I NCAA basketball player at Saint Mary's College in California. A mother of two, Amy now lives in Oakland, CA.
Natalie A. Walrond brings to the organization extensive experience in education, finance, and strategy. Most recently, Natalie was an Associate Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund, where she co-founded and managed the firm's academic systems work. Prior to joining NewSchools, Natalie served as chief financial officer and treasurer of Creative Commons Corporation. She also spent four years in investment management at Northwestern Mutual Life, where she was responsible for the emerging markets public equity portfolio, and five years in investment banking, where she worked as a senior equity research analyst conducting deep primary research on business services, particularly those in the education sector, including K-12, post-secondary, and corporate education software companies. Natalie earned a bachelor's degree in international studies and international business from Trinity University and an MBA from the University of Chicago, with concentrations in analytic finance and policy studies. She is also a founding board member and treasurer for Beyond 12 (formerly CollegeSUCCESS), an integrated technology and services organization whose mission is to increase the number of low-income, first-generation and traditionally underserved students who graduate from our nation's colleges and universities; and serves as a board member of The Generation Project, an education philanthropy that allows donors to become actively involved in their giving; and Live Oak School, an independent K-8 day school in San Francisco.
