FWD

Leaders in the Tech Community

FWD.us Silicon Valley Team: The FWD.us Silicon Valley team handles our digital, organizing, and membership efforts.

Joe Green: Founder and President -- Joe founded FWD.us to organize and engage the tech community on issues of vital importance to America's global competitiveness. Previously, he founded Causes and co-founded NationBuilder to realize his belief that social networks enable community organizing at a previously unknown scale. These two successful companies combine the best of traditional organizing with new technologies, making the tools of democracy more widely available and empowering people to become leaders. Joe started in local politics by winning election to his local school board while he was still in high school. He went on to work on several other political campaigns at the local, state and national level, including John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. He is a Board Member of the Salesforce Foundation.

Jeremie Vella: Digital Director -- Jeremie spearheads FWD.us's online advocacy program. He is responsible for social networking, web production, email marketing and content creation. Most recently he was the digital director for the Obama campaign in Colorado during the 2012 election.

William Leiter: Digital Strategist and Researcher -- William helps develop and implement the FWD.us advocacy strategies on the web and social media. He also performs research for our policy campaigns, and our organizing in the tech community. He previously worked as a legislative aide in the California State Senate, and as a digital strategist for political campaigns.

Emanuel Yekutiel: Special Assistant to the President -- Emanuel supports the President in his work to bring America forward. He graduated from Williams College where he was Co-President of the Student Body. He previously worked in the White House Office of Public Engagement and on President Obama's re-election campaign in New Hampshire.

FWD.us Washington D.C. Team: The FWD.us Washington D.C. team focuses on our advocacy, research, and communication efforts.

Rob Jesmer: Campaign Manager -- Rob is the former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He manages our campaigns, and oversees grassroots operations, research, earned and paid media, and our policy and legislative operations. Rob has extensive experience on statewide and national campaigns and on Capitol Hill as a chief of staff.

Alida Garcia: Coalitions and Policy Director -- Alida Garcia is the former National Latino Vote Deputy Director of Obama For America's 2012 reelection campaign. As FWD.us's Director of Coalitions & Policy, Garcia advises on immigration policy and oversees our external relationships with a diverse coalition of allied groups and individuals dedicated to passing comprehensive immigration reform.

Kate Hansen: Communications Director -- Kate Hansen most recently worked as the communications director for the Democratic Governors Association's successful 2012 cycle. Hansen has run communications operations for members of both the House and Senate and has wide-ranging experience on progressive statewide and national campaigns.

Scott Sloofman: Research Director -- Scott Sloofman is the former Deputy Director of the Republican National Committee War Room. As the Research Director, Scott is responsible for media monitoring, rapid response and research operations.

FWD.us Supporters: A diverse group of leading innovators, job creators, business owners and founders from the tech community.

Aditya Agarwal: FWD.us Founder -- Vice President of Engineering at Dropbox -- Aditya is Vice President of Engineering at Dropbox. He oversees the different engineering teams including new product development, infrastructure, platform and operations. Aditya came to Dropbox via the acquisition of Cove, a company he co-founded that was focused on improving group collaboration and communication. Prior to Cove, Aditya was the Director of Product Engineering at Facebook where he oversaw the development of core products such as News Feed, Search, Photos, Profile and Applications. Aditya was one of the first engineers at Facebook and played an important role in helping to design and build core parts of the Facebook engineering infrastructure.

Jim Breyer: FWD.us Founder -- Partner at Accel Partners -- Jim is passionate about social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy. He is a Partner at Accel and is the President of Accel Management Company. Jim has been an investor in over 30 consumer Internet, media, and technology companies that have completed public offerings or successful mergers. Several of these investments have returned over 100 times their initial cost and many of these investments have returned over 25 times their cost to investors. In 2012 and 2011, Jim was ranked #1 in Forbes' Midas List of top technology investors. Fortune Magazine also named Jim the smartest investor in technology, and one of the 10 smartest people in all of technology. In December, 2012, he was named the AlwaysOn Venture Capitalist of the Year. In February, 2013, Jim was elected a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, Harvard University's senior governing board.

Matt Cohler: FWD.us Founder -- General Partner at Benchmark -- Matt is a General Partner at Benchmark, where he has partnered with entrepreneurs as a board member at Instagram, Quora, Asana, Domo, Edmodo, Couchsurfing, Peixe Urbano, ResearchGate, and 1stdibs; as a board observer at Uber, Baixing and Zendesk; and as an investor at Dropbox. Prior to joining Benchmark, Matt served as Vice President of Product Management at Facebook, where he was the company's seventh full-time employee, and as Vice President and General Manager at LinkedIn, where he was a member of the company's founding team. Matt also serves on the Board of Governors and Executive Committee at the San Francisco Symphony and actively supports non-profits and NGOs including Women For Women International, Tate Americas Foundation, UCSF, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Tipping Point Community, and GiveDirectly.

Ron Conway: FWD.us Founder -- Special Advisor to SV Angel -- For the past 15 years, Ron has been passionate about angel investing in Silicon Valley technology start-ups. During this time, he has been fortunate to invest in - and work closely with - hundreds of startups including: Google, Facebook, Zappos, Square, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, foursquare, and Twitter. Ron was included in Vanity Fair's 100 most influential people in the Information Age in 2010. He was awarded Best Angel at the 2009 TechCrunch Crunchies Awards, and was named #13 on Forbes Magazine's Midas list of top "deal-makers" in 2011. Philanthropically, Ron is a Board Member of the Salesforce.com Foundation, Sandy Hook Promise-Newtown CT, and Americans for Responsible Solutions-Gabby Giffords.

John Doerr: FWD.us Founder -- General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers -- John Doerr joined Intel in 1974 just as they invented the famous "8080" 8 bit microprocessor. At Intel he held various engineering, marketing and management assignments, and was one of their top-ranked sales executives. In 1980 he joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and sponsored a series of investments including Compaq, Cypress, Intuit, Netscape, Lotus, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, S3, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, Symantec and Google. John was the founding CEO of Silicon Compilers. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Google and Zynga and on privately-held company boards including Miasole and Bloom Energy.

Joe Green: FWD.us Founder -- Founder and President of FWD.us -- Joe founded FWD.us to organize and engage the tech community on issues of vital importance to America's global competitiveness. Previously, he founded Causes and co-founded NationBuilder to realize his belief that social networks enable community organizing at a previously unknown scale. These two successful companies combine the best of traditional organizing with new technologies, making the tools of democracy more widely available and empowering people to become leaders. They are bipartisan tools; NationBuilder has been used by non-profits and politicians from both major parties. Joe started in local politics by winning election to his local school board while he was still in high school. He went on to work on several other political campaigns at the local, state and national level, including John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. He is a Board Member of the Salesforce Foundation.

Reid Hoffman: FWD.us Founder -- Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of LinkedIn -- Reid is Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock. An accomplished entrepreneur, executive and investor, Reid has played an integral part in building many of today's leading consumer technology businesses, including LinkedIn and PayPal, where he was executive vice president and founding board member. Today, he is a director at Airbnb, Zynga, Mozilla, Shopkick, Wrapp, Edmodo and Kiva.org. He is also co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. He studied symbolic systems at Stanford University and philosophy at Oxford University.

Drew Houston: FWD.us Founder -- Founder and CEO of Dropbox -- Drew Houston is the CEO and cofounder of Dropbox, and has led Dropbox's growth from a simple idea to a service relied upon by millions around the world. Prior to starting Dropbox, Drew studied computer science at MIT, during which he also founded Accolade, an online SAT prep startup. After graduating from MIT, Drew recognized that people needed a way to bring their files with them without sending email attachments or carrying USB drives. He began writing a solution to this problem in 2007, before demoing an early version to Arash Ferdowsi in Boston. The two of them then began working on the project that would eventually become Dropbox. Drew has been named one of the top "Twentysomething Entrepreneurs" by Businessweek. He was also included in Fortune's "40 Under 40" list and Inc. Magazine's "30 Under 30".

Chamath Palihapitiya: FWD.us Founder -- Founder and Managing Partner of The Social+Capital Partnership -- Chamath is a highly-successful Bay Area based entrepreneur, and an original member of the Facebook management team. He has been a prominent figure in the venture capital business and a multitude of successful online ventures during their formative stages. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of The Social+Capital Partnership, a venture fund focused on investing in highly disruptive ideas in healthcare, education, financial services and the internet. He is also an avid sports fan and is Owner and Director of the NBA's Golden State Warriors.

Ruchi Sanghvi: FWD.us Founder -- Vice President of Operations at Dropbox -- Ruchi is the Vice President of Operations at Dropbox. Prior to joining Dropbox, she served as the co-founder and CEO of Cove, a collaboration, coordination and communication product for organizations and communities. Ruchi holds the distinction of being the first female engineer at Facebook and was instrumental in implementing the first versions of key features such as News Feed. She then led product management and strategy for Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. She was also responsible for core product areas such as privacy and user engagement. Ruchi is the recipient of the prestigious TechFellow award for engineer leadership.

Mark Zuckerberg: FWD.us Founder -- Founder and CEO of Facebook -- Mark is the Founder and CEO of Facebook, which he founded in 2004. Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook's service and development of its core technology and infrastructure. Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving the company to Palo Alto, California.

Brian Chesky: FWD.us Major Contributor -- CEO and Co-founder of Airbnb -- Brian drives Airbnb's vision, strategy and growth. Always pushing the status quo, he aims to disrupt the industry with ideas that change the way people live. To grasp the full impact and experience of Airbnb, Brian rid himself of an apartment and has been living in the homes of the Airbnb community since June of 2010. Before Airbnb, Brian ran an industrial design shop in Los Angeles; even these days he is rarely seen without a drafting pen and sketch book in hand. Brian believes that what sets Airbnb apart is the access to space that would otherwise be off limits, and, haunted or not, he would be honored to someday stay in the Lincoln Bedroom through the site.

Chris Cox: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Vice President of Product at Facebook -- Chris is responsible for organizing Facebook's product strategy and overseeing the product management and design functions. He joined Facebook in 2005 as a Software Engineer and was instrumental in implementing the first versions of several key Facebook features. He then became Director of Human Resources where he drove the development of Facebook's mission, values, and people strategy.

Paul Graham: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Co-founder of Y Combinator -- Paul is a programmer, writer, and investor. In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb, the first software as a service company. Viaweb was acquired by Yahoo in 1998, where it became Yahoo Store. In 2001 he started publishing essays on paulgraham.com, which in 2012 got 20 million page views. In 2005 he and Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell started Y Combinator, the first of a new type of startup incubator. Since 2005 Y Combinator has funded over 500 startups, including Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit. Paul has also published several books on programming.

Reed Hastings: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Founder and CEO of Netflix -- Reed has served as the Chief Executive Officer of Netflix since September 1998, and Chairman of the Board since inception. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Pure Atria Software, a maker of software development tools, from its inception in October 1991 until it was acquired by Rational Software Corporation, in August 1997. Reed currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Facebook.

Chad Hurley: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Co-founder and CEO of AVOS -- Chad was one of the co-founders of YouTube. After its start, YouTube quickly became one of the web's fastest-growing sites, and was ranked as the 10th most popular website just a year after its launch. In October 2006 he, along with the other founders, sold the company to Google. There are reportedly 100 million clips viewed daily on YouTube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded every 24 hours. Prior to YouTube he worked in eBay's PayPal division, where he primarily focused on user interface and helped design the original PayPal logo.

Josh James: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Founder and CEO of Domo -- Josh founded Domo in 2010 to transform the way CEOs and other executives manage their business and to help drive value from the tens of billions of dollars spent on traditional business intelligence systems. Prior to Domo, Josh served as CEO of Omniture, a SaaS-based web analytics company that he co-founded in 1996 and took public in 2006. An active member of the Utah business community, Josh is passionate about promoting the state's economic development and he is equally devoted to entrepreneurship. He has served as an advisor on the technology and startup community to the two most recent governors, Governor Jon Huntsman and Governor Gary Herbert.

Max Levchin: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Co-founder of PayPal, Chairman of Yelp -- Max co-founded and was CTO of PayPal, and is the Chairman of Yelp. He also founded and was CEO of Slide, which created and distributed web applications on Facebook. Google acquired Slide in 2010. Max is currently working on HVF, which stands for solving hard, valuable and fun problems. It is an umbrella project for his data-focused undertakings. The mission of HVF is to be the catalyst of a transformation where we make better use of data to yield enormous productivity gains, create efficiencies where none existed before, and meaningfully improve lives.

Joe Lonsdale: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Partner at Formation 8 -- Joe is a Partner at Formation 8, a fund which invests in top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and connects them with Asian conglomerates in order to give innovation a global impact. Before that, Joe co-founded Palantir Technologies, a multi-billion dollar software company which develops mission-critical analysis systems used by government and financial organizations around the world. He is also the founder of Addepar, a leader in private wealth management technology. Previously, he worked with the financial arm of PayPal while still a student, and then joined as an early executive at Clarium Capital, and was a key player in growing Clarium into a $5-billion AUM global macro hedge fund. On the side, Joe is Chairman of ONEHOPE Inc., a charity-focused wine brand, and is on the board of California Common Sense.

Andrew Mason: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Co-founder of Groupon -- Andrew was founder and CEO of Groupon from 2008 to 2013. He graduated from Northwestern University. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and currently lives in Chicago.

Marissa Mayer: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Chief Executive Officer, President and Director of Yahoo! -- Prior to Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer was Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location Services at Google where she oversaw product management, engineering, design and strategy for the company's suite of local and geographical products. During her 13 years at Google, Marissa held numerous positions, including engineer, designer, product manager, and executive, and launched more than 100 well-known features and products. Prior to joining Google, Marissa worked at the UBS research lab in Zurich, Switzerland and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Marissa serves on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. She is also on the board of various non-profits, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Ballet, and the New York City Ballet.

Mary Meeker: FWD.us Major Contributor -- General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers -- Mary focuses on investments in KPCB's digital practice and helps lead the Digital Growth Fund, targeting high-growth Internet companies that have achieved rapid adoption and scale. She serves on the boards of Square, Lending Club, DocuSign and Quirky. Mary previously worked at Morgan Stanley and served as managing director and research analyst. Since beginning her career as a securities analyst in 1986, Mary has focused on discovering and understanding emerging technology trends, building relationships with visionary entrepreneurs and supporting category-defining companies.

Dave Morin: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Co-founder and CEO of Path -- Dave is an entrepreneur. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Path. He co-founded the company with the mission of bringing people closer together. Through design, mobile, and social technology Path serves millions of people each month with an award winning, five-star rated experience. Dave has had a lifelong passion for entrepreneurship, technology, culture, design, skiing, and improving society. He served both Apple and Facebook for several years during rapid innovation and growth. Today, he serves on the Board of Directors of Eventbrite and on the Boards of two Non-Profit Organizations, the United States Ski and Snowboard Foundation and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He holds a degree in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and grew up under the big sky in Montana.

Elon Musk: FWD.us Major Contributor -- CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX and the CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors -- At SpaceX, Elon is the chief designer, overseeing development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit and ultimately to other planets. At Tesla, Elon has overseen product development and design since the beginning for the all-electric Tesla Roadster, Model S and Model X. Transitioning to a sustainable energy economy, in which electric vehicles play a pivotal role, has been one of his central interests for almost two decades. In addition, Elon is the non-executive chairman and principal shareholder of SolarCity, which he helped create. SolarCity is now the leading provider of solar power systems in the United States. Prior to SpaceX, Elon co-founded PayPal, the world's leading Internet payment system, and served as the company's Chairman and CEO.

Hadi Partovi: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Co-Founder and President of Code.org -- Hadi is an entrepreneur and investor, and also co-founder of education non-profit Code.org. As an entrepreneur, he was on the founding teams of Tellme and iLike. As an angel investor and startup advisor, Hadi's portfolio includes Facebook, Dropbox, airbnb, Zappos, Indiegogo, OPOWER, and Bluekai. A graduate of Harvard University, Hadi began his career during the browser wars in the 1990s, when he was Microsoft's Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer. After the release of IE 5.0, Hadi co-founded Tellme Networks. Tellme was acquired by Microsoft for a reported $800 million. Hadi was General Manager of MSN.com, where he delivered 30% annual growth and incubated Start.com.

Alison Pincus: FWD.us Major Contributor -- One Kings Lane Co-Founder and Chief Partnership Officer -- A digital media veteran, Alison was inspired to co-create One Kings Lane to converge her passion for online shopping and design. In addition to serving as spokesperson and evangelist for One Kings Lane, Alison oversees business development and strategic partnerships. In this role, she and her team drive alliances with web upstarts, media properties, e-commerce entities, and talent. Previously, Alison held digital marketing and business-development positions at The Walt Disney Company, NBC, and Hachette Filipacchi. Alison received her MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and her BS from UC Berkeley. She also serves on the boards of One Kings Lane, the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, Colorado.

Mark Pincus: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Product Officer of Zynga -- Mark is the founder, CEO and chief product officer of Zynga. He founded the company in 2007 with a mission of connecting the world through games, and in founding zynga.org, he also believes that games can do good. On his way to creating Zynga, Mark started three companies. In 2003, he launched Tribe.net, one of the first social networks. Before that, he founded Support.com, a pioneer in automating tech support, and took it public. In 1995, he launched FreeLoader, the first web-based consumer push company. Mark also made founding investments in Napster, Brightmail, Twitter and Facebook and regularly gives lectures to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Keith Rabois: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Partner at Khosla Ventures -- Keith Rabois joined Khosla in March 2013. He served as the COO at Square from 2010 until January 2013, where he lead the company's business operations. He specializes in transforming early-stage startups into successful businesses and has deep expertise in the financial services industry and government affairs. An accomplished executive, entrepreneur and angel investor, Keith has held leadership roles at PayPal, LinkedIn, and Slide, was an early investor in several high-profile Internet companies including YouTube, and currently serves on the board of directors of Yelp and Xoom.

Hosain Rahman: FWD.us Major Contributor -- CEO and Founder of Jawbone -- Hosain is the CEO and founder of Jawbone, a developer of popular products and services for the mobile lifestyle, and one of the largest venture capital-backed consumer electronics companies in the world. Jawbone's premium Bluetooth headsets have disrupted the headset market, and its JAMBOX wireless portable speaker is the best-selling speaker in North America. Now it's UP product is leading the next wave of wearable computing innovation around consumer health. Hosain is passionate about bringing innovative, intuitive, and elegantly designed products to market that let consumers get the most out of their mobile experience.

David Sacks: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Yammer -- David has been involved in the Internet space for 10 years as an entrepreneur, executive and investor, starting with PayPal in 1999. He was PayPal's Chief Operating Officer and product leader, taking the company from startup to IPO and eventual sale to eBay for $1.5 billion. Subsequently, he founded Geni.com, which is a genealogy website that enables millions of family members to collaboratively build an online family tree. He also produced and financed the movie "Thank You For Smoking." David holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

Eric Schmidt: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Executive Chairman of Google -- Since joining Google in 2001, Eric has helped grow the company from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in technology. As executive chairman, he is responsible for the external matters of Google: building partnerships and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership, as well as advising the CEO and senior leadership on business and policy issues. Prior to joining Google, Eric was the chairman and CEO of Novell and chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc. He is member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Prime Minister's Advisory Council in the U.K. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a fellow in 2007. He also chairs the board of the New America Foundation, and has been a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey since 2008.

Kevin Systrom: FWD.us Major Contributor -- CEO and Co-Founder of Instagram -- In 2010, Kevin co-founded Instagram which is used by over 100 million people every month worldwide. Currently, Kevin works at Facebook along with the Instagram team which was acquired by Facebook in 2012. Kevin got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo, which later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google - the first of which was spent working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products, and during the latter he worked on the Corporate Development team. Kevin has always had a passion for social products that enable people to communicate more easily, and, combined with his passion for photography, Instagram was a natural fit.

Padmasree Warrior: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Chief Technology & Strategy Officer at Cisco -- Padmasree Warrior is charged with aligning technology development and corporate strategy to enable Cisco to anticipate, shape, and lead major market transitions. She helps direct technology and operational innovation across the company and oversees strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, the integration of new business models, the incubation of new technologies, and the cultivation of world-class technical talent. In her previous role, Warrior served as CTO and also co-led Cisco's worldwide engineering organization. As Senior Vice President, Engineering, she was responsible for core switching, collaboration, cloud computing and data center/virtualization, security, and architectures for business transformation.

Fred Wilson: FWD.us Major Contributor -- Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures and Founder of Flatiron Partners -- Fred has been a venture capitalist since 1987, helping people start and build technology companies. He currently is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures and also founded Flatiron Partners. He also writes a popular blog, AVC.com.