Management
Melinda Richter, Executive Director
Melinda Richter is the founder and CEO of Prescience International, a firm dedicated to the commercialization of science and technology through starting and managing research centers, incubators, foundations and institutes such as the San Jose BioCenter, Environmental Business Cluster (EBC), UC Berkeley BioExec Institute and Cleantech Institute. With over 15 years of global experience managing and operating incubators and research centers, Ms. Richter specializes in the practices that expedite the path to commercialization.
Ms. Richter started her career within a small elite leadership group of 8-10 people who were selected and developed to be one of the leaders of the Nortel Networks. Ms. Richter worked for eight years in Nortel Networks throughout North America, the U.K., Europe, Central and Latin America, and Asia. Ms. Richter worked in acquisitions, strategic planning, marketing, contract negotiations, engineering and manufacturing optimization, world trade market development, and general management of an IT business unit. One of Ms. Richter's key accomplishments was the successful implementation of a new technology across Nortel Networks' seven international regions including Nortel Africa, Nortel Asia South Pacific, Nortel CALA (Caribbean and Latin America), Nortel China, Nortel Europe, Nortel Japan, and Nortel U.K. Ms. Richter won several Nortel awards including the highest level CEO Award for People / Emerging Market Development in China. In China, Ms. Richter was responsible for creating joint ventures with locally owned telecommunications companies and, post agreement, she was responsible for developing the management for each joint enterprise. She also was responsible for general management development for Nortel Asia Pacific, which encompassed the regions of Nortel China, Nortel Japan, and Nortel Asia South Pacific. In her final position, she was responsible for integrating and managing a software business unit which was an acquisition of a 1500 person firm.
Ms. Richter left Nortel to start eTreasurer, a European online financial and accounting hub for CFOs, where she raised $11M and executed operations in London, Paris and Barcelona. Following, Ms. Richter led business development for high technology companies in Silicon Valley before entering the field of incubation for science and technology by co-leading the life science and technology incubator, Astia (formerly known as the Women's Technology Cluster).
Ms. Richter currently sits on the governing board of the National Business Incubation Association and the boards of University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business BioExec Institute and San Jose State University's Masters of Biotechnology Program. Ms. Richter holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and an M.B.A. from INSEAD in France.
Erika Kula, Director, Business Development
erika@prescienceintl.com
415.828.1498
Ms. Kula is responsible for the Business Development needs for Prescience International, San Jose BioCenter, and Environmental Business Cluster. Prior to Prescience International Ms. Kula was responsible for sales and management of corporate accounts at Equilar, Inc, the market leader for benchmarking executive and director compensation and providing corporate governance related information to over two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies. In her capacity she was responsible for the management of over 200 accounts such as Eli Lily, AutoNation, and Capital One.
Ms. Kula holds a BA in Biological Sciences and Political Science from the University of Southern California and a Certificate from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, Center for Executive Education for their 2008 Business Executive Program.
Evan Goldman, Entrepreneur-in-Residence
evan@prescienceintl.com
650.799.4246
Evan Goldman is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Environmental Business Cluster (EBC) where he coaches and provides strategic counsel to its resident and affiliate member companies. In addition, Mr. Goldman supports Prescience International as in-house Strategic Business Counsel. Mr. Goldman is both a California and Israeli attorney who has held numerous legal and business positions for U.S. and Israeli based technology companies and law firms. Prior to joining the EBC and Prescience, Mr. Goldman led the legal department of BrightSource Energy (utility-scale solar thermal power plants), where he negotiated preferred stock financings totaling over $160 million, processed a $1.4 billion DOE loan guarantee application, and was responsible for all strategic and commercial agreements. Before that, he served in corporate development and legal roles for InsureWorx (insurance claims and policy management systems), Virtual Ports (laproscopy systems), Magnolia Broadband (fabless semiconductor wireless solutions), Rainfinity/EMC (firewall and storage software solutions), Heller Ehrman (San Francisco and Silicon Valley based law firm), ViryaNet (mobile field service solutions), Shraga Biran & Co. (Israeli based law firm), Elop/Elbit Systems (electro-optics products and systems), Fried Frank (New York and Washington D.C. based law firm), and Bezeq (Israeli national telecommunications service provider). Mr. Goldman received his Masters in International Business Law from the American University (Washington, D.C.) and his Bachelor of Law from the Hebrew University (Jerusalem).
Bharat Gpute, Practice Leader
bharat@prescienceintl.com
408.790.2000
Bharat has been a Board Member/Advisor at numerous technology and renewable energy companies. He has helped with private financing, operational and management related issues for them. He has also helped private equity firms on due diligence, board and advisory roles for technology companies.
As a Managing Director, at Redwood Venture Partners ,Bharat was actively involved on the boards of several companies in the Data security systems, Photonics subsystems, Software services, Wireless RF and Semiconductor sectors. He was actively involved in merging all the companies he was directly responsible for with other private and public companies. He led the investments into Laurel Networks and Success Trade in 2004.
In India, Bharat was on the board at Lambent Technologies a profitable wireless software services company and an advisor to Opelin, an automatic remote backup storage software company .Prior to joining Redwood Ventures, Bharat Gupte was on the Board of Directors of Oki Semiconductor(only non-Japanese) and President and COO of the Optical Components Division of Oki. Before heading operations at Optical Components, he was Vice President and General Manager of Standard Products(over $300M), another business unit of Oki Semiconductor. In 1998, he was appointed a member of Oki Semiconductor's Board of Directors. Before joining Oki in 1989, he was Director of Marketing and International sales for Inova Microelectronics. Still earlier, he was a Directorate Marketing Manager with Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD).
He earned an MBA at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he was on the Director's Honors List. He has a BSEE degree, with distinction, from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi.
Greg Martin, Practice Leader
greg@prescienceintl.com
408.790.2000
Greg Martin is a Practice Leader at the Environmental Business Cluster, sharing the mission of helping clean tech startups grow their businesses. Over the last two years, he has worked with numerous startups, earning the Cleantech Open California Mentor of the Year award in 2009. In parallel, he owns startup consulting company, Clean Elements. Prior to his current activity, Greg ran R&D Ops at the Seagate Motor Division as well as the Corporate Chemical Technology Lab, commercializing the hydrodynamic spindle motor for disc drives. Earlier, he ran the Memorex Computer Tape Plant and performed manufacturing and development engineering for Dow Chemical Plastics. Greg holds an MS in Chemical Engineering from Iowa State and an MBA (Technology Management and Entrepreneurship) from Santa Clara.
Russ Sweeney, Practice Leader
russ@prescienceintl.com
408.790.2000
Russ has 28 years of product development, manufacturing and program management experience in aerospace, plastics, custom silicon devices and electric vehicles. At Tesla Motors, he planned the development of Tesla’s electric vehicle prototypes and then took a role as Test Director to recruit assure the safety and reliability of powertrain technology. Russ developed engagement practices for fabless semiconductor startup eSilcon and co-managed the development of the sound processing chip used in the first Apple iPod. Before pursuing Silicon Valley startups, successfully restructured Amerex Technologies, a precision plastic products provider to the semiconductor and drive industries. His early career as an optical engineer at Litton Guidance & Control Systems focused on the development of ring laser and fiber optic gyroscopes. His involvement in bringing new Information Technologies to that division led to a corporate program manager role, where he provided world-wide support on IT and manufacturing strategies. His academic degrees include a BSEE in Applied Physics, M.S. in Optical Engineering, M.S. in Technology Management.
Alessandro Zago, MBA, PhD, Practice Leader
alessandro@prescienceintl.com
408.790.2000
Alessandro Zago is a global, tech-savvy business and corporate development professional with 10+ years international and operational experience in: large multinational corporations (Siemens, BMW), clean-tech start-ups and Venture Capital, including Boards. He is well versed in a broad range of technologies/sectors, e.g. energy, automotive, materials, water. In addition he has a proven track-record of sourcing, evaluating, negotiating, executing and managing a broad range of deals, e.g. investments, strategic partnerships, technology licensing. Over the years he has developed expertise in: new business development and strategic partnerships; business planning and strategy; due diligence, venture finance, fundraising; open innovation and strategic marketing; new business incubation and technology/product commercialization. Combined with extensive international experience in US, Europe, Asia with strong language skills, cultural know-how and global mindset, he is a resourceful team player with strong leadership skills and ability to identify business partners worldwide. He holds the Global Executive MBA from INSEAD and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
Chelsea Hewitt - Marketing Director, Prescience International
chelsea@prescienceintl.com
415.405.6385
Ms. Hewitt is the Marketing Director for Prescience International, a firm dedicated to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship through innovation centers dedicated to acceleration of cleantech, life sciences, and other technologies utilizing chemistry, biology, and engineering. As a senior member of Prescience Intl, Ms. Hewitt is responsible for the marketing strategy of the San Jose BioCenter, a 40,000sf incubator featuring a new generation of specialized facilities; capital equipment; laboratory services; and commercialization support for emerging companies. Since inception, the BioCenter companies have raised over $1.4B in growth capital and generated over 2,000 indirect jobs. Ms. Hewitt also oversees the marketing strategy for the Nation’s first and largest cleantech incubator, the Environmental Business Cluster, and is responsible for creating the marketing strategies behind Prescience Intl’s newest innovation centers in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Chicago, and Denver. Ms. Hewitt also directs the commercialization efforts via the Annual Investor Forum for the National Cancer Institute, and produces the annual BioExec and Cleantech Executive Education Programs on behalf of UC Berkeley.
Ms Hewitt began her career in international marketing and incubator management with London-based, multi-media incubator and investment firm, Illuminator Plc., where she was responsible for the market analysis and due diligence to support the funding of prospective portfolio companies. Following her time with Illuminator, Ms. Hewitt lead marketing at Astia, where she managed all marketing communications, oversaw external program development, and directed the Annual Venture Conference; an emerging company showcase to over 400+ attendees. Ms. Hewitt has a BA in History from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Certificate from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Center for Executive Education for their 2004 Business Executive Program.
Stephanie Dobyns, Marketing Manager
stephanie@prescienceintl.com
415.264.9780
Stephanie Dobyns is the Marketing Manager for the Environmental Business Cluster (EBC), a cleantech incubator fostering entrepreneurship in clean energy innovation within the Silicon Valley. She is responsible for the development and execution of various events and programs within the EBC. Ms. Dobyns has spent the last 7 years in the environmental remediation industry analyzing the treatment of contaminated soil and groundwater at various sites, including Brownfields. She began her career as a remediation technician for Stantec in San Diego, California where she sampled and analyzed contaminated groundwater from various sites such as service stations and dry cleaners. Following her time with Stantec, Ms. Dobyns joined the marketing team at Regenesis, a firm dedicated to the restoration of natural resources such as soil and groundwater. While at Regenesis, she analyzed and presented the results of in situ chemical oxidation and enhanced bioremediation applications for the treatment of petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents in groundwater at hundreds of sites within the United States and United Kingdom. The results of her analyses have been presented at conferences led by Battelle, the Association for Environmental Health and Science (AEHS) and the National Groundwater Association (NGWA). Ms. Dobyns earned her BS In Earth Science from the University of California, San Diego.
Minh Miran, Business Operations Manager
minh@prescienceintl.com
408.960.2319
Ms. Miran manages all aspects of business operations at the Environmental Business Cluster and the San Jose BioCenter to ensure the staff and office continue to operate at the highest level of efficiency and achieve optimal performance. In her role, Ms. Miran helps to define and continuously improve all business processes and operational flows; oversees executive budgeting and reporting functions; manages the administration of human resources policies, procedures, programs, and best practices; and provides general support to the Executive Director. Ms. Miran comes with over 14 years in Business and Operations management, having worked for such companies as American Capital, Ltd., Pacific Media, Monster Cable, Blanc & Otus Public Relations, and State Farm Insurance. Ms. Miran has a BS in Accounting from Saint Mary's College, Moraga, CA.
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