Elon Musk is CEO and Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, a company which focuses on space exploration technologies.
Prior to founding SpaceX, Musk founded a company Zip2, which helps newspaper companies put classified ads and other local information on Web sites. He sold it to Compaq for $307 million in cash.
Musk used that to start his next business, PayPal, which enabled e-mail payments. Months after taking it public, he sold it to eBay for $1.5 billion.
Born in South Africa, Musk came to North America at age 17. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned undergraduate degrees in physics and business.
<p>Cheryl Melchiorre is a Manager at Deloitte Consulting. Prior to her position at Deloitte, she worked in strategic consulting at McKenzie. </p> <p>Melchiorre shared her experiences as a woman in business on a panel of "Women In Business" presented by Cornell University's Career Center.</p> <p>Cheryl Melchiorre received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and her MBA from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. </p>
<p>Erica Retblatt is the Human Resources Manager at Hillstone Restaurant Group. Prior to her role at Hillstone, Retblatt had assorted experience in the hospitality industry including working as a sommelier in a three-star restaurant and later moving into management roles.</p> <p>Retblatt shared her experiences as a woman in business on a panel of "Women In Business" presented by Cornell University's Career Center.</p> <p>Erica Retblatt received her undergraduate degree from Columbia University and received a Masters of Management in Hospitality (MMH) from Cornell University. </p>
<p>Brent Gloy is a professor of agricultural finance and agribusiness management at Cornell University. He teaches an undergraduate course in Agribusiness Strategy and a graduate course in Agricultural Finance. He co-teaches a two-week international field study that allows students to gain exposure to the food and agribusiness systems in foreign countries. In the past three years, groups have traveled to Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and Australia. He has also participated in farm management study trips to California, Florida, and Georgia and has been actively involved with the Farm Credit Fellows program.</p> <p>In addition to his activities at Cornell, Brent remains involved in the family farming operation located in southwestern Nebraska.</p> <p>Brent Gloy received his B.S. from the University of Nebraska and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Purdue University.</p>
<p>Alison Gerlach is a successful entrepreneur and business executive with expertise in and passion for building businesses. After doing extensive research in optimizing the business start-up process, Gerlach went on to build businesses in industries including technology, entertainment services, consumer packaged goods, and professional services. Prior to her entrepreneurial endeavors, she was a strategic management consultant and an overseas investment banker. </p> <p>In addition to building and growing her current venture, "Allie's Edibles", Gerlach spends a great deal of her time teaching, consulting to both start-up and large corporations, and giving lectures to both business and academic audiences on optimizing the business start-up process. </p> <p>Alison Gerlach earned a BA in economics from Cornell University and an MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management.</p>
<p>Michael Holland is currently a Director at Oberon Media, one of the world's leading casual games solution provider.</p> <p>Prior to his position at Oberon, Mike was the founder of OpenWonder. OpenWonder is focused on developing and planning specialized web services and is specifically targeting the area of diversity within large corporations.</p> <p>Prior to founding OpenWonder. Hollard worked at DirectAdvice, a subsidiary of Mellon Financial. Before that role, Holland was a project manager at Infonautics. Infonautics was an operator of specialized information Web sites and tools that was acquired in 2001 by Tucows. Tucows is a Toronto-based provider of wholesale digital products to Internet service providers and Web-hosting companies. In addition, Holland attempted several dot com startups while an undergraduate student. </p> <p>Michael Holland received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his MBA From Duke University.</p>
<p>Brian Magierski is an experienced entrepreneur and start-up executive in the area of software and web services targeted at enterprises. Currently Brian is the Co-Founder, President & CEO of Kalivo, Inc., a leading provider of web software that enables companies to engage directly with their customers across the Web.</p> <p>Magierski has co-founded two companies and served as an interim CEO and angel investor in another. He was the co-founder and CEO of Phiware, a venture-backed enterprise demand planning software company, and iMark.com, a business-to-business web marketplace for trading surplus goods that was sold to FreeMarkets in March 2000 for $340 million. Magierski also served as interim CEO and investor in ioLogics, an enterprise email security software provider, and provided consulting services to the chairman and board of directors at ROME Corporation. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Magierski was a business unit director at Trilogy Software in Austin, TX.</p> <p>Brian Magierski holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Engineering from Cornell University.</p>
<p>Chris Wilkerson is the President of EquipSystems. EquipSystems focuses on equipment management programs for what is referred to as the non-electrics rolling stock in hospitals. </p> <p>Prior to purchasing EquipSystems, Wilkerson was the Founder, President and CEO of High Bar Capital. High Bar Capital specializes in the acquisition and management of high quality businesses operating in niche healthcare markets. Creation of High Bar Capital led to his purchase of EquipSystems.</p> <p>Before founding High Bar Capital, Chris worked in the business development group of Ventro, a B2B marketplace builder and operator and was part of the founding team at OnCare, a nationwide oncology physician practice management company. </p> <p>Chris Wilkerson holds a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University and a MBA from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania. </p>
Sara Jobin made history in 2004 as the first woman to conduct on the mainstage subscription series at San Francisco Opera. She conducted performances of Puccini's Tosca with Carol Vaness in the title role and Wagner's Flying Dutchman with Juha Uusitalo and Nina Stemme; the following season she conducted multiple performances of Bellini's Norma. Jobin has also led performances for the San Francisco Opera Center. Prior to her six years as an assistant with the San Francisco Opera, she conducted for Opera San Jose for four years. Her recording with Frederica von Stade of the music of Chris Brubeck has recently come out on the Koch International Classics label; it features the Tassajara Symphony, an organization she led for four years after its founding in 1998. She has also conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Edmonton Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, The Women's Philharmonic, Oakland East Bay Symphony, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic, and Toledo Symphony. At age 16 she attended Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, where she was named a Leonard Bernstein Music Scholar. After graduation, as a John Knowles Paine Travelling Fellow, she studied conducting with Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School. In 1999 she was the first recipient of the JoAnn Falletta Award, given by The Women's Philharmonic in recognition of a young female conductor of outstanding promise.