Kathleen O'Connor is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at Cornell University's Johnson School. She is an organizational psychologist who studies negotiation, teamwork, and decision making. Much of her recent research focuses on how negotiations link together over time. One stream of work shows that past negotiation experiences direct negotiators' choice of tactics and their performance in successive negotiations. A second stream investigates how negotiators' reputations affect them and their potential for success at the bargaining table. As part of this research, she has explored how negotiators' confidence in their skills changes as a function of their negotiation successes or failures, and how it affects their tactical decision making and the quality of their deals.
O'Connor's recent projects investigate the development of individual social capital. She applies theories of individual cognition and interpersonal behavior to study the conditions under which people recognize and exploit opportunities for building social capital. She is a member of a team of networks experts from Cornell University whose work is sponsored by the Institute for the Social Sciences.
Her research has been published in such journals as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Making, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
O'Connor joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1997. She has been a member of the faculty at Rice University, and has been a visiting faculty member at Northwestern University, and at the London Business School.
Kathleen O'Connor earned a BS from Cornell University and an AM and PhD in social and organizational psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Warren Packard is a Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He currently serves on the Boards of Anagran, CastTV, EoPlex, Media Lario, Microfabrica, Primet Precision Materials, and SeaMicro. Warren also leads the firm's investments in BinOptics, CallGate, Imago Scientific Instruments, ooma, YeePay, and Zon Networks.
Prior to joining the firm, Warren co-founded Angara Database Systems, a main memory relational database company, which was acquired by Personify. Prior to co-founding Angara, he was an Associate at Institutional Venture Partners, investing in early-stage technology companies. Before IVP, Warren was a Senior Principal Engineer in the Advanced Product Development Group at Baxter International.
Warren Packard is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University and holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering: Smart Product Design. He received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.
Colleen Wainwright is a writer-speaker-illuminator who started calling herself "the communicatrix" when she hit three hyphens. She consults one-on-one with solopreneurs about their online marketing presence and creates content for an alarmingly large number of online outlets.
Wainwright spent 10 years as an award-winning TV copywriter at Young & Rubicam crafting ads for brands like Wheaties, Gatorade and Jell-O, and another 10 acting in them as a performer. Wainwright now spends her time teaching other creative souls how to talk about what they do in a way that wins them attention, work and satisfaction.
Colleen Wainwright is a graduate of Cornell University.
William Verhelle is the Chief Executive Officer of First American Equipment Finance. First American specializes in leasing high-technology equipment to large corporate borrowers. There are about 4,600 companies offering equipment financing services in the United States. For the fifth consecutive year, First American was recognized as one of the 100 largest equipment finance companies in the U.S. Before founding First American, Bill was Vice President and Western Division Manager of the Tokai Financial Services middle-market leasing company (now, De Lage Landen Financial Services).
Verhelle served as Chairman of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA) in 2008. Prior to that, he was Chairman of the ELFA Government Affairs Council, a member of the ELFA Executive Committee and the ELFA Board of Directors, and chaired the ELFA Middle-Market Independent Business Council Steering Committee.
Bill Verhelle received a Bachelor of General Studies Degree from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, a Master in Business Administration from the Anderson School at UCLA, and a Doctor of Laws from Cornell Law School. He is a member of the New York Bar.
Harry Hill is the President of Oak Lawn Marketing.
Harry Hill's comments are from a panel entitled "Bootstrapping to Success: Starting a Business on a Shoestring and a Prayer" that took place during Entrepreneurship at Cornell Celebration in April 2010.
Harry Hill received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University.
Tien Tzuo is the Chief Executive Officer at Zuora, Inc.
Tien was one of the "original forces" at salesforce.com, which he joined in 1999 as the 11th employee, when the company was still operating out of a house on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. In his 9 years there, Tien held a variety of executive roles in salesforce.com's technology, marketing, and strategy organizations, including building out the product management & marketing organization, serving as salsforce's first Chief Marketing Officer, and most recently as Chief Strategy Officer.
Tien personally oversaw the vision, direction, and design of the first 17 releases of salesforce.com's award winning product line, including overseeing the launch of salesforce.com and the AppExchange. In 2004, Tien was named CMO of the Year Finalist by the CMO Council and BusinessWeek Magazine. Tien is also widely recognized as one of the thought leaders in the software-as-a-service industry. His podcast on the Secrets of Salesforce is widely cited and has been downloaded over 250,000 times.
Tien Tzuo holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University and a master's in business administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Deborah J. Muller brings more than 20 years of employee relations and workplace investigation experience and expertise to her role as Founder and President of HR Acuity, LLC.
Prior to founding the firm, Muller held HR leadership positions in numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Honeywell, Citibank and Marsh & McLennan, where she developed a seasoned approach to conducting workplace investigations into allegations of misconduct. She has been instrumental in leading fact-finding cases involving a wide range of complex investigations, including sexual harassment, discrimination and inappropriate use of company funds. In her senior HR roles, Muller was also responsible for strategic organization redesigns, extensive change management initiatives, coaching and development of senior executives, and performing due diligence and integration activities for company acquisitions.
Deborah Muller earned a BS degree from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and a MA from the University of Maryland.
Marlene Quijano is Director R&D for Cereals, Bars, Better For You Platforms and Open Innovation for the Snacks & Cereal Sector at Kraft. She is responsible for Category Leadership across Growth, Quality and Core Programs across North American Cereal, Bars, Back To Nature and South Beach Diet Categories.
Prior to moving into this assignment, Quijano had prior leadership roles in the Snacks & Cereal Sector. Quijano was the Director for Snacks & Cereal Productivity and Pilot Plant Operations, responsible for Raw & Pack productivity across Biscuit, Snacks, & Confections, involving major product and process cost optimization initiatives and Pilot Plant Operations supporting Growth, Quality and Productivity for the sector. She also served as the Director Packaging and Engineering where she oversaw all of the Packaging and Engineering activities for Biscuit, Snacks & Confections businesses.
Quijano also held a leadership role in Human Resources where she was responsible for guiding the Kraft diversity agenda and focusing on effective strategies to meet quantitative and qualitative goals across the Westchester and New Jersey management sites.
Quijano began her career with the company in 1984 as an intern in the Beverage Division at General Foods Corporation. A year later, she joined the company as a technical researcher in Beverages. She has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility including Senior Engineer for Maxwell House and Asset Planning Manager for Maxwell House Logistics. In 1995, she was named Beverages Operations Quality Manager where she focused on leading and implementing food safety and quality assurance initiatives. A year later, she was named Technology Section Manager for the Beverages Division and then in 1998 became Technology Section Manager for Kraft's Coffee & Cereals Division.
In 1999 Marlene was promoted to Associate Director for Beverages, Desserts & Snacks with overall technical business leadership across two categories - Ready-to-drink beverages and new product development for the entire division. She progressed in that capacity to overseeing the overall technical business leadership across Kraft's Dessert businesses.
Marlene Quijano has a bachelor's of science in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.
Elizabeth A. Mannix is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Management and Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion at the Johnson School at Cornell University.
Professor Mannix's research and teaching interests include: Effective performance in managerial teams, diversity in organizations and teams, power and alliances, negotiation and conflict, and organizational change and renewal. Recently, she has been studying the effects of informal power in teams, and the multi-faceted effects of diversity on performance in organizational groups.
Elizabeth Mannix received her PhD from the University of Chicago.