Advisory Board
| Shai Agassi |
Founder and CEO, Better PLC |
| Eric Benhamou |
Chairman and CEO, Benhamou Global Ventures, LLC. |
| Safra Catz |
President & CFO, Oracle |
| Uzia Galil |
Chairman & CEO, Uzia Initiatives and Management Ltd. |
| Guy Gecht |
CEO and Chairman, EFI |
| Levy Gerzberg |
President & CEO, Zoran Corporation |
| Eli Harari |
Founder, President & CEO, SanDisk |
| Harry Kellogg |
Vice Chairman, SVB, Chairman, SVB Capital |
| Kenneth Levy |
Founder and Chairman Emeritus, KLA-Tencor |
| Dan Maydan |
President Emeritus, Applied Materials |
| Sass Somekh, Ph.D. |
Founder, Musea Ventures |
| Mike Splinter |
President & CEO, Applied Materials |
Executive Board
Team
Shuly Galili
Executive Director
|
Tami Lev
Chief Operations Officer
|
| |
|
|
Eric Weiss
Chair, Cleantech Initiative
|
|
Biographies
Chairman of the Board
Zvi Alon
CEO Alon Ventures
Mr. Alon is the founder of NetManage, Inc. and has served as its Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer since the Company’s formation in 1990. From 1986 to 1989, Mr. Alon was President of Halley Systems, a manufacturer of network equipment. He previously held management positions at Sytek, Inc., a networking company and served as Manager of the Strategic Business Group for Architecture, Graphics and Data Communications at Intel Corporation. Mr. Alon holds a Bachelors of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel.
Isaac Applbaum is a founding partner of Opus Capital where he is focusing his efforts on finding Israeli-based investments for the firm. Previously, Isaac was a Partner and Managing Director for Israel at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Isaac also brings strong operating experience to Opus Capital. He was founder and CEO of Concorde Solutions Inc. where he broke ground bringing credit cards online in 1996—despite criticism that there would be no market for it. Following the company's acquisition by Bank of America, Isaac became a Senior Vice President responsible for E-ventures.
Before founding Concorde Solutions, Isaac held senior positions at Advanced Technology International and Unify Corporation. At Advanced Technology, his role included defining the needs of U.S.-based companies for Israeli-based programmers, then recruiting, placing and training the Israeli talent to meet the requirements of Advanced Technology's clients.
Founder and President
Sagy Law Associates
Rony Sagy's practice focuses on complex litigation in the area of intellectual property and corporate business litigation, as well as counseling clients in transactional and corporate governance matters. A seasoned trial attorney and negotiator, Ms. Sagy has successfully litigated numerous cases including jury and non-jury trials before federal and state courts, and before the World Intellectual Property Organization. She has effectively utilized alternative dispute resolution (ADR), including mediation, private judging, and arbitration to resolve intellectual property and other commercial disputes. Ms. Sagy's public interest work has focused on the pursuit and advancement of education for children with disabilities. She has represented children with disabilities in class actions, seeking the enforcement of the rights of children with disabilities to a free appropriate public education as required by state and federal laws.
Prior to founding Sagy Law Associates LLP, Ms. Sagy was a Partner with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison (1987 to 1995), where she specialized in complex litigation and ADR. Before joining Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, Ms. Sagy practiced with the litigation group at Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe (1984 to 1986).
Ms. Sagy received her LL.B. cum laude from the University of Tel Aviv in 1978. She is fluent in English and Hebrew.
Ms. Sagy is a member of the State Bar of California and the Israeli Bar.
Tali Aben
General Partner Gemini Israel Funds Tali Aben joined Gemini in 1994 and was the first woman partner in an Israeli VC. She focuses on Enterprise Software and Data Security and represents Gemini on the board of several private companies. She also sits on the board of Verisity (NASDASQ:VRST), a former Gemini portfolio company which was the best performing IPO on NASDAQ in 2001. Tali is based in California where she manages Gemini's Silicon Valley operation, which she opened in 2000. Tali joined Gemini in 1994 from RadView (NASDAQ:RDVW), then a start-up software company and a member of the Rad group, where she served as Marketing Director. Prior to joining RadView, Tali was Senior Product Marketing Manager at SunSoft Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) in Mountain View, CA, where she managed several software development product lines, including compilers, SDK's and Graphical User Interface design tools. From 1990 - 1992, Tali served as Marketing Director for Mercury Interactive Corporation (NASDAQ: MERQ), then a start-up company, where she established the company's U.S. Sales and Marketing organization. From 1984-1990, Tali held Software Engineering positions at Scitex Corporation and Aitech Systems. She holds a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science and an MBA, both from Tel Aviv University. Tali is a prominent speaker at Private Equity events both in the US and in Israel. Tali blogs on Israeli VC from the Valley. Click Here
Venture Partner
U.S. Venture Partners
Jacques joined USVP in 2005 and became a Venture Partner in 2009. Jacques focuses on fostering USVP's position as an active investor in the Israeli market and bringing a top Silicon Valley firm to work directly with Israeli entrepreneurs and venture investors. In addition, Jacques is working with several USVP companies and currently serves as executive chairman of Synfora and Certess. He's also a board observer at Kilopass, Trusteer and Dune Networks and has advised several portfolio companies such as ClearShape, Yoomba and LightSpeed Logic.
Before joining USVP, Jacques had significant operational experience as CEO and President of Monterey Design Systems, from 1999 until its acquisition by Synopsys (SNPS) in 2004. Prior to that, he founded and served as general manager of the European subsidiary of Epic Design Technology (EPIC) and participated in the company's IPO and subsequent acquisition by Synopsys, where he became vice president of European Sales. Jacques has held a number of research and management positions at IMEC in Leuven, Belgium, at IBM's Scientific Center in Haifa, Israel and STMicroelectronics in Grenoble, France.
Currently, Jacques is the co-president of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Technion Society, on the board of the California Israel Chamber of Commerce, and on the Steering Committees of the Israel Web Tour and the Israel Cleantech Tour. He was on the board and vice-chairman of the EDA Consortium from 1999 through 2005.
Fluent in English, French and Hebrew, Jacques holds a B.Sc in computer engineering from Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and an MS and Ph.D in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He has published over 30 technical papers.
Gil Livnah has been working with U.S. and Israeli technology companies, founders and investors as an investment banker and corporate attorney since 1988. Gil has executed domestic and international merger and acquisition transactions totaling more than $7.5 billion in consideration and private placements and public offerings totaling in excess of $9 billion in raised capital.
Gil launched Livnah Associates to offer a broad range of both corporate law and corporate development services to technology companies with a particular focus on mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property transactions, venture financings and commercial transactions. He continues to work closely with technology companies and investors based in the United States, Israel, Europe and Asia.
Gil’s legal experience includes working in the business department of Morrison & Foerster in Palo Alto where he led many M&A transactions and venture financings. In addition, Gil served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and General Counsel of an Israel-related venture-backed wireless software and device company, where he led all of the company’s strategic, financing and intellectual property transactions globally.
Gil’s investment banking experience spans several years with Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and Jefferies Broadview in New York and California. During that time Gil led multiple technology M&A transactions, private placements and public offerings as well as specialized restructuring transactions.
Gil holds a Bachelor of Science degree from U.C. Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law where he graduated magna cum laude. He was born in Haifa, Israel, is fluent in Hebrew and is an avid classical piano and tuba player.
Ash Lilani is responsible for SVB Global, which consists of SVB’s global market activities, and SVB’s strategy to promote technology, venture capital, entrepreneurship, banking, and financial solutions to technology and life science companies globally. In addition, Lilani sets the strategy and oversees the operation of SVB’s international subsidiaries in London, Bangalore and Shanghai, and future openings in locations including Israel. Additionally, he is also responsible for SVB’s international venture capital and private equity investments along with SVB’s international VC banking portfolio. Previously, Lilani served as senior vice president and manager of SVB Silicon Valley Bank’s South Bay region, located in the heart of Silicon Valley. In that role, he was responsible for all commercial banking activity in Northern California’s South Bay region from January of 2002 until May 2004. During this time, Lilani also served as the country head, India, responsible for the company’s network and activities in India. In his ongoing effort to help venture capital clients better understand and leverage India, Lilani led 23 Silicon Valley venture capitalists on a networking and educational expedition to India in November 2003 and another group to China in June 2004. The trips exposed clients to SVB’s connections and clientele in India and China and helped them better understand what it takes to work with Indian and Chinese companies and do business in the regions. In 1997, Lilani opened Silicon Valley Bank’s Philadelphia office and managed this and the New York regional offices through 2001. By 2001, under Lilani’s leadership, the region had expanded to include coverage of New York, Connecticut, Delaware and New Jersey. Before joining SVB, Lilani held technology-lending positions at Meridian Bank and CoreStates Bank, serving as vice president at both companies. Lilani co-founded the technology lending practice at Meridian Bank. He is constantly on the speaking circuit in regard to venture and business activities in the global arena and was named one of Silicon Valley’s 40 most influential business people under 40 in 2005 by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. Lilani holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting from Bangalore University and has an MBA from Philadelphia University.
Ilene Adler is the founder and CEO of PR@vantage, a public relations agency that promotes technology clients worldwide. Founded in 1990, the company has offices in San Francisco, New York and Orlando. PR@vantage handles the worldwide PR for a number of Israeli companies, including ECI Telecom, Veraz Networks, Convergin, and VKB. Other well-known international clients have included Ericsson, Samsung Electronics and Panasonic. She has also successfully helped start-ups make the leap to public companies or get acquired by leading companies such as Cisco, Alcatel, and Juniper. Prior to founding PR@vantage, from 1983 to 1989, Ilene was president of RAD Data Communication, Inc. where she built the company and sales force in the U.S. and was Director of International Sales & Marketing for the company in Israel. Ilene holds an MBA in Marketing and International Business from NYU and a Bachelor of Science degree from S.U.N.Y. Buffalo. She has taught marketing as an adjunct professor at NYU.
|
About CICC
