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Speakers and Panelists To Date |
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Donald Back,
CTO,
Lombard Life Sciences
has
an extensive academic science background with broad expertise in
biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology. Dr. Back is responsible
for identifying and screening new investment opportunities, ensuring
that the scientific experimental proposals and protocols, under which
the investee companies operate, meet the business model expectations. |
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Becky Bergman, VP of Materials and
Biosciences, Medtronic heads the
central research group dedicated to providing Medtronic’s business
units with broad expertise and laboratory capabilities in biomaterials
R&D. She has received several of Medtronic’s highest honors including
membership in the Bakken Society and recipient of the Wallin
Leadership Award. She holds a B.S. degree in Chemical
Engineering from Princeton University. |
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Mike Berman
is a medical device entrepreneur and was President of Boston
Scientific/Scimed. As President
Mr. Berman provided leadership and management for more than 4000
employees. Mr. Berman is currently working with the following
companies: (1) Velocimed, (2) Curon,
(3) CoAxia, (4) Myocor, (5) Neuromics, Urometrics, Data Sciences
International. These companies have raised a cumulative $115
million during Mr. Berman’s Board tenure. |
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Dr. Frank Cerra is the SVP of the
UofM Academic Health Center and
leads one of the largest and most comprehensive academic health
centers in the United States. Comprising schools of dentistry,
medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and veterinary medicine,
the UM AHC prepares 70 percent of the state's health professionals,
supports biomedical industry, and attracts a $160 million a year in
government and private grants. |
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Cathy Connett, Director,
University of St. Thomas John M. Morrison Center for
Entrepreneurship is a successful entrepreneur as well as coach.
She has been an operating manager in all areas of businesses from
manufacturing to marketing to controller to General Manager and has
also been an acquirer as well as an acquiree. She is a past president
of the 65,000 strong Harvard Business School Alumni Association. |
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Jim D'Aquila of The
Mercanti Group has nearly 20
years of investment and merchant banking experience and has completed
over $35 billion of advisory and financing transactions. Jim founded
Mercanti after he left Credit Suisse First Boston/Donaldson, Lufkin &
Jenrette in 2001. Prior to joining DLJ in 1997, Jim was Head of
Investment Banking at Dain Rauscher. Prior to Dain, Jim was a partner
with William E. Simon and Gerald Parsley. |
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Allen Dines, Assistant Director of
University-Industry Relations,
University of Wisconsin, a business
executive with 25 plus years of experience in business development,
marketing, finance and government/public affairs. His present position
focuses on the development of new companies providing links to funding
sources and opportunities. He also works with existing businesses to
establish research collaborations with the University of Wisconsin. |
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Michael Duran joined
Apax Partners as a Partner
in February 2000 to
focus on investments in telecommunication equipment, service
providers, software and components.
Prior to joining the
company, Mr. Duran was a vice president at Lazard in equity research
for four years. He
was a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories for 11
years. He
received his M.B.A. from
the Wharton School and a MSEE
from Carnegie Mellon. |
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Doug Johnson, Director of the
New Business Development Enterprise at the
Carlson School of Management,
holds an MBA and a degree in Math from the UofM. Doug spent 10 years
at IBM, 3 years in investment banking with Dain Bosworth and 10 years
at Norwest Venture Capital. He has served as an investor,
director and officer of several early-stage and/or troubled companies. |
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Bill Joos has served as Vice President of Entrepreneur
Development at
Garage Technology Ventures since its
founding in October 1997. He has held sales and marketing positions
with a variety of companies, including IBM and Apple Computer. Bill is
perhaps best know as a "Pitch Doctor" and has assisted hundreds of
entrepreneurs with refining and focusing their positioning and
presentations. |
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Moses Joseph, Managing General
Partner,
Anila Fund, Mr.
Joseph has more than 5 years of experience as a technology
investor and 11 years of experience as an executive in high technology
companies. He has held executive positions at Integrated Systems,
Wind River Systems, and PepsiCo. He has advised Sun Microsystems on
embedded Java. He co-founded the ESSE (Embedded Systems Standards
Environment) body that evolved numerous IEEE standards. |
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Timothy Kraskey,
Managing Director,
YankeeTek Ventures,
Boston, was one of the founders and VP of Sales & Marketing for Sahara
Networks, acquired by Cascade Communications and later Ascend.
He served as VP of Marketing in Ascend Core Systems Division. Tim has
also worked for ADC, Newbridge Networks and General DataComm in key
sales and marketing roles. He holds BA in Economics from the UofM. |
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Steve Larsen, Venture Partner,
St. Paul Venture Capital. Steve
has held founding executive roles at four start-up companies: Net
Perceptions, Ticketmaster Online-Citysearch,
Unicast and World Merchandise Exchange. He is a founding board member
of the U.S. Internet Association. He was founder of The
Personalization Summit and is the author of Competing in CyberSpace:
Guidelines for Market-Driven Web Site Planning and Design |
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Karen Gilles Larson is the CEO of
Synovis Life Technologies
which designs, develops, manufactures and markets medical
devices for the surgical and interventional treatment of disease. Ms.
Larson joined the company in April 1989 as Director of Finance and
Administration. In December 1989, she was promoted to Vice President
of Finance and the following year to CFO. She was named of President
and Chief Executive Officer in 1997. |
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Jim Leslie, CEO of
Midwave, a company he founded in
June 1999. Jim graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from
the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. In 1990, Jim
joined OPM Information Systems as Vice President of Sales. He became
President of OPM Information Systems in 1996. In 1998, Jim and the
three other principals of OPM Information Systems sold their business
to Inacom Corporation. |
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Spencer Lien, CEO of
QRS Diagnostics founded QRS in a
spare bedroom in his home in 1994. Since then, the company has
rapidly risen to become one of the fastest growing and most
recognizable names in the industry. QRS provides patient
monitoring devices using PC card technology; transforming laptop PCs
in to mobile patient monitoring devices in the fields of spirometry,
oximetry, EKG, blood pressure and vitals. |
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Steve Oberlin, CEO of
Unlimited
Scale, a Linux software company creating a supercomputing resource of
networked Linux machines. Steve was the lead hardware architect
of the Cray T3E, a parallel supercomputer system that is widely
recognized as the most efficient highly-scalable production computer
ever built for scientific and engineering applications. |
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Andrew Odlyzko, Director of the Digital Technology
Center,
Assistant VP for Research, Professor of Mathematics, Univ. of MN. The
Digital
Technology Center integrates research, education, and
outreach in digital publishing and design, computer graphics and
visualization, telecommunications, data storage and retrieval systems,
electronic commerce, multimedia, advanced manufacturing and scientific
computation, and other digital technologies. |
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Mathias Samuel, Intellectual
Property Attorney,
Fish & Richardson,
specializes in high technology litigation spanning a broad range of
technologies. Particular expertise in telecommunications, electronic
devices, and medical devices. Additional experience and expertise in
trademark, trade dress, domain name and design patent infringement
litigation. |
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Brett Shockley is CEO of
Spanlink Communications, a
leading provider of contact center solutions. He founded the
company in 1988 with $3,000, took it to an IPO and then back to a
private company. He has also held senior-level management
positions in international product management and marketing at ADC
Telecommunications, Inc., and holds a Bachelor Degree in Mechanical
Engineering from the University of Minnesota. |
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Dave Stassen
manages the healthcare investment activities for St. Paul Venture
Capital. Prior to joining
St. Paul Venture Capital in 1999,
Dave spent six years as CEO of Spine-Tech, an emerging growth company
specializing in development and marketing of revolutionary spinal
implant products. The company was acquired in January, 1998 for over
$600 million. Dave was awarded the 1998 Ernst & Young National
Entrepreneur of the Year. |
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Gerald Timm, Founder,
Timm
Medical, is a scientist, inventor and entrepreneur who has
repeatedly created value for investors in the urological device
industry as a co-founder of Mentor Corporation and American Medical
Systems and a founder of Dacomed Corporation and Timm Medical
Technologies. His will describe some of the challenges he faced from
the conceptualization of an idea through the creation and sale of a
business. |
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Dr. Gretchen Unger is
President/CTO of
GeneSegues, a company she founded
in 1999 to revolutionize drug delivery of antisense DNA molecules for
cancer therapy using nanotechnology. She recently completed a
fellowship in the UofM Otolaryngology department and is the author of
12 patents and publications. |
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Daryl Erdman, Senior Director,
Aavin Venture Capital,
has 39 years of
entrepreneurial management experience. Mr. Erdman served as Professor
and Director of the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at the
University of Iowa from 1996 through 1998 and was an Endowed Professor
and Chair of the Small Business and Entrepreneurial program at St.
Thomas University from 1984 through 1996. He is now a venture
capitalist with Aavin. |
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Michael P. Kaye,
M.D.,
Acumen Healthcare,
is SVP of
Medical Affairs and Regulatory Compliance. Dr. Kaye is a semi-retired
cardio-thoracic surgeon who has had his training at St. Louis
University and the Mayo Clinic. Besides a distinguished career at
Loyola University, Mayo Clinic, University of Minnesota, and the Heart
and Lung Institute of San Diego, Dr. Kaye organized and maintained the
registry of the International Society for Heart and Lung
Transplantation. He has 191 publications to his name. |
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Dan Ryan
is Senior VP, Corporate and Business
Development at
Stellent,
a leading provider of Content Management systems to large enterprise
customers. Dan joined Stellent in April 1999. Prior to
joining Stellent, he was VP of Marketing at Foglight Software.
Dan spent 14 years in Silicon Valley where he held senior marketing
positions at Compact Devices and Sync Research. Dan is a
graduate of the University of Minnesota. |
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Tom Von Kuster, Angel
Investor,
AMEX, Inc.
was a
founding Director of Cymbet; a venture-backed solid state battery firm
and a founder of FibreStream; a storage appliance company. In the past couple of years, companies for
which he has served as an early investor/advisor have been acquired
including NuSpeed (purchased by Cisco for $450 million), NT
International (purchased by Entegris) and SurvivaLink (purchased by Cardiac Science). |
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Margaret Walker, Senior Business
Development Manager, Bio,
3M, is leading 3M's business
efforts in a start-up project focused on leveraging 3M technologies
and manufacturing capabilities to provide enabling tools for the
genomics and proteomics markets. She has served in this capacity for
two years, with prior experience in commercialization of health care
devices and other 3M products. She holds a B.S. from the UofM
and is currently a board member of MNBIO. |
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Political Candidate Speakers To Date
Others Invited: Roger Moe***, Jesse Ventura*, Paul Wellstone**, Judi Dutcher***
*Not a declared candidate. If not a candidate by May 8, the Governor will
not speak.
**Senator Wellstone is in Senate session and can not attend. He
may address the Conference by video.
*** Roger Moe and Judi Dutcher will abide by the DFL Convention
results of May 5. If the endorsed candidate, he or she may choose to attend and speak at the
Conference. |
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Norm Coleman, Republican Candidate
for US Senate |
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Tim Pawlenty, Republican
Candidate for Governor |
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Brian Sullivan, Republican Candidate for Governor |
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Investors To Date |
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Donald Back,
CTO,
Lombard Life Sciences |
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Buzz Benson,
Managing Director,
Piper Jaffray Ventures |
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Dan Broderick,
Managing Director,
Mason Wells Private Equity |
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Lisa Chu,
M.D., Investment Associate,
Primus Venture Partners |
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Kyle Crowe,
Managing Director,
Greene Holcombe &
Fisher |
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John Deedrick, Venture
Manager, Mayo Medical Ventures |
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Trevor D'Souza,
Managing Director,
Mason Wells Private Equity |
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Michael Duran,
Partner,
Apax Partners |
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Scott Harper, Director,
Primus Venture Partners |
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Joe Jasper,
VP,
Aethlon Capital |
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Moses Joseph, Managing General
Partner,
Anila Fund |
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Kevin T. Hennessey, Venture Manager,
Mayo Medical Ventures |
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B. Kristine Johnson,
Managing Partner,
Affinity Capital Management |
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Timothy Kraskey,
Managing Director,
YankeeTek Ventures |
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Mark Koulogeorge, Managing Director,
First Analysis Venture Capital |
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Steve Larsen, Venture Partner,
St. Paul Venture Capital |
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Brad Lehrman, President,
Portage Capital |
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Jerry Mattys,
Angel Investor,
Timm Medical Technologies (CEO) |
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Kevin McGarry, CEO,
Lombard Life Sciences |
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Art Monaghan,
Principal,
Norwest Equity Partners |
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John Pagnucco, Founder/Principal,
Aethlon Capital |
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Steve Pederson,
Partner,
Sherpa Partners |
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Bea Rothweiler, Executive Vice President,
Portage Capital |
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Courtney Russell,
General Partner,
Weston Presidio Capital |
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Serafin Samson, Analyst,
Affinity Capital Management |
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Nathan Stacy,
Venture Associate, Mayo Medical Ventures |
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Dave Stassen,
General Partner,
St. Paul Venture Capital |
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Jeffrey Torborg,
Venture Associate, Mayo Medical Ventures |
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Loren Unterseher,
Principal,
ThinkEquity Partners |
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Dan Arlandson,
Analyst,
Validus Partners |
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Cathy Harms,
Angel Investor,
St. Paul Capital Fund |
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Michael J. Harris,
Partner,
Validus Partners |
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John Hodgert, EVP,
Lombard Life Sciences |
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Matt Kinley,
SVP,
Pappajohn Capital
Resources |
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Jess Lewis,
Senior Technical Analyst,
Validus Partners |
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Kevin McGarry, CEO,
Lombard Life Sciences |
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Jack Meyer,
Angel Investor |
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Blake Nixon,
Associate,
The Rahn Group |
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Doug Novack,
Associate,
Ravenswood Capital |
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Michael O'Connor,
Angel Investor & CEO,
US TeleMed |
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Scott Pancoast,
Executive VP,
Western States Investment Group |
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Rick Pauls,
Managing Director,
Genesys Ventures |
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Art Rosenberg,
President,
Renaissance Ventures |
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Jade Sadosty, Venture
Associate, Mayo Medical Ventures |
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Christopher Volker, Principal,
The
Mercanti Group |
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Tom Von Kuster, Angel
Investor,
AMEX, Inc. |
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Grace Voorhis,
VP,
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Venture Partners |
