Alan Creutz
Dr. Alan Creutz has a broad background in executive management, with a focus on both operations and marketing in enterprise software and technology companies. He has extensive international experience, providing services both to US companies seeking to penetrate international markets and to non-US companies seeking to penetrate North American markets. He has been instrumental in transitioning startup companies to commercial success and in growing established companies to $100million/year revenues. Strengths include strategic leadership, strategic planning and fund-raising (including market and company positioning, business modeling, organizational development, and investor relations), business and market planning and execution, technical management, and general operations.
Bill Smillie – IBM partner
Bill Smillie is a former Executive with the Learning and Knowledge function of IBM’s Global Business Services, where he and his team designed and implemented the professional development programs for all IBM consulting Partners and staff worldwide. Known as Springboard, these programs were designed to accelerate the acquisition of core competencies necessary for each individual to reach their next level of promotion. From his perspectives gained from over 30 years of international program and project management and management consulting experience, he also provided IBM with thought leadership in project management best practices and delivery excellence. Bill is now the President of Tamarac Consulting LLC, and is providing professional development, coaching, facilitation, and strategic advisory services to a variety of for-profit and non-profit clients.
Clark Jordan – UC San Diego
Clark Jordan is the assistant dean for undergraduate education. Before joining UC San Diego, Clark was president of Mesa Systems Guild, Inc., a leading provider of web-based product development tools and consulting. Additionally, Jordan has been on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University (1992-1998) as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship, where he developed and taught master’s level courses in entrepreneurship and sales force management. He was also the director of the Executive/Professional Education Center for the School of Computer Science and the Graduate School of Industrial Administration. Jordan holds a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon in manufacturing and operations systems, an MBA in international business and finance from Columbia University and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
Gary Klein
Gary Klein is the Chief Scientist of Klein Associates, a group he formed in 1978 to better understand how to improve decision making in individuals and teams. The Klein Associates Division is now part of Applied Research Associates, Inc. Dr. Klein is one of the founders of the field of Naturalistic Decision Making. Dr. Klein received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969. He was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Oakland University (1970-1974) and worked as a research psychologist for the U.S. Air Force (1974-1978). He has written several books, including: Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (1998, MIT Press); The Power of Intuition (2004, A Currency Book/Doubleday); andWorking Minds: A practitioner’s guide to Cognitive Task Analysis (Crandall, Klein and Hoffman, 2006, MIT Press).
Michael Lurie – Blue Mine Group
Michael Lurie has twenty years experience as an entrepreneur, Chairman and CEO. He has founded and built three companies, helped grow dozens of early-stage businesses, and successfully led strategic business initiatives for multiple Fortune 500 corporations throughout North America and Europe. Michael began his career in London, England, as a strategy consultant with the international management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, Inc. He then co-founded Goodman Lurie Ltd., the United Kingdom’s leading firm specializing in European market entry for technology companies. After successfully selling Goodman Lurie, Michael co-founded and grew Conneq, Inc., a web application software and services company in San Diego, California. Combining his experience in his previous two companies, in 2002 he launched Blue Mine Group, a strategy firm specializing in new product development, venture management and corporate innovation. Michael holds Bachelor of Commerce and Master of Business Administration degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Mark Juergensen
Mr. Juergensen is a recognized executive in the power industry for over 25 years with executive and Public Board experience. Mark has participated in the development, financing, acquisitions or divestitures of over $2.5B in power assets. This include 860MW of solar, wind, gas fired and energy storage projects. He has been on the on the Board of Directors of several for profit and non-profit energy organizations. He is a Managing Director of ACJ Infrastructure Capital and its associated operating entity, CleanTech, Energy, Inc. He is a retired senior Naval Nuclear Submarine Officer and holds a BS electrical engineering from USC. Mr. Juergensen has judged multiple clean technology competitions including; Department of Energy’s SBIR, NREL’s Industry Growth Forum (IGF), NSF’s CAP, California Clean Innovation (CACI), Biomimicry Institute’s Global Design Challenge, Connect’s Most Innovative Product (MIP), the UCSD von Liebeg Center and CleanTech San Diego.
Adam Mikkelsen
Adam is a Principal of Cooper and Company, a private investment company that acquires and actively develops assets on a long-term ownership basis.It operates in two areas, Real Estate and Private Equity, with offices in Newport Beach, CA, Dallas, TX and Auckland, New Zealand. Adam leads the evaluation, structuring and execution of the Company’s private equity investments. He serves as a director on the boards of the portfolio companies and is closely involved with their operations. He has also been involved in the financial and legal structuring of the Company’s large New Zealand real estate projects. Adam formerly practiced as a corporate attorney in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis, where he acted for institutions in leveraged buyout, private equity and public company investments. He was also a senior analyst for Cooper & LeVasseur, a long-concentrated investment fund focusing on public companies in transition. Prior to moving to the United States he was a lawyer at Auckland law firm Russell McVeagh, where he was involved in domestic and international corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions and IPOs. He holds PhD, LLB and BA degrees from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
