Bio
Salim Ismail
Salim Ismail is a sought-after speaker, strategist and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. He travels extensively addressing topics including breakthrough technologies and their impact on a variety of industries.
Salim spent the last three years building Singularity University based at NASA Ames and before that built and ran Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal incubator. His last company, Angstro, was sold to Google in August 2010.
He has a unique perspective and track record on how to innovate, how to turn cutting edge ideas into thriving startups and how to apply leading edge thinking to invigorate entire industries.
Avery Lyford
Avery Lyford is responsible for assessing investment opportunities at Signal Lake Ventures. Prior to this he was the CEO of Linuxcare, which delivers software that manages Linux in the corporate data center. Prior Mr. Lyford was part of McKinsey&Co's business building practice. His early career was at IBM where he was initially part of IBM's personal computer independent business unit and later was responsible for product planning, business development, and strategy for the Intel based server product line as it grew from $475M to $1.4B.
Dick Williams
Dick Williams joined Shell in 1980 after receiving his Electrical Engineering degree from Penn State. He worked in a variety of Shell Pipeline's regions as an Engineer. After returning to Houston for several positions in the business and leading the Commercial Development effort of a major restructuring, Dick served three years as the Commercial Manager for Shell Distribution NA and was appointed President, Shell WindEnergy, Inc. in 2008. Shell’s Wind activities include operating 10 wind farms, eight in North America and two in Europe, with a capacity of 1000 MW and developing new projects in North America. Dick was one of the founding Chairmen of The Wind Alliance, a consortium or academia, government, and industry established to focus on the long term safety, operational, and technical success of the Wind Industry and is Chairman of the Houston Technology Center.
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