Unlocking Your First Advisory, Board Opportunity
Nandini Easwar
Coco Brown
Caroline Tsay
Yousuf Khan
Stepping into your first board role is a significant milestone in any professional's journey, marking both achievement and the onset of new challenges. But how does one navigate the complexities of securing that first board position?
Join us as we delve deep into the essential skills and strategies needed to not only secure but also excel in your first advisory or board role. We'll unpack the intricacies of boardroom dynamics, highlight the importance of networking, and guide you on how to position yourself as an invaluable asset. Whether you're aiming for a non-profit or a corporate board seat, this talk is your roadmap to success.
About Coco Brown
Coco Brown is the Founder and CEO of Athena Alliance. Athena has helped thousands of leaders grow and advance in their executive careers, and has brought over 400 women to corporate boards from growth stage private companies to name brand public companies. Coco has personally worked with hundreds of top leaders, CEOs and boards to evolve modern leadership.
She’s served on ten commercial and non-profit boards and advisory boards, and has led two notable companies (Taos, acquired by IBM, and now Athena). She is part of Nasdaq's Governance Insights Council, and is often called on to share guidance to the evolving focus and breadth of responsibility within the Modern Boardroom. Coco was recently named one of the 100 Most Powerful People of Silicon Valley.
About Caroline Tsay
Caroline has rapidly grown B2B and B2C businesses on the scale of $25M to $4.5B in annual revenue. She was most recently CEO and Co-founder of Compute Software, a SaaS cloud optimization company based in Mountain View, CA. Prior to Compute Software, Caroline was Vice President and General Manager of Software at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Prior to HPE, Caroline held six years of product leadership roles at Yahoo!.
She is currently a Board Member of The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) and Morningstar (NASDAQ: MORN), and she was previously a Director of Rosetta Stone (NYSE: RST). She has been recognized as The National Diversity Council’s Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology and Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. Caroline holds a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering, both from Stanford University. She is a mother of two and speaks Mandarin Chinese conversationally.
About Yousuf Khan
Yousuf is a Partner at Ridge Ventures. Having held many operational roles in his previous positions, he’s uniquely qualified to not only grow Ridge’s portfolio, but more importantly to support founders through the vantage point of deep start-up experience. He currently serves as board director for Ridge-backed Archera, Lightyear, Rafay, and Rewind.
Prior to joining Ridge, Yousuf was the first CIO of Automation Anywhere, the CIO and Vice President of Customer Success at cloud-based AI platform Moveworks, as well as CIO of Pure Storage and Qualys. He has been an advisor to early stage companies such as Zoom, Productiv and Material Security as well as an active member of the CIO community.
About Nandini Easwar
Nandini Easwar is the CTO and Co-Founder of https://www.speakfully.com/ who led her company through an acquisition in Nov 2022. At Speakfully, she was responsible for the product and tech side of the human-centric SaaS platform to address workplace mistreatment including retaliation, harassment, and microaggression. Known for humanizing tech solutions, Nandini ensured the success of the Speakfully mission by integrating social and emotional intelligence into the overall product roadmap of the brand. Prior to joining Speakfully, Nandini was the global head of software engineering at Esurance and led the engineering function through the acquisition of Esurance by Allstate in 2012.
Nandini is now Head of Security and Technology Operations at HR Acuity, the acquiring company of her startup Speakfully. She currently also serves as a technical advisor at https://good4work.com/ and is a founding member at http://FirstBoard.io, working on increasing representation of women on corporate boards. She also serves as an ambassador to a non-profit sheTO.org, passionately working on helping women in engineering break the glass ceiling in corporate companies. A passionate proponent of women in STEM, Nandini supports access to diverse talents while enabling women to grow and learn to their fullest potential.