Advisors

Fred Baker has been involved in the architecture, development and deployment of packet communications technologies since 1978, and specifically in Internet communications since 1986. Most recently, Fred was a Fellow at Cisco Systems where he worked for 22 years. His technical work included quality of service (QoS) for their operating system IOS and key architectural work on the enterprise and service provider networks. He represented Cisco in Focus Group 4 of NRIC V in 2001, and in 2004 in the FCC Technical Advisory Committee. More recently, again at Cisco’s request, he contributed to or edited several BITAG papers, some of which were referred to in the 2010 Open Internet Order or relevant technologies. Since 1989, he has been involved with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in various capacities, including serving as the IETF chair from 1996 till 2001. He has chaired a number of working groups and other activities, and presently serves as the co-chair of its IPv6 Operations Working Group. He has written or edited 60+ RFCs on a wide variety of topics including Integrated and Differentiated Services, OSPF and IS-IS routing, security, forensic access, requirements for various product types, and others. He is neither a lawyer nor an economist; he is a technologist.

Amarjit Gill is a serial entrepreneur and he Co-founded Maginatics, acquired by EMC. Prior to Maginatics, Amarjit co-founded and helped lead three companies that built lasting technologies. He was co-founder and VP of Business Development and Sales at SiByte (acquired by Broadcom), co-founder and EVP of Business Development and Sales at PA Semi (acquired by Apple), and co-founder and CEO of Agnilux (acquired by Google). Earlier in his career, Amarjit was Director of Sales for Strategic Accounts in Digital Equipment Corporation’s semiconductor group. After that business unit was purchased by Intel, he served in a similar capacity for Intel. Amarjit also worked for many years at Texas Instruments in its technical sales organization. Amarjit received a BS in Electrical Engineering from San Jose State University.

After 11 distinguished years, Nancy retired from Google in February 2017. She continues to work with organizations and individuals committed to enhancing employee experience and workplace culture.

At Google, in 2013, Nancy was asked to build a team comprised of several “fairness” functions including global diversity and inclusion, HR compliance, and audit oversight of the employee relations department. As Vice President of People Operations, she was instrumental in designing the Google’s comprehensive diversity strategy. She was also a key player prompting Google to disclose its diversity demographic data publicly, compelling other tech companies to disclose their diversity data and igniting a broader discussion in the tech industry around diversity and inclusion. Her work has been covered in print and broadcast outlets including the PBS NewsHour, NPR, USA Today, and the San Jose Mercury News.

Nancy began her career in the technology sector in 2006 when she joined Google Inc. as employment counsel responsible for a wide-range of legal matters including general employment law advice, counsel on benefits and compensation matters, and mergers and acquisitions. Additionally, she managed much of the company’s employment disputes and litigation.

In 2009, Nancy joined Google’s People Operations executive team to manage HR partnership with the company’s global Product Management function. Her role included management of HR generalist, staffing, learning and development, and people analytics teams supporting the function. Over the next several years, she continued to manage similar HR teams across a broad range of Product Areas including: Google Search & Search Infrastructure, Ads, Maps & Local, and Android.  Her team also provided HR support for several acquired companies and the Google’s artificial intelligence endeavors.

Prior to Google, Nancy was an associate attorney at the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (now Orrick). Her practice there focused on employment law and general commercial litigation. She then moved in-house to lead the employment law function at San Francisco-based Providian Financial, with her role expanding to include management of the company’s litigation department.

Nancy earned a BA degree in Political Science from UC Davis in 1992, and a law degree from UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law in 1996.

Farzad (Zod) Nazem has been a prolific angel investor and advisor to tech startup companies since his retirement from Yahoo! in 2007. He has invested in more than 90 early stage companies, two thirds Big Data and Cloud platforms, and one third Health and Medical. Zod was the Executive Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer of Yahoo! Inc from 1996 to 2007 where helped acquire and integrate over 50 companies and managed over six thousand engineers representing half of the company’s employees. Between 1985 and 1996, Mr. Nazem held various software development and management positions at Oracle Corporation culminating in his role as Vice President of Media and Web Server Division. His tenure at Oracle also included membership in the company’s Product Division Management Committee, which set overall strategy for Oracle products. Previously, Mr. Nazem was recruited from California Polytechnic State University by Rolm Corporation to be a software engineer in the VLCBX division.

Zod serves on the boards of Hand Foundation and The Nueva School. At age 19, he earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science with highest honors and holds several technology patents.

Pankaj Patel was Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer at Cisco Systems, Inc.  Mr. Patel reported into the CEO as the Engineering head of the company’s $38 billion product and solution portfolio. He drove the business and technology strategy across Cisco’s Routing, Switching, Wireless, Security, Mobility, Video, Collaboration, Data Center and Cloud offerings delivered by a global team of over 26,000 engineers.

Mr. Patel is a proven results-oriented and seasoned technology leader with 25+ years of experience developing highly scalable products and services by building and leading large, high-performance global engineering organizations, setting clear vision, directing strategy and delivering against goals. He is passionate about translating strategy to execution, and delivering the best experience for the customer.

Mr. Patel retired from Cisco in October of 2016 and now serves on the Board of Directors of several startups. He is focused on incubating, investing, and advising startups with their strategy, product development, and go-to-market as well as helping them scale. Patel is also a mentor and sponsor to numerous employees throughout the industry.

Rajiv Patel is a seasoned technology executive with over 30 years of experience in the networking, computing and imaging fields. His technical contributions have spanned the areas of Silicon and Systems for which he has been awarded 15+ patents and has authored several technical publications. Rajiv worked at Juniper Networks for over 17 years, starting from when it was founded in 1996. During his long tenure, he contributed to all areas of Engineering, both in a technical as well as managerial role, and helped the company through multiple phases of growth. He was instrumental in helping Juniper set up its India hardware operations and was VP of Engineering in their Data Center Group prior to retiring from Juniper. Prior to Juniper, Rajiv has worked at Xerox where he was part of a team to develop the first multi-function imaging machine on a single chip. Before that Rajiv worked at Sun Microsystems where he was part of the initial team that built Sun’s first full custom VLSI SPARC microprocessor.

At present, Rajiv is pursuing several activities that include angel investing, advising/mentoring startups and individuals, and giving back to the community thru his involvement with the TiE Silicon Valley organization.

Rajiv holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from UT Austin and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS, Pilani, India.

Shawn Zandi is a Director of Network Engineering at LinkedIn. In addition to his work with infrastructure and network architecture, Shawn is the product owner of the Falco and OpenFabric projects at LinkedIn, and is a board member on the OpenSwitch project steering committee. Shawn’s role at LinkedIn is to economically grow and scale data center, backbone, IP, and optical networks with correct architecture, long-term strategy, and clear roadmaps in place. He played a major role in the design and deployment of LinkedIn’s backbone and four recent global data centers, including LinkedIn’s Oregon data center, and is the lead architect of project Altair. Shawn holds multiple patents, has published several papers, frequently speaks at international conferences, and is a board member and advisor to tech startups in San Francisco, California. Before joining LinkedIn in 2012, Shawn worked as a network consultant and architect for various Fortune 100 companies from Dubai to Silicon Valley, building infrastructure for universities, hospitals, airports, luxury hotels, plain old dial-up service providers, and mega-scale data centers.