Professional Development activities at OPEN Silicon Valley are aimed to make OPEN more relevant for all the professionals in the community. While OPEN was originally formed to cater to budding entrepreneurs who are interested in meeting investors and peers, coming up with ideas or getting their start-up off the ground, a vast majority of our community comprises excellent professionals who would love to be part of  teams at larger companies and do great work.

These professionals want OPEN to also help them. Whether its to identify new opportunities and jobs or ways to move up the corporate ladder or help with resume critique, OPEN is there to help. Over the years, many of OPEN’s Charter Members and larger community has helped OPEN members and attendees to our events, find new opportunities and jobs. Our aim is to ensure that every significant OPEN event should include tracks focused solely on professionals in the community. In addition, we plan to invite more professionals to join OPEN as members and panelists and Charter Members, as well as attend OPEN events.

Vice President Professional Development: Faisal Jeddy

Chairman of Professional Development Committee: Yasser Z Khan

RESOURCES

Non-Corporate Careers

Gen-Y (Faran Tahir)

http://www.opensiliconvalley.org/wlf2012

“Congratulations to the OPEN SV Team for setting up this successful event: speakers were phenomenal, turn out was great and very interesting topics were discussed.”

Cloudy Funding Forecast Ahead For Start-Ups or Year of The Entrepreneur? - hear from leading VCs & Angels on how to get started!

• Have a breakthrough idea but don’t know how to get it started or funded?
• How to ensure that you have the right recipe for a successful business?
• How do investors gauge the chances of success for a startup and contribute capital?
• What important legalities should you pay attention to?
• What does it take for an innovative idea to land a top investor in its early stage?

This event will answer all of these questions and more in a casual environment that will help you get started in 2012. Hear from our panel of top angel investors, venture capitalists, and lawyers on how to get your startup funded. This is your chance to ask all of your important questions with some of Silicon Valley’s finest.

Tim Lenderking Office Director for Pakistan Affairs at the State Department

Tim Lenderking is the director of the Office of Pakistan Affairs in the Bureau of Central and South Asian Affairs for the U.S. Department of State.

Prior to joining the Pakistan Office, Lenderking completed two tours in Baghdad, the first as the Senior Democracy Advisor at the U.S. Embassy, and then as the policy advisor to LTG Charles Jacoby at Camp Victory. Before his Iraq tour, Lenderking served as the economic counselor and Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. He was also the political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, Morocco from 2002 to 2006.

Lenderking has also held posts in Lebanon, Bangladesh, and Syria. He joined the Foreign Service in 1993 after a career in the refugee field, where he held numerous positions with American NGOs and with the United Nations, working in New York, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Thailand.

Lenderking holds a master’s degree in history and international relations from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University. He is the recipient of seven Superior Honor Awards.

[ Top ]

Rehan Jalil is the Venture Advisor at the Mayfield Fund and a Limited Partner at Accel.  Previously he was the SVP at Tellabs.  He led WiChorus as a founder and CEO through inception, product delivery, major customer wins and eventual merger with Tellabs for about $200 million in cash and stock. He was the chief architect at Aperto Networks, where he led development of broadband wireless silicon and carrier-grade systems.  At Sun Microsystems, he contributed in development of one of the industry’s earliest advanced multi-core multithreaded processor for throughput computing and graphics applications.  At Siemens, he managed large-scale projects related to system-level design and implementation.

He contributes to social entrepreneurship projects, is on the board of OPEN-SV and Koshish and is a charter member of TIE.  He holds an AMP from Harvard Business School, an MSEE from Purdue University and BEEE from NED University, and has 25 patents granted or pending.  He was named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist for 2010.  [ Top ]

Mamoon Hamid General Partner at The Social+Capital Partnership (S23P)

Mamoon is a General Partner at The Social+Capital Partnership (S23P), an early stage Venture Capital firm based in Palo Alto. Mamoon has 15 years of experience in building and investing in high growth technology businesses. He primarily invests in business and consumer services software companies.

Prior to S23P, Mamoon was a Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), a firm he joined in 2005. At USVP, Mamoon led investments in Act-On Software, Box, Castlight Health, Supplyframe and Yammer and represented USVP on those company’s boards. He was an advisor at Yelp since its inception and previously worked closely with Optichron (acquired by Netlogic/Broadcom).

Before USVP, Mamoon spent six years various engineering and marketing roles at Xilinx. There he was responsible for defining and implementing sales and marketing strategies that grew the company’s consumer electronics and automotive market segment revenues five-fold to $100M in a span of three years.

Mamoon holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, an MS in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is also a graduate of the Kauffman Fellows Program.

A native of Pakistan, Mamoon spent the pre-college part of his life in Frankfurt, Germany. [ Top ]

Tabreez Verjee Impact Investor & Entrepreneur

Tabreez Verjee is three time entrepreneur and recovering Venture Capitalist who is now pursuing his greatest passion of investing in and supporting mission driven technology entrepreneurs who are aligning purpose and profit to change the world and affect positive impact at scale.  Some of his angel investments and advisory roles in this area include ClassDojo, Purpose.com, Novica, Blissmo, StayClassy, Women2.0, FounderLabs, and Priya Living.

Tabreez is an early seed funder and member of the board of directors at Kiva.org, the world’s first peer-to-peer lending platform dedicated to connecting people for the purpose of alleviating poverty.  Kiva has provided over $300M in capital from the internet community to over 600,000 borrowers in more than 60 countries with a 98.9% repayment rate.

Tabreez’s started his first entrepreneural venture at 21 years old, where he co-founded and served as Managing Director of Global Entertainment Capital, which raised $150 million for innovative media financings and completed deals like the first ever stand alone investment grade bond securitization of music royalties for heavy metal band Iron Maiden.  He then moved over to the technology and internet space where he co-headed Sonique, maker of some of the first and most popular internet music software that became the 5^th most downloaded application on the Internet in 1999 and was sold for over $70 million.  After Sonique, Tabreez co-founded Global Asset Capital, which started as an angel investment fund and grew into a venture capital firm where he directed more than $500 million in committed assets across multiple venture capital funds and over 40 portfolio companies in the U.S. and Europe.

Tabreez began his career at Bain & Company and received a bachelor of science in Environmental Engineering with honors from University of California at Berkeley. He is also a charter member of TiE, a global, non-profit network dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship. [ Top ]

Abrar Hussain Founder and Managing Director of Elixir Capital

Abrar Hussain is a founder and managing director of Elixir Capital.  An insider in the private equity industry, prior to Elixir he was a corporate partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and one of the most highly regarded emerging markets private equity experts in the country — regularly sought out by some of the world’s largest investment funds including Apollo Management, Soros Fund Management, the Carlyle Group and New Enterprise Associates.  Abrar is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law and speaks extensively at institutions such as the Harvard Business School, Harvard’s Kennedy School and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the subject of private equity and emerging markets investments. [ Top ]

Kamal Ahmed Managing Director at Greenlane Advisors

Kamal Ahmed is Managing Director at Greenlane Advisors, a boutique investment banking firm focused on the technology sector. During his 18 year career as an investment banker, Kamal has advised on over $86 billion in M&A transactions and has raised over $47 billion in financing for his clients. Prior to Greenlane Advisors, Kamal was Managing Director in the technology investment banking group at Morgan Stanley. His prior experience includes investment banking roles at Merrill Lynch and CS First Boston. Kamal received a BA from Yale University and an MBA from Cornell University, where he was a JGSM Scholar. [ Top ]

“It was a great opportunity to hear success stories of accompalished professionals from technology and other industries.”

“The focus on women leaders in the industry. The opportunity to network.”

- laid back yet productive- informal talks by featured members- nice room- friendly environment for new person”

What: OPEN SV Monthly Planning Meeting & Charter Member Panel
When: Wednesday, Jan 11th, 2012, 6 PM
Where: SAP – 3410 Hillview Avenue  Palo Alto, CA 94304, United States (Food will be served)

Come join OPEN’s monthly Pitch/Planning Meeting (6-7 pm), followed immediately by OPEN’s Successful Story Series where Maria Mohiuddin Verjee and Amra Tareen will chronicle their stories and answer your questions (7-8.30 pm) followed by a networking session until 9 pm.

Maria Mohiuddin Verjee Co-Founder and Partner, Johal & Mohiuddin

Maria Mohiuddin Verjee is the co-founder and partner of Johal & Mohiuddin, LLP, a boutique law firm in downtown San Francisco.  The firm was founded in 1996 and includes areas of practice in Corporate, Mortgage Banking, Immigration law and Litigation.  Maria has lived in San Francisco since 1983 and graduated from Drew College Preparatory School in 1988.  Maria earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration from the University of San Francisco in 1992 and a Juris Doctor degree in 1995 from University of San Francisco School of Law.  She is an active member of the State Bar of California, the American Bar Association and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.  She is admitted as Attorney and Counselor to practice before the Supreme Court of California, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the United States District Court.

Her primary area of practice is immigration law.  Maria has a diverse range of clients, including publicly traded companies, foreign companies, and businesses hiring foreign employees or obtaining greencards for their current employees; entrepreneurs seeking work or business visas; investors seeking greencards through the EB5 program; families sponsoring other family members; and individuals facing deportation or removal from the U.S.

Maria and her husband Tabreez are passionate about venture philanthropy and impact investing and have seed funded a dozen mission driven companies including Kiva, Novica, Purpose, ClassDojo, and Priya Living.

Maria is also on the Board of Directors of Operation USA (www.opusa.org), a privately-funded relief organization that helps alleviate the effects of disasters, disease and endemic poverty throughout the world by providing material and financial assistance and promoting sustainable development.  Since 1979, Opusa has worked in 99 countries delivering over $350 million in relief and development projects.  In 1997, Opusa received a Nobel Peace Prize in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.  Opusa is very active in Pakistan.  In 2005, in response to the devastating earthquake in Pakistan, Opusa was one of the first to send an airlift of medical supplies; support to rebuild homes, a prosthetics clinic, a health clinic, and a community center.  Since the earthquake, and through the 2010 flood disaster, Opusa has committed to the long term recovery process in the village of Moldhara, providing an ambulance service, as the maternal mortality rate peaked, and medical aid in support of maternal child health programming throughout Pakistan.

Maria is also on the Board of Trustees of Drew High School in San Francisco, founded in 1908.

Amra Tareen CEO of All Voices

Candidates must be undergraduate or graduate electrical engineering, computer engineering, or computer science students at a local bayarea colleges or university.

Interns must be US Permanent Resident and local to bayarea.

Interns will be involved in creating and executing feature, performance, longevity and QoS testing of wireless routers using various test tools. Interns will help engineers in finding issues, troubleshooting, and reporting bugs. Interns will also be working closely with development teams to reproduce, analyze, and debug hardware, RF and software issue as well as customer-found defects. Interns may also work on scripting and automation of test cases.

This will be a good experience for both undergraduate and graduate students. Students from San Jose State University, Santa Clara University or Stanford University preferred.

Responsibilities:
Engineers will create and execute feature, performance, longevity and QoS testing of wireless routers using various test tools. Engineers will be involved in finding issues, troubleshooting, and reporting bugs. They will be working closely with development teams to reproduce, analyze, and debug hardware, RF and software issue as well as customer-found defects. They will also create programs and scripts for automation of test cases.

Requirements:
Among other desired expertise:
-BSEE or MSEE
-RF/wireless expert-level knowledge
-RF signal analysis
-Matlab
-Some programming and scripting skills needed
-Only US Permanent Residents or Citizens

Please contact arif.shamim@opensiliconvalley.org for this job post.

Come join OPEN’s monthly Pitch/Planning Meeting (6-7 pm), followed immediately by OPEN’s Successful Story Series where two OPEN Charter Members, Rehan Jalil and Hasan Rizvi will chronicle their stories and answer your questions (7-8.30 pm) followed by a networking session until 9 pm.

In this month’s Successful Story Series we have an entrepreneur and a Corporate executive who will share their corporate and entrepreneurial journey, talk about their experiences and lessons learned during the process. You will hear from Rehan Jalil, an OPEN volunteer, turned entrepreneur, turned corporate executive and now a Venture Advisor and Hasan Rizvi, founding member of OPEN SV, past OPEN Board member and currently SVP at Oracle, heading all Fusion Middleware and Java development.

Rehan Jalil: Venture Advisor, Mayfield Fund

Rehan Jalil is the Venture Advisor at the Mayfield Fund and a Limited Partner at Accel.  Previously he was the SVP at Tellabs.  He led WiChorus as a founder and CEO through inception, product delivery, major customer wins and eventual merger with Tellabs for about $200 million in cash and stock. He was the chief architect at Aperto Networks, where he led development of broadband wireless silicon and carrier-grade systems.  At Sun Microsystems, he contributed in development of one of the industry’s earliest advanced multi-core multithreaded processor for throughput computing and graphics applications.  At Siemens, he managed large-scale projects related to system-level design and implementation.

He contributes to social entrepreneurship projects, is on the board of OPEN-SV and Koshish and is a charter member of TIE.  He holds an AMP from Harvard Business School, an MSEE from Purdue University and BEEE from NED University, and has 25 patents granted or pending.  He was named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist for 2010.

Hasan Rizvi: Senior VP, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java

As Senior VP of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java Products, Rizvi is responsible for the company’s Application Server, Service-Oriented Architecture, Application and Data Integration, Content Management and Portal, Identity Management and Security and Java product development, product management and architecture. Previously Rizvi was VP of Oracle Enterprise Manager responsible for the company’s Data Center Automation products.

Rizvi has a M.S. in computer science from Rutgers University and an M.S. in engineering management from Stanford University. He also holds eight patents in the database management area.

This event is free and open to everyone. We request that you RSVP. Please click here.

Have an idea, panelist or a company to include for any of OPEN’s upcoming events?  Interested in joining one of the planning teams?  We would love to hear from you at the meeting. Open to everyone, please forward to folks who have a passion for professional development and entrepreneurship!

OPEN SV presents the 4^th Annual Women’s Leadership Forum 2012: Inspire, Impact, Win!

Come experience a great event on Feb 11, 2012 where participants will meet, network and make lasting personal and valuable professional connections. At this event you will network with an impressive group of leaders and entrepreneurs belonging to technology, finance, social enterprise, medicine, and social media sectors in the Silicon Valley.

Come join us at this event and attend panels such as:

Re-Assess| Re-Brand| Re-Start|

Reinvent Yourself for New Opportunities: How do you reinvent yourself in these challenging times? Learn to look for new opportunities and to use times of crisis in your career/ life to brand or rebrand yourself for success.

From Vision to Fruition - Strategies that Win!

Be inspired and motivated by stories of remarkable women in the areas of Social Entrepreneurship and Women Empowerment. They had a vision to change the status quo and made it work for many.

Mentorship Lunch: Meet with the panelists, make connections, find leads to jobs, feel empowered.

Mark your calendars for Feb 11, 2012 and stay tuned for more information!