Speaker Profiles

Gerald A. Benjamin
President, International Capital Resources (ICR)

Gerald A. Benjamin is President of International Capital Resources (ICR), a pioneering capital sourcing firm that links ventures with investors through nine licensee offices in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. He has over 20 years of experience as a corporate consultant, including over 400 assignments worldwide.

Mr. Benjamin is the publisher of The Private Equity Review, a bi-monthly magazine reporting on promising developmental stage ventures and analyzing the private equity investment market. He also serves as chairman of the California Venture Forum, executive director of the Private Equity Research Institute and founder of Angel Lake Capital Partners, the largest nationwide private investor network.

Mr. Benjamin co-authored Finding Your Wings: How to Locate Private Investors to Fund Your Venture (John Wiley and Sons, NY, 1996), which was selected by the Financial Times of London and Booz, Allen & Hamilton as the best "how-to" business book published in the U.S. in 1996.

Guy Kawasaki
Chief Executive Officer, Garage.com

Guy Kawasaki is CEO of Garage.com, a Silicon Valley-based firm that assists high technology startups in obtaining seed level financing through mentoring, an investor network, expert advice, research and reference materials. Garage.com also offers assistance to investors in finding pre-screened investment opportunities that match the investor's identified interests.

A noted columnist (Forbes), speaker, Apple evangelist and founder of various personal computer companies, he was one of the individuals responsible for the success of the Macintosh computer.

Mr. Kawasaki is the author of six books: The Macintosh Way, Database 101, The Computer Curmudgeon, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Hindsights and Selling the Dream. His next book, Rules for Revolutionaries, will be published in early 1999.

Ginger Ehn Lew
Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer,
Telecommunications Development Fund

Ginger Ehn Lew is Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Telecommunications Development Fund, which currently has $25 million under management. TDF invests in small emerging communications businesses.

Prior to joining the Fund, Ms. Lew served as deputy administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration where she provided day-to-day management and oversight of the agency's $42 billion loan portfolio. Previously, she served as general counsel at the U.S. Department of Commerce where she provided legal guidance on all major agency litigation with a special emphasis on international trade issues.

Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, Ms. Lew was an entrepreneur as a member of a startup high technology firm based in San Francisco. Ms. Lew gained her management, planning and technology experience during her six years with Ernst & Young, advising technology companies on market expansion strategies for East Asia, Europe and Africa.

John May
Managing Partner, New Vantage Partners

John May is Managing Partner and a founder of New Vantage Partners, a firm that innovatively mobilizes private equity into early stage companies and provides advisory services to both funds and private investors. Mr. May is managing general partner of Calvert Social Venture Partners, L.P., a Washington, DC-based venture capital firm specializing in providing early stage capital and assistance to emerging growth companies.

Mr. May is also an advisor to and a member of the Investment Committee of the Women's Growth Capital Fund, LP, a Washington, DC-based $30 million fund, and is the fund advisor to Next Generation Partners, L.P., a Fairfax, VA, information technology venture fund. New Vantage Partners is also the mid-Atlantic office for Solstice Capital, a $23 million venture fund headquartered in Boston, MA.

In 1991, he co-founded the Investors' Circle, a national non-profit group of 175 family and institutional investors working to grow the social venture capital industry.

Additionally in 1996, he co-founded and became executive director of the Private Investors Network, an angel network sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association, which has grown to over 115 investor members. He sits on several boards of directors of non-profits such as Students for Responsible Business, the Capital Region Technology Investors Conference and two university incubators.

Mario Morino
Chairman, Morino Institute

Mario Morino's career spans some 30 years as a business leader, social entrepreneur, and leading advisor on information technology. Mr. Morino co-founded Morino Associates in 1973, which after many years of expansion, mergers, a host of acquisitions and one name change became Legent Corporation. Legent was acquired in 1995 in one of the larger transactions in the computer software and services industry.

Today, Mr. Morino divides his time among his commercial interests in the information technology sector as an investor and advisor, and as chairman of the Morino Institute, a nonprofit organization he founded to help people and communities use information and electronic communications to work for positive social change. He is also the founder and chairman of the Potomac KnowledgeWay Project, an initiative to advance the Greater Washington region as the global center of the knowledge industries in the 21^st century.

He serves as a Special Advisor to General Atlantic Partners, one of the premier private investment firms in information technology and is a Trustee at Case Western Reserve University. He serves on the Boards of Directors for Mid-Atlantic Venture Association, National Commission on Entrepreneurism, Potomac KnowledgeWay, Proxicom and Who Cares. He sits on Advisory Councils for Pew Partnership for Civic Change, Academy of Leadership, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship Inner Circle, Smithsonian Washington Council, Northern Virginia Tech Council, CTCNet, CompuMentor and the Network Solutions Technical Advisory Board.

Laura B. Sachar
Co-Chairman and Founder, StarVest Management, Inc.

Laura B. Sachar is Co-Chairman and Founder of StarVest Management, Inc., a private equity firm that invests in business services, digital media, and related information technology companies. She is also Founder and Chairman of the New York New Media Association Angel Investors Program.

Until recently, Ms. Sachar was responsible for direct venture capital investments at Gabelli Securities, Inc. In January 1992, she founded Sachar Capital, Ltd., a financial advisory firm specializing in digital media. Its clients included Redgate Communications, an interactive marketing services company subsequently acquired by America Online; IDT, one of the largest Internet access companies in the U.S.; and Multex Systems, Inc., an electronic distributor of brokerage reports and other high-end financial information.

She was a financial analyst in corporate finance at Prudential Securities from 1984 to 1986 and an associate editor at Financial World magazine from 1986 to 1989. At Financial World, she wrote approximately 100 articles and was responsible for a special international issue. She was cited as a journalist to watch in the year 2000.

Ms. Sachar holds a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, and an MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business. In 1995, she was selected as a Betsy Magness Fellow by CEA and Women in Cable and Telecommunications. She is a board member of Ballet Hispanico and the Trail Blazers Camp, and a Society of Fellows Advisory Committee Member at the Aspen Institute.

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