General Counsel/Chief Compliance Officer, Meritage Group LP
Laura Baxter-Simons is general counsel and chief compliance officer at Meritage Group LP, a U.S.-based investment management firm. Prior to Meritage, Ms. Baxter-Simons worked at Renaissance Technologies as legal counsel from 1996 to 2011. She and her husband, Nat Simons, serve as co-directors of Sea Change Foundation, a private family foundation formed in 2007 and currently dedicated to addressing global climate change. They are also the co-founders of Prelude Ventures, a family-held cleantech investment fund. Ms. Baxter-Simons served on the board of trustees of Head-Royce...
Seed-Stage Investor and Advisor; Founder and Former CEO of Newfield Wireless
Marc Bensadoun graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Physics in ‘83 and from UC Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Physics in 1991. A physicist by training, Marc Bensadoun splits his time between seed-stage investing with his wife Cristina Hawes-Bensadoun, board and advisory roles, and developing technology ideas. During his PhD and post-doctoral study at Berkeley he worked in experimental astrophysics for eight years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with Nobel Laureate George Smoot. Mr. Bensadoun then founded Newfield Wireless, initially to help mobile network...
Former General Manager, Khadra International Folk Ballet
Ellen Dale serves as vice president on the board of the California Shakespeare Theater, where she focuses on development. Prior to her retirement, Mrs. Dale was general manager of Khadra, a San Francisco dance company, and an arts management consultant. She met her husband and fellow Berkeley alumnus, Joffa Dale, as an undergraduate. Mrs. Dale served on the 50th reunion committee for the class of ’66, and Mr. Dale is an emeritus member of the UC Berkeley Foundation and formerly chaired its audit committee. He also serves on the Cal Golf Committee, which has funded the Cal Men’s...
Charles Huang is a co-founder of RedOctane and the co-creator of the Guitar Hero video game franchise. In 2005, the company published Guitar Hero, which became the best-selling video game globally for 2007-2008 and the fastest video game to reach $1 billion in sales. In 2006, Mr. Huang, along with his brother Kai, was elected as one of the top 50 producers in new media by the Producers Guild of American New Media Council, whose membership includes notable movie directors such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Brian Grazer. Mr. Huang currently acts as an advisor to several venture...
Matt Jacobson is a managing member of Jacobs & Co., LLC, a San Francisco registered investment advisor, where he has worked since graduating from Berkeley in 1979. Jacobs & Co., LLC provides investment management and financial planning services to high-net-worth individuals, company retirement plans, and multi-employer pension plans. Prior to joining Jacobs & Co., Mr. Jacobson worked from 1971 to 1979 for the Berkeley Gazette and Richmond Independent newspapers as a copy boy and sportswriter. While working at...
Vice President, Business Development, Princeton BioMeditech Corporation
Roger Kang is vice president of business development at Princeton BioMeditech Corporation (PBM), which specializes in point-of-care tests related to fertility, infectious disease, tumors, cardiology, and veterinary and environmental diagnostics. The company’s rapid COVID-19 test — which Mr. Kang provided to UC Berkeley and the companies of UCBF fellow trustees at a significant discount — was the first of its kind to provide a combination rapid COVID-19 and influenza A&B test. Mr. Kang has served on the East Coast Chancellor’s Council since 2014, including three years as its co-...
Kathy Kwan is a local philanthropist who directs charitable giving for the Eustace-Kwan Family Foundation. Since the foundation’s establishment in 2005, Kathy has funded a broad range of educational, safety net and leadership/career development programs in the SF Bay Area. At UC Berkeley, Kathy supports programs in the School of Public Health, Student Affairs, the Data Sciences Division, and the College of Letters and Science. In the past, she funded projects at the Jacobs Institute, as well as in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She also provided the $1 million match for the 2020 Student...
Doug McBeth is a managing director at Nomura Securities Inc, a Japanese investment bank, based in New York. His banking career began at Lehman Brothers in 1996 starting in quantitative modeling and then trading interest rate derivatives. He soon moved to Lehman’s Tokyo office (1997–98) successfully managing his book through the volatility of the Asian Financial Crisis. After returning to New York, he focused on solutions for insurance industry capital issues, pioneering a number of groundbreaking transactions. He served as a director and president of Lehman Re and Congress Life...
Akiko Mikumo is a retired senior partner of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a global law firm headquartered in New York that she joined as an associate in 1982. She served on the firm’s management committee for 12 years, as Asia managing partner for 10 years, and as a senior mergers and acquisitions partner in their New York, London, and Hong Kong offices. In addition, she was founding partner of the Hong Kong office. She is recognized as one of the leading mergers and acquisitions lawyers by various publications. After retiring at the end of 2017, Ms. Mikumo was a fellow at...
Na’ilah Suad Nasir is the sixth president of the Spencer Foundation, which funds education research nationally. She has held faculty appointments in the schools of education at Stanford University and at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also served as vice chancellor for equity and inclusion. Nasir’s research examines the racialized and cultural nature of learning and schooling, with a particular focus on the experiences of African American students in schools and communities. Nasir is a member of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and...