Board of Directors & Advisory Board

Board of Directors

Hatch Graham – Managing Director, ATA Ventures
Hatch is an accomplished business executive and technologist who focuses on the entrepreneurial realm. He has founded a number of successful start-ups, including Wave7 Optics in Georgia and Rosonext in California, which was acquired by RF Micro Devices. He has also served as CEO of venture-backed companies such as Actelis Networks, Bandwidth9 and Arroyo Optics and managed publicly traded businesses such as Zoran Corporation (ZRAN). Hatch holds a B.S. in Engineering from Idaho State University and is the recipient of the University’s Professional Achievement Award. He currently serves on the College of Engineering Advisory Committee.

Don Butler – Partner, Thomvest
Don Butler is the President of Thomvest Ventures Inc.  He began his career with the investment banking firm of Lehman Brothers, where he was a member of the energy and high technology industry groups in New York and San Francisco . In this capacity Don assisted in completing transactions ranging from initial public offerings to mergers and acquisitions.  Don has also worked with the consulting and investment firm Asia Pacific Ventures, where he assisted numerous technology companies in business development in the East Asian markets.  Don received a Bachelor’s degree in Chinese from UCLA and Master’s degrees in East Asian Studies and Political Science from Stanford University.

Chris Hollenbeck – Managing Director, Granite Ventures
Chris Hollenbeck is a founding member of the Granite Ventures team. He joined Granite after serving as Vice President of Hambrecht & Quist's Venture Capital department, and focuses his investments in software. In addition to software applications, Chris is also interested in companies that capitalize on the current digital content explosion – from voice and video to consumer entertainment – and next-generation software infrastructure technologies. Chris currently sits on the Boards of Bunchball, Convio, DecisionView, Episodic, Oversight Systems, Telltale and YottaMark. He sponsored Granite’s investments in Digimarc (NASDAQ: DMRC) and Vignette (NASDAQ: VIGN), and was a member of the Boards of AvantGo prior to its acquisition by Sybase (NYSE: SY) and of Liquent prior to its acquisition by Information Holdings (NYSE: IHI). Earlier in his career, Chris held several positions within Hambrecht & Quist's Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance departments. Chris holds a B.A. in American Studies from Stanford University.

J. Scott Carr – President & CEO, YottaMark
Scott is an expert in the field of secure ID solutions. His most recent position was Executive Vice President at Digimarc Corporation where he was responsible for business development and North American sales for secure identification solutions. Scott led Digimarc’s currency anti-counterfeiting business, and has testified on ID security issues before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and the National Conference of State Legislators Homeland Security taskforce. Scott is the co-inventor of more than 20 patents. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Oregon State University and an executive MBA from the Stanford/AeA program.

Elliott Grant – CMO, YottaMark
Elliott’s background is in high-volume manufacturing and packaging. Prior to YottaMark, Elliott was the VP Operations at Portola Packaging, Inc., a $250 million packaging manufacturer, where he oversaw high speed, high volume production lines across six US plants. Previously, he was a manager at McKinsey & Company, a strategy consulting firm, where he focused on industrial operations improvement and corporate spin outs. Elliott earned his doctorate in engineering from Cambridge University.

Advisory Board

Dan’l Mackey Almy
Dan’l has more than 15 years experience in the fresh produce industry. In her current role as President of DMA Solutions, Dan’l implements customized marketing solutions and initiatives for her fresh produce industry clients, serving to differentiate them in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Prior to founding DMA Solutions, Dan’l served as Vice President at Fresh Del Monte Produce, overseeing the Wal-Mart and Sam’s business for North America. She is an active speaker at industry events, and was recently awarded the United Fresh Leadership Alumni Organization’s Outstanding Alumni Award, and named one of Produce Business’s “40 Under 40,” which profiled top industry leaders under the age of 40.

Tom Berson
Tom has over 35 years of experience in cryptology and computer science. He is the founder of Anagram Laboratories and a Fellow, Past-President and Director of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). He was the Chairman of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy and editor of the Journal of Cryptology. Tom also served on the advisory board of the International Journal of Information Security (IJIS) and as a principal scientist at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

Robert C. Carlson
Bob is a Professor at the School of Engineering and Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He was the past chair of the Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management Department. He also has served as visiting faculty at UC, Berkeley, the Amos Tuck Business School, and the IMI in Geneva. Bob has published over sixty articles and technical reports and is an expert in production and capacity planning, new product development, and manufacturing strategy.

Rob Chesnut
Rob is the Senior Vice President, Trust & Safety at eBay, Inc. Previously he was a senior federal prosecutor for 11 years with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia where he led the Major Crimes unit, and handled several noteworthy espionage cases including the prosecution of CIA employee Aldrich Ames. Rob is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School.

Kip Knight
Over the past 25 years Kip has held a variety of international marketing and general management roles at eBay North America, Proctor and Gamble, Pepsico, Taco Bell, and KFC. Kip is also on the Board of Advisors for Reactrix, Dayak, and C.E.O Women. He earned his MBA from the University of Cincinnati.

Mark Leonard
Mark’s experience spans more than 23 years in a variety of industries, including computer software, retail and prepaid. In his current role, Mark is the Executive Vice President of InComm, a leading provider of prepaid financial processing and point of sales solutions that transacted over 10 billion dollars in sales in 2008. Mark is responsible for developing new revenue opportunities, as well as running mergers and acquisitions.

He most recently served as Group Vice President of Alliances at Blackhawk Network. Prior to Blackhawk, Mark held roles as Executive Vice President and President of Astoria Software, a Ticonderoga invested company. Mark also played baseball professionally for over 10 years, during which time he played for the San Francisco Giants and Baltimore Orioles.

Bruce Peterson
Serving nearly 40 years in the produce industry, Bruce spent 15 years at Wal-Mart where he successfully launched and built the perishable foods division. He was at the forefront of the Wal-Mart Supercenter expansion which grew from 6 to 1500 stores in 15 years. Peterson retired from Wal-Mart in 2007 to take the helm of president and CEO of Naturipe Farms, a leading grower and marketer of premium berries. He completed his tenure as CEO of Naturipe Farms in 2009 and is currently the president of Peterson Insights, a strategic consulting firm for the produce industry, which has played a key role in the development and rollout of the Produce Traceability Initiative.

Sharam Shirazi
Sharam is the CEO of Empact Software, and has previously served as the CEO of University Planet, Verification Technologies and Hyperstone Electronics. Sharam’s extensive technology background includes leadership positions in Teknekron and Zilog and roles of advisor and consultant to LinkExchange and Bain & Company. Sharam has BSEE and MSEE degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Jim Vangelos
Jim Vangelos is the president and CEO of the Polymer Logistics U.S. business, a leading provider of one-touch retail reusable packaging. Prior to Polymer, Jim was president and CEO of ORBIS Container Services, which was originally launched as Hays Container Services in 2001. Jim also served as vice president of the Wal*Mart team for CHEP USA. He participated in CHEP’s entry into the produce industry with both pallets and RPCs. Prior to CHEP, he held senior management roles at Del Monte Foods and Hansen Beverage Company. He is a graduate of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and has an MBA from Willamette University in Salem Ore.