Gary Gauba
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Gary Gauba

Founder and MD, The CXO Fund Gary Gauba is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship. Most recently, Gary launched The CXO Fund, focused on early-stage investment (seed and pre-seed) and curating companies through close working relationships with several top University in the US. The CXO Fund investment thesis revolves around three key verticals: DeepTech, Healthtech, and Fintech. These verticals and our thesis will evolve based upon the expertise in the fund – i.e. the CXO investors that are predominantly Former and current senior executives from Fortune 500 companies (90+) Prior to founding the CXO Fund, Gary was President and CERO at CenturyLink – the 2nd largest U.S. telco, global internet backbone provider. Entrepreneurship is in Gary’s DNA and over the past two decades he has boot strapped, self-funded and successfully exited three companies: Cognilytics, Systech and Softline. Cognilytics was one of the first companies globally to focus its whole strategy around big data, machine learning, and AI and was acquired by CenturyLink in 2014. Entrepreneur Magazine in 1997 ranked Softline as the second fastest growing company in the U.S.A. — prior to acquisition by KPMG. Gary is a supporter of several charitable organizations including El’s for Autism, NextGen, GenYouth Foundation. Gary is also on the board of several emerging startup companies (TruU, Pyxis, Cogni, Balbix, Coddle) as well as Saison, Michelin 3-star restaurant and on the advisory board of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and DocuSign. His hobbies include food and fine wine, golf and powerlifting.

Vab Goel
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Vab Goel

Managing Director at NTT Ventures Vab Goel is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Vab is the founding partner of NTT Venture Capital (NTTVC), a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. He is also a strategic advisor to NTT Group companies on strategy, emerging technology, and trends. Previously, Vab was a Partner at Norwest Venture Partners for 19 years, a leading venture capital firm in Silicon Valley with $8B+ under management where he invested in startups in Asia, Israel, and USA.  Vab helped launch multiple successful companies including world’s leading overlay network company, Virtela, which NTT acquired in 2014.  Vab’s was an early investor in startups companies including: Winphoria Networks (Motorola), Lifesize (Logitech), Unisphere (InterCall), Qumranet (RedHat), Veveo (Tivo), Pontis (Amdocs), Apigee (Google), Ravello (Oracle), and Mist Systems (Juniper). Before joining Norwest, Vab served as Qwest’s Vice President of emerging technologies, a group he founded. In that position, he was responsible for identifying new technologies. Earlier, as Qwest’s Vice President of IP network engineering and advanced technology, he created and implemented the “Qwest IP Network and Data Center Strategy,” designed to enable seamless services with open standards and a strong customer focus. Prior to joining Qwest, Vab worked at Sprint, where he was a principal architect for the Sprint Internet backbone and contributed to the world’s first IP-over-Optical Internet architecture. Vab collaborates with global CIOs to understand their challenges and help them adopt new technologies. Vab was named as one of the Top 25 Unsung Heroes of the Internet in 1999. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from George Mason University.

Vasu Jakkal
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Vasu Jakkal

Corporate Vice President & CMO of Security, Compliance and Identity, Microsoft Vasu is the Corporate Vice President & CMO of Security, Compliance and Identity at Microsoft. She is a passionate, customer-centric and purpose-driven marketing & business leader, able to drive transformation, build inspiring brands, create disruptive thought leadership and bolster demand. Recognized by Forbes as “CMO Next” one of 50 Marketing Chiefs redefining the role and shaping the future of marketing. Recognized as Top 25 women in Cyber Security by the Software Review. Recognized as 10 Best CMOs of 2019 by Silicon Review. 2018 Woman of the Year finalist by Women in IT Awards. Marketers that Matter Innovation Council 2018, 2019. Silicon Valley Exec Network Board of Directors. 20+ years in tech across marketing (brand, comms, products, demand, operations), strategy and general management in Cloud, CyberSecurity, IoT & Mobility. Inspires change by leading with vision and strategy balanced with driving measurable results. Recognized for building modern, creative and human-centric marketing. Awarded for thought leadership, storytelling & creating content to inspire actions. Track record for driving growth, pipeline and scaling businesses in challenging markets. Values-based leadership philosophy with a passion for inspiring & developing teams to achieve big. M&A experience [9 M&As]; Advisor to Startups. Recipient of several industry awards & recognitions for being a high impact creative & strategic executive.