SPEAKERS

Diane M. Bryant is a global technology leader with more than three decades of executive leadership in the global semiconductor industry, cloud computing services, artificial intelligence applications, and technology-based healthcare solutions.

Bryant serves as the Chair and CEO of NovaSignal. NovaSignal is a medical technology and data company focused on brain health. Applying advanced technology - robotics and artificial intelligence – direct access to cerebral vascular data is obtained enabling diagnosis of stroke, traumatic brain injury, and other illnesses that present themselves in the brain.

Prior, she served as the Chief Operating Officer of Google Cloud, where she focused on accelerating the scale and reach of Google Cloud’s business, including optimization of the global supply chain, acceleration of customer adoption, and development of next-generation information technology solutions.
Before Google, Bryant spent 32 years at Intel, the last five years as Group President of Intel’s Data

ata Center Group, the worldwide organization that develops server, storage, and network platforms for the digital service's economy, growing it to $19 billion in revenue in 2017. Before becoming Group President, Bryant was Intel’s Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, responsible for the corporate-wide information technology solutions and services that enable Intel’s business.

Bryant was elected to the Broadcom Inc. board of directors in January 2019 and serves on the compensation committee. She is currently a board member of the privately held Ownzones, a SaaS AI-driven platform for media post-production.  Diane served on the United Technologies Corp (UTC) board of directors from 2016 to April 2020. She is also the chair of the UC Davis Chancellor’s Board of Advisors.

Bryant was named among Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2015 and 2016 and is a tireless advocate for women and underrepresented minorities in the fields of engineering and technology. She established the Diane Bryant Engineering Student Center at the University of California-Davis, and the Diane Bryant STEM Innovation Center at the American River Community College. In 2020, Becker’s Healthcare named Diane one of 7 “shaker and mover” leaders affecting health IT. Business Insider ranked Ms. Bryant #6 among the Most Powerful Female Engineers in 2018. In 2016, World Affairs and its Global Philanthropy Forum honored Ms. Bryant with its Global Citizen Award.

Bryant received her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from U.C. Davis in 1985. She attended Stanford Graduate School of Business, completing the Executive Program in 2011.  Bryant holds four U.S. patents in mobile computing.

Vinod is an entrepreneur, investor, and technologist. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, a firm focused on assisting entrepreneurs to build impactful technology-based disruptive companies. Vinod grew up dreaming of being an entrepreneur, despite being from an Indian army household with no business or technology connections. Since the age of 16, when he first heard about the founding of Intel, he dreamt of starting his own technology company.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, Vinod failed to start a soy milk company to service the many people in India who did not have refrigerators. Instead, he came to the U.S. to further his academic studies and received a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. His startup dreams led him to Silicon Valley, where he received an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Upon graduation, Vinod co-founded Daisy Systems, the first significant computer-aided design system for electrical engineers. The company went on to achieve significant revenue, profits, and an IPO. Then, driven by the frustration of having to design the computer hardware on which the Daisy software needed to be built, he started the standards-based Sun Microsystems in 1982 to build workstations for software developers. As the founding CEO of Sun, he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Sun Microsystems was funded by Vinod’s longtime friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB).

In 1986, Vinod joined KPCB as a general partner. While there, he played a crucial role in taking on Intel’s monopoly by building and growing a semiconductor company, Nexgen, which eventually was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Nexgen/AMD was the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel. Thereafter, Vinod helped incubate the idea and business plan for Juniper Networks to take on Cisco System’s dominance of the router market. The company went on to give KPCB a 2,500x return on its early investment. Vinod also was involved in the formulation of the early advertising-based search strategy for Excite. He helped transform the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent Corporation, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1999 for $7.2 billion.
In 2004, driven by the need for flexibility to accommodate four growing children, the desire to be more experimental and to fund sometimes imprudent “science experiments,” Vinod formed Khosla Ventures to focus on both for-profit and social impact investments. His goals remain the same: work and learn from fun and knowledgeable entrepreneurs, build impactful companies by leveraging innovation, and spend time with a partnership that makes a difference. Vinod has a passion for nascent technologies that have beneficial effects and economic impact on society. He works closely with many KV companies as they face transitions or key decisions.

Vinod is driven by the belief that technology is a positive force multiplier to accelerate societal reinvention in food, health, climate, energy transportation, education, housing finance, media, retail, and entertainment for billions around the globe. His greatest passion lies in being a mentor to entrepreneurs who are building companies to tackle society’s largest challenges. He was also a supporter of several microfinance organizations in India and Africa.

Vinod sits on the board of Breakthrough Energy Ventures and is a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a non-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals that was founded in 1992 and has more than 40 chapters in nine countries today. He is a founding board member of the Indian School of Business (ISB).

Vinod holds a bachelor of technology degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India, a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.