We strive for divergence. Let inspiration
take shape in unexpected ways.
Cindy Eckert is a leading women's health advocate and entrepreneur currently serving as founder and CEO of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, home of the first ever FDA-approved drug for low sexual desire in women - Addyi - and The Pink Ceiling, an incubator for women-founded and focused startups. Over a distinguished 24-year career in healthcare, she has started and sold two businesses for more than $1.5B (and got one back for free). Her results have become a widely-covered business success story featured in major media outlets, and the positive impact her companies have made in people's lives is what keeps her coming back for more.
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Widely recognized as one of the best operating executives in the United States, Bob has grown the sales and profits of a number of multi-national corporations in his career, including quadupling operating profits for General Electric, doubling the size of The Home Depot, and steering Chrysler Corp. through the financial institution meltdown. Bob Nardelli is the Founder of XLR-8 LLC, Investment & Advisory Company. XLR-8 helps companies identify weaknesses and improve performance.
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Hayley Barna is a Partner at First Round Capital based in New York. Prior to joining First Round she co-founded Birchbox, the leading beauty and grooming retailer seed funded by First Round in 2010. She served as Co-CEO at Birchbox for five years from conception and launch to growing the business to over a million monthly subscribers. She raised over $70M in venture capital, expanded the business internationally and launched new businesses and channels like men's and retail stores. Hayley is a board member at Birchbox, RAB Lighting and Madison Reed.
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Matt is an entrepreneur and CEO with expertise in quickly scaling successful businesses. After shepherding a versatile arsenal of tech companies, Matt wants to build technologies at scale that disrupt hierarchies and disseminate control of secure information to data users. His innate design thinking focus complements a belief that good corporate governance and culture make success possible.
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Nova Cadamatre is the first female winemaker in the US to achieve the title of Master of Wine and one of only two American winemakers to do so. In 2014, Cadamatre was named to Wine Enthusiast's Top 40 under 40 list and has numerous 90+ scoring wines to her credit from both California and New York.
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Marlon Nichols is a founding managing partner at Cross Culture Ventures (CCV), which finds the entrepreneurs who are building the future for the rest of America. He's a former Kauffman Fellow and Investment Director at Intel Capital and a current adjunct professor in entrepreneurship and venture capital at the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University. Marlon's unique eye for global trends and shifts in consumer behavior has helped him capture high-potential investments like Gimlet Media, MongoDB, Thrive Market, Fair, LISNR, Mayvenn, Blavity, Wonderschool, and others. He's been featured on Fortune, Blavity, and Black Enterprise magazine and is the recipient of SXSW 2018 Innovator of the Year award, Digital Diversity's Innovation & Inclusion Change Agent award, and was named Pitchbook's 25 Black Founders and VCs to Watch in 2018.
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Cory is the Chief Market Strategist of Ripple. In his current role, Cory is focused on managing the company's growth and telling Ripple's story to regulators, Wall Street and global financial markets. Prior to Ripple, Cory worked as a hedge fund portfolio manager at Kingsford Capital Management and journalist at Bloomberg and CNBC covering high-growth technology companies. Earlier in his career Cory ushered in many startups, including theStreet.com, the Industry Standard, SLAM and Vibe magazines.
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Barry Beck is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Bluemercury, Inc., a high growth luxury beauty retail chain. Mr. Beck oversees all aspects of Bluemercury's operations and leads the company's strategic growth initiatives. He developed the original store retail model after the acquisition and development of the first Bluemercury store. In 2006, Mr. Beck also co-founded M-61 Laboratories, makers of M-61 Skincare, the first highly technical, natural cosmeceutical brand.
Among his accolades Mr. Beck was named 2017 Retailer of the Year by Total Retail Magazine, was the recipient of the 2016 Retail Innovator of the Year Award by Retail TouchPoints Magazine, and sits on the Board of Advisors of The Fashion Institute of Technology.
In her current role, Leigh Gallagher writes and edits feature stories, helps steer the brand's editorial coverage and serves as a co-chair of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit and Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference. She is also a seasoned business news commentator, appearing on channels such as MSNBC and CBS. From 2014-2016, she was the host of Fortune Live, Fortune's weekly half-hour video talk show. Leigh is the author of two books: The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions...and Created Plenty of Controversy and The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving.
Scott Belsky is an executive, entrepreneur, author, investor, and now serves as Adobe's Chief Product Officer. Scott's passion is to make the creative world more productive, connected, and adaptive to new technologies. He founded Behance, the leading online platform for the creative industry to showcase and discover creative work, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. He is a Venture Partner with Benchmark, and is an early advisor and investor in Pinterest, Uber, sweetgreen, and Periscope as well as several other startups. He is the author of Making Ideas Happen, and founded 99U, a publication and annual conference devoted to productivity in the creative world.
Check-in & Breakfast
Opening Remarks
Zach Shulman '87, JD '90, Director, Entrepreneurship at Cornell
Joe Thomas, Interim Dean, SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University
Cindy Eckert
Followed by startup pitch
Marlon Nichols MBA '11
Followed by startup pitch
Bob Nardelli
Fireside chat moderated by Leigh Gallagher '94
Networking Lunch
Nova Cadamatre '06
Followed by startup pitch
Matt McGraw '95
Followed by startup pitch
Cory Johnson
Fireside chat moderated by Scott Belsky '02
Networking Break
Hayley Barna
Followed by announcement of startup pitch winner
Barry Beck '90
Closing remarks with Scott Belsky '02
and Zach Shulman '87, JD '90
with Reception to Follow
This year's startup pitches featured four companies that are based on intellectual property licensed from Cornell. Click on a Startup to watch their pitch.
