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Chris Berghoff
Steven K. Case
Mark Deffner
Barbara Hensley
Jennifer Keller Jackson
Dr. Greg Mowry
Steve Pederson
Kyle Peterson
Joseph Phillips
Jay Schrankler
Chris Berghoff, founder and CEO of Control Products, Inc.
Chris Berghoff is Founder and CEO of Control Products, Inc. and Protected Home. Control Products designs and manufactures custom electronic controls for equipment OEMs. Control Products operates manufacturing plants in the USA and China. Protected Home develops and markets electronic home protection products primarily to North American retail channels. He holds a BS and MBA in business. Prior to founding Control Products, Chris was employed by Honeywell, Inc. and General Electric as a manager in the areas of sales, marketing and venture management. Chris also has over 20 years experience as an Adjunct Professor in Marketing, Leadership, Strategic Planning and Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas and University of Minnesota graduate schools of business in addition to teaching in their executive management programs. Chris has also guest lectured throughout the USA and in China.
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Steven K. Case, Chairman of CyberOptics Corporation
Dr. Case founded CyberOptics Corporation (NASDAQ: CYBE) in 1984 and currently is its Chairman. Dr. Case built CyberOptics from startup to over 200 employees and revenue of over $60M. It has been on the Inc 100 list of fastest growing companies in America and is internationally recognized as a leader in the design and manufacture of sensors and systems for high precision inspection, measurement, and assembly in the electronics and semiconductor equipment markets. Dr. Case is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA). In 2004, Dr. Case received the Edwin H. Land Medal for pioneering entrepreneurial activity from OSA and in 2006 was honored with the Achievement Award from the Automated Imaging Association. He has served on the National Board of Directors of the American Electronics Association and is the past President of the Surface Mount Equipment Manufacturers Association. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan in 1976, and in 1978 was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for research at the Applied Optics Institute in Erlangen, Germany. Dr. Case holds twenty-eight patents for optical and laser devices and has presented over 80 contributed and invited papers at optical and electronic conferences.
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Mark Deffner, Co-Founder and Patent Attorney of Pauly, DeVries Smith & Deffner, L.L.C.
Mark is a registered patent attorney and practices intellectual property law with an emphasis on patent prosecution. Mark has significant experience counseling clients on intellectual property strategies related to many different technical areas including general mechanical, business methods, software, medical devices, chemistry, biotechnology, and bioinformatics. He is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School where he was named a member of the Order of the Coif. Before entering the legal profession, Mark worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a consultant. Mark then worked at the law firm of Merchant & Gould before co-founding his present firm, Pauly, DeVries Smith & Deffner, L.L.C. Mark was previously co-chair of the Minnesota Intellectual Property Law Association (MIPLA) chemistry and biotechnology practice committee.
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Barbara Hensley, Founder of Hope Chest for Breast Cancer
Losing both of her sisters to breast cancer devastated Barbara Hensley. During their combined six year battles, she became painfully aware of the challenges faced by underserved women. Seeing women who are already struggling just to afford rent and food and who are then faced with fighting breast cancer disturbed and angered her. So she did something. In 2001 Barbara resigned her executive corporate position and founded the Hope Chest for Breast Cancer®.
The Hope Chest raises critical resources through the sale of designer furniture, accessories and clothing donated by individuals, wholesale and retail businesses. These items are then sold through a chain of company owned and franchised retail stores. The Foundation uses funds from the stores and other fund-raising opportunities to support breast cancer causes such as early detection education, treatment programs, hospice care and research. Barbara brings extensive experience to her role as creator of Hope Chest for Breast Cancer™. Prior to founding the organization, she was the vice president of product management for Ceridian Corporation. In this capacity, she was responsible for creating and managing products that provided more than $900 million in revenue. Before Ceridian, Hensley was responsible for marketing at Datakey. She also spent 13 years with Honeywell in various upper level management positions. Hensley was a business instructor at the Wooster campus of Ohio State University. She has also owned and operated a successful retail business.
Hensley is a 2003 recipient of Women Venture's "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained" award, Minnesota Women's Press Change Makers Award, Minnesota Oncology and Hematology Foundation's Star Award. In 2004 she was honored by Volvo US in the Minnesota Volvo for Life Award, the National Association of Women Business Owners Luminary Award the Business Journal as one of the 25 Women Change-Makers. Hensley was a semi-finalist in the Yale Graduate School of Management Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures' National Business Plan Competition in 2005 and took second place in the Claremont Graduate School Peter Drucker Award of Innovation. In 2006 Hensley was selected as one of the General Mills Yoplait Champions recognizing individuals from across the nation for their contribution to breast cancer causes. The St. Paul Chamber of Commerce presented Hensley with a 2006 Celebrate Business Success Award . In 2007 Upsize Magazine honored her with their Life Line Award. Hensley has a Bachelor of Art degree from Austin College; a Master's Degree in Business Information Management from the University of Missouri; and a Master's Degree in Urban Affairs from Webster University. She is a member of the Minnesota Women's Economic Roundtable, serves on the Board of Directors for the Breast Cancer Awareness Association and is currently CEO of LeeRyan Corporation. Hensley is active in the Lake Minnetonka, St. Paul and Wayzata Chambers of Commerce. She also is a member of the International Franchise Association, the Woman's Club of Minneapolis, the International Fashion Group and the University Club of St. Paul.
Hensley resides in Shakopee, Minnesota, with her husband, Jay. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her sons, Will and Jason, and Jason's wife, Melissa, and their sons, Dawson, Noah and Manny. She also enjoys gardening and reading.
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Jennifer Keller Jackson, Grants Manager of National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance
Jennifer Keller Jackson, NCIIA's Grants Manager, oversees the NCIIA's grants, awards, and competitions. Keller Jackson's background is in nonprofit management, in the areas of education and technology. Her experience includes program development, marketing, fund-raising, technical proposal writing, communications, and PR. She has also helped to start a nonprofit and worked to transform another nonprofit into a for-profit company. Keller Jackson and her family moved to Amherst, MA from the Washington, DC area in 2004. Jennifer grew up overseas in Asia, Africa, and South America and is deeply interested in alternatives to the traditional aid model of development. She is fluent in French and understands Spanish.
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Dr. Greg Mowry of University of St. Thomas School of Engineering
Interests and Expertise
Alternative energy systems and hydrogen. Lasers, optics, imaging, and optical material processing. Solid state device electronics, analog electronics, magnetics and magnetic materials, thin films and thin-film processing, MEMs, and electromagnetics.
Career
Dr. Mowry came to the University of St. Thomas after 25 years in industry. His experiences have included fundamental research on thin-film magnetic materials and deposition techniques for materials that are used in disc-drives, magnetic recording head design, design and development of optical metrology equipment, designing laser systems with tailored spatial mode profiles, plus medical device and imaging research. He also has 17 years of experience as an expert technical witness in several technology fields and is named on 39 patents. He has worked for several companies including Seagate Technology and Boston Scientific. Dr. Mowry has also been involved as a founder in several technical company startup ventures.
His current work includes alternative energy for sustainability in developing countries, laser processing of materials, and student research-abroad opportunities. He has taught a variety of optics and communications courses and currently teaches various Electrical Engineering courses including analog electronics, electrodynamics and motor theory.
Education
B.S. Metallurgical Engineering, 1976, Iowa State University.
M.S. Metallurgy, 1978, Iowa State University; thesis.
M.S. Electrical Engineering Program, 1980 - 1982, Stanford; non-thesis.
Ph.D. Electrical Engineering - laser optics, 1995, University of Minnesota.
Selected Patents and Publications
US 4,803,580; 7 Feb 89, "Double-gap magnetoresistive head having an elongated central write-shield pole completely shielding the magnetoresistive sensor strip in the read gap."
US 6,324,319; 27 Nov 2001, "Spliced optical fiber coupler."
Mowry, Leger, "Large-area, single transverse mode semiconductor laser with diffraction limited super-Gaussian output," APL 66 (13), 1614 (1995). Also presented at 1994 CLEO conference.
Kief, Al-Jumaily, Mowry, "Optical Metrology for Magnetoresitive Heads," IEEE Tran. Mag. 33 (5), 2926 (1997).
D. K. Thome, G. S. Mowry, et.al., "Influence of Hydrogen on the low temperature heat capacity of Lutetium-rich Lutetium Hydrogen alloys," Solid State Commun., 25 (5), 297 (1978).
G. S. Mowry, "Boundary Control Stabilization (BCS) of single domain MR sensors," IEEE Tran. Mag. 24 (6), (1988).
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Steve Pederson, Managing Director of Concerto Venture Partners
Mr. Pederson is currently a Managing Director with Concerto Venture Partners, LLC. Concerto Venture Partners is an early stage venture firm formed to capitalize on a significant investment opportunity that currently exists as a result of a "disconnect in the United States between where innovation is occurring and where innovation is being funded". Concerto's mission is "to establish a long-term, sustainable support infrastructure dedicated to creating a world class international investment & innovation commercialization hub in Mid-America that capitalizes on opportunities which will generate significant financial returns for its investors". For more information, visit www.concertovp.com.
For the past 8 years Mr. Pederson has been a General Partner of Sherpa Partners, LLC., and co-founder of the Trek I Fund (now a fully invested fund). Sherpa Partners, LLC is a Minneapolis-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology companies. The partners at Sherpa are all experienced operational managers, investing time, energy and money to help emerging technology companies create the strategies, systems, infrastructure and management teams to become leaders in their markets. Mr. Pederson still serves as a Director for three portfolio companies, and has been active as an interim operating officer in numerous early-stage, Sherpa sponsored companies as they strive to meet their business milestones. www.sherpapartners.com
Prior to Sherpa, Steve was an operational executive at Xerox Corporation, Design Stages and Skyline Displays where he helped create strategic programs that facilitated new channels of sales distribution, customer and employee training, product development and quality programs (TQM). His focus centered on creating systems and processes that allowed the parent companies and channel partners to grow exponentially, providing the infrastructure to help them become leaders in their markets.
Mr. Pederson earned his undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College. He received his Masters degree and the coursework requirement for his doctorate at the University of Illinois.
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Kyle Peterson, Attorney of Patterson, Thuente, Skaar and Christensen
Kyle Peterson '98, M.B.A. '04 is an attorney with the law firm of Patterson, Thuente, Skaar and Christensen, a 30-member intellectual-property law firm based in Minneapolis. Peterson represents clients with complex business issues involving patents and trademarks.
Before earning his law degree, Peterson worked as a manufacturing engineer at 7-Sigma Inc. in Minneapolis. He was responsible for developing systems used to manufacture precision components for the automotive, medical device and office-products industries.
An adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas, Peterson teaches intellectual property law. He is a 2006 recipient of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal's "Forty Under 40" award. In 1995, Peterson and his family founded WineHaven Winery and Vineyard in Chisago City, Minn.
Peterson graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 1998 with a B.S. degree in manufacturing engineering. He received his law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in 2001 and an M.B.A. degree in 2004 from St. Thomas, where he conducted research regarding valuation methods for intellectual property. He studied winemaking at Cornell University and recently completed the Wine Executive Program at the University of California, Davis .
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Joseph Phillips, Former Director of Corporate Development of Imation Corp
Joseph R. Phillips (Joe) was previously the Director of Corporate Development at Imation Corp, where he was responsible for strategy planning, M & A, venture capital investments and corporate development projects. Mr. Phillips has 38 years of business experience with 3M Corporation and Imation, a 1996 spin-off of 3M, in a variety of business management, strategy, M & A, product marketing and new product development positions.
At Imation, Mr. Phillips played a key role in the portfolio strategy development that resulted in a focus on the data storage industry and the divestiture of the assets of six other businesses in 18 transactions totaling over $800 million. He managed the external analysis that resulted in the strategy for the company's core data storage products business and its adjacent growth opportunities. The resulting investments in new technology, product development and an optical media joint venture successfully drove accelerated growth at Imation. Mr. Phillips developed and managed Imation's strategic, business, new product and acquisition planning and implementation processes. He also managed the venture capital investments that returned over 6X on Imation's investments.
Prior to Imation, during 29 years at 3M, Mr. Phillips led several product line business operations, served as Marketing Operations Manager in the Data Storage Products, marketed new products for the commercial office supply channels and led a new product development group in 3M's Commercial Tape Laboratory.
During his corporate business career, Mr. Phillips has been involved in the startup of over 25 new products and businesses and served as a guest lecturer in marketing and business management at the University of Texas Graduate School of Business.
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Jay Schrankler, Executive Director, Office for Technology Commercialization of University of Minnesota
During his 26 years at Honeywell, Jay Schrankler had key management and executive roles spanning the Aerospace Sector to the Automation and Control Solutions business. After successfully leading Honeywell's $1.1B Environmental Controls Business as Vice President and General Manager he spent five years as the Vice President of Honeywell's Automation and Controls intellectual property licensing and marketing business. He built this business from scratch by licensing Honeywell's technology as well as its renowned trademark. This was attractive experience to his alma mater, the University of Minnesota.
The job, which Schrankler started in April 2007, is the executive directorship of the University of Minnesota's new Office for Technology Commercialization. Schrankler's group is responsible for mining the University for key inventions and then determining the best route to commercialization. This comes in the form of technology licenses and in new venture start up companies created by the University's Venture Center.
As an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota he studied electrical engineering before getting master's degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin. He has also completed executive management certifications as Harvard University and UCLA.
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