John's IT experience spans 25 years as a Senior Executive of high-growth private and public companies. In 1984, he co-founded Business Software Technology, Inc. (BST) and served as Chief Operating Officer and Director. BST became the industry leader in software configuration management and grew at a compound annual growth rate of greater than 50%, achieving profitability in every financial quarter of operation. BST grew to sales of greater than $15 million, with net profit of over $2 million, before being acquired by Legent Corporation in 1989.

After the merger of Legent and BST, John became President, Chief Operating officer and then Chief Executive Officer of Legent. During his tenure, Legent grew in sales from $126 to over $500 million and was ranked as one of the ten largest software companies worldwide. Under his management, Legent executed over one dozen corporate acquisitions, nearing $1 billion in value.

Since 1995, John has advised, invested in and assisted several technology firms in expansion and re-engineering efforts. John currently serves on the boards of Ecutel, OTG Software, ePresence, MainControl and SwapDrive.

A Managing Director of Centennial Ventures, Mr. Schutz joined the firm in 1987and made partner the same year. He is in his 20th year of full-time, direct venture capital investing. He has served on the boards of numerous public and private companies.

Jeffrey holds an A.B. in Economics from Middlebury College and an M.B.A. from Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.

Jed is a fifteen-year veteran of the high technology industry, from his career at Oracle in the late 1980's to his experience launching drugstore.com in the late 1990's and current role as a leading venture capitalist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jed left Oracle to become Director of Sales at Tribe Computer Works (Tribe became Whistle Communications, a networking hardware and software company that was subsequently acquired by IBM). Jed then co-founded and spent four years at Cybersmith, a retail store chain that showcased the latest advances in information technology and multimedia software.

He then founded drugstore.com, and served on its board of directors with John Doerr, Brook Byers, Peter Neupert, Howard Schultz and Jeff Bezos. Jed is currently the President and Managing Partner of Catamount Ventures an early stage technology fund.
Jed has been mentioned a "Web visionary" by MSNBC, "One to Watch" by The Industry Standard, and one of the top forty "most influential people on the Internet in Boston" by the Improper Bostonian.

An advisor to many private companies, Jed currently serves on the board of directors of Bocada Software, Liquid Engines, Inc., Sapias, Inc., Siterra Corporation, Linden Lab, Inc. Jed also has served on the board of several education and non-profit institutions, including the Board of Trustees of Middlebury College, Shackleton Schools, the Interactive Mathematics Program, and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

Mark Patinkin has been writing a thrice-weekly column for the Providence Journal for over 20 years. In 1989, he and Ira Magaziner co-authored "The Silent War'' (Random House), a Book-Of-The-Month Club selection on how U.S. companies compete against foreign rivals. In 1985, he spent a month in Africa writing about famine, later publishing "An African Journey.''

In 1986, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting for a newspaper series on religious violence in Belfast, India and Beirut. That same year, he covered the collapse of communism in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Moscow and Romania, where he was arrested for trying to interview a dissident.

Patinkin also did a 1991 series from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He spent several years, part-time, doing a television talk show and ``video columns'' for local network affiliates, receiving three New England Emmy awards. He has also published two humor books and a collection of his columns.

Mark grew up in Chicago, graduated from Middlebury College and lives in Providence with his wife and three children.

Dave comes to Vermont from Montreal, Canada. He Graduated from Concordia University, and then spent nine years playing professional hockey.

After retiring from professional hockey, Dave spend the next 10 years serving as president of a school and office manufacturing company.

The next six years were spent working along side his brothers with several manufacturing companies in New England.

For the last two-and-a-half years, Dave has been with Autumn Harp of Bristol, Vermont a custom formulator and manufacturer of color cosmetics, personal care and OTC products, whose clients range from major global corporations to independent brands.

Following graduation in February of 1989, Dave headed off to help start the WorldTeach Program in Thailand. He returned to the states 18 months later, settled in San Francisco and helped Jed Smith '88 launch Tribe Computer Works, a seminal Macintosh networking company. Tribe morphed into Whistle Communications, Internet appliance maker sold to IBM in 1999.

Dave then co-founded RapidLogic, which pioneered embedded Web servers for managing any device via the Internet. His next venture was a four year stint as Vice President of Product Management and later Business Development at BackWeb Technologies. At BackWeb, Dave was responsible for a major joint venture with Real Networks that developed the Real Jukebox and the first Music Delivery System, which would later evolve into MusicNet.

Dave's next stop was Picatel Systems, an ill fated but revolutionary company that developed vocal navigation and interaction technology for cell phones and PDAs, an idea whose time will someday come.

Now back in enterprise software, David is currently SVP of Sales and Global Business Development for DigitalFuel, builders of software to manage global outsourcing and quality of service.

Two amazing kids, Ike and Tressa, beautiful wife Annemarie ('88), 8 surfboards, booming flower garden, big stack of telemark skis, and a cat named Liam round out the picture.

Matthew is currently the Director of Digital Strategy & Corporate Communications for the Motion Picture Association of America where he is working with the seven major motion picture studios to chart the future of the media industries in the emerging digital age. He was recruited to his present role from his role as Manager of Website development at FirstLook.com -- an entertainment portal that provided consumers and businesses with the largest database of promotional media for movies, music, games and television programming. Matthew started his career in New York where he spent 3 ½ years in media production working on a number of independent films and the Woodstock '94 Music Festival. He also worked in the New York office of the William Morris Agency, one of the largest talent agencies in the world, where he developed financing partners for independent feature films, created strategies for acquiring and retaining clients and negotiated client contracts.
Following William Morris, Matthew moved to Los Angeles to attend The Anderson School of Business at UCLA where he received his MBA. In addition to his MBA, Matthew holds a BA in Film from Middlebury College. As an undergraduate, he purchased -- and two years later profitably sold --Middlebury Wash & Carry, a local laundry service to Middlebury students. Matthew lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife Alaine and their yellow Labrador retriever, Sophie. He has recently taken up surfing.

Tom Knox is a partner at Shaw Pittman LLP, a Washington, D.C. law firm. He advises technology companies of all sizes on corporate and finance matters and on technology creation, use, exploitation, marketing and disposition.

In the technology field, Tom counsels clients on intellectual property development, licensing and protection issues; electronic commerce, outsourcing, complex systems procurement, strategic alliance and teaming arrangements; consulting and services agreements; distributor, reseller and dealer arrangements; telecommunications services agreements; and the management and disposition of intellectual property portfolios.
On corporate and finance matters, Tom advises clients on venture capital, private placement and other kinds of financing; mergers and acquisitions; purchases and sales of assets; and strategic transactions and joint ventures. He serves as outside general counsel to a number of companies and in that capacity he advises management and boards of directors on a wide range of issues facing high-growth technology companies.
Tom has served as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and has been a speaker on various topics relating to technology law and emerging companies. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and Middlebury College. Tom is a member of the Virginia, Maryland and District of Columbia bar associations.

Representative clients include America Online, Sun Microsystems, XO Communications, webMethods, Cordiem, Sourcefire and ObjectVideo.

Betsy Backes is currently an Asset Manager with the Global Vendor Finance division of Fleet Boston Financial. Prior to Fleet, Betsy was with Mellon US Leasing as Vice President - Equipment Risk in San Francisco. She also previously worked with Ameritech/SBC Capital Services in Rolling Meadows, IL as Director of Portfolio Management.

Betsy currently works on several major leasing programs. Among the largest is Fleet Capital Leasing's PC Program which spins off approximately 500 returned units per month. Betsy is responsible for setting the residual value (i.e - what the equipment is expected to be worth at the end of the lease) as well as monitoring the remarketing of the equipment upon its return.

Betsy graduated from Middlebury with a B.A in English in 1982. She stumbled in computer leasing in 1985 after the video game development company that she was doing technical writing for went bankrupt. Betsy has worked for steadily larger leasing companies throughout her career. Following this trend, Betsy's current company has been purchased by Bank of America and, if she survives the merger, she will work for the second largest bank in the country.

Betsy lives in Chicago with her husband and 2 daughters.

Robin is president of American Retroworks Inc., a consulting and recycling services organization specializing in reuse, repair, and recycling used goods such as electronics and household goods, both domestically and for export. American Retroworks has just reopened a reuse facility in Middlebury, Vermont, called Good Point Recycling.
Ingrenthron was Director of the Massachusetts Recycling Program at the state's Department of Environmental Protection before accepting a short-term promotion to Deputy Director of Consumer Programs at DEP in 1998.

Robin has led two private not-for-profit recycling organizations, and was vice president of ElectroniCycle Inc. during its two-year growth from a TV repair shop to one of the largest CRT recyling companies in the U.S.

He was both a volunteer and a country training consultant for the US Peace Corps (1984-86). During September and October 2002, he consulted to the Guangzhou Electric Appliance Research Institute (GEARI) concerning recycled copper scrap operations in China.

Robin has a BA degree in international relations from Carleton College and an MBA from Boston University's Public Management Program.