Sue Siegel, Chairman
Sue Siegel has driven game-changing ideas and powered companies that advance industries and improve lives for more than three decades. As GE’s Chief Innovation Officer and CEO of GE Ventures for seven years, Siegel oversaw investment in startups, creating and scaling new companies, and commercializing GE’s intellectual property. She also led strategic planning and oversaw the global marketing function.
Before joining GE, Siegel was a General Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, where she spearheaded investments in personalized medicine, digital health and life sciences. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Siegel led Affymetrix as President and a board member. She also held executive leadership roles at Bio-Rad, DuPont and Amersham after transitioning to a corporate career from early work in molecular biology and biochemistry.
Siegel has served on many corporate and non-profit boards and has been recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley.” Siegel lives in Silicon Valley with her husband and her two sons.
Paula Hammond
Paula T. Hammond is Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. She is a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, the MIT Energy Initiative, and a founding member of the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology. As of September 2021, she was named to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
The core of her work is the use of electrostatics and other complementary interactions to generate functional materials with highly controlled architecture. Her research in nanomedicine encompasses the development of new biomaterials to enable drug delivery from surfaces with spatio-temporal control. She also investigates novel responsive polymer architectures for targeted nanoparticle drug and gene delivery, and has developed self-assembled materials systems for electrochemical energy devices.
Professor Paula Hammond was elected into the National Academy of Science in 2019, the National Academy of Engineering in 2017, the National Academy of Medicine in 2016, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013. She is one of only 25 distinguished scientists elected to all three national academies. She won the ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science in 2018, and she is also the recipient of the 2013 AIChE Charles M. A. Stine Award, which is bestowed annually to a leading researcher in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of materials science and engineering, and the 2014 AIChE Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research. She was selected to receive the Department of Defense Ovarian Cancer Teal Innovator Award in 2013, which supports a single visionary individual from any field principally outside of ovarian cancer to focus his/her creativity, innovation, and leadership on ovarian cancer research. By developing degradable electrostatically assembled layer-by-layer (LbL) thin films that enable temporal and even sequential controlled release from surfaces, Paula Hammond pioneered a new and rapidly growing area of multicomponent surface delivery of therapeutics that impacts biomedical implants, tissue engineering and nanomedicine. A key contribution is her ability to introduce not only controlled release of sensitive biologics, but her recent advances in actually staging the release of these drugs to attain synergistically timed combination therapies. She has designed multilayered nanoparticles to deliver a synergistic combination of siRNA or inhibitors with chemotherapy drugs in a staged manner to tumors, leading to significant decreases in tumor growth and a great lowering of toxicity. The newest developments from her lab offer a promising approach to messenger RNA (mRNA) delivery, in which she creates pre-complexes of mRNA with its capping protein and synthesized optimized cationic polypeptides structures for the co-complexation and stabilization of the nucleic acid-protein system to gain up to 80-fold increases in mRNA translation efficiency, opening potential for vaccines and immunotherapies. Professor Hammond has published over 320 papers, and over 20 patent applications. She is the co-founder and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of LayerBio, Inc. and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Moderna Therapeutics.
Linda Pizzuti Henry
Linda Pizzuti Henry is the managing director of Boston Globe Media Partners, a 144-year-old print, digital, event, publishing, and marketing company with 26 Pulitzer Prizes. She is a co-founder of HUBweek, a collaboration among the Boston Globe, Harvard University, MIT, and Massachusetts General Hospital that explores the intersection of art, science, and technology. Pizzuti Henry is also an early-stage-impact investor, an Emmy-winning television producer with two shows currently airing, and a community activist.
Pizzuti Henry serves as a trustee of the Liverpool Football Club Foundation, a director of the Red Sox Foundation, chair of the Boston Globe Foundation, and chair of the John W. Henry Family Foundation. In addition, Pizzuti Henry is a founder of the Boston Public Market and serves on the advisory board of MassChallenge.
Pizzuti Henry received her BS from Babson College and a master’s degree in real estate development from MIT. She spends a lot of time questioning referee and umpire decisions, is surprisingly knowledgeable about team mascots, and passionately believes in the bright future of Boston.
Brad Powell
Brad Powell is the managing director of investments for Emerson Collective. In this position, he oversees Emerson’s financial and investment activity. This requires directing diligence work, coordinating research and advising the founders and entrepreneurs who operate the companies within Emerson’s portfolio. He is a member of and advisor to several boards of both private for-profit and non-profit organizations. In addition to this role, Powell has primary responsibility for driving the community impact work of the Collective.
Prior to joining Emerson, Powell’s career spanned many different sectors, including public accounting, management consulting, financial services and commercial real estate. He has launched and built several startups and worked in large corporate and multinational organizations. He has undergraduate degrees in accounting and computer science and was a certified public accountant. Powell has two graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology–a master’s of science in real estate and an MBA from the Sloan School of Management.
Jeremy Wertheimer
Jeremy Wertheimer received a BE in electrical engineering from Cooper Union and an SM in computer science and PhD in artificial intelligence from MIT. He started ITA Software when he graduated from MIT, and grew it to a company with more than 400 employees. Google acquired ITA Software in 2011. Jeremy is now vice president for engineering at Google. He serves on the board of trustees of Cooper Union, on several visiting and advisory committees at MIT, and on the boards of several biotech startups.
Katie Rae
Katie Rae is the CEO & Managing Partner of Engine Ventures. She serves as a Board Member for Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Form Energy, Boston Metal, Via Separations, and Sublime Systems. Katie has over 10 years of experience as an investor and 25 years as a tech executive helping build Boston into a thriving tech hub. She has invested in nearly 100 companies and advised hundreds of founders from early-stage formation to scale-up. Key investments include Pillpack (acquired by Amazon for $1 billion in 2018), Flywire, Moon, and Grab CAD.
Katie has experience in managing startup accelerators and business-innovation programs — she was a Managing Director of Techstars Boston. She was also a co-founder and Managing Director at Project 11 Ventures.In addition to her extensive investing career, she has over 20 years of experience in product development, management & operations including holding management positions at Microsoft, Eons, AltaVista, RagingBull, Zip2, and Mirror Worlds.Katie holds an MBA from Yale and a BA in Biology from Oberlin College. Katie co-founded the Equity Summit, which convenes leading General Partners and Asset Managers of diversity across the venture capital industry.
Glen Shor
Glen Shor was appointed Executive Vice President and Treasurer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in October 2020. In this role, he is the chief steward of MIT’s $32 billion in net financial assets and over $4 billion operating budget, responsible for financial strategy development, operations, and capital budget planning, debt issuance, and maintenance of the integrity of financial information for the Institute. He also leads the central administrative functions at MIT including operating units focused on finance, human resources, information systems and technology, campus services and stewardship, security and safety, and campus medical care.
Shor joined MIT in 2015 as Vice President for Finance. Prior to that, he served as Secretary of Administration and Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under former Governor Deval Patrick, and was the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Health Connector. He also held roles as Senior Policy Counsel and Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts, a senior policy aide to former U.S. Representative Martin T. Meehan, Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, and a public interest attorney who participated in the McConnell v. FEC campaign finance case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Shor holds a BA in history from Yale University, awarded in 1993, and a JD from Harvard Law School, awarded in 1996.
Founding Chairman
Israel Ruiz
Israel Ruiz is the former Executive Vice President and Treasurer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While at MIT, Ruiz was the Institute’s chief financial officer, a former trustee of the MIT Corporation, and a member of its executive committee. He was the chief steward of over $17 billion in financial assets and $3.4 billion in operating revenues, making him responsible for administering the Institute’s $5 billion capital plan through 2030.
Ruiz helped grow the university’s innovation ecosystem and was instrumental in the orchestration conception and launch of The Engine.
At MIT, Ruiz oversaw the capital renewal and construction program of thousands of residential units and over two million sq. ft. of labs and offices which were instrumental to the real estate development of Kendall Square.
Ruiz was responsible for a wide array of services at the Institute: financial and debt strategy development, budget and capital planning, the integrity of financial information, human resources, information systems, campus facilities, security and safety, compliance, government relations, international support, sustainability and medical.
Prior to becoming Executive Vice President and Treasurer in 2011, Ruiz held several roles of growing influence at MIT, most recently serving as Vice President of Finance. Having spent the 2000s involved in digital education, Ruiz was instrumental in launching a group to evaluate e-learning opportunities in response to the global financial crisis of 2008. The work of this group ultimately led MIT to launch its online efforts—MITx in 2011 and edX in 2012—in partnership with Harvard University. In 2014, Ruiz co-led the task force that published the “Future of MIT Education,” outlining the tremendous opportunities that digital learning technologies bring to residential education and to the global market. Ruiz previously held management and engineering roles at Hewlett-Packard and Nissan Automotive.
Ruiz holds a master’s degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a six-year degree in industrial and mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, in his native Barcelona.
Board Emeritus
Anantha P. Chandrakasan
Anantha P. Chandrakasan received the BS, MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989, 1990, and 1994, respectively. Since September 1994, he has been with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is currently the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In July of 2017, Chandrakasan was named the Dean of MIT’s School of Engineering.
Chandrakasan is the co-recipient of several awards, including the 2007 ISSCC Beatrice Winner Award for Editorial Excellence and the ISSCC Jack Kilby Award for Outstanding Student Paper (2007, 2008, 2009). He received the 2009 Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) University Researcher Award and the 2013 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits. In 2015, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
His research interests include ultra-low-power circuit and system design, energy harvesting, energy efficient RF circuits, and hardware security. He is a co-author of Low Power Digital CMOS Design (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), Digital Integrated Circuits (Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2003, 2nd edition), and Sub-threshold Design for Ultra Low-Power Systems (Springer 2006).
Chandrakasan is an IEEE Fellow and has served in various roles for the IEEE ISSCC, including conference chair (since 2010), program chair, signal processing subcommittee chair, and technology directions subcommittee chair. He served as director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories from 2006 to 2011, and was named head of the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department in July 2011.