Steve Arnold, PhD

Venture capitalist and co-founder of the George Lucas Education Foundation

Steve Arnold is a Polaris Partners co-founder with Jon Flint and Terry McGuire. Before starting Polaris, Steve served as a special advisor to Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. following more than 10 years in executive positions in the software industry. He served as vice president of Broadband Media Applications at Microsoft Corporation and as president and CEO of Continuum Productions (now Corbis), a private company founded by Bill Gates to pioneer the creation of large digital libraries for online distribution. Before coming to Continuum, Steve served as vice president and general manager of LucasArts Games and Learning divisions, and vice president of the New Media Group at Lucasfilm Ltd. He continues to serve as vice chairman of the board of directors of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Steve holds a BS with honors from Macalester College and an MA and PhD from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco.

Lisa Conquergood, MBA

Co-Founder and former CMO of PicMonkey, former CMO of Picnik

Lisa has worked in product management and marketing at Google, was the Vice President of Marketing at Bevy, Inc., and held director roles at Expedia and Eddie Bauer. She received an MBA from Seattle University and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Central Washington University. With a wealth of experience, Lisa brings strong marketing and entrepreneurial expertise to the team.

Mike Harrington

After initially bringing his technology, managerial, and business expertise to Committee for Children’s New Mission Ventures Task Force as an advisor, Mike Harrington moved into the Chief Technology Officer role. Mike’s experience spans several successful tech companies including Microsoft, where he worked as a software developer and manager, and Google, where he worked following the acquisition of his photo-editing company, Picnik. Additionally, Mike co-founded gaming company Valve and Catnip Labs. A leader in technology strategy, Mike brought a strong engineering, leadership, and entrepreneurial background to the organization as CTO. He currently lives in Bend, Oregon and is involved with a start-up focusing on precision medicine.

Reed Koch

Retired Microsoft Executive

Reed Koch is the former general manager of Assistance Platform at Microsoft, where he was responsible for the strategy and execution of Assistance Platform, starting with version 1.0. He has also been general manager of FrontPage Windows, SharePoint Services, and PhotoDraw. In addition, Reed has served as group program manager, group product planner, and product manager of Microsoft Word. In these roles, he organized design and shipping of Word 2000 and Word XP, started the product planning group and organized product planning for Word 95 and Word 97, and developed the first usability testing at Microsoft to design Word and test it against WordPerfect. Reed holds a BS in liberal arts with a major in mathematics from Reed College.

Mike Mecham, MBA

Mike Mecham is a principal at NIRO International LLC, a global consulting and advisory firm with private equity, venture capital, technology start-up and nonprofit clients. Prior to his current role, Mike worked for twenty-two years in executive business development, corporate development, strategy, and finance roles for technology, media, and telecommunications companies, including McCaw Cellular Communications and Google. At YouTube he led strategic partnerships in Spanish-speaking Latin America from 2011 to 2014. Mike formerly was a corporate banker with Bank of America for three years and an officer with the Central Intelligence Agency for five years.

Mike has an MBA in strategy, finance, and multinational management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in business administration from the University of Washington.

Kumar Mehta, PhD

Dr. Kumar Mehta was the CEO of Blueocean Market Intelligence and the Cross-Tab Group until 2016. He developed this highly regarded data analytics and strategic outsourcing company, which now employs over a thousand professionals around the world. Kumar is well versed in executive management, leadership, and data-driven development and implementation. He received his PhD in pharmaceutical socioeconomics from the University of Iowa in 1990.

Under Kumar’s leadership, Blueocean Market Intelligence and the Cross-Tab Group won multiple awards for innovation focused on big data, digital analytics, and mobile analytics. He brought cutting-edge solutions to social media mining, dashboards, and text mining. Before joining the Cross-Tab Group, Kumar spent over thirteen years at Microsoft in a variety of leadership roles within market research, business strategy, competitive intelligence, corporate alliances, business management, and finance.

Jon Reingold, JD

Retired Microsoft Executive

Jon Reingold is retired from Microsoft, where he served as vice president of corporate marketing, vice president of marketing for the Applications Division, general manager of the Excel Product Group, and director of international marketing. He was a founding board member and treasurer of Eastside Preparatory School. Jon currently serves on the board at Seattle Academy, for which he chairs the Facilities Committee and serves on the Executive Committee, Committee on Trustees, and Finance Committee. He holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA in political philosophy from Princeton.

Susan H. Willis, MD

Child and Adolescent Psychologist

Dr. Susan Willis is a child and adolescent psychiatrist with over 20 years of clinical experience in a solo practice. She served as a psychiatric consultant for Youthcare’s Bridge Program for sexually exploited youth and 45th Street Clinic’s Homeless Youth Program. Susan is active in the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine and the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She holds a BA from Mount Holyoke College and an MD from University of Connecticut School of Medicine. She completed her residency in psychiatry and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and is double board certified in adult general psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry.