OPEN Forum 2005 | The Art of Leadership

General Pervez Musharraf joined the Pakistan Military Academy in 1961 and was commissioned in an elite Artillery Regiment in 1964. He saw action in the 1965 war as a young officer in the Khem Karan, Lahore and Sialkot sectors with a self propelled Artillery Regiment. He was awarded the Imtiaz-i-Sanad for gallantry. He later volunteered and served for seven years in the Special Service Group "Commandos". He also participated in the 1971 war as Company Commander in a Commando Battalion.

General Musharraf has had the privilege of commanding two self-propelled Artillery Regiments. As a Brigadier, he had the distinction of commanding an Infantry Brigade as well as Armored Division Artillery. On promotion to the rank of Major General on 15th January 1991, he was given the command of an Infantry Division and later of a prestigious strike corps as Lieutenant General on 21st October 1995.

General Musharraf has served on various important staff and instructional appointments during his career. These include Deputy Military Secretary at the Military Secretary’s Branch, member of Directing Staff both at the Command and Staff College, Quetta and the National Defence College. He has also remained the Director General Military Operations at the General Headquarters.

A graduate of Command and Staff College, Quetta and the National Defence College, General Pervez Musharraf also distinguished himself at the Royal College of Defence Studies, in the United Kingdom. A comment from his performance report was, "a capable, articulate and extremely personable officer, who made a most valuable impact here. His country is fortunate to have the services of a man of his undeniable quality".

General Pervez Musharraf was promoted to the rank of General on 7th October 1998 and appointed Chief of Army Staff. He was given the additional charge of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee on 9th April 1999 which he relinquished in October 2001. He performed his duties as the Chief Executive of Pakistan from 12 th October 1999 to the time he became President. He is now the COAS and the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Marten Mickos brings a strong track record of leadership in global high-tech companies to MySQL AB. Prior to joining MySQL in 2001, Marten was CEO at MatchON Sports, which he grew to become the twenty-fourth "hottest e-business" in Europe within nine months of its inception. Marten was also previously the CEO at Intellitel Communications, where he was instrumental in transitioning the company from a development lab to a commercial software vendor. He has also directed worldwide sales efforts at several technology companies.

Tom Dyal is a founding partner of Redpoint Ventures. Prior to founding Redpoint, Tom was a general partner with IVP, a firm he joined in 1997.

Tom focuses on infrastructure investments, including software, systems and components for the communications, datacenter and wireless sectors. Tom was a Director or actively involved in such companies as TopSpin Communications (acquired by Cisco), TiMetra Networks (acquired by Alcatel), StratumOne Communications (acquired by Cisco), Growth Networks (acquired by Cisco), Shasta Networks (acquired by Nortel), Vivace Networks (acquired by Tellabs), Netcore Systems (acquired by Tellabs), Santera Systems (acquired by Tekelec) and Velio Communications (acquired by LSI Logic). Currently, he is leading the firm's investments in Clearwell Systems, Cortina Systems, Kazeon Systems and Wichorus.

Prior to joining the venture business, Tom spent ten years in operating roles in the communications and networking industry. He worked in product management at Bay Networks, where he was responsible for its network management application business. Tom began his career as a systems engineer with AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he held various system engineering and management positions in the areas of wide-area networking products and services.

Tom is the President of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists (WAVC). He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Senior Adviser to the Secretary of State for Women's Empowerment
Shirin Tahir-Kheli was appointed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to serve as her Senior Adviser for women's empowerment. In this capacity, she will focus especially on multifaceted outreach to the women of the Muslim world.
Ambassador Tahir-Kheli most recently served as the Secretary's Senior Adviser on United Nations reform. She engaged the UN Secretary General and Secretariat as well as other UN member states on UN reform efforts. From 2003 to 2005 Ambassador Tahir-Kheli was the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations at the National Security Council. Prior to that she was Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. From 1993 to 1995 she was a senior fellow at the Center of International Studies at Princeton University. Ambassador Tahir-Kheli was appointed Alternate United States Representative to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs serving from 1990 to 1993.
During her career of service, Ambassador Tahir-Kheli was Head of the United States Delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 2001; she was appointed by President Bush to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; and she served on the Presidential Commission on Public Service from 1992 to 1993.
Ambassador Tahir-Kheli has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, ePlanet Ventures
Asad Jamal is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ePlanet Ventures (www.eplanetventures.com). Mr. Jamal founded ePlanet Ventures in 1999 with a first-mover focus on global venture capital opportunities. Mr. Jamal articulated, developed, and executed ePlanet's global, innovation-driven investment philosophy, while building ePlanet's office and business presence throughout the world's major innovation centers in the U.S. , Europe, and Asia . Mr. Jamal is responsible for overseeing the firm's investment portfolio, developing exit strategies, and assisting entrepreneurs with growing their businesses. Since 1999, Mr. Jamal has led and sponsored the ePlanet Venture's investments in multiple sectors covering a wide range of industries such as Advertising & Media, Communication & Wireless, Computing Software, Consumer Internet, Energy, Enterprise Software, Financial, Life Sciences, Network, Optical, Security, and Storage Networks. A number of these companies have been listed via NASDAQ IPO's such as Chinese companies Baidu (BIDU), Kong Zhong (KONG), Focus Media (FMCN). Others have been acquired such as Skype (EBAY), Cyanea (IBM), Safeview, and End2End. Mr. Jamal has served on the boards of directors of numerous technology companies and currently serves on the boards of Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), Intrapace, IXI Mobile, and the Visto Corporation. He has over 25 years professional experience in Asia, Europe, and the United States . He previously worked in a senior executive capacity with Peregrine Investment Holdings, a Hong Kong merchant bank. He was also the Head of Principal Investing at the Interest-rate Derivatives Trading Unit of the Chase Manhattan Bank in London . Mr. Jamal graduated with a B.Sc. (Honors) from the London School of Economics, and is a member of The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales . Mr. Jamal is a charter member of the entrepreneurship organizations TIE Silicon Valley and OPEN Silicon Valley.

Aaref is the President and CEO of Clearwell Systems, a pioneer in Email Intelligence funded by Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures. Prior to Clearwell, he was Co-Founder, President and CEO of CenterRun, which he led from inception in 2000 to its acquisition by Sun Microsystems in August 2003. CenterRun was a leading provider of application provisioning software and today forms the basis of Sun's data center automation product suite.

Prior to CenterRun, he worked in corporate and business development at Excite@Home Networks, which at that time was one of the largest internet companies. He joined Excite@Home from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting company. At BCG, Aaref led projects advising Fortune 500 companies on a variety of sales, marketing and product development issues, with particular focus in the software and telecommunications industries.

Aaref earned an MBA from Harvard Business School with high distinction as a Baker Scholar. He holds a BA Honor's degree from Oxford University, and a Master's degree from McGill University, where he was awarded the Arthur Tagge Fellowship.

Adil Jaffry is the co-founder of Tara Energy, the largest independent commercial electricity provider in the state of Texas. Prior to founding Tara, Adil Jaffry was a principal of FoodTrader, a business-to-business electronic exchange focused on streamlining the fragmented global food industry. FoodTrader was named a top-50 internet company by the Forbes magazine in 2000, and was profiled on "Best of the Web" in 2001. Previous to this Mr. Jaffry served as the founding member of the Global Investments group at Enron Corp., where he helped execute energy and infrastructure M&A transactions with over $4.5bn in value. He also helped with the establishment of Enron’s voice minutes trading group in 2001. Mr. Jaffry has also worked at iVita Corp. in Business Development and for Bear, Stearns Jahangir Siddiqui, where he provided corporate finance and advisory services to energy companies in Pakistan.

Mr. Jaffry actively mentors young entrepreneurs and professionals in the Texas area and is a volunteer with the Aga Khan Foundation USA.

Ali Asghar
VP Corporate Development, Mobile Satellite Ventures

As Vice President of Corporate Development at Mobile Satellite Ventures, Mr. Asghar is responsible for developing partner relationships within the United States and also exploring international partnerships. Mr. Asghar joined MSV from America Online where he led their alternative broadband development. Previously, Mr. Asghar was with Morgan Stanley, McKinsey & Company, and E.M . Warburg Pincus in their technology venture capital group.

Asghar holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate dual degree from the Wharton School and the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, in Finance and Computer Engineering. Mr. Asghar also holds a Master's Degree from Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in Middle Eastern Studies.

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Ammar H. Hanafi joined Alloy Ventures as a General Partner in 2005 from Cisco Systems. Ammar received a B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University and an MBA from Stanford University. His last role at Cisco was Vice President of New Business Ventures where he led new product efforts in the enterprise datacenter market. From 2000 to 2002, he was Vice President of Corporate Business Development and in that capacity, he was responsible for Cisco's acquisitions, acquisition integration, investment, and joint venture activity on a global basis. During Ammar's tenure, Cisco's Business Development Group completed over 50 acquisitions and made over $750 million in venture capital investments.

Prior to Cisco, Ammar held positions at PanAmSat Corporation, a global satellite services provider, and the investment banking firms of Morgan Stanley and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Ammar is a director of 3Leaf Networks.

Arif is a Director in the San Francisco office of the Boston Consulting Group. Previously he was Managing Director in the Technology & Communications practice of SDG. Mr. Janjua has more than 20 years of professional experience both in senior positions at technology companies and as a consultant specializing in high tech. Prior to joining SDG, he was president and chief executive of Anuvio Technologies, formerly known as I-drive, a leading global provider of storage management and application software. Previously, Mr. Janjua was High Technology Practice Leader and vice president at A.T. Kearney. Areas of consulting specialty included business strategy, operations, and information technology.

Dilawar Syed manages SAP's vertical go-to-market strategy for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as the head of product marketing of CRM industry solutions. In this capacity, Dilawar is responsible for developing future market perspective for the SAP CRM business worldwide. Prior to joining SAP, Dilawar held various leadership positions in the Communications, Media and Energy sector at Siebel Systems. At Siebel Systems, Dilawar was instrumental to the launch of Siebel Universal Applications Network (UAN) and growing the UAN platform business to more than $100 Million in three years. Formerly at Deloitte & Touché Consulting Group and Ernst & Young management consulting.

Dilawar holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A with Honors in Economics and Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. Dilawar is on the Executive Board of OPEN Silicon Valley (Organization of Pakistani Professionals and Entrepreneurs).

DoKelly received a BA in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California at San Diego, an M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and an MBA from Stanford. Prior to joining Alloy Ventures, he worked for two European venture capital firms, as well as for Ligand Pharmaceuticals, and as an independent consultant. He is currently a director of Favrille and Pharsight, both public companies, and several private companies including: Adiana, Arbor Surgical, BARRx, Crux Biomedical, KaloBios and Restoration Robotics. Doug also teaches a class at Stanford University, "Business 16; Financing The Start-up.

Imran, a co-founder of IBB Consulting Group, is responsible for IBB’s strategy and vision, major client relationships and leading key engagements. Previously, Imran has held senior consulting and industry positions in leading companies including Xavor, PA Consulting Group and Philips Electronics. As the President of Xavor, Imran led the company to record growth and profitability, significantly expanding the company’s client base. As a Partner in the Telecommunications practice of PA Consulting Group, Imran launched the Interactive Media Group and led it to become the most profitable and largest revenue-producing group in the practice. Imran has worked with senior management teams in a variety of leading broadband and media companies, including: AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Microsoft, Telenor, TeleDenmark, UPC and Cable & Wireless.

Imran, who has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University , has led various industry bodies in the standardization of digital media compression, distribution and storage. He personally holds 13 patents and has been published numerous times.

Syeed leads Keane Corporation's financial service thought leadership. He became a part of the Keane team through its acquisition of netNumina, a technology strategy and architecture services firm, which he founded. He has over 15 years experience in software and information technology services for financial institutions, holds a patent on secure financial transactions that he jointly developed with Citigroup, and is a visiting faculty member at one of the world's leading business schools, MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to netNumina, Sayeed founded Open Environment, a middleware product focused on financial services.

Sayeed received his B.S. in Engineering from Brown University and did post-graduate work at Harvard in business, marketing and product development.

Ken Matusow is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, mentor, angel investor, and a member of the Keiretsu Forum, the largest angel investor group in North America. Besides investing in Keiretsu client companies, Ken has assisted and led numerous due diligence efforts for potential Keiretsu clients and has also represented Keiretsu as a representative investor and entrepreneur at numerous of panels, conferences, and other events. He is currently working with a number of wireless related startups, taking on an active, operational role in two of them: BroadbandCentral and Teomap. Ken also works as a volunteer to assist technology companies in remote parts of the globe. Working with groups such as USAID, Geek Corps and the International Executive Service Corp, he has assisted and advised technology companies in Mongolia, Bulgaria, South Africa, Southeast Asia, and West Africa.

Khalid Ghayur is Managing Director and Global Head of Research at Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Barra, a leading provider of benchmark indices and risk management analytics products. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Ghayur was a Director of HSBC Asset Management (Europe) where he advised the group CEO on strategy implementation and business management issues. Previously, Mr. Ghayur held the position of Global Head of Research for HSBC, being responsible for all quantitative research efforts for HSBC Asset Management globally. Prior to joining HSBC, Mr. Ghayur worked for Credit Lyonnnais Asset Management in Paris as a Senior Quantitative Analyst and for Union National Bank in Abu Dhabi as Portfolio Manager.

Mr. Ghayur holds an MBA in Finance from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Karachi . He is a CFA charterholder and a Diplomaed Associate of the Institute of Bankers .

Larry Kubal is a founder of Labrador Ventures, a seed and early stage venture capital firm where Larry serves as a managing partner. Mr. Kubal is the Labrador representative with portfolio companies Aperto Networks, MeeVee, Proficient Systems, Pandora, Soligence, and Teraburst Networks. Labrador Ventures is one of Silicon Valley's oldest seed/early stage venture capital firms, and has invested in more than 80 companies including: Jareva (acquired by VERITAS), MyPoints.com, InfoGear (acquired by Cisco), Family Point (acquired by iVillage), Digital Impact, Four II (acquired by Yahoo), Internet Devices (acquired by Alcatel), RightPoint (acquired by E-piphany), Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft), Convoy (acquired by NEON), Sonic Innovations, Abuzz (acquired by The New York Times). In addition to his investment experience, Mr. Kubal was a management consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, a global strategy and technology consulting firm. Mr. Kubal was also a founding executive with a venture-backed PC software company, Avalanche Technologies, which was acquired by Microsoft.

Mr. Kubal received his undergraduate degree from Duke University, cum laude with departmental distinction, and his MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

Max Levchin is a computer scientist and entrepreneur widely known as the co-founder and CTO of PayPal. PayPal grew to become the leading payments platform on the web. PayPal went public in February 2002 and was acquired by eBay for $1.2B in 2003. Today, Max is the founder and CEO of Slide, a next generation photo sharing site; he is the founding investor in Yelp, an online social networking and reviewing service; and is the Executive Producer of the hit movie, Thank You For Smoking .

Originally from the Ukraine, Max moved to Chicago in 1991 and earned his bachelor's degree in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Mir has founded several medical device companies: Physiometrix (1990/IPO 1996), Cardiac Pathways (1991/IPO 1996), Intella Interventional Systems (1993), Advanced Cytomextrix (1994), Percusurge (1995/Acquistion 2001), CardioVasc (1995), Reflow, Inc. (1997/Acquistion 1999), Novasonics (1999), and Intrapace (2001). He currently serves as a Director for CardioVasc, Novasonics, Jstreetdata.com and IntraPace.

From 1986 to 1989, Mir served as General Manager of Azcorp Technology, an industrial electronics company. From 1980 to 1985 Mir was Manager of Engineering at Intec System, where he pioneered the development of the first FDA approved Automatic Implantable Cardiovertor / Defibrillator.

Mir has B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Bio-Engineering from Rutgers, where he spent three years as a Reserach Specialist. Mir has authored or co-authored several scientific publications and is inventor or co-inventor of over 100 patents.

Roger joined Battery in 2001 and focuses on the software, consumer Internet and digital media markets. Roger is currently a board member at Insitu, Peerflix, PrimeRevenue and Spot Runner. Before joining Battery Ventures, Roger spent ten years as an entrepreneur and business unit executive. Most recently, he was a co-founder of Corio, a leading managed service provider that was acquired by IBM. At Corio, Roger oversaw all business development activities and later became a General Manager of the eCommerce business unit. Prior to Corio, Roger was the Manager of Internet Products at Edify Corporation. Roger was also the co-founder and President of NetMarket, an online consumer Internet service that was acquired by Cendant Corporation.

Roger graduated with distinction from Yale University with a BA in Political Science.

Ravi Srivastava is an Executive Recruiter in the Palo Alto practice of Egon Zehnder, an international executive search firm. Prior to Egon Zehnder, Ravi was Vice President of Strategy for Intuit's QuickBooks-Related Business organization. Before joining Intuit in August 2004, Srivastava was Vice President of Corporate Development at BEA Systems, responsible for acquisitions and equity investments. He has also held senior management positions at Sun Microsystems, where he was senior director of corporate development, and at Motorola, where he had marketing and strategy responsibilities. Srivastava also worked as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group in Chicago.

Shahid Khan is a Partner at Interactive Broadband Consulting Group (IBB), LLC, a consulting firm advising top management in the broadband-related sectors of cable, mobile, technology and digital media. Prior to joining IBB, Shahid was a Managing Director at BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting) in the Media & Entertainment Industry Practice. Previously, Shahid was a Client Services Partner at IBM Global Services (IGS), where he led the activities of the various arms of IGS focusing on East Coast based Publishing and Entertainment clients. Over the course of his career, Shahid has served leading Media firms including Bertelsmann, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, Thomson, Viacom and the RIAA.

Shahid holds an MBA in Marketing and Finance from NYU's Stern School of Business and is a Fellow at U. Penn's Wharton School of Business. Shahid serves on the Board of two technology firms in the mobile and enterprise software space, and is the President of OPEN New York.

Salman joined Google in the fall of 2004 as Director of Corporate Development. He manages the team that is responsible for all of Google's acquisitions and minority investments. Prior to Google he spent over seven years at Microsoft in several roles including General Manager of Corporate Strategy and Managing Director of Corporate Development. Earlier in his career, Salman was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Co. in Chicago where he spent four years. He was also a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in physics at the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago.

Salman has an undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford University.

Sergio is currently the Vice President of Marketing & Services at Photobucket, Inc, a leading video & photo hosting and sharing service, which allows consumers to easily upload, customize and publish their personal visual content. Photobucket has over 16 Million users and adding 2 Million new users per month, which made it the fastest growing site of 2005 according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Prior to Photobucket, Sergio was a Director & General Manager at eBay, Inc. where he developed and led eBay's worldwide digital goods strategy, product design, and market entry. Sergio has also worked in a variety of product, marketing, business development, and finance roles at Siebel Systems, Portal Software, and Morgan Stanley.

Sergio earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and has a BS in Industrial Engineering & Engineering Management from Stanford University.

Talat Sadiq is Chief Information Officer of drugstore.com, where he oversees all aspects of technology planning, development and operations. Sadiq has 20 years of experience in managing, developing and implementing information technology systems for companies in the financial, retail, and manufacturing industries including Citicorp, Sun Microsystems, Nextcard and The McGraw Hill Companies.

Dr. Waheed Qureshi is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of Zenprise Inc a technology company funded by premier silicon valley venture capital firms of Mayfield Fund and Bay partners. Prior to Zenprise, Waheed founded Zambeel, a venture funded company that was focused on delivering highly scalable network attached storage sub-systems for the distributed Internet. Waheed started his career at Excelon Corporation where he focused on ObjectStore, the industry-leading object-oriented database management system in several technology leadership positions. An avid researcher, his co-authored publications have been published in ACM SIGMOD and VLDB and he is the holder of several awarded and pending US patents.

His honorary and professional memberships include IEEE, ACM, Tau Beta Pai and Eta Kappa Nu.

Dr. Qureshi's current technical expertise include Autonomic computing, Information grids, File/data management and Storage sub-systems. A serial entrepreneur, Dr. Qureshi is a charter member of OPEN and TIE and is an advisor to several early stage companies. Waheed holds a Ph.D in computer sciences from University of Southern California (USC).

Umair is co-founder of Clickmarks, a Silicon Valley based enterprise software company. As CEO of Clickmarks, Umair grew the company through $27 million in venture funding from investors such as Vodafone, DFJ, and Mitsubishi, and successfully took the company to profitability. In July 2005, Clickmarks was acquired by Semotus, a publicly traded US company. Umair serves as President of Clickmarks, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Semotus, and as Chief Operating Officer of Semotus.

Umair is also founder and chairman of Verisium, a software testing tools company, and founder of Folio3, a Pakistan-based services company that focuses on providing offshore operations incubation to startups. Prior to this, Umair was founder and chairman of Wordwalla, which was acquired in 2001. Umair started his career as part of the Itanium microprocessor group at Intel.

Umair has over 20 industry patents applied for or pending in computer design and architecture. Umair received a BS in Mathematics and an MS in Computer Engineering, both from MIT, where he was elected Institutional Nominee by the Department of Mathematics.

Zia is the Executive Vice President of the Platform Ecosystem unit at SAP, where he is chartered with building an open ecosystem based on an industry standard design led by the company. Based in Palo Alto, Zia reports to Shai Agassi, president of the Product Technology Group and executive board member of SAP. Prior to his role as Executive Vice President, Zia led SAP’s Corporate Consulting Team, Corporate Strategy Management team and Design Services team, all of which report to SAP CEO Henning Kagermann.

Zia was formerly with Goldman, Sachs & Co. and the World Bank.