Events

Journey of Leadership

When: Monday, October 27, 2025 
Time: 6:00pm - 7:00 p.m. 
Where: SJSU Student Union Theater 
Speaker: Laxman Narasimhan, former CEO of Starbucks & Reckitts, and former Global Chief Commercial Officer of PepsiCo

Leading a Global Startup 

When: Monday, October 13, 2025 
Time: 6:00pm - 7:00 p.m. 
Where: SJSU Student Union Theater 
Register here 
Speaker: Janine Pelosi, CEO, Neat 

Speaker's Bio:

Janine Pelosi is CEO of Neat. Janine has nearly two decades of experience in the technology industry, most recently serving as Chief Marketing Officer of Zoom from 2015 to 2023. During her tenure at Zoom, she helmed the company’s bold brand strategy, powerful demand engines, and e-commerce business that fueled its transformation into a globally recognized enterprise. She served as part of the early founding team and was a key executive navigating Zoom in its early stages, to its successful IPO, and through the massive growth experienced during the global pandemic. Prior to joining Zoom, Pelosi led global demand generation at Webex, before and after its acquisition by Cisco. Building on her experience overseeing Zoom’s corporate responsibility initiatives, she serves as a board member for technology-focused NGOs. Pelosi also works with early-stage founders as an advisor and investor. In 2020, Pelosi was named one of the most innovative CMOs in the world by Business Insider and included in Fortune’s 40 Under 40. Pelosi holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from San Jose State University.

Responsible Innovation in AI Conference

When: Friday, September 26, 2025 
Time: 9:00am - 1:00 p.m. 
Where: SJSU Student Union Theater 
Register here

Taking the Leap into Entrepreneurship: My Journey

When: Monday, September 15, 2025 
Time: 6:00pm - 7:00 p.m. 
Where: SJSU Student Union Theater 
Register here 
Speaker: Rajeev Madhavan, co-founder & General Partner, Clear Ventures. 

Speaker's Bio:

Rajeev Madhavan is a founding Partner of Clear Ventures, where he focuses on early stage technology investments. Rajeev has operational experience of running companies from formation to a public company. He has been a venture investor in over 35 companies. Rajeev’s operational specialties include recruiting, software-oriented technology, product definition, sales acceleration, and scaling. 

Prior to founding Clear in 2014, Rajeev founded three successful startups. The most recent, Magma Design Automation, became the 4th largest Electronic Design Automation company in the world under his leadership. Rajeev served as Magma’s Chairman and CEO from when he co-founded the company in 1997 through its acquisition by Synopsys in February 2012 for $680 million.  Magma was listed on Nasdaq in 2001 and was ranked as the 2nd fastest growing Technology Company in 2005 by Forbes.  Magma provided core infrastructure software to mobile pioneers such as TI, Qualcomm, Apple, and Samsung, which was used to design the core processors and low power designs at the heart of the smartphone era.

Scaling With Soul

When: Monday, March 18, 2025 
Time: 6:00pm - 7:00 p.m. 
Where: SJSU Student Union Theater 

Speaker: Sharon K. Gillenwater, author of “Scaling With Soul: How I Built and Sold a $25 Million Tech Company Without Being an A**hole.” 

Speaker's Bio:

At age 43, Sharon founded Boardroom Insiders, Inc., her third startup. She ran the company for 14 years before selling it in 2022 in a $25 million cash deal.  Sharon has over two decades of entrepreneurial experience that includes both successes and spectacular failures. The conversation with Sharon will cover VC funding vs. bootstrapping, tips for finding key investors/partners/vendors/employees, managing your mindset as an entrepreneur, how to build a company to sell and more! Bring your questions as most of the session will be devoted to Q&A. This is a rare opportunity to dive deep with someone who has been there, done that.

The Next Big Entrepreneurial Opportunities

When: Monday, February 10, 2025 
Time: 6:00pm - 7:00 p.m. 
Where: SJSU Student Union Theater 
Register here

Speaker: Ashmeet Sidana, Founder & Managing Partner of Engineering Capital, a seed stage Venture Capital fund. 

Speaker's Bio:

Ashmeet is the Founder and Chief Engineer of Engineering Capital. Investing before traditional venture firms, Engineering Capital specializes in leading seed rounds in software companies with a technical insight. Ashmeet’s experience includes running venture capital funds and leadership positions helping build the industry leading products VMware ESX Server and Silicon Graphics WebFORCE. 

Ashmeet came to venture from VMware, where he ran product management for their flagship product - ESX Server. His successful investments include Azure (IPO AZRE), Rubrik (IPO RBRK), SignalFx, acquired by Splunk, Tubi.tv, acquired by FOX, AirGap, acquired by ZScaler, Robust Intelligence acquired by Cisco etc. He serves on the Board of Directors of Evinced, Nexla, Tapistro and WideField. His other investments include Asimily, CtrlStack, Kentik, Kognitos, Menlo Security, vFunction, and Xano – in all of which he was the seed investor.

Ashmeet received an MBA from Wharton with Honors, MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a BS in Computer Science summa cum laude from the University of Southern California. In his spare-time he can be found planning his second trip to Mt. Everest.