Building a Career in Tech and the Culture of Silicon Valley

224 Townsend Street,San Francisco CA 94107

24 June, 2021

Description

Join us for an in-person Student-Alumni networking event and a panel discussion about career in tech and the Culture of Silicon Valley. Meet with fellow INSEAD Alumni and the first ever MIM cohort visiting San Francisco, and join us for a panel discussion at the INSEAD SF Hub of Business and Innovation. Our host Eugenia Njolito (MBA'10D) Entrepreneur, Angel Investor and Venture Fellow at Venture Cooperative, and panelists Santosh Kumar (MBA'13J) Product Manager at Lyft, Elena Kohl (MBA'06D) Startup Advisor and VP of Product Design and Marketing at OakNorth, and Rahul Tripathi (MBA 99J) CTO & VP/GM at Nutanix will share their perspective about the culture of Silicon Valley and their experience building a career in tech. This event is open to INSEAD Alumni. Registration will open at 5:30 pm and the event will start at 06:00 pm. COVID: to ensure the safety of everyone, we ask attendees who are not vaccinated to keep their masks at any time and respect social distancing ==== Meet our panelists: Santosh Kumar Santosh is a product manager working at Lyft building the infrastructure that powers data and ML/AI models running in Lyft. Prior to Lyft, he worked at Cloudera as a Director of Product Management leading their datawarehouse PaaS offering in the public cloud. Before that he was a Data Scientist in Facebook - his first post-MBA job. Prior to that he did his MBA from INSEAD and before that he was leading engineering teams in Yahoo, Akamai and JPMorganChase. He started a company in 2009-10 which obviously didn't go very far, but nevertheless was one of the best experiences of his life thus far in terms of learning and growth! Outside work, he has been a husband and doting father of two girls - 3.5 years and 3.5 months old respectively. He loves to read but rarely get time. Recently, his interest in chess has been resurrected. He aspires to reach 1500 FIDE rating over the next few years (currently at ~1250). Elena Kohl Elena is a product leader and startup advisor, who has extensive experience building and launching first generation consumer and enterprise software products for startups (OakNorth, C3.ai) and innovation teams within larger companies (Google X, Chegg, Ellucian, Nook, OXO). She is passionate about creating simple, intuitive products that solve customers' most pressing problems, disrupt industries, and have a meaningful impact on the world in the process. This passion has led her to work on AI and ML powered products that have served millions of users across utilities, higher education, smart cities, the connected home space, and more recently the banking industry. In addition to graduating from INSEAD’s MBA program in 2006, Elena also has a master’s in architecture from Harvard, and a bachelor’s from the University of Pennsylvania. In her free time, she advises startups, enjoys going on adventures with her two sons, and, in her role as Co-President of INSEAD's Women in Business club, organizes events that bring INSEAD's alumni together to exchange ideas, network, and discuss what they can do to accelerate gender equity in the workplace. Rahul Tripathi Rahul Tripathi is a transformational leader with over 20 years of IT industry experience building innovative products, growth businesses and high impact organizations. Rahul is currently CTO of Customer Success and VP/GM of Xpert Services at Nutanix. He leads solution development, sales and delivery organizations worldwide and partners with customers to drive successful cloud transformation and devops journeys. In his prior role as VP of Product at Micro Focus (formerly HP Enterprise Software division), Rahul led product management and engineering teams to transform a billion $ IT Operations Management (ITOM) Software & SaaS portfolio. Before that for over a decade at Cisco, he brought to market industry’s first cloud router, first virtualization enabled branch server and led product teams for Hybrid cloud, Data Center, Security, and SDN solutions. Rahul has a Bachelors in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from BITS-Pilani, India and an MBA from INSEAD, France. He is a well-recognized thought leader and speaker at industry forums and holds multiple patents and certifications. Eugenia Njolito Genie is an entrepreneur, an active angel investor, and a Venture Fellow. She supports innovative startups by leveraging her operational, business, and scientific background coupled with her extensive network in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. In addition to her involvement in startups, Genie has previously been a part of large corporations and government. While at the pharmaceutical giant Merck, she co-developed the manufacturing process for Januvia®, Merck’s best-selling type 2 diabetes drug, and holds patents for her innovative work. Genie has a BS in Chemistry from University of Michigan and an MBA from INSEAD. INSEAD opened its first permanent facility in North America in February 2020. Located in the heart of San Francisco, the new presence of the Business School for the World, is connecting Alumni, Faculty, Students and Friends from all over the World. Learn more about us: https://www.insead.edu/san-francisco-hub Any question: [email protected]