The UPWARD Leadership Team
The UPWARD Board of Directors
Barbara Donaldson is Senior Vice President of Global Workplace Resources at Synopsys, a global leader in electronic design automation (EDA). Barbara joined Synopsys in 1995 and has held various positions of progressive responsibility within the Real Estate and Facilities group. In her current role, Barbara manages a worldwide team with responsibility for more than 120 sites in 30 countries.
Vijay Reddy is a partner at Clear Ventures where he focuses on early-stage technology investments in AI and Cloud infrastructure. Prior to joining Clear Ventures, Vijay Reddy was a Partner at Intel Capital where he has been an early backer of leading AI and DeepTech companies.
Monica Kumar leads the global marketing of Hitachi Vantara. She is a champion of synergy, focused on growth and go-to-market strategies that spotlight how Hitachi Vantara is the trusted partner for achieving business, transformation, and sustainability objectives.
Monica has more than 20 years of enterprise software and services experience including product marketing, partner marketing, and technical marketing to database and cloud marketing.
Ross Malinowski is UPWARD's Treasurer and founding board member. Ross ran the Silcon Valley office for a leading national executive search firm for 15 years and conducted national and international searches at the C-Suite and VP level. Focused on early stage technology clientele, Ross worked with technology founders and venture capital firms to bring in senior level technology, sales, marketing, engineering, and operations talent.
Stewart L. McDowell is a partner in the San Francisco office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She is a member of the firm’s Corporate Transactions Practice Group and Co-Chair of the Capital Markets Practice Group. Stewart’s practice involves the representation of business organizations as to capital markets transactions, mergers and acquisitions, SEC reporting, corporate governance and general corporate matters.
Anne Voigts is Partner at King & Spalding in the firm’s Appellate, Constitutional and Administrative Law Group. Former federal prosecutor with over a decade of experience handling appeals. Has handled cases before the United States Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and federal and state appellate and trial courts, and argued more than 50 cases before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Nancy Duarte is Known as “the Storyteller of the Valley”, Nancy Duarte is CEO and author of six best-selling books. For over 30 years, Duarte, Inc. has worked with the highest performing brands and executives in the world. The insights from those engagements get transformed into training everyone can learn from. Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in Fortune, Time Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Cosmopolitan, LA Times, and on CNN.
Ioana Badea is a leader of the global B2B/B2C market and user experience research, who is passionate about using technology to address needs, shape attitudes, and change behaviors. Her competencies include building effective research teams, developing insights in support of the product lifecycle, and influencing marketing and product strategies through collaborative consensus building. Ioana is the Director of Research at Meta.
Mary Ann Bianco is an executive leader with diverse experience driving revenue growth, building, and scaling global organizations with a focus on business transformation. As Chief Customer Officer, Uniphore, Mary Ann built out 5 key organizational pillars: Global Delivery, Professional Services, Customer Support, and Success and Managed Services in the AI Conversational Automation space. Uniphore led with over 240% growth from FY19 to FY20; on target for 340% growth for FY21.
Peggy Northrop is the Communication Strategist at Infiniscape. She was most recently CEO of Watermark, a nonprofit devoted to accelerating women’s leadership which merged with UPWARD in 2021. Peggy started her career as a journalist and was an award-winning Editor-in-Chief for a number of print and digital publications, including More, Reader’s Digest and Sunset Publishing, and served in senior editorial positions at iconic women’s media brands such as Vogue, Glamour and Real Simple
Vibhor Rastogi leads AI/ML/Data investing for Citi ventures globally. He was formerly General Partner at SymphonyAI, a $1B AI-focused private equity fund started by serial entrepreneur Dr. Romesh Wadhwani and an Investment Director at Intel Capital.
Dr. Ekta Dang is the Founder and CEO of U First Capital and drove venture capital investments at Intel prior to that. She has an excellent track record of achieving at least 1 Exit every year: Pensando (Acquired by AMD in 2022), Nextdoor (IPO 2021), Palantir (IPO 2020), Orb Intelligence (Acquired by Dun and Bradstreet in 2020), Pinterest (IPO 2019), etc. She has invested in category-leading companies such as SpaceX, Pensando, and DevRev.
Dr. Sanjit Singh Dang is the Co-Founder and Chairman of U First Capital which has invested in category-leading companies such as SpaceX, Pensando, and DevRev. Prior to that, he was at Intel Capital where he led Venture Capital investments in Enterprise Software. He has been an Investor and on the Board of several companies, including True Fit (AI for eCommerce, Raised $100M), Reflektion (AI recommendation for eCommerce, Raised $42M), Helpshift (AI-driven Customer Service, Raised $38M) and Enlighted (Smart Lighting, Acquired by Siemens in 2018).
