As chief executive officer of Boxborough’s Broadbus Technologies Inc., and now general manager of on-demand solutions at Motorola Inc. after that company’s recent acquisition of Broadbus, Vin Bisceglia’s work life is all about video — video on demand, television on demand and the related platforms Broadbus makes for service providers.

When he punches out, however, he shifts his attention to audio — specifically music.

An avid guitar player, Bisceglia entered his first year of college as a music major, but soon transferred to the business program with the hope of a more stable future.

But he never laid down his guitar (preferably a Fender Stratocaster), and over the course of his 24 years in the technology industry, Bisceglia has been able to use his musical talents to bond with fellow executives and build relationships in the industry.

“Most of the customers in the carrier space are also musicians, and we’ve used music as a way to fuse relationships,” he said. “I’ve had the opportunity to play with some great people, like (Microsoft Corp. co-founder) Paul Allen and (Comcast Corp. CTO) Dave Fellows.”

Bisceglia, 51, joined Broadbus after founder Jeff Binder moved the then 10-person company from Chicago to the Boston area to be closer to the company’s initial investors in 2002. Since then, the company has grown to 130 employees just prior to the acquisition by Motorola, and has been increasing revenue by 200 percent each year.

He also led Broadbus through $37 million in private funding over the course of that time.

Bisceglia has a long tenure in the communications industry, having led the Technology Services Group Inc. as CEO through its 1996 IPO, and leading optical carrier NEON Communications Inc.

He’s also knee-deep in the local technology community as an investor. He is a limited partner in several Boston area venture funds, though he would not say exactly which ones.

“It’s a great learning experience,” he said. “I’ve been able to see dozens of portfolio companies — successful and not successful ones — and learn from what works and what doesn’t.”

Broadbus, however, has been Bisceglia’s first foray into the video realm, and he has found it his most rewarding market.

“I’ve been involved with voice companies and data companies on both vendor and carrier sides, and I think video has been the most exciting,” he said.

The industry obviously agrees. Motorola paid $186 million for Broadbus earlier in the year, and the acquisition was one of the more successful M&A events of 2006.

“When (founder Binder) first came to see us, they were two guys and a PowerPoint,” said Carl Stjernfeldt, a partner at Battery Ventures, one of Broadbus’ investors. “Building the team, first revenue, partnerships, and then a successful exit — it was a great personal journey.”

With the Motorola acquisition, Bisceglia will continue to run the Broadbus team as general manager of the on-demand business unit, and, he said, Motorola not only intends to keep the Broadbus employees in place in Boxborough, but intends to expand its operations in New England.

The experience will be a new one for Bisceglia, as he has spent most of his time at smaller companies in the past.

“This is going to be new for me because I am staying on with a very large company, but I am really looking forward to it,” he said.

Ray Cronin has been in the testing business for most of his professional career. Electronics testing with Circuitest Services Inc. from 1986 to 1997, semiconductors with Kinetrix Inc., a subsidiary of Teradyne Inc., from 1998 to 1999 and with electronics again at Everett Charles Technologies Inc., which acquired Circuitest, from 1999 to 2002.

The exception was a stint as chief operating officer at Andover’s Quantum Bridge Communications Inc., an optical access gear maker in 2001.

In 2002 he was asked by some venture capital friends to help evaluate a testing company, Azimuth Systems Inc., in which they were looking to invest. He liked what he saw, and soon became Acton-based Azimuth’s sixth employee.

“Testing may not be the most glamorous part of technology, but it is crucial,” Cronin said.

Turns out Azimuth’s wi-fi testing gear hit a niche industry that was clearly in need of its services. Before Azimuth, most equipment vendors were using ad-hoc testing practices developed in-house. As the wi-fi market grew, however, so did the demand for more reliable equipment. Azimuth developed the right product at the right time — a formula all entrepreneurs look for in a business and, in this case, its technology.

But it wasn’t all simple. Cronin and his team began product development at a time when people used their cell phones for calls and their laptops for data and Internet connections, he said. Originally developed as a voice testing product for cell phones, the team had to shift its product strategy in mid-development to keep up with the rapidly changing mobile environment. Eventually they were able to include data streams and wi-fi connections to the product-testing portfolio.

In 2004 the company brought its first products to market, and analysts have pointed to Azimuth’s wi-fi testing equipment as an industry model ever since. The company has landed more than 100 customers since that time, and while the company does not release the names of most of its customers, they account for 95 percent of all wi-fi units sold in 2005, according to Sam Lucero of ABI Research.

But the company’s success has also put Cronin, 48, in the position of soothsayer, with vendors looking to him to provide services on technologies that are still in development.

“Now development is so fast that there is a lot of pressure as a testing company to be on top of all the new technology,” he said. “But the conundrum is that, in order to test something, the technology being tested needs to be in the equipment, and sometimes that is a challenge. You kind of have to see into the future.”

Most of Cronin’s career has also been spent at smaller companies, but that could change. Should Azimuth continue its growth rate, particularly as new technologies that need to be tested and integrated, Cronin admits he could find himself leading a much larger company. The plan, he said, is to keep moving the company forward, while maintaining strategic, manageable growth.

“I think being too small isn’t good and being too large isn’t good,” he said. “There is some kind of critical mass you reach that is the right size. You just have to make sure you see it when it comes.”

Sometimes pure numbers can be misleading. In other cases, they tell the whole story.

Kedar Gupta founded GT Equipment Technologies Inc. in Merrimack, N.H., in 1994, with the help of business partner John Talbott and just $1,000 in stake money. He and Talbott parlayed that modest start into some market respect by 2003 when the company reported $9 million in revenue. The tech executives grew that to $28 million in 2004 and upped it to $58 million in 2005.

2006 finds the newly renamed GT Solar Inc. with a backlog of $175 million in sales of its photovoltaic manufacturing equipment designed to grow, cut and shape solar cells and panels that produce electricity.

So Gupta and GT Solar have had a pretty good return even factoring in a $5 million round of funding in 2001 to finance construction of manufacturing facilities in Merrimack. That financing, said Gupta, has long been paid off. But it hasn’t been all milk and honey for Gupta. Solar energy has been touted as a potential player in the industry for some time, but remained on the fringes of viable markets until recently. In 2002 and 2003, as the solar market overseas was beginning to heat up, GT Solar was looking for some funding to expand. Fleet Bank agreed to provide debt financing, according to Gupta, but pulled the plug as it merged with Bank of America.

Gupta turned to his negotiating skills and asked a new customer, Tatung Co. of Korea, for $5 million of its contract upfront. He got it.

“They saved us,” said Gupta. “They trusted me. We got the money upfront and we never looked back.”

Gupta, 59, hasn’t forgotten the company’s humble beginnings, and maintains that it is the company as a whole, rather than himself, that has fueled the success.

He is also an executive who believes in spreading good fortune among all of the employees that helped the company succeed. For instance, last year Gupta decided to distribute $800,000 from the company’s revenue directly back to employees.

But despite its growth — the company has gone from 35 employees in 2004 to 110 today — the company has remained relatively low on the local public radar. The main reason? A whopping 90 percent of the company’s business comes from overseas, particularly from China and Germany.

While dealing predominantly overseas has its challenges, it has encouraged GT Solar to develop a diverse work force, a dynamic of which Gupta is especially proud.

Working overseas can also provide solace, of sorts, when customer-vendor relationships are strained.

“If they don’t like us and want to shout at us, they do it in their own language,” he said.

Selling solar in North America meanwhile is still a challenge, where attitudes about alternative energies are changing slowly. But, said Gupta, they are changing. A recent growth in energy investments in places such as California and New Jersey could encourage more adoption in the United States.

Overall, however, North America has a lot of work to do to catch up to the rest of the world.

“We are still dedicated to digging a hole in the ground and getting something out of it,” he said.

As a young man growing up in Illinois, John Landry planned a future of trading stocks and attaining success in the financial services market. A chance challenge to manage Shawmut Bank Boston’s computer system in the early ‘70s, however, ignited a thriving career in the technology industry that now spans four decades distinguished by Landry’s role as founder of 10 technology companies.

“This business has always been fun,” he said. “It’s always been populated by businesspeople — there are people who are just kind of dreamers, vision guys and engineers. Banking just doesn’t have that same dynamic.”

Landry, 58, is chairman and chief technology officer of Adesso Systems Inc., a 20-person, Boston-based software company he founded in 2001. Landry likes the challenge of growing a small company — although he readily admits getting tired of the lack of resources — which may explain his knack for shifting gears between small and large tech firms.

“I like them both — for a while,” Landry said, with a laugh. “Historically, that’s been a three– to five-year cycle for me.”

Before Adesso, Landry served as vice president of technology strategy for IBM Corp. for six years following IBM’s acquisition of Cambridge-based Lotus Development Corp., where served as chief technology officer five years.

Landry calls his previous position at IBM the “ultimate hybrid.” He served, in part, as a tech talent scout in search of disruptive technologies complementary to the tech market giant’s, and worked closely with innovative startups such as Waltham’s Narrative Communications and Cambridge’s AnyDay.com.

Before Lotus, Landry was CTO at Natick’s Dun & Bradstreet Software, which had acquired Agility Systems, a company he cofounded in Cataumet. Previous to Agility, Landry was CTO at Westwood’s Cullinet Software Inc. and Distribution Management Systems, also in Westwood.

In 2002, he founded Boston’s Adjoin Solutions Inc., which was later acquired by Computer Associates Inc.

Landry got his start in technology in an unlikely place — Boston’s Shawmut Bank in 1971. The bank’s accounting department had one automated accounting system, and when the manager got fired, Landry was selected to replace him because he said he was the only remaining employee with computer experience — one computer course at Babson College.

He subsequently taught himself computer programming, becoming enamored with the whole concept of the bank’s computer and what it could do.

“I started falling in love with the damn thing,” Landry said. “I thought it was the coolest thing going.”

After Shawmut, Landry was executive vice president of development at Westwood’s McCormack & Dodge Corp.

During those early years, he met many software vendors and became interested in what they — and their products — could do. It’s an interest that hasn’t waned.

“These guys were wild and crazy,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is a business I could really get to like.’ We make stuff you can’t even touch. To contemplate that you can do such a thing is fun in its own right. It’s so much fun, it’s almost Zen-like.”

In his long career in medical research, Robert Lanza has witnessed history up close, as when he worked alongside Dr. Christiaan Barnard on some of the first human heart transplants or when he helped advance the work of Jonas Salk at the Salk Institute.

Today, Lanza at 50 feels medical science is again at the doorstep of significant breakthroughs, with potential treatments for a range of the most debilitating ailments on the horizon, thanks to advances in the use of stem cells. Much of that work is being done in the Worcester labs of Advanced Cell Technology Inc., where Lanza serves as vice president of research and scientific development.

Teaming with researchers at Harvard University, Stanford University and other institutions, Advanced Cell is working to find ways to use stem cells to reverse blindness, to potentially reverse the effects of stroke and to repair organs damaged by heart attack and vascular diseases.

“We’re talking about some very exciting stuff,’ said Lanza. “We’re talking about the potential to revolutionize medicine.”

In September, Advanced Cell published research suggesting human embryonic stem cells partly restored vision in blinded rats. “People need to know that this stuff is real,” Lanza said. “Sometimes we get slammed for having enthusiasm for what stem cells can do.”

Lanza, however, doesn’t shy away from those criticisms and is a vocal supporter of wider access to stem cells for researchers, including widely publicized new techniques that the company says can enable stem cells to be harvested without destroying embryos should be explored fully, along with all other methods of gaining access to stem cells.

When he spoke to Congress in September, Lanza noted that in the year since he had last testified, “another million people have died of diseases that could potentially be treated — and possibly cured — using future stem cell therapies. How long are we going to allow this intolerable situation to continue?”

Advanced Cell CEO William Caldwell said Lanza’s cutting-edge stem cell work was well known to him before he took the helm at the company in early 2005, just after a recapitalization by major investors. Today, the company employs about 35 people, operating research facilities in Worcester and in California.

The company is now focused on “driving that research into a number of different therapies. Dr. Lanza is clearly instrumental in that whole process,” Caldwell said.

Lanza’s experience and profile in the research community also make him an important spokesman for expanding access to stem cell lines, according to Caldwell.

Lanza said good scientists have a responsibility to help others understand what’s happening inside the lab.

“Critics of stem cell research figure if there’s no funding, there’s no research and they can kill it,” he said. “My feeling is, the research we’re doing, no one else is really doing and is aware of all the results and sees what might be coming.

“It’s important to educate the public,” Lanza added. “The answer here is education, education, education. Sometimes scientists shy away from explaining their research and think they’re too superior to stoop so low as to explain their research. People have a right to understand the research they’re helping to fund and to see where it might be taking us.”

As a high-schooler in Winchester, Joseph McIsaac didn’t have your average part-time job.

While other teens bagged groceries and poured coffee, McIsaac worked for Data General — indirectly, that is, having learned to code from his father, working with him on DG projects and cutting his teeth on the PDP-8 and PDP-11 minicomputers of the day.

He didn’t have your average college experience either; in fact, he didn’t have any at all, instead devoting himself to his passion for software and beginning an odyssey as a software developer and serial entrepreneur.

“This is his lifelong pursuit — solving tough problems with software,” said David Hughes, chief executive officer at McIsaac’s latest venture, Reflexion Network Solutions Inc., an e-mail security software developer in Woburn. “But there’s another dimension, which is doing things that are good for people at large.”

Those are the goals that drive him, says McIsaac, who founded Reflexion in 2001 and developed Reflexion Total Control, which uses supplemental e-mail addresses, content filtering and whitelisting to eliminate spam and phishing.

But long before e-mail, McIsaac went straight from high school into the world of software development, working with his father full-time before taking a position at Strategic Information in Burlington and working on the first relational database management system.

“At 21 I was immersed with some heavy-duty professional engineers, and I put in a lot of hours,” he said. “I was single then, so I would pretty much come in on Monday and leave on Friday.”

Later, at New Jersey-based Automatic Data Processing (ADP — the company that probably cuts your paycheck), he wrote the first inter-bank ATM switch and, as founder and president of Zortech Inc. of Woburn, created the first C++ compiler for MS-DOS.

“I was approached by an entrepreneur with a C compiler company and we made the decision to implement the first C++ compiler, thinking it was better off being the only fish than a small fish among the Microsofts and Borlands,” McIsaac said. “This is where I got the entrepreneur bug, and since then I’ve sort of been on my own, starting companies on technologies that I invent.”

But it was his work with chromatography at Marlborough-based pharmaceutical company SepraCor Inc., his first venture into life sciences, that put everything in a new light, he said. Having observed the three– to four-day process that lab professionals used to build protein chromatography matrices, he developed a software that enabled scientists to build them in minutes.

“I like being an entrepreneur, but this was even bigger because it wasn’t just about making money,” McIsaac said. “It’s about playing a part in applications that could cure AIDS and cancer and knowing that something I did could make a difference.”

Hughes praises McIsaac’s ability to bring a new perspective to development, an advantage that McIsaac acknowledges may come from his having avoided the preconceptual parameters of college.

“Some people would say that traditional academic environments sort of separate people from their creativity, although it’s not intended to be that way,” Hughes said. “He’s very comfortable coming at a problem with a clean slate and sort of coming up behind it. He’s not pushed one way or the other. Some people are uncomfortable with that approach, but that’s not him.”

It took Richard K. Miller a matter of days to accept the offer for a job to head a Massachusetts college with no buildings, no land, no staff and no students.

He thought about the practical consequences of his decision later. It was a brash and audacious decision, he said, and one that still keeps him up at night.

Miller is the president of Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, which graduated its first class of students last May.

“It’s not about my career. It’s not about the money. How am I going to look these kids’ parents in the face if this doesn’t work?” Miller said.

In 2002 Olin College welcomed its first students. The school sits on a sparkling 70-acre campus in Needham adjacent to Babson College. The school’s 286 students — with average SAT scores of 1,500 — chose to attend the school despite its lack of pedigree. Some students even spent a year before the school opened to collaborate with professors and administrators to build the curriculum.

Part of the reason it may have been easy to fill the seats is the school provides each four-year student with a $130,000 scholarship. The funding is made possible by a $460 million endowment bestowed on the school by the F.W. Olin Foundation.

Native Vermonter Franklin W. Olin, who died in 1951, created the foundation. Since 1938, the organization has donated $800 million to 58 college campuses nationwide. After the donation to Olin College in 2004, the foundation closed.

Not that this is Miller’s first brush with Olin — the foundation donated the money to build a University of Iowa science building, which Miller worked in before he left to join Olin as its first employee in 1999.

Miller served as the dean of engineering at the University of Iowa for seven years. There he pioneered a Technological Entrepreneurship Certificate program and increased external research funding by 50 percent.

Prior to that, Miller served as the associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Southern California Santa Barbara.

What excites Miller is that Olin students tinker with technology from day one. It is a shift in engineering education philosophy from theory to practice and discovery to commercialization. For example, freshman Olin students built a pulse oximeter, a device used to measure the amount of oxygen in blood, during their first few weeks.

“The country doesn’t need more engineers, it needs more innovators,” Miller said.

Miller earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of California Davis. A year later he earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT. Miller also holds a Ph.D. in applied mechanics from the California Institute of Technology.

After an emotional graduation ceremony of the school’s first class, Miller says, he is proud.

Two of the 2006 Olin graduates received Fulbright Scholarships. Three are pursuing their master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.

For Miller, there is always more work to be done. He admits the jury is still out, despite the early successes of the class of 2006. Olin College has yet to be accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, a process school administrators hope will be completed by the end of the month.

“The long-term aspiration is to persuade people at well-established institutions to change things. That will keep up busy for decades,” Miller said.

Sleep, he said, will come later.

Lita Nelsen’s technology career began with a bang. Nelsen graduated first in her class as an undergraduate chemical engineer at MIT. And her 40-year career, split between industry and academia, is still rocketing forward.

“I have the best job in the country,’ says Nelsen.

Since 1992, that job has been as the director for MIT’s Technology Licensing Office.

Nelsen, 63, heads an office that pumps out 500 inventions, 100 licensing agreements and 20 spinouts annually. When Nelsen joined the licensing office in 1986, there were eight employees. Now there are 30.

She was there in 1996 when the artificial skin research of an MIT polymer chemist and biomedical engineer, Ioannis V. Yannas, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat burn patients. Breakthroughs such as fiber-optic cable and laser surgery for cancer patients were pioneered at MIT — and were projects that passed over her desk.

Nelsen holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from MIT. She also earned a master’s degree in business administration from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Nelsen’s work gives her a ground-level view of the innovation economy in the United States. She said the biggest challenge facing science and technology businesses is funding. Unfortunately, there is an emphasis across American industry on short-term earnings rather than long-term investments, she said.

But Nelsen’s insight also roots from her 20-year private-sector experience.

Prior to joining MIT, she served as the vice president of operations at Cambridge-based Applied Biotechnology Inc. For eight years before that, Nelsen worked as a business manager at Bedford-based Millipore Corp. At Amicon Corp. in Lexington, Nelsen managed a group of medical device engineers.

Today her focus is on the intersection of academic science and commerce. But Nelsen has a deep commitment to her work with nonprofit organizations and sits on four boards.

Nelsen said she cherishes the impact her work has globally. She hopscotches around the globe to share what she has learned. For example, she recently traveled to Brazil, South Africa, India and Chile. She serves as adviser to the National Academy of Sciences and universities including Cornell University.

She serves on the board of the Center for the Management of Intellectual Property in Health Research and Development, which is based in the United Kingdom. It is a nonprofit organization Nelsen helped to launch four years ago. The organization’s aim is to provide training and information on research practices, technology transfer and intellectual property development to developing countries.

In 1996, Nelsen became an intellectual property adviser to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a position she holds today. The initiative is a joint R&D project among 30 companies, academic institutions and government agencies in developed and developing countries, including Kenya and Uganda. The project has generated five vaccine candidates and operates in 23 countries. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation fund the initiative.

“We’re helping to influence the world, I hope for the good, in bringing new medicines and using new technology for economic development,” said Nelsen.

Plain-spoken and modest almost to a fault, Richard Packer nonetheless predicts big things are ahead for Zoll Medical Corp.

As chief executive at the Chelmsford-based manufacturer of cardiac defibrillators and other resuscitation devices, 49-year-old Packer has kept the company firmly on a growth trajectory throughout his tenure. Revenue grew nearly 170 percent during his first six years as CEO, and Zoll was on pace for about $240 million in sales during the fiscal year that ended in September, according to analysts.

But now, following the company’s 2004 purchase of Revivant Corp. and other recent strategic moves, Packer says Zoll finally has the complete offering of tools to treat sudden heart-failure, which kills about 460,000 Americans each year.

All that work, including spending more than $55 million for research and development over the past three years, also is positioning the company to take on much bigger companies such as Medtronic, GE Medical Systems and Royal Phillips Electronics. In fact, to hear Packer tell it, it’s the competition now scrambling to keep up with Zoll.

“More and more, it’s little old Zoll that’s providing the leadership in this industry,” he said. “We’re doing things and it’s the other guys who are now responding to us. The ability to set the agenda is really exciting.”

Packer said handling the sheer size of Zoll — its work force has grown to nearly 1,000 employees, up from around 100 when he joined the company in December 1992 — and expanding its operations across the United States and into nine other countries can be daunting.

“I’d say I’m highly involved in the company, that’s always been my style,” he said. “When I came here, I could walk the halls and know just about everyone I met. That’s not the case anymore as we’ve gotten bigger.”

Packer arrived at Zoll 14 years ago, a few months after its initial public offering of stock. He originally was the company’s head of operations, overseeing a rapid expansion of Zoll’s manufacturing capabilities, later taking on duties as chief financial officer and company president as well.

He was promoted to CEO after longtime chief executive Rolf Stutz died from cancer in November 1999. Packer had been well-groomed for the job, but the transition still was tough in many ways, given the close ties between the two executives.

“Rolf was my mentor. There wasn’t a part of the business that we didn’t talk about several times a day,” Packer said. “He was completely knowledgeable and comfortable in his job, and one of the big lessons he taught me was to not sweat the ancillary things.”

Packer also is quick to credit Charlie Stott, his former boss at the Whistler Electronics unit of the Arkansas-based electronics firm The Whistler Group Inc., for teaching him the “people side of the business” and for giving him the professional freedom to work in nearly all aspects of the company.

“I was really fortunate to earn his trust early on,” Packer said.

Today, nearly two decades removed from his early days at Whistler, Packer extends that same level of trust to the employees at Zoll. They are encouraged to take on new duties and take reasonable risks, comfortable in the knowledge that management is behind them.

“Zoll is a company that will allow its people to fail,” he explained. “People won’t lose their jobs here because they try big things and come up a little short.”

Boston will be blanketed by a wireless network that promises to connect the entire city and spur new business — under the leadership of one of the Bay State’s most successful women in the field of technology.

Pamela D. Reeve was hand picked by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to take the helm of the Boston Wireless Task Force after serving as a member of a group tasked with finding the best route to deliver wireless Internet access to the city of Boston.

This is the single largest commitment Reeve has faced in the public policy realm, but she’s up to the challenge.

The former chief executive of mobile business solution provider Lightbridge Inc., Reeve helped grow that business from $1 million in sales and about a dozen employees in 1991 to $133.4 million in sales and more than 1,000 employees in 2002. She stepped down from Burlington-based Lightbridge in 2004 to start her own consulting firm, Kairos Group. For the moment, Reeve said, she is even putting that to the side in order to focus on Boston’s wireless network.

Reeve said the group is busy fund-raising and developing a network design. The Task Force is also working to find or form a nonprofit group to support the project. Individuals and businesses have come forward with in-kind contributions and services to help with the project, expected to cost between $16 million and $20 million, said Reeve.

“Once we get to the stage where we can start deployment of the network, we are looking at 18 months to get things built,” she said.

The satisfaction of working with wireless technology, something she loves, and a desire to deliver something of real value to the city of Boston balances the time and energy required to get the job done.

“Sixty percent of households do not have high-speed access,” she said.

As an entrepreneur, Reeve sees many opportunities coming out of this project both for small and large businesses.

“Health care institutions will have innovative ways to communicate with patients, and the whole city can be a test market for devices that people want to test and market. And there will be an impact on city services,” Reeve said.

Often asked to join civic and professional organizations, Reeve must sometimes say no. She finds herself committing to organizations that involve innovation and technology, and encourage women’s leadership and empowerment.

“I do what I am committed to do,” she says. “There are a lot of needy and wonderful organizations that are looking for assistance, but you can’t do it all.”

Reeve also dedicates time to her role as a trustee of the Mass Technology Leadership Council, for which she has also served as chairman. She is a member of the International Women’s Forum and the Massachusetts Women’s Forum, and a director at the Commonwealth Institute. She is also a director of American Tower Corp. and Natural Microsystems Corp.

Professional accolades include being awarded CEO of the Year by the Massachusetts Telecom Council for the years 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000. In 2000, she as also named Entrepreneur of the Year in the field of technology.

Reeve, also the mother of four children, said a fully integrated life suits her best. In fact, she even makes room for her church and spends several days during the month of October baking apple pies for the church’s annual fair.

Nina Saberi got her first taste of technology entrepreneurship early — and it stuck.

Saberi’s early experiences working at a startup formed her views of the technology business — views that remained when she went on to run tech companies and now as she invests in them.

The founder of Castile Ventures in Waltham first worked as an engineer with Newport, R.I.’s Avanti Communications after she graduated from the University of Rhode Island. The company was just starting up — which gave Saberi a chance to wear many hats. It also gave her a taste for something more.

“I got to understand the whole company,” she said. “I ended up growing up in it and went on to run a company. I started to think I’d like to be on the path to eventually managing a business.”

That path led to Castile Ventures, a Waltham venture capital firm Saberi founded in 1998. The firm is a holdover of sorts, focusing on small deals with startup companies rather than following the venture capital industry’s trend of larger firms.

For Saberi, that’s intentional. While she admits larger firms work well for some, Saberi wanted Castile to remain an old-style firm — one that followed a model she had become familiar with as a startup executive.

“The model that I thought worked was one in which the VC has time to work with its companies,” she said. “The assembly-line approach to early-stage investing is not a model I’m interested in.”

Before Castile, Saberi worked for two years as a partner at OneLiberty Ventures in Boston.

Saberi, 47, was also a general manager at Framingham-based Amnet Inc. before it merged with North Carolina-based Netlink Inc., a company that Saberi moved to Framingham while serving as its president and CEO. In 1996, Netlink was acquired by New Hampshire’s Cabletron.

Previously, Saberi managed an international joint venture for Westborough-based Data General Corp. for two years and worked as an engineer at Cambridge’s BBN Communications.

Saberi said she developed a reputation as being a “good enabler” while managing businesses. She discounts perceived disadvantages of being a woman in the technology industry because, she said, results matter more than gender.

“(Business success) is all about performance and capability,” Saberi said. “Are you leading where I want to go? Are you making me money? Are you a good partner? And none of those questions can be answered by a person’s gender.”

Saberi is putting her years of operational managing to good work at Castile Ventures, which is now investing its third fund. She serves or participates on the board of six of the firm’s portfolio companies.

Several of Castile’s portfolio companies have grown to successful initial public offerings or mergers and acquisitions.

For example, Chelmsford’s Sonus Networks Inc. raised $115 million during an initial public offering in 2000, and Needham’s GeoTrust Inc. was acquired by VeriSign Inc. in September for $125 million.

“All of that is because of our association with entrepreneurs who know we take the time to care,” Saberi said.

James D. Shields’ former post as vice president of programs at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory is now a two-person job — when Shields took over as the Cambridge-based laboratory’s president and CEO earlier this year, he was replaced by two executives not one.

Just steps from Shields’ well-ordered office are laboratories responsible for developing some of the planet’s most complex technology, including missile-defense systems and its pioneering microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology.

“The key to being a successful leader is being able to collaborate and get the best out of people who are smarter than you,” said Shields, 57, who is now responsible for the multimillion-dollar nonprofit research institute.

Shields joined Draper in 2001 as the vice president of programs. Shields said he was recruited out of the private sector by Vincent Vitto, the former Draper president and CEO whom Shields succeeded. Vitto, who retired from Draper after his role as president and CEO since 1997, had spent 32 years at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory before Draper.

Prior to joining Draper, Shields had spent 28 years at The Analytic Science Corporation Inc. (TASC), a defense technologies company. Northrop Grumman Corp. eventually bought the TASC IT division. When Shields started at TASC, it employed 60 people; when he left, it employed 4,000.

But Shields’ education ultimately traces back to Cambridge, where he received a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT.

Some of the most significant works at Draper are sponsored by NASA. The laboratory maintains a 40-year relationship with NASA and was selected in August to participate in a multibillion-dollar project to develop the avionics for a new commercial spacecraft designed to bring people and cargo to the International Space Station. Draper scientists are scheduled to develop a launch system for the vehicle and expect to allocate 70 scientists and engineers to the project.

In addition, Draper is working on a Trident missile redesign project for the U.S. Navy. The project is Draper’s largest and occupies 40 percent of the 1,100-person staff.

But Draper’s frontier includes human systems integration studies, including the development of a handheld translation device designed for soldiers and a neurologically controlled prosthetic.

Historically, Draper has focused on defense work, but now Draper is also making headway in biotechnology, researching artificial-tissue generation. The laboratory is also working on a portable breath test for detecting tuberculosis. The World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsor the project.

“As we look at the 21st century, probably the two most important problems facing the country are health care and energy,” said Shields.

The laboratory is part of a consortium of institutions aimed at collectively designing health care technologies. The consortium, known as the Center for Integrated Medicine and Innovative Technology, includes Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston University and MIT.