Distinguished Achievement Award

Rodney Brooks

Who he is: CTO of Heartland Robotics Inc., which aims to do for manual labor what the PC did for office work.

Track record: Co-founded consumer and military robot maker iRobot Inc. with Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, who were students of his at MIT, where Brooks was director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Education: Degree in pure mathematics from Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia); Ph.D., Stanford University.

Long ago and far away: Like a lot of stories involving mad scientists and robots, Rodney Brooks’ starts with nuclear explosions. “There was lots of radioactive stuff wafting around when I was being conceived.” That joke might explain something about a guy whose biography on MIT’s website includes a photo of a robot using a banana as a telephone. Brooks was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in the 1950s—around the time Great Britain was testing nuclear weapons in the surrounding desert. Brooks built simple computers in Adelaide when he was about 8 or 9 years old. “I hadn’t seen a real computer. There weren’t many around, but I had some books.”

He built his first robot when he was 16—a 10-inch disc that moved toward light and would back up if it bumped something. But he laughs at the idea of comparing it to the Roomba. “I think anyone who worked on the Roomba would be really insulted by that.”

Circuitous route to Kendall Square: Brooks was rejected by MIT when he applied for grad school, but he was accepted by Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University. Not being familiar with the geography of the United States, he went to a library and checked an atlas. He chose Stanford: “California looked closer to Australia than Pennsylvania did.” Brooks came to the U.S. in 1977 and ended up at MIT as a post-doctoral student in 1981, becoming a faculty member in 1984.

Accomplishments: Aside from his three children, Brooks said he’s most proud of developing the behavioral model of robotics, which has since become widely adopted. He was in Thailand visiting his then-wife’s family. They didn’t speak English, and he didn’t speak Thai. There was no Internet at the time, and no TV where he was. He was sitting, watching insects when it occurred to him—the insects were maneuvering pretty well with simple nervous systems.

Special pride: Brooks said he’s gratified by the time he spent as director of CSAIL, both mentoring students there and working on the building of the Ray and Maria Stata Center, which opened in 2004. He’s also proud of the U.S. military’s use of iRobot’s PackBot, which can dispose of land mines and perform other dangerous tasks, and of the slow creep of robots into everyday life. For example, iRobot’s Roomba occupies the bottom shelf of the vacuum section of Target, next to brands that won’t vacuum anything by themselves.”

Mentors: Former AI Lab director Patrick Winston, the late Michael Dertouzos, a noted MIT computer scientist, and Robert A. Brown, a former MIT provost and current president of Boston University. MIT AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, a technology consultant on the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” inspired him in his teenage years. With its flat-panel displays and graphical interfaces, Brooks said “2001” is one of the few futuristic movies of the period that have aged well. “That’s how I found out about MIT.”

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Helen Greiner on Rodney Brooks

Rod Brooks was Helen Greiner’s academic adviser at MIT, and he was not good at it. Greiner, the iRobot co-founder, is current CEO of The Droid Works Inc. and was a MHT All-Star in 2007.

As an advisor:
“He had bigger issues on his plate, like the future of robotics…He basically just told me to go look it up (laughing).”

On getting the job done:
Grenier recalled a working at 3 a.m. on a robot that had to absolutely ship the following morning—and a stray wire somewhere was keeping the robot from working. It could have been a depressing situation, but for the company.

“With Rod and Colin (Angle), it’s like, ‘OK, let’s get some food at Burger King. We’ll figure it out.”

Nanotechnology

Peter Antoinette

Who he is: President and CEO of Nanocomp Technologies Inc. in Concord, N.H., where he is moving carbon nanotube materials toward commercialization with potential applications such as vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles and transmission lines.

Track record: “An awful lot of business development. … I have a marketing biz stamp on my forehead.” A 15-year career at Millipore Corp. and as president and CEO of Cambridge Research & Instrumentation, Antoinette co-founded Nanocomp Technologies with CTO David Lashmore in 2004.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in biology with minor in chemistry from Tusculum College (Tennessee).

Favorite accomplishment: “If there is one thing I’m most proud of, Nanocomp would be it. We saw an opportunity, picked it up and moved forward with the company, along with Dr. Lashmore. It was one of those cases where the business guy led rather than the tech guy leading.”

What makes him tick: “Take technologies and connect the dots to customers. It’s one of the things I do reasonably well. People at Millipore called me Mr. Blue Sky. It was something that rankled me at first, but now it makes me tick.”

Whither nanotubes: “We have the opportunity of creating a platform—materials and products that have the same type of advantages that aluminum had when it was first introduced. The difference is, ours is like a fabric. It’s lighter and more conductive, a real 21st century material.”

Mentor: “A number of people, particularly at Millipore … they really taught me a lot about business and taking risks.”

Anti-mentor: “I saw someone at Millipore who basically got hung up on the trappings of a big company. He lost sight of the customer, stifled creativity and stifled growth. This person was exemplified by implementing named executive parking spots and executive washrooms. It was the antithesis of what we try to do in the tech sector, flattening the organization.”

Outside of work: “When you’re running a startup like this, there’s very little time. I like to play golf. It’s a good walk in the woods because I can’t hit it straight. I also enjoy woodworking.”

BY JAMES M. CONNOLLY, Managing Editor

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Bob Dean on Peter Antoinette

Robert C. Dean is an entrepreneur, professor emeritus at Dartmouth College, chairman of the board at Nanocomp and founder of Synergy Innovations Inc. He recruited Antoinette for his current role.

What makes Antoinette tick:
“Among all of the entrepreneurs I’ve dug up and put in place, he has more drive, more charisma, more sales ability than any I’ve seen. He immediately struck me as a good leader. He’s a big guy, tall, big smile, gregarious guy, and he has a lot of experience as an entrepreneur.”

If he chose to do something else, he would do …
“Less of the management stuff and more creative stuff for himself. Maybe he could be more of a free agent, finding inventors who have good ideas and then helping them to find markets and opportunities while adding something to the products too.”

Education

Maura Banta

Who she is: As IBM Corp.’s East Coast regional manager for corporate citizenship and corporate affairs, her day job has been to help manage IBM’s corporate philanthropy, government relations and community relations.

Track record: A glance at her resume shows that her job is also a platform enabling her to champion education in Massachusetts: Chair of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, past chair for the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, six years on the Massachusetts Educational Management and Audit Council and board member of United Ways of New England, Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and Boston Plan for Excellence.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics, Marymount College.

What makes her tick: “One thing that’s been very important to me is to be part of the broad community that has helped advance education in the commonwealth. … Early on, I was fortunate enough to befriend Jack Rennie and Paul Reville, two amazing icons of educational reform in Massachusetts and co-founders of the Mass. Business Alliance for Education (Reville is currently Massachusetts’ Secretary of Education), and I became part of their ‘gang.’ That afforded me an awful lot of opportunity to have an active role in advancing the educational agenda.”

Accomplishments: “At IBM, I’ve been able to do something related to all this, and that’s to help architect a program that takes midcareer IBM-ers with math and science backgrounds and gives them an opportunity in an encore career to become K-12 math and science teachers. We came up with a program that gave people money and time and, probably most important, their manager’s permission to spend time while still working at IBM to get themselves certified as math, science or computer science teachers.”

How she got here: “I was one of 11 children and grew up with a mother who was a social activist in a family where we very much believed that we were fortunate and therefore we needed to share that good fortune, and so I’ve always been an active volunteer. … I don’t want to be painted as a Goody-Two-Shoes: the need to get involved was how I was raised. It was just part of the deal. Any little thing you do for another human being comes back twofold.”

BY JIM SCHAKENBACH, Special to Mass High Tech

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Sean Rush on Maura Banta

Sean Rush, CEO of Junior Achievement Worldwide, is former general manager of IBM’s global education business.

What drives her:
“Her absolute belief in education. Maura represents IBM well, but she absolutely believes in education and that’s what drives her.”

What people don’t know:
“She was the captain of the Mount Alvernia High School basketball team (in Newton).”

Maura’s greatest assets:
“She has this underlying tenacity with an overlay of wonderfully diplomatic, interpersonal skills. She has that passion that successful people have, with the personal skills to get people to rally around whatever she wants to get done.”

If she were doing something else:
“She’d be perfect for just about any number of public-policy-type jobs. She has those great personal skills to influence people. She’s also make a great doctor.”

Finance

David Beisel

Who he is: Vice president, Venrock, where he invests in web companies; Organizer of the quarterly Web Innovators Group conferences, a 400-strong gathering of web entrepreneurs.

Track record: Co-founder, Sombasa Media—acquired in 2000 by About.com for $35 million in stock; previously a principal at Masthead Venture Partners, where he invested in Expo TV, Tremor Media, Intercasting, TripConnect and NewsGator.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics, Duke University; MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Favorite accomplishment: “Before I got on the venture side of things, I was an entrepreneur myself. Having helped start a company and go through that success—to me that was a very defining moment for me.”

Launch, grow repeat: “I like being a part of the creation of a new company—having something that just wasn’t there before and starting from zero to 60 or zero to 70. That’s the exciting part. Growing something once you’re there, that’s exciting, too, but I like that ‘beginning part’ of the process.”

Webinno. Accidentally famous: “I started it in the summer of 2005 and I literally just invited a dozen entrepreneurs and others in the web space to a bar. I just gave everyone name tags and we’re standing in the middle of this bar, and other people were, like, ‘Who are these guys wearing name tags?’ But at the next one, 24 people showed up, and it started to grow.”

An East Coast optimist: “I think earlier this decade (the Boston area) didn’t have as many of the events that help foster that interaction. Now we have more of it. We’ve got Web Innovators Group. We’ve got Mobile Monday. I think we’ve seen a movement toward people recognizing we need more informal or formal or somewhere-in-between kind of events. There’s a recognition that something was missing. I feel like, as a community, we’re starting to do something about it rather than just talking about it. In 2005, we were just talking about it.

Geek pride: “I was a geek as a kid. Even before high school, I can remember when I had my first computer. Even before that, in kindergarten, I got to sign up for a special computer class and play with an Apple I.”

BY GALEN MOORE, Reporter

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Richard Levandov on David Beisel

Masthead partner Richard Levandov was an early investor in Sombasa, and later hired Beisel as an associate at Masthead.

What makes Beisel a good VC?
“Being a founder of a company is invaluable experience for a venture capitalist. That’s who our customer is. In this business, you have to serve your customer well (and) to serve them well, you have to know them. The people who are best at this are previous founders of companies, as opposed to purely finance backgrounds.”

Were there any early signs he’d turn out to be the social coordinator of an event like Webinno?
“Definitely. From the day he started here, his communication skills were extraordinary—and his ability to use web tools (like) wikis and invite systems. If he didn’t have those skills, it would be impossible to do it without it becoming a full-time job.”

Life Sciences

Omid Farokhzad

Who he is: Farokhzad has made a large impact on medical science by thinking small. He works on an unimaginably tiny scale, developing nanoparticles that enable more targeted and effective treatments for delivering drugs directly to diseased tissues. An associate professor at the Harvard Medical School, he is a co-founder and director of Bind Biosciences Inc. and a co-founder and vice chairman of Selecta Biosciences Inc.

Education: Master’s degree, Boston University; M.D., BU School of Medicine. Fellowship at Harvard University. Post-doctoral training at MIT.

His approach: “I’ve been able to pick challenging problems that are impactful and then assemble the right team to solve them. (At Bind) we constantly try to solve problems and constantly try to do better than before. We consider ourselves our most serious competitor.”

His other team: “My wife and my kids are just amazing. With that kind of support system in place, I can concentrate on other things, like developing nanotechnologies that can apply to medical applications.”

The mentor: “I’ve had outstanding mentors who have had great success. I interned in Bob Langer’s lab. He’s been absolutely persistent in solving difficult problems, creating solutions that have had an impact on many, many lives.”

Thinking back: “I never thought I’d be doing what I’m doing today. I thought I was going to be a doctor and see patients. But then I spent a bunch of years working at Mass. General Hospital with Dr. M. Armin Arnaout. And seeing how he worked, mostly as a scientist, really shifted my mind-set. Then I trained with Bob Langer, and I shifted again. It wasn’t so much that he was doing science as he was doing science with real, near-term applications. You could see impact.”

Looking ahead: “Developing nanoparticles that could deliver drugs was the first generation. My work developing nanoparticles that could deliver drugs in a selective way to diseased tissue contributed to the second generation. Now we’re developing nanotechnologies that can deliver multiple drugs or do multiple things at the same time—for example, deliver drugs and an image or deliver drugs and report back that a cell has received the drug. These are the kinds of technologies that are going to be developed over the next 10 or 20 years.”

BY JIM SCHAKENBACH, Special to Mass High Tech

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Robert Langer on Omid Farokhzad

MIT professor Robert Langer is founder of 20 life sciences companies. He is on the board at Bind Biosciences.

Three attributes of Omid:
“He’s brilliant, charismatic, incredibly driven and highly motivated. Sorry, that’s four things.”

Something no else knows:
“Well, besides being both an outstanding clinician and a good businessman, he also happens to be very good with his children.”

What makes him a good scientist:
“He’s very smart. He’s got vision, he understands what’s important and he asks good questions.”

What do people need to know about him:
“He’s a terrific example of someone who combines clinical excellence and academic excellence with the ability to commercialize his discoveries.”

What gets him up in the morning:
“Tremendous drive. He wants to figure out new treatments for patients and get them out there.”

Mobile

Eric Giler

Who he is: CEO, Witricity Corp., where he’s having fun demonstrating the company’s wireless electrical power technology for computers and other devices.

Track record: Chairman and CEO of Groove Mobile until its acquisition by Live Mobile Inc. in 2008. Best known as founder and CEO of Brooktrout Inc., which in 1984 launched a voicemail system for use in AT&T Merlin phones after the AT&T divestiture, and IPO’d in 1992.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and music, Carnegie Mellon University; MBA Harvard Business School.

Favorite accomplishment: “Starting a company from three people and running the business for 20-plus years at each stage of growth, from concept through raising money to growing the business through profitability and taking care of our constituents. You take care of your customers and employees; if you do a good job there, the stockholders tend to be happy.”

The accidental CEO: “I was asked to join the board at Groove Mobile, become the chairman and mentor a CEO that the company had recruited. It was going to be a one-day-a-week kind of thing. But the CEO they recruited never came, so they asked if I could step into the full-time CEO role.”

Good times: “Groove Mobile was much more of an entertainment company than a tech company. Probably the most fun was getting to take my 14-year-old daughter to the Grammy’s in Los Angeles.”

Mentors: “I would put Ray Stata (Analog Devices Inc.) and Alex d’Arbeloff (Teradyne Inc.) at the top … entrepreneurs who started their businesses and ran them for a very long period of time and grew with their businesses.”

Where is he going? “Witricity is the most fun I’ve had in my life. Fundamentally the world is changing. … Imagine, if you will, that you won’t need wires or batteries anymore.”

BY JAMES M. CONNOLLY, Managing Editor

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Brooke Tunstall on Eric Giler

Brooke Tunstall was director of corporate planning for AT&T Corp. during the firm’s divestiture. He served with Giler on Brooktrout’s board for 15 years.

What makes Giler tick:
“It was a wonderful experience working with him from beginning to end. He’s a very gifted leader, respected by his workers. He has an incredible ability to cut through tech talk. Time after time in shareholder meetings he would hold the audience in rapt attention. He also was able to be one of the gang but still maintain the respect of his workers. He was a very generous guy in terms of health care and bonuses. There were a lot of tears on the table when he felt compelled to sell the company.”

If he chose to do something else, he would…
“I don’t know that I would want him to run a GM or anything because he has this touch with people. I think he is doing exactly what he wants to do.”

Internet

Gail Goodman

Who she is: CEO, Constant Contact Inc., where her mind is on a small army of small-business e-mail marketing software and online survey users.

Education: Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania; MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College.

What she’s most proud of: “Knowing that Constant Contact has helped more than 300,000 small organizations build deeper relationships with customers, clients and members is tremendously gratifying.”

What makes her tick: “I am passionate about creating complete solutions for customers. I was always a product geek at heart, but now at Constant Contact I can combine my love of all things ‘product’ with really great ideas about delivery channels, customer service, and support and educations programs to create that total package that customers can use to be successful. I have always been a results-oriented, metrics-driven person, and those attributes have contributed to my success.”

Her advice to other entrepreneurs: Seek advice. “You don’t have to reinvent a lot of things. Other people have done it. Get a lot of advice. You want to be cultivating a set of people who are just one or two steps ahead of you. Once they get three or four steps ahead of you, they forget. They’re on to new challenges.”

On Boston entrepreneurs: “I think the Boston community is immensely generous, but you have to ask the right people. I don’t want to go negative, but there are a lot of people who reach too far for help and guidance. People have been so helpful to me.”

Missing the startup turmoil: “(As leader of a larger company), I have to be very sensitive of exactly who I’m going toe-to-toe with. It was a little more fun when I could just go toe-to-toe with everyone in the company. There’s no question in startup mode you are putting out fires every day. In the early days, we used to meet once a month for one-and-a-half days for a progress report. It’s not like reporting progress to your board. There’s no spin.”

BY GALEN MOORE, Reporter

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Shikhar Ghosh on Gail Goodman

Harvard Business School professor Ghosh was chairman at Open Market Inc. in the late ’90s, when Goodman joined the e-commerce company.

Steering a company in crisis:
“Internet commerce had moved from being this very narrow thing to being quite a confusing sort of venue. Gail had to balance the needs of a public company with the rapid change in what was happening in the markets. It was very easy to try to be everything to everyone, and she kept us from falling into that trap.”

What are Goodman’s strengths?
“I think of her as being strong, bright and disciplined. In a marketing role when you’re trying to get all the butterflies to go in the same direction, Gail is very good.”

Something others may not know:
“Gail is very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person. She hasn’t changed at all. She’s got the same sort of disciplined focus.”

Web

Scott Griffith

Who he is: CEO, Zipcar Inc., where he hopes to change the face of urban transportation.

Track record: Managed 2007 acquisition of Flexcar and brought the merged company to profitability; former Boeing engineer; guided Atlanta-based Information America to its 1999 sale; founded Digital Goods, which closed its doors in 2001.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Carnegie Mellon University; MBA, University of Chicago.

What motivates him? “I’m probably my own harshest critic. I put the bar very high for myself and I criticize myself whenever I don’t get there. I think that’s probably a big motivator.”

What’s important? “Twelve years ago, I was diagnosed with a lymphoma and treated at (Massachusetts General Hospital’s) Cancer Center. During that time I thought a lot about who I wanted to be associated with, both personally and professionally. This helped me to realize much about myself and more broadly, the types of people I want to surround myself with and those I could live without. “I thrive around honesty, flexibility and creativity, and find myself turning away from those who over promise and under deliver and/or who frequently say ‘no’, ‘we can’t’, ‘we won’t’, or ‘it’s already been tried.’”

City kid: “I’ve always had an interest in cities. I grew up in Pittsburgh. I watched the steel industry disintegrate when I was going through junior high and high school. As that happened, I became fascinated by what happens to cities when half the employment base goes away? You know, this is happening in Detroit right now. I went through that experience, and I watched that city reinvent itself. Pittsburgh’s a nice city again.”

‘Mr. Fix-it’ finds his calling: “Growing up, my father called me ‘Mr. Fix It’. I suppose this started because I was generally handy as a child—taking apart toasters and fixing them and that sort of thing. But as I grew up, it became a passion to make some sort of big change—to have an impact on global challenges.”

What’s bigger than the business? “People are all debating whether spending is going to be down 10 percent or 15 percent for the long term? I’m not even sure that’s the right question, because I think people have learned they can’t outspend their means anymore. And that to me is not a bad outcome.”

BY GALEN MOORE, Reporter

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Jonathan Seelig on Scott Griffith

Globespan Capital Partners managing director Jonathan Seelig was an investor in Zipcar and was on the search committee that hired Griffith.

What makes Griffith suited for startups?
“He’s an open sort of thinker. We realized the next stage of the company’s growth was going to take some trial and error. All of these elements were up for debate and decision, and we felt that Scott didn’t come in with a lot of preconceptions about how to do things.”

What makes him tick?
Scott is a little bit of a gearhead. He gets very excited, for example, about the fleet: about having conversations with car manufacturers about what’s next in their line.

Something others may not know: I’ve seen Scott do a mean Elvis impersonation at the company Halloween party.

Community

Scott Kirsner

Who he is: Co-founder of Future Forward Events LLC, which produces the Nantucket Conference; Columnist and blogger at the Boston Globe; author of several books, most recently “Fans, Friends & Followers.”

Education: Bachelor’s degree in communications from Boston University.

Favorite accomplishment: “I am not sure I have accomplished anything of substance. But my writing career has taken me to the White House, the United Nations, the tunnels beneath Walt Disney World, Google, George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, Pixar, the Guinness brewery in Dublin and the Sundance Film Festival. Of all those places, the food at Google is the best.”

Toughest challenge professionally: “One of the things I work on is trying to put together gatherings like Future Forward and the Nantucket Conference that attract busy, smart, powerful people for a day or two. Giving them a good reason to come is always a challenge.”

What helped to shape him: “I lived out in Silicon Valley for two and a half years. When I came back to Boston in 2007 I think I saw things in a new way. We have incredibly strong clusters here in areas like life sciences, online travel, defense tech, digital measurement, robotics—and I wanted to find ways we can both help those clusters grow, and bring more global attention to them.”

What downtime looks like: “I cross-country ski and snowboard in the winter, bike and wakeboard in the summer, when the opportunity presents itself. I enjoy ‘open studios’ weekends and all kinds of museums. I dabble a bit in making mosaics and have been learning how to surf, slowly.”

Mentors: “I’ve been inspired (and maybe mentored) by lots of people I’ve met, including inventor Dean Kamen, MIT professor Woodie Flowers, and some magazine people I’ve worked with, like Lew McCreary of CIO Magazine; media entrepreneur Scott Cohen; and Bill Taylor and Alan Webber, the co-founders of Fast Company. Those people have taught me about either writing better or thinking more deeply or just not being lazy.”

What about an “anti-mentor?” “I think there are a lot of public-company CEOs and successful venture capitalists whom I consider anti-mentors. Too many of them don’t spend five minutes a year thinking about replenishing the pond—helping get students interested in entrepreneurship or mentoring first-time founders. They know who they are. I’m getting ready to start naming names if they don’t shape up.”

If you could do something besides journalism/writing, what would it be? “I’m really interested in nonprofits that get kids excited about careers in science and technology, so I’d probably be involved with one of those. Either that, or teach snowboarding somewhere in New England.”

BY DOUG BANKS, Editor

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Shayne Gilbert on Scott Kirsner

Shayne Gilbert of Future Forward and an MHT All Star 1998; Founder, Silverweave; author, 90 Days to Launch

What do you know about Scott nobody else in tech would know?
He wrote his first novel before he was a teenager.

If he walked away from his job today, what would you want him to do next?
Produce an award-winning documentary about an obscure New England startup company that makes it really, really big.

What’s the No. 1 thing that makes him a good journalist?
Scott doesn’t accept the status quo. He’s willing to take chances and change public perception. It’s not just a day job for Scott.

What’s one of his assets that doesn’t get enough attention?
Scott is an amazing team player and a great connector for the industry as a whole. He has the ability to see challenges from multiple perspectives and come up with balanced solutions. In this spirit of understanding and camaraderie, he works on many ideas and projects, many of which are not money-making, to help advance the needs of others.

Health Care

Joseph Kvedar

Who he is: Director of the Center for Connected Health at Partners HealthCare, where his mission is to change the way health care is delivered and managed, providing better, more cost-efficient and more effective health care to everyone.

Education: Bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Vermont

What makes him tick: You needn’t look any further than his computer’s hard drive. He keeps a quote from Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” close at hand, which he reads periodically when the going gets tough. It reads, in part, “there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”

About his accomplishments: “These are accomplishments for the Center of Connected Health, not just me. … That’s really the vehicle for these accomplishments—the team around me. We have a symposium every year that keeps growing. It’s become the conference to go to around this topic. I’m really proud of that. The team has developed the ability to understand adoption and I’m proud of that. It’s interesting to watch a project go through these stages where people first resist it, then there’s some early adoption, and finally people originally resisting it now recommend it.

We have a monitoring program called Connected Cardiac Care, which is designed to keep heart failure patients in the home.”

Starting in 1997, Kvedar and his team “cobbled something together,” creating a concept that for years went nowhere for a number of reasons. But they persevered, and it became the first example of a connected-health approach.

His inspiration: “My mom and dad gave me the rudder of integrity and honesty. I think that’s been a huge part of any success I’ve had. It’s been helpful in weathering some tough times.”

The opportunity: He is a big believer in the power of change, recognizing the opportunity Barack Obama has provided for looking at models of health care reform. “Once we get this access and coverage issue resolved, we’ll be able to turn our attention to delivery. So we’ll have plenty to do, both here at Partners and nationally.”

BY JIM SCHAKENBACH, Special to Mass High Tech

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John Glaser on Joseph Kveda

John Glaser is vice president and CIO at Partners Healthcare

What drives Joe Kvedar:
“He truly believes taking care of patients and curing disease is what it’s all about. He believes connected health has huge power. He’s almost evangelical about it.”

What don’t people know about him?
“His roots are in Vermont and he’s very soft-spoken, almost self-effacing, which masks this fierce determination.”

What makes him an effective leader?
“He’s a terrific mentor and boss. His staff almost worships him. He has management sophistication to go with his technical smarts.”

If he had another job, what would it be?
“I don’t really know. But he’s one of those people who, when they become engaged in something, that thing happens. He’s the type that just can’t shake the conviction that this thing, whatever it is, needs to be brought to life.”

Entrepreneurship

Patrick Larkin

Who he is: Director, John Adams Innovation Institute at Mass. Technology Collaborative; former aide to U.S. Rep Silvio Conte.

Education: Georgetown University Law Center; Boston College, bachelor’s in political science; Berkshire Community College, associate’s degree.

Favorite accomplishment: “Raising my children. My last child started college this year, so I’m entering a new phase. Professionally, we’re in our fifth year at the institute, and I don’t know at what point you plant the flag and say you’re successful, but establishing the institute has been very satisfying. It has set the trend with regard to how some states think about economic development. Let’s take California: They don’t have an institute like ours, and I’ve heard them say how much they envy that.”

Toughest challenge professionally: “Trying to inspire leadership and participation among all the stakeholder groups we work with. Trying to get them to share and participate in the risk and in the rewards of economic development, helping them understand what success can look like in the world.”

Personal challenges: “I would say that, in life, I’ve kind of had to fight for all of the opportunities that I’ve achieved.“

What’s on your nightstand right now? “Care of the Soul” by Thomas Moore. I just finished “Practicing Catholic” by James Carroll.

Mentors: “Silvio Conte. He took me to places at such a very young age that few people have had the ability to experience. He was an inspirational and charismatic leader, which I admire. He was a consummate dealmaker, and he knew what was in the realm of the possible.

Anti-mentors: “I don’t like unbridled ambition and self-aggrandizement. It is so corrosive to success and to the public good.”

If you could effect just one change in the N.E. tech community, what would it be? “There’s always an attitude that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. I would have the tech community understand and appreciate what is really indigenous to this region, what the opportunities are, because I think at the end of the day, this region’s capabilities equal or exceed any other’s.”

BY DOUG BANKS, Editor

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Michael Greeley on Patrick Larkin

Michael Greeley is a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners and is chair of the Entrepreneurship Committee of the Mass. Information Collaborative.

What’s Pat like to work with?
“Pat is one of the most articulate passionate public servants I have ever met. He has a wonderful ability to frame an issue and marshal the right resources to see that it gets done, and done at a very high professional level.”

For example:
“I am always struck at the breadth and depth of Pat’s staff. More often than not, he brings more people from his office than attend the entire IT Collaborative meetings!”

An asset that doesn’t get enough attention:
He has a very keen fashion sense in how he matches ties with various patterned shirts (Note: Greeley should know;, having been voted one of the 100 best-dressed Bostonians).

Security

Stephen Orenberg

Who he is: President, Kaspersky Lab Americas

Track record: Former president at Sophos Inc., Dr. Solomon’s Software Inc. and Netguard Inc.; former CEO at Sprockets Inc.

Education: M.A., Emerson College

What makes him tick: In 2003, he attended a conference, and sat next to Natalya Kaspersky, CEO of the Russian antivirus software maker Kaspersky Lab. Two years later, when Kaspersky Lab was planning its move into the American market, she hired Orenberg to run it. He took a five-employee operation to 135 employees. Orenberg said the security startup still has him excited to get out of bed in the morning. “If you’re complacent, the ship’s going to pass you by.”

What’s next? Orenberg wants Kaspersky to expand its presence in Latin America. He also said the company would focus on becoming profitable in 2010.

Accomplishments: Kaspersky Americas’ growth and mentoring other entrepreneurs. “Hopefully I’ve gotten a little better at (entrepreneurship) each time.”

Outside the office: He’s gotten better on the links, recently breaking 90 on the golf course. Orenberg called that feat much harder than starting a company. “It only took 10 years.”

Mentorship: Of all the mentors he’s had, his grandfather influenced him the most. He was a Russian immigrant who took a two-hour train ride from Brookline to work at the Quincy Shipyard every day for 60 years, and instilled the work ethic need to be an entrepreneur.

Anti-mentors: “Narcissistic, megalomaniacal entrepreneurs.”

BY BRENDAN LYNCH, Interactive Editor

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Tamela Gates May on Stephen Orenberg

Tamela Gates May is a sales director for Kaspersky Lab Americas.

Steve Orenberg has also spent time mentoring others, such as May, who now has worked with Orenberg at two companies. She said Orenberg has served as a mentor for more than 20 years. He was her first manager when May was starting out in sales, and he has an “upfront, honest management style,” and makes decisions democratically.

She works as Kaspersky Lab Americas’ senior director of national reseller sales for the U.S. and Canada. May has watched Orenberg’s career has take off since she first worked for him 20 years ago, but he hasn’t changed in the intervening time.

Social Media

Dharmesh Shah

Who he is: Chief technology officer and founder of HubSpot Inc., where he heads up HubSpot Labs, which developed the company’s social media applications.

Track record: Founded Pyramid Digital Solutions Inc., which sold to SunGard Data Systems.

Education: M.S., MIT Sloan School of Management; B.S., University of Alabama Birmingham.

What makes him tick: He isn’t the typical brash, outgoing entrepreneur. He looks at the world with what he calls a “pragmatic passion,” being neither overly optimistic, nor overly pessimistic.

Looking Back: People he went to high school with in India would be surprised at his career choice. “I would have probably been voted least likely to start a business.”

Shah the investor: Besides his pride in his startups, he’s proud of his track record as an investor. As of September he’d made 11 investments in startups, including Twitter app store OneForty Inc. He’ also invested in LifeStream Backup, a company that backs up your social networking activity; and Shareaholic, which makes a plugin that lets users share web content across their social networks. “It’s really fun to live vicariously through entrepreneurs,” he said.

And Shah the author: Shah and HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan wrote the newly released “Inbound Marketing: Get Found in Google, Blogs and Social Media.” In his usual writing routine of blogging at OnStartups.com he gets incremental, constant feedback. Not so with the book. “You’re off in a dark corner for months,” he said.

Mentorship: When Shah was starting Hubspot, he asked Constant Contact CEO (and 2009 MHT All-Star) Gail Goodman to discuss his plans for the startup. Goodman was generous with her time, even though she had no idea who he was. She even took a board seat.

BY BRENDAN LYNCH, Interactive Editor

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Gail Goodman on Dharmesh Shah

Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman said someone she respected—she couldn’t recall who—must have introduced her to Shah and his co-founder, HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, otherwise she likely wouldn’t have taken the meeting.

“What was clear was they were going to get there or die trying,” she said.

Goodman, who sits on the company’s board, said Shah stood out as a driven technical entrepreneur with a good understanding of the customer.

She did remember the pair being smart and energetic, with an impressive toy to show off—HubSpot’s Website Grader.

During Shah’s demo of Website Grader, Goodman noticed the tool returned a full report without asking any information of the user. She suggested a tweak—the product should ask for an email address and send the full report later. Three months later, she said Shah and Halligan mentioned how helpful grabbing that information was.

Pharmaceuticals

Roger Tung

Education: Ph.D., medicinal chemistry, University of Wisconsin Madison

Who he is: CEO and president of Concert Pharmaceuticals Inc., where in 2009 he concluded a partnering deal with GlaxoSmithKline valued at over $1 billion.

His track record: As a co-founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. with Richard Aldrich, Tung co-invented two key HIV protease inhibitors, marketed as Agenerase and Lexiva, which he calls two of his most important achievements. “HIV was thought of as a deadly disease. It had a 100 percent fatality rate. These two inhibitors are one of the most remarkable stories in the fight against HIV. They had a dramatic affect on patients’ lives.”

After spending 16 years at Vertex, Tung took a couple of years off to be the primary caretaker of his two young children before co-founding Concert in 2006 and raising more than $110 million to focus on the next generation of HIV drug therapies.

In addition to HIV therapies, he has led development on other drug R&D projects over the years, including Telapravir, a Phase 3 Hepatitis C inhibitor, and the Phase 3 ion channel activator for cystic fibrosis, VX 770.

His mission: With more than 20 years of experience in drug discovery, he is committed to finding ways to reduce the time and expense it takes to develop drugs and bring them to market. “The pharmaceutical industry is carrying out a lot of experiments on its business model. The industry model doesn’t work very well and we’re trying to find ways to fix it. We don’t know the answer yet, but it will look a lot different than it does now. Hopefully, we at Concert will be part of the process.”

What makes him tick: “Being in health care, you have the opportunity to make a living and have a tangible affect on a lot of people’s lives. That’s deeply satisfying.”

BY JIM SCHAKENBACH, Special to Mass High Tech

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Richard H. Aldrich on Roger Tung

Richard H. Aldrich, managing director of investment firm RA Capital Management LLC co-founded Vertex with Tung.

What sets him apart from other scientists?
“Roger Tung is the best ‘drug hunter’ I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with a lot of scientists over the years. What really distinguishes Roger from everyone else is that he is all about finding a drug that can be really useful for patients. He’s not interested in impressing people with papers.”

An example of his work ethic
“At Vertex, we were running neck and neck with Merck and Warner-Lambert to develop an HIV protease inhibitor. Roger worked night and day, going full blast for a couple of years to come up with a breakthrough compound. He doesn’t stop.”

Why did you invest in Concert Pharmaceuticals?
“Roger Tung’s all about coming up with the drug—no one does it better. When Roger came to me in 2006 with the idea for Concert, I knew I wanted to be involved.”

Hardware

Russell Wilcox

Who he is: President and CEO of Cambridge-based electronic paper display developer E-Ink

What makes him tick: Passion has been a cornerstone in his life, enabling him to rack up an impressive professional track record, including most recently Ernst & Young’s 2009 Entrepreneur of The Year. As a businessman in a scientific world, Wilcox discovered early on that he was drawn toward the business end of things. “I loved science in high school, but I realized in college that I was really drawn more toward business. What I love about it is the huge room you have to be creative. That’s just fun. … I really like passionate people—people who love what they’re doing, no matter what it is. If you really like to sell hot dogs, I’m going to like you.”

Education: Bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics, Harvard University; MBA, Harvard Business School

Making a difference: “We are all connected by the human condition. It’s important to find meaning in your life and make your time count.” He is doing just that with E-Ink, developing breakthrough technology in the form of thin, paper-like electronic displays used in a wide range of products, such as e-books. ”I think this technology will have a profound effect on civilization. It will revolutionize how people read and look at things.”

Accomplishments: “Six years ago, E-Ink was almost out of money. We burned a lot of cash, and all we had to show for the investment was some paper patents. But people saw the passion in our company and enabled us to keep plugging away at it to make it successful. We didn’t give up, and that’s what counts.”

On family: “I’ve been doing tech entrepreneurship for 14 years, and I’m proud to say my family’s still together. I’ve seen a lot of people go through the stress of running a startup and not having enough cash to pay people and it’s hard. I’m proud of my family for sticking together through all that and for letting me do this.”

BY JIM SCHAKENBACH, Special to Mass High Tech

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J.D. Albert on Russell Wilcox

J.D. Albert is director of engineering at SRS Energy in Philadelphia and was a co-founder of E-Ink with Wilcox.

What’s Russ Wilcox like to work with?
“Russ has this nervous energy about him. When he’s excited about something, he almost jumps out of his chair. He’s a very intense person, very passionate about what he does.”

An example of his passion?
“When we first started E-Ink, the technology worked at a high voltage. You needed a microscope to see what was going on and we had to use alligator clips to hold things down. Russ was really excited to see how it worked and jumped right in. We kept telling him to be careful, but he grabbed the wrong thing and got quite a shock. That didn’t stop him, though, he was still interested.”

What makes him unique:
“He’s got an incredibly sharp mind. He can think strategically and raise money but he wants to know technically what’s going on beyond just a basic understanding.”