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NEA ANNOUNCES INVESTING STAFF PROMOTIONS
Harry Weller Named General Partner; Rohini Chakravarthy and Jon Sakoda Promoted to Partner; Ali Behbahani Named Principal
Chevy Chase, MD – September 30, 2008 – New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA), a leading global venture capital firm, today announced several promotions within the organization. Harry Weller was named General Partner; Rohini Chakravarthy and Jon Sakoda were promoted to Partner; and Ali Behbahani, M.D., was promoted to Principal.
”NEA has grown considerably in recent years, and these promotions speak to both the depth of talent within our organization and the truly outstanding contributions Harry, Rohini, Jon and Ali have made to the firm and to our portfolio companies,” said Peter J. Barris, Managing General Partner of NEA. “We congratulate each and look forward to their continued success in their new roles.”
Harry Weller joined NEA in 2002. He focuses on technology and renewable energy investments, as well as NEA’s activities in China. His current board memberships include Availink, Clearspring, Echo Global, Informance, Leadtone, MediaBank, Play Hard Sports, Realtime Worlds and Suniva; other investments include GlobalLogic, Pentaho and Vertica. Mr. Weller’s past board seats and investments include Innerworkings, Riverbed Technologies (acquired by Aether Systems), SourceFire, Vonage and webMethods (acquired by Software AG). Prior to joining NEA, Mr. Weller was a Partner at FBR Technology Venture Partners where he worked with several successful startup teams. Early in his career, he managed strategy and technology initiatives in the financial, energy and telecommunications industries for the Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte & Touche Management Consulting. Prior to his business career, Mr. Weller served as an officer in the U.S. Navy. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School and his bachelor’s degree in Physics from Duke University. Mr. Weller serves on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (MAVA), is a past Chairman of MAVA Capital Connection, and co-founded the Young Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (YAVA). Network Magazine named him one of the 50 Most Powerful People in Networking, and he has been honored numerous times in Forbes magazine’s “Midas List” as one of the most successful venture capitalists in America.
Rohini Chakravarthy joined NEA in 2007 and focuses on information and energy technology investments. She is a board member of Plusmo, Inc. and Wi-Chi Semiconductor and also serves as a board observer at Fusion-io, VuClip, TechForward, Cleeves Engines and Telsima. Prior to joining NEA, Ms. Chakravarthy was most recently with Cisco Systems as Head of Wireless, Corporate Business Development, where she set strategy and led an acquisitions and investments team for growing Cisco’s wireless businesses. Prior to Cisco, she spent more than seven years at Intel Capital as a Senior Investment Manager, where she invested in several companies, spanning semiconductors, systems and service provider markets. While at Intel, she also led Intel’s early WiMAX investments and provided strategic advice to Intel’s WiMAX business groups. Ms. Chakravarthy started her career as a design engineer at Bay Networks, working on Ethernet chips and hardware. She received an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Ms. Chakravarthy also holds a master's degree from Case Western Reserve University and a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology – Madras, both in Electrical Engineering.
Jon Sakoda joined NEA in 2006 and focuses on technology and renewable energy investments. He is a Director of Suniva, Inc. and led NEA's investments in SunEdison and Spring Wireless. He also serves as a board observer to BandGap, Channel Advisor, Dexterra, JobFox and Thumbplay. Prior to joining NEA, Mr. Sakoda was co-founder of IMlogic, Inc. (acquired by Symantec Corporation) and served as its Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Products. He was also Senior Director of Product Management for Enterprise Message Management at Symantec Corporation, a position he assumed following Symantec’s acquisition of IMlogic. Prior to IMlogic, Mr. Sakoda worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. where he focused on venture capital investments for their Private Equity Group. He earned his A.B. degree at Harvard University in Chemistry.
Ali Behbahani, M.D., joined NEA’s healthcare team in 2007 and specializes in healthcare investments in the biopharmaceutical, medical device, specialty pharmaceutical and healthcare services sectors. Prior to joining NEA, Dr. Behbahani worked as an intern and later as a consultant in business development at The Medicines Company, a specialty pharmaceutical company developing acute care cardiovascular products. He previously held positions as a Venture Associate at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners and as a Healthcare Investment Banking Analyst at Lehman Brothers. He conducted basic science research in the fields of viral fusion inhibition and structural proteomics at the National Institutes of Health and at Duke University. Dr. Behbahani concurrently earned his medical degree from The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and his MBA degree from The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, where he graduated with Honors and was a Palmer Scholar. He graduated summa cum laude and received his bachelor’s degrees with distinction in Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Chemistry from Duke University.
08/10/2008
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