Ascend Executive Network (AEN) Forum
Speaker Bios
Win Chang
Solution Engineer Director
North America, Oracle
Win Chang is Oracle's North America Government and Education Solution Engineer Director. She began her career as a software engineer, developing financial application solutions at Texas Eastern. In 1990, Win joined Oracle as a technical support manager, providing exceptional customer service. Later, she worked as an Applications Sales Consulting Manager for several years, managing a global Solution Engineers. Win also worked at Siebel Systems and Hyperion before joining LogicalApps as the Customer Experience Vice President with responsibility for several business lines, including consulting services, customer success, education, and customer support. She grew the consulting services portfolio by 200% and received the highest customer experience ratings. In 2008, Oracle acquired LogicalApps; over the last few years, she has held several critical roles at Oracle, including Key Account Director, Customer Success Director, Cloud Accelerator Director, and Cloud Customer Experience Director.
In October 2021, she received the FY21 Government and Education Leadership Award for her commitment to Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, Trust, Quality, Leadership, Business Results, and Diversity & Inclusion. Win was the recipient of the Oracle CEO's Cup Award for account management excellence in 2011, 2013, and 2014.
Over the last 12 years, she has served as the Oracle Women's Leadership Redwood Shores community leader, focused on giving back to the community, professional development, and empowering women to lead beyond. This community delivers monthly events to the Oracle Women's Leadership community. Win was honored with the YWCA Silicon Valley 2014 TWIN award, the 2015 Professional Businesswomen of California (PBWC) Industry Leader award, and the 2016 Powerful Women of the Bay award.
Win is the founder and served six years as the chairperson for the Oracle Professional Asian Leadership (OPAL) Employee Resource Group. She currently serves as an executive advisor to OPAL. Today, OPAL has over 27 communities globally with over 5000 members. OPAL is an organization that inspires Oracle employees to leverage the ERG platform to build Asian culture awareness, career development, professional development, cross-company collaboration as well as engagement with the external community.
Win serves as the Member at Large on the Executive Board for the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on raising awareness of the experience of immigrants into America through the Pacific. In 2021, Win joined the board of ASCEND NorCal, a non-profit Pan-Asian organization for business professionals. Lastly, she is an active mentor for Women Unlimited Inc., an organization focused on leadership, education, and networking.
Win was born in China, grew up in Miami, Florida, and now lives in Redwood Shores, California, with her husband, Mike Chang, and children, Nicholas, Madison, and Michael. She is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. She also enjoys traveling, cooking, and succulent gardening.
Victor Cho
CEO/Board Member/Advisor
Evite, IMA, and Modo Payments
A passionate consumer advocate, Cho was most recently the CEO at Evite where he led the company successfully through COVID19 and returned it to growth, financial health, and a successful corporate buy-out. Before that Cho was the CEO during a multi-year turnaround effort at Kodak Gallery (formerly ofoto.com). He served as the Vice President and leader of Intuit’s web channel, taking the business from $300 million to $1.3 billion+. Cho also spent seven years at Microsoft, where he launched some of the company's earliest Internet commerce and SaaS initiatives.
Cho has received numerous awards for his work, including being named the Internet Person of the Year by the Internet Marketing Association and receiving a Knighthood from the Royal House of Savoy for his philanthropic efforts--which have raised over $30M for charities and non-profits. He is also the creator of the 4th Stakeholder Framework (www.4thstakeholder.com) on improving stakeholder capitalism.
Daniel Chu
Chief Product Officer
23andme
Dan Chu joined 23andMe as Chief Product Officer in September 2022, as the company embarks on transforming healthcare to deliver a more personalized experience.
Prior to 23andMe, Dan was the Chief Product Officer for Waymo where he launched the world's first commercial fully autonomous ride-hailing service. He oversaw the product management, program management, UX design/research, industrial design, product data science and strategy teams for Waymo. Before Waymo, Dan led the Google Maps platform product team, which included the Google Maps API, one of the most popular APIs of all time.
He holds a B.S. and AB from Stanford University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Kats Furuyama
Co-President, Ascend NorCal
HR Business Partner, Robert Half International
Kats Furuyama is the Co-President of Ascend NorCal and has been a member for over eight years, first stepping into a leadership role in 2019 as N. California Co-Vice President of Student Affairs and, shortly after, Vice President of Membership. He is the HR Business Partner at Robert Half International, a global talent solutions firm and parent company of consulting firm Protiviti. He is passionate and dedicated to serving as a collective voice for Pan-Asian communities and giving back with various philanthropic efforts such as Ascend Cares: Feed Our Hospital and Feed Our Future. Outside of work, he enjoys running full marathons, cycling, and cooking.
Buck Gee
Executive Advisor
Ascend
Mr. Gee retired in 2008 from Cisco Systems, where he was Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center Business Unit. He joined Cisco with its 2004 acquisition of Andiamo Systems where Mr. Gee was President and CEO. Buck Gee is the co-founder of the Advanced Leadership Program for Asian American Executives at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Since 2010, the executive education program has provided leadership training to over 500 Asian American executives from over 100 companies such as Microsoft, Google, HSBC, Chevron, and IBM. He has co-authored many Ascend Foundation research papers on the topic of the Asian glass ceiling, analyzing EEOC workforce data that show that Asians are the most likely to be hired into the white-collar workforce, but least likely to reach executive positions.
Jimmy Hua
Lead Software Engineer
Salesforce
By day, Jimmy is a Lead Software Engineer at Salesforce. He has been in the tech industry for over a decade and has almost a dozen patents under his belt. He was one of the founders of Asiapacforce (Asian Equality Group, ERG) at Salesforce. With Salesforce's Office of Equality; he developed the Equality Network for Salesforce. Equality Network is a platform and tool whose mission is "To empower ERGs in their vision, measure their impact to stakeholders, and engage with the community and employees".
Through different conferences he spoke at, Jimmy met many peers of like mind around the area of equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion. ERG leaders were looking for other leaders to learn from and be part of a community. With peers, Jimmy and others founded Asian Leaders Alliance to be that community, whose mission is "To equip and empower Asian Pacific Islanders and allies to develop as leaders in the workplace and communities, to advocate, serve, and drive collective impact through ERGs and partner organizations"
Jimmy is also an entrepreneur, angel investor, and philanthropist. He is involved in many initiatives and organizations.
Binita Pradhan
Partner
BDO, USA, LLP
Binita leads BDO’s West Region Third Party Attestation practice with over 20 years in public accounting, starting with Coopers and Lybrand and is a member of the AICPA SOC 2 Task Force that authors SOC 2 guides; and the AICPA SOC Supply Chain Task Force that authors SOC for supply chain guides. She is a member of BDO’s nominating committee. She is also the national co-leader for BDO’s Multicultural Alliance, that focuses on the firm’s DEI efforts.
She was recognized as one of the most influential businesswomen in the Bay Area by San Francisco Business Times for 2018 and also servers on Ascend NorCal Board. She was recognized by Ascend with a High Impact Leader award in 2018.
Binita has experience working with a wide range of industries including technology, financial services, professional services, healthcare, and governmental organizations. She is a member of BDO’s Third Party Attestation Working Group that sets the methodology and practice standards for third party attestation service within BDO.
Faye Sahai
Partner
Telosity by Vinaj Ventures
Faye Sahai is currently Partner at Telosity by Vinaj Ventures, investing in digital wellness and behavioral health startups with the www.Telosity.co touching the lives of millions. Prior, she has 25+ year experience in healthcare, financial institutions, and insurance innovation and investment executive at Kaiser Permanente, Schwab, AIG, Blue Shield and Deloitte Consulting and founded 3 of her own startups.
She has served an Advisor and Board member to over a dozen companies including Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, UCSF Catalyst, ANA Innovation Advisory, Samsung Emerging Technology Advisory, Innovation Executive Forum, Summer Search, Autonomous ID, &Ascend Leadership NorCal Chair.
Faye has been recognized by Insurance Business Hot 100 and Elite Women in Insurance Business America, Tech for Good Women in Tech, Ascend Leadership Award, Computer World’s Top Premier IT Leaders, Stevie Awards Women helping Women, Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Kaiser Permanente Asian Community and Innovation Enterprise Best Ideation Award.
Hitesh Shah
Director, Business Development, BDO
Board Member at Parents Helping Parents (PHP)
Hitesh Shah has more than 30 years of experience spanning startup through venture financing and eventual M&A exits in multiple high technology companies. He has in-depth experience in people management, finance, venture capital, business development, product management, business planning and customer service. Hitesh has raised over $100M in venture capital for four different startups.
Prior to joining BDO, Hitesh has served in multiple executive roles as CFO, COO, and CEO. He was the Chief Operating Officer at Solum an Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Google Ventures funded company which was acquired by Monsanto. Hitesh also served as CEO and COO at Fat Spaniel Technologies acquired by Power-One and CFO at iPolicy Networks which was acquired by Tech Mahindra in India.
Hitesh serves on the Executive Leadership Council of Parents Helping Parents (PHP), an organization whose mission is to empower families to build bright futures for children with special needs. He also serves as a board director of Human Needs Project (HNP), an organization focused on alleviating poverty.
Prasanth Vadlamudi
Sr. Director, Global Cloud Compliance
Cisco
Prashant Vadlamudi is a senior leader with experience in information security, trust, and compliance. He has deep expertise in cloud security and global certifications combined with a passion for tackling massive, industry-wide security challenges. He excels at data-driven, security decision-making and applies a pragmatic risk management approach.
Prashant heads Cisco Global Cloud Compliance as a senior director within the Security and Trust Organization. He is responsible for delivering a security and compliance baseline for all Cisco SaaS offers.
Before Cisco, Prasant served as the Head of Adobe’s Technology Governance, Risk and Compliance group for Adobe Services. He was the key architect of the Adobe Common Controls Framework (CCF), which became the foundation for all Adobe certification and trust strategies and unlocked global sales opportunities for their SaaS offers.
Prashant believes in being a team player and building future security leaders
Kurtis Yang
Sr. Director, Customer Experience
Cisco
Kurtis Yang is a senior director in the Customer Experience organization and has been at Cisco for over 20 years. His first 7 years was in APAC leading technical and logistics support for customers and partners. In 2006, he relocated to San Jose and held various leadership roles including operations, business intelligence and CX practices. A few of his accomplishments include implementing the Net Promoter System across Services, improving Cisco’s installed base data quality and driving Ease of Doing Business efforts to improve customer satisfaction.
Kurtis is an active leader in diversity and inclusion efforts. He’s the global lead Cisco’s Connected Asian Affinity Network ERG. Under his leadership, CAAN has grown from 1 US chapter to 12 chapters globally including in Europe, Asia and LATAM. CAAN has raised over $830,000 in 4yrs to benefit 50+ charities and led Cisco’s first ever “World Social Justice Week” in 2021, a collaboration with many Cisco ERGs. Kurtis is the inaugural recipient of the Leadership Excellence award from Cisco’s Office of Inclusion and Collaboration and CAAN received Ascend’s ERG leadership award in 2016.
Program Partners
