Who We Are: Ruth A. Stergiou

Founder of Invent Your Future Enterprises

Ruth Stergiou is the CEO and Co-Founder of Invent Your Future Enterprises, a professional development company that specializes in the retention, development and acceleration of women leaders. The company offers talent development programs; tools and toolkits; online and offline skill-building conferences; virtual events; and organizational consulting.

For 20 years, Ruth has run a thriving event production company, Planning Dynamics. In that role, she served for 19 years as the Founding Executive Director and event producer for the Professional BusinessWomen of California, building their two successful annual conferences in San Francisco and Sacramento to 5,000 and 3,000 attendees respectively.

Ruth also produced the highly-acclaimed California Governor’s Conference for Women
in Los Angeles for 17 years, working with four administrations, and building the
conference to over 10,500 participants. Her company also produced the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing from 1997-2009.

For fourteen years, Ruth served as a faculty member for San Jose State University’s Professional Development Center. She is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

Ruth is the recipient of the 2010 NAWBO Silicon Valley Enterprising Woman of the Year Award and 2010 Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal Top 100 Women of Influence Award. She has also been recognized by the Northern California Chapter of Meeting Professionals International with the Meeting Planner of the Year Award. Ruth holds a B.A. (Hons.) degree in Geography from Leeds University in England.

Officers

  • Telle Whitney, – President and CEO
  • James Beck, CPA & CMA, Managing Director & COO, Mayfield Fund – Treasurer, Vice President & Corporate Secretary

Corporate Counsel

  • Allison Spinner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Staff

Our Founder

Board of Trustees

  • Leah Jamieson, John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering and Ramsburg Distinguished Professor, Purdue University, Board Chair
  • Francine Berman, Vice President of Research and Professor of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – Vice Chair
  • Robin Abrams, Investor
  • Anushka Anand, Ph.D Candidate, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • James Beck, CPA & CMA, Managing Director and COO, Mayfield Fund – Treasurer, Vice President and Corporate Secretary
  • Mark Bregman, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Neustar
  • Debi Coleman, Managing Partner, SmartForest Ventures
  • Nancy E. Cooper, Retired, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, CA Technologies
  • Kelli Crane, Senior Vice President of Global Enterprise Information Solutions, LexisNexis
  • Nora Denzel, Senior Vice President, Big Data, Social Design and Marketing, Intuit
  • Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Knowledge, Google
  • Penny Herscher, President and CEO, firstRain
  • Kathy Hill, Senior Vice President, Development Strategy and Operations, Cisco Systems Inc.
  • Tracy S. Keogh, Executive Vice President, Human Resources, HP
  • Sarah Loos, Ph.D Candidate, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Brian Pawlowski, CTO and Senior Vice President, NetApp
  • Richard Rashid, Chief Research Officer, Microsoft
  • Justin Rattner, Senior Fellow and CTO, Intel
  • Mike Schroepfer, VP of Engineering, Facebook
  • Bill Unger, Partner Emeritus, Mayfield Fund
  • William Wulf, Former President, National Academy of Engineering
  • Telle Whitney, President and CEO, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
  • Margaret Ashida, Emerita (Term: 2003- 2009)
  • Linda Bernardi, Emerita (Term: 1996 -2006)
  • Wayne Johnson, Emeritus (Term: 2002-2008)
  • Maria Klawe, Emerita (Term: 1996-2011)
  • Greg Papadopoulos, Emeritus (Term: 1996 -2006)

Individual and Organizations

Board of Advisors