2012 Speakers
Morning Keynote:
Matt Sanchez, CEO, SAY Media
Matt co-founded VideoEgg, now SAY Media, with two Yale classmates in late 2004. Prior to VideoEgg he co-founded a production company focused on helping non-profits develop cost-effective public service announcements. Matt is a member of YPO and serves on the board of the Yale Entrepreneurial Society. He holds a BS from Yale University.
Chris Tobin, VP of People and Places, SAY Media
Chris is responsible for Human Resources, Information Technology and Workplace Resources at SAY Media. Before joining SAY Media, Chris held senior HR and Organization Development leadership roles at eBay, Sun Microsystems, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Chris holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from Alliant International University.
VP Panel:
Panel Moderator
Rebecca Guerra, Executive VP for Talent Acquisition and Care, Infoblox
Rebecca Guerra is a seasoned Human Resources executive with over 30 years experience working for market-leading companies in Silicon Valley. At present, she is the Executive Vice President for Talent Acquisition and Care at Infoblox, a software and appliance technology company which creates network automation software and tools.
For four years prior, she served as Managing Director for the HR and leadership consulting practice of The Palmer Advantage. Prior to transitioning into her consulting role, Guerra served with Extreme Networks’ founding executive team as the Vice President, Human Resources and immediately prior to that, in the same capacity for Riverstone Networks.
Before August of 2000, she was the first Vice President of Human Resources at eBay Inc., the world's largest person-to-person on-line trading community establishing the strategic direction of the HR function and assisted with the formation of the eBay Foundation. Prior to joining eBay, she was Sr. Vice President of HR and Community Relations for Adobe Systems, Inc.
Rebecca has demonstrated success in all aspects of the Human Resources field. She has directed staffing and talent management, compensation and incentive strategies and organization and executive team coaching and development in rapidly evolving businesses. She has handled the human side of multiple mergers and acquisitions, senior leadership succession and the development of high integrity, employee-engaged cultures.
She sits on the Board of Trustees for the University of Santa Clara and the Urbanek Levy Scholarship Fund. She holds both her BS degree and MBA in finance from Santa Clara University. In her spare time, she runs her Jack Russell Terriers, collects wine, reads voraciously and when it isn’t snowing in the California Sierras, allowing her and her husband to ski, they can be found riding their motorcycles in the south Silicon Valley area where they live.
Amy Cappellanti-Wolf, Chief HR Officer, Silver Spring Networks
Amy Cappellanti-Wolf heads up Human Resources, Technical Education, and Facilities for Silver Spring Networks. Amy joined the smart energy, pre-IPO company in June of 2009, and in her nearly three-year tenure has been instrumental in helping the Company double in size, scale for growth and a public profile through infrastructure and technology, while also establishing programs and practices to attract, retain and develop talent.
Amy has extensive experience working in the high-technology, entertainment, and consumer products industries. Amy's prior roles include HR leadership at Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, The Walt Disney Company and Frito-Lay. She has significant experience in organizational design and development, talent and leadership management, change management and business partnering.
A native of West Virginia, Amy has a MS in Industrial and Labor Relations and a BS in Journalism and Public Relations, both from West Virginia University.
Amy is an avid runner. She has completed eight marathons, fund raising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and always finds herself in training mode. She is a proud parent along with her husband Doug, to her daughters Olivia and Chloe. She serves on both non-profit and private boards supporting areas of education and talent management.
Debi Hirshlag,Vice President of Human Resources, Workday
Debi joined Workday in January 2012. Her early priorities in the role include building a strong HR team to support the growth and global expansion of the company; developing creative HR programs which recognize and capitalize on the multi-cultural and multi-generational workforce Workday enjoys; and ensuring Workday has the “ready” talent needed to continue delighting their current customers and winning new ones.
Prior to Workday, Debi was Vice President, Global Human Resources at Flextronics where she led their multi-year Workday deployment; implemented and ran global HR Shared Services and managed the Learning Systems and site-based Human Resources organizations. Before Flextronics, Debi held Human Resources leadership roles at Trimble Navigation, Ariba and Latitude Communications; and early career roles with Seagate, Pepsi-Cola and Amoco Corporation. She has extensive international experience, including assignments in China and Malaysia.
Debi has a Masters in Labor and Industrial Relations from the University of Illinois and a Bachelors in Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University.
On the personal side, Debi enjoys a passion for shoe shopping, red wine, her three cats and time at her Santa Cruz beach house.
Dianne Mills, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, PayPal
Dianne Mills is an accomplished Human Resources and Business executive with nearly 30 years of experience working in the financial services sector world-wide. Currently, she is the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at PayPal, an eBay, inc. company, the faster, safer way to pay both online and offline.
While Dianne has spent the bulk of her career in HR, she began her career as a commercial banker and has served in several business role capacities at various times during her career. Most recently she served as the interim Head of Marketing for PayPal while maintaining her HR role. She attributes these business experiences with her ability to relate to business leaders and to translate business objectives into the HR strategies or interventions that drive real strategic value. She has enjoyed the benefit of diverse HR experiences -- working as a human resources business partner to numerous businesses and executives and from experience in staffing, and learning and organizational design roles. Before joining PayPal, Dianne was responsible for HR outside of the U. S. for Bank of America and was based out of London, England.
Dianne is a trusted advisor to PayPal executives. She is known as a practical, business-focused executive who makes values-based decisions that drive business outcomes. She has been instrumental in leading strategic conversations around organization and talent capabilities aligned to PayPal’s growth priorities and has been a driving force behind making people development a top priority for PayPal. Dianne has moved seamlessly between business and HR at both Bank of America and PayPal, creating a strong and impressive portfolio of strategic change and innovation successes across multiple businesses and internationally.
Dianne is married and lives with her family in Pleasanton, California. On the weekends she spends time at her younger daughter’s hunter / jumper competitions, visiting her older daughter at Baylor University or watching college sports, particularly for her Alma Mater, Virginia Tech.
Paul Whitney, Senior VP of Human Resources, DataDirect Networks
Paul Whitney has recently joined DataDirect Networks as Senior Vice President of Human Resources. DataDirect Networks is the worlds largest privately held data storage company and solves the biggest of “big data” storage issues in key sectors such as high performance computing (HPC), Cloud Content and Media and Federal markets. 60 of the worlds 100 largest computers rely on DataDirect Networks solutions to manage their data storage requirements. DataDirect Networks is growing rapidly, and Paul is tasked with building out the HR strategy and team to meet the business demands of this high growth company. His focus will be on establishing a high performance organization culture and delivering the supply of talent, whether internally or externally sourced, necessary to meet the growth challenges of the company. He is a firm believer in the use of technology to support the delivery of HR strategies and feels that an area of critical focus to achieve success is in the effective marketing of HR to the business.
Prior to DataDirect Networks, Paul served as SVP HR for Infinera Corporation from October 2006 until March 2012. Infinera was founded in 2000 and is now the #1 provider of long haul optical networking solutions in North America and #3 globally. Paul joined the company pre-IPO and built the HR organization and infrastructure from the ground up, supporting a 4x increase in revenue and 3x increase in headcount over the 5 ½ years of his tenure.
Prior to Infinera, Paul held VP HR roles with Portal Software, Parametric Technology and Knight Ridder Financial. Originally from the UK, these roles have taken him to New York, Boston and now the Bay Area. His earlier career was spent in International HR roles for US corporations including Sybase and Novell, both of whom experienced dynamic growth during his time with them and gave him the opportunity to live in Germany and Holland.
He feels fortunate to have had some great bosses and to have worked alongside some outstanding HR colleagues in delivering innovative HR programs, particularly in the areas of leadership development and performance management. Paul has recently decided that Sonoma is the place he wants to be when he isn’t working, so has purchased a home in the area which he escapes to most weekends. When not wine tasting he enjoys spending time with friends and family, hiking and all forms of music, although his public performance days are firmly behind him. He is an avid reader, seeking out new ideas wherever he can find them. He is also proud to currently serve as a Board Director of Sunnyvale Community Services, a not for profit aimed at reducing homelessness and hunger in the Sunnyvale area.
Advancing the development of the Human Resource profession in Northern California
