Lee Roberts
General Manager/Executive Vice President, IBM
Lee Roberts became general manager/executive vice president of IBM after IBM acquired FileNet in October of 2006 where he was chief executive officer and chairman from 1997-2007. He leads IBM’s Content, Human Centric Business Process, and Discovery business serving over 16,000 customers. He manages an organization of 3400 people with major development centers in Europe, North America, and Asia with operations in over 160 countries. IBM is the market leader in this space with over 25% market share and is growing rapidly.
Lee joined FileNet in 1997 and led the company’s transformation from a leading document management supplier to one of the industry's top Enterprise Content and Business Process Management providers. Under his leadership, the company has launched two core product families - Panagon and P8, and added industry-focused applications. Additionally, Lee has championed a number of initiatives aimed at leveraging FileNet's extensive customer base, global marketing presence, and vast R&D resources. His many contributions include the globalization of FileNet's sales, marketing, and support organizations to expand the company's presence in more than ninety-two countries.
Lee joined FileNet as president and chief operating officer in May 1997, was named chief executive officer in April 1998 and chairman in December 2000. Prior to FileNet, he spent twenty years at IBM in a variety of sales, marketing, product management, and general management roles. Lee holds two bachelor's degrees from California State University, San Bernardino, and a master's degree in business administration from the University of California, Riverside.
Paul Song
Chairman Of the Board
Early in his career, Paul Song joined Oracle Corporation in a consulting capacity and quickly moved into the management ranks. In 1990, he founded Aris Corporation, a provider of integrated e-business solutions with 1999 revenues of $118 million. In June 2000, Paul led a group of investors in the purchase of Aris Software, known today as Noetix Corporation.
Paul won the Seattle Chapter of the Korean-American Society's “Professional of the Year Award” in 1994, and in May 1997, he won the Ernst and Young “Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year” award in the service category. In 1998, Paul was awarded the “Rising Sun” award from the Asian Management Association/National Association of Asian American Professionals, and in 1999 he received a presidential appointment from President Clinton to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) as one of three business leaders to represent US business interests to APEC. Paul earned his master's degree in computer science from MIT and his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from General Motors Institute.
Steve Arnold
Managing Partner, Seattle
Polaris Venture Partners
Steve Arnold is a co-founder and managing general partner based in the Seattle office of Polaris. Along with Jon Flint and Terry McGuire, he founded Polaris in 1996. Steve focuses on investments in information technology.
Prior to starting Polaris, Steve served as a special advisor to Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. following more than ten years in executive positions in the software industry. He served as vice president of broadband media applications at Microsoft Corporation and as president and chief executive officer of Continuum Productions (now Corbis), a private company founded by Bill Gates to pioneer the creation of large digital libraries for online distribution. Before coming to Continuum, Steve served as vice president and general manager of LucasArts Games and Learning divisions, and vice president of the new media group at Lucasfilm Ltd. He continues to serve as vice chairman of the board of directors of the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
Steve represents Polaris on the boards of directors of Group Source Solutions, Impinj, MessageGate, Syncronex, Turbine Entertainment, and Noetix Corporation. Steve holds a bachelor's degree with honors from Macalester College and a master's degree and PhD from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco.
Peter Solvik
Managing Director,
Sigma Partners
Peter Solvik joined Sigma in 2002 with over twenty years of experience at leading high technology companies. Most recently he was senior vice president of Cisco Systems with worldwide responsibility for information technology, internet initiatives, and productivity strategy, reporting to chief executive officer John Chambers. He managed IT at Cisco for nearly ten years from January 1993 to September 2002, during the company's explosive growth from under $500 million to nearly $20 billion in annual sales run rate, was chief information officer from 1994 to 2001, and conceived and formed Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group. While at Cisco, Pete was named to the “CIO 100” four times by CIO Magazine, and was chosen as one of "the 25 most powerful executives in Networking" by Network World.
He has been quoted in articles on IT and e-business in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, The Economist, The New York Times, Information Week, CIO Magazine, and many other publications and books, and has been keynote speaker at over fifty industry conferences on information technology and e-business. He received a bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in information systems from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was recently appointed to the Board of Overseers of The College of Business. Pete is responsible for Sigma's investments in Digital Fuel Technologies, Encover, and Topio.