Leadership Team

Jishnu Bhattacharjee

Jishnu brings in hands-on familiarity with start-up dynamics, experience in managing cross-functional teams and leading projects from conception to release to production, abilities to innovate (have more than 10 issued US patents and 6 published papers), and strong connections with the silicon valley entrepreneurs and venture capital community. Before joining the GSB, Jishnu has worked in silicon-valley for 5 years as technical lead in start-up as well as mid-size companies. He holds MSEE from Georgia Tech, and B.Tech in Electronics and Communications, from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.

Jishnu’s expertise and interests span semiconductors, communication systems, consumer internet and clean tech.

Kelly Mayes

Kelly Mayes has six years of experience in internet software product management and product development.   She has worked at everything from a 12-person startup to large, leading companies like eBay, managing teams of up to 10 people in building web-based software from the ground up.   Most recently, she was the Senior Product Manager at Authorize.Net (formerly part of InfoSpace,) a leading eCommerce payment gateway, and was independently responsible for a product line worth $50M in annual revenue.   She also participated in due diligence on both sides of M&A activity as the company explored restructuring. 

She graduated with Honors from the University of Washington with a BS degree in Computer Science and a BS in Physics. During college she performed research at Princeton University, the Washington Technology Center and NASA, and was a teaching assistant for numerous undergraduate computer science courses.  She is primarily interested in consumer internet, interactive media, and mobile.

Avishai Shoham

Avishai has 9 years of in-depth technological R&D & leadership experience in a variety of fields from intelligence gathering systems to broadband communication. After serving in the Israeli Intelligence Services’ elite technological unit and as a counter-intelligence officer, Avishai joined a startup company as an RF & HW technician. This startup was later acquired by Texas Instruments.

During Avishai’s 7 years in TI, he has designed chips, initiated and created system performance benchmarking and developed ground breaking embedded software solutions for the mobile market, patenting the BT-WiFi co-existence algorithms. Avishai has led cross functional teams on projects, impacting product definition, managing the planning, development and testing phases and presenting the solution to customer senior managers.

Avishai has led the business development activities for AllCom Systems Engineering – a small technological startup in the Intelligence & Defense systems industry, creating company strategy leading to $125K revenue (30% revenue increase).

Avishai has a BSc in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, focusing on Signal Processing, Communications & Medical Devices.

Hugh Browne

Prior to the Stanford GSB, Hugh was an Associate with Morgan Stanley Venture Partners (MSVP), a late stage growth private equity fund with $1.2Bn under management which focuses on technology and healthcare investments.  As a member of the team, Hugh focused on technology investments and was responsible for sourcing, financial modeling, term negotiations, coordinating due diligence and working with portfolio company management teams.  While at MSVP Hugh completed six investments, two of which were successfully sold to Cisco (Airespace) and EMC (Avamar). He also served as a board observer for Soma Networks and Business Engine where he worked closely with management teams on financial and strategic issues.  Prior to joining MSVP, Hugh was a member of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer for Morgan Stanley where he co-founded and lead a team responsible for the evaluation of all the company's technology vendors and was the lead business development officer responsible for learning technologies at the firm.  Hugh graduated with honors with a BS in Computer Science from Washington University.  While in university he worked for Boeing's military R&D center in St. Louis designing propulsion systems and stress testing software.  He also spent a semester in Germany working on strategic marketing for Moeller GmbH.  Hugh's entrepreneurial interest include the effect of mobile technologies and consumer behavior.