Sidd Goyal is March CEO (Boston)

Congratulations to Sidd Goyal, who is stepping up as March CEO for TLP Boston.

Sidd is CoFounder & CTO of Assured Labor Inc. a web-based company that leverages the power of SMS and the Internet to connect employers and workers in emerging markets. Sidd and his co-founders successfully raised funding over the last three months during his fellowship at TLP. Sidd is traveling back and forth to Nicaragua these days supporting the launch of Assured Labor's Latin America job marketplace, Empleolisto!

Sidd has extensive background in mobile and wireless technologies having worked with the co-inventor of the SyncML specification on an early implementation of the protocol as a college intern, co-founded a startup in the enterprise mobile space out of MIT, and most recently before Assured Labor served as a lead architect on Palm's synchronization team.

Sidd holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Computer Science from MIT. He's an avid traveler, sports enthusiast, and volunteers his time to various organizations around the Boston area.

Jeff McAulay is February CEO (Boston)

Congratulations to Jeff McAulay, who served as TLP Boston CEO for the month of February.

Jeff is currently working to start a new cleantech Incubator in collaboration with a major non-profit research lab, Fraunhofer USA. As part of this project he is screening potential clients on both technical and business merits before connecting startups with early stage investors or government grants. In this role, Jeff sits at the interface between energy technology, business development and public policy.

Jeff graduated from MIT in the Technology & Policy Program where he conducted research in the Sloan Automotive Laboratory. While at MIT Jeff was a lead organizer for several student groups including the MIT Energy Club, and the MIT Electric Vehicle Team. Jeff also sat on MIT's Campus Energy Task force to help form MIT's long-term campus greening strategy. Before coming to MIT, Jeff worked as an engineer at Nuvera Fuel Cells where he lead project work and supported the company in reaching several technical milestones for the integrated fuel processor group.

He has a BS in biomedical engineering from Boston University where he won an award for best project presentation for undergrad research on microbial fuel cells, and received the scarlet key for excellence in student leadership.

Michael Mullins is December CEO (Boston)

Michael is the part-time CEO and co-founder of rentbuywhatever.com, a next generation ecommerce marketplace and asset portfolio tool. Modeled on electronic stock exchanges, the site transacts commodity goods and performs data analysis using regression to value asset in users' portfolios. As CEO, he is responsible for overseeing a software development team in Chennai, India, along with other business development matters. Michael presently works full-time as a real estate developer and asset manager focused on the development of smart-growth town centers. During his tenure as a developer, Michael worked on several technology projects. He was the CEO of Paradise Cable, a broadband internet startup as well as Cadservice, an offshore architectural rendering company. He also led several CAD conversion and electronic document management efforts. Michael has a bachelor's degree in Finance from the University of Miami and a master's degree from the MIT Center for Real Estate. Michael is a Trustee of the Dublin School, a director of Caritas Communities, and previously served for four years as a director of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board's Rental Housing Association.

James Carothers is the November CEO (Silicon Valley)

James is currently a Research Fellow at the University of California Berkeley and the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a U.S. Department of Energy research center in Emeryville, CA (http://www.jbei.org/). He is working to make it easier to engineer biology for bioenergy and cleantech applications.
For six years he served on the Board of Stockholders of the Harvard/MIT Cooperative Society, a for-profit corporation with >$40 million in annual sales. He is a co-founder of the Introductory College Level Experience in Microbiology (iCLEM) at UC Berkeley, a paid research internship for low income High School students and their teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area (http://www.synberc.org/education/HSBiotech.htm.)
James earned a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University and a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard University.

Zahra Kanji is named November CEO (Boston)

Zahra is a product engineer at the Perkins School for the Blind, where she is designing a smart next generation brailler, a typewriter for the blind. Through social entrepreneurship, she combines her engineering background to build feasible and evidence-based solutions for public health concerns in resource-poor communities. Prior to joining Perkins, Zahra was a medical researcher in anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital. She also worked with E-Ink, the electronic ink technology behind the Amazon Kindle, as a product and research engineer. Zahra also works as a volunteer program manager for the Prajnopaya Foundation, which leads teams in finding cost effective solutions for communities in need of help. She holds a BS in Electrical Engineering, with a minor in biomedical engineering from MIT. Zahra was a finalist at MIT's 100K competition in 2006, and a five time winner of the IDEAS competition on innovative solutions for communities in need. Outside of work, she enjoys an active lifestyle of cycling, martial arts and skiing with the YESKids, a program that takes inner urban children to the outdoors.

Parker Treacy is Dec CEO

Parker is the co-Founder and COO of First Help Financial, a financial services company focused on auto lending to the new immigrant population of the US. Incorporated in 2006, First Help Financial has developed proprietary underwriting and servicing models that are able to provide safe and reliable financing to new immigrant borrowers with little to no reportable credit or income. The company is establishing a traditional financing platform for immigrants, while giving them the ability to purchase a vehicle at a choice dealership and establish a credit history. Parker graduated from Duke University in 2006 with degrees in Mathematics and Economics. He is a member of the Neighborhood Association of Back Bay and The Union Boat Club.

Parul Singh named November CEO

Parul is a product manager at Visible Measures where she builds products that find insight in traffic data for video playing all over the internet. Current customers include MTV and NBC, with more to come. Previously she worked at The New York Times Digital as a product manager focused on multimedia and video\, and for six years worked as a web developer and project manager for Fast Company, Inc. Magazine and the Fund for the City of New York. \n\nShe started her career as an interface developer at Razorfish, and continues to be passionate about usable interface design, product marketing and packaging. She has spent time volunteering for charities in the US, UK and India focused on women, development, and technology. In her spare time, Parul enjoys fiction, running, and yoga. She completed her BA from Harvard University in Government.

Bala Venkatrao named CEO for October

Balakrishna (Bala) Venkatrao is an experienced technologist and an entrepreneurial business leader, with a penchant for innovation and execution. He is interested in pursuing exciting opportunities in the cloud computing industry. Bala is currently at CA Inc, working on projects related to strategy, portfolio optimization\, venture/innovation fund and emerging technologies. Prior to CA, Bala worked as a consultant at the Parthenon Group, where he primarily worked with venture capital/PE firms, supporting portfolio companies on their strategic and operational issues. Bala has also worked for several years as microprocessor architect at Sun Microsystems. He has 2 issued patents and six research publications to his credit. Bala holds an MBA from MIT Sloan\, where he was an executive leader of the MIT Innovation Club and the South Asia Business Club. He holds a master's degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) and completed his undergraduate engineering from University of Mumbai, India