Blog Archives

Nancy Bekavac served 17 years as the first female president of Scripps College, one of the five Claremont Colleges in California. During her tenure, the Scripps’ student applicant pool doubled, median SAT scores of the incoming students increased almost 20 percent, and the endowment quadrupled. President Bekavac’s passion for Venly’s mission with small & local businesses emerges from her experience growing up in a family that owned a small business. Upon graduation from Swarthmore College, she was selected for a year of international field study as one of the first Thomas J. Watson Fellows, named in honor of IBM’s founder. After completing her JD degree at Yale Law School and becoming partner at Munger, Tolles & Olsen, she returned to education. First, she ran the Thomas Watson Fellowship as Executive Director, selecting each of the Fellows for two years. Then, she served another two years as Counselor to the President of Dartmouth College before going to Scripps. She also served on the Swarthmore College Board of Managers and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Most recently, she taught aboard the University of Virginia’s Semester at Sea.

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Joined Venly after nearly 25 years as Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning for Comcast Corporation. Mark founded Comcast’s New Media Development Group and co-founded Comcast Interactive Capital. His passion for Venly’s mission goes back to his early leadership experiences growing up in an Ashtabula, Ohio family business where he and his family were active in the local Chamber of Commerce and other community associations. Mark began his career as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force serving at the Pentagon. He went on to receive a number of the highest awards for technology and innovation in the Cable and Broadband industries, as well as an Emmy. Mark currently serves as a Trustee for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He holds a BS in Management Science from Case Institute of Technology and a MS in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon.

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Professor Julie Reuben directs the Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship at Harvard College and is a historian of American higher education. Her research supports Venly’s efforts to develop next generation training that combines in-person and online learning. Her scholarship addresses broad questions about the purposes of education, the relation between educational institutions and social concerns, and the forces that shape educational change.

As the daughter of a refugee from Iraq, she has written extensively on the historical development of U.S. civics education in promoting active citizenship. She holds a BA from Brandeis University and a PhD from Stanford.

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Admiral David Brewer oversaw the training of more than 300,000 sailors during his service as Vice Chief for U.S. Naval Education before going on to become Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Raised in a family of educators from Virginia and Florida, he graduated from Jones High School in Orlando where he currently chairs the Jones High School Foundation to support local community empowerment. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for Bethune-Cookman University.

Admiral Brewer attended Howard University before graduating with a BS in Biology from Prairie View A&M University where he was commissioned in the first class of Naval ROTC established at a Historically Black College or University. As the leader of the Military Sealift Command (MSC), he managed the private sector relationships for the sea transportation needs of all military branches. His MSC role also included command of the Navy’s relief and hospital ships during Hurricane Katrina. His energy behind Venly’s mission and training was sparked by his observation of the inverse learning relationship around social media in which first year college students often arrive knowing more than college seniors.

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Joined Venly after retiring as a Cambridge-based business development lead for Google/ITA Software. David began representing ITA in 1997, and he served as the MIT spin-off’s founding General Counsel and Vice President beginning in 2000 through Google’s acquisition of ITA in 2011. David worked previously for Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York, and then with Edwards & Angell in Boston, before becoming an adviser to early stage technology companies in the 1990s. David holds an AB in English Literature from Princeton University and a JD from Columbia Law School.

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Joined Venly after serving as the longtime editor of the Nieman Reports, a magazine and website published by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. An ardent baseball fan, she became a reporter for Sports Illustrated right out of college. Her landmark court case against Major League Baseball gave female sportswriters equal access to interview baseball players after being shut out of the locker room during the 1977 World Series. Her entry credential is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Melissa holds a BA in Art History from Wellesley College.

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Helped launch Venly after joining Benchmarking Partners in 2006. Yoeun specializes in graphics, layout, and icon design. She graduated in Visual Communications from the Boston, MA campus of Gibbs College.

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Gary helped launch the firm. Gary originally joined Benchmarking Partners in 1997 and went on to deliver a range of next generation systems from open source collaboration for a range of multinationals, to clinical trials for Pfizer, to distribution systems at Apple. Prior to Benchmarking, Gary served as one of the core architects within Digital Equipment Corporation’s object-oriented integration group. At Venly, he ensures that Venly’s big data analytics stay aligned with the emerging needs for augmented intelligence for local and global firms from Main St. to Wall St. Gary holds a BSE in Computer Science from the University of Connecticut.

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In addition to her leadership as a co-founder of Venly, Andrea serves as President and CEO of Grameen America. Grameen America is the non-profit micro-finance bank started by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, to help women who live in poverty build small businesses. Andrea spent 13 years as Avon’s first female Chair and CEO until 2012 and currently serves on the boards of Apple, Unilever, and Wayfair. Andrea is an authority on distributed resource networks and chaired the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations. She has also been a longtime international activist on women’s economic independence. Andrea believes that helping local businesses grow is the best and most fundamental way to create jobs. She gave Venly its name based on the way our Venn diagram brings together community and technology through talented recent graduates and returning veterans to help their local businesses and community institutions with a user friendly platform and service. Hence the name Venly for combining hi-touch and hi-tech. Andrea is fluent in Mandarin and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Princeton University with an AB in English Literature.

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As Venly’s General Manager, Tom Fellows helped launch the Mary S. Peake Fellowship for more than a decade. In 2007, he began leading an elite programming effort that led to the Peake Fellowship Development Team. Together with Peake, Tom continues to pioneer Venly’s secure, massively scalable, open source commerce and collaboration platform that supports Applied Learning & Teaching among higher ed centers, local chambers of commerce, and Anchor Community businesses.

Tom has driven enterprise strategies from neighborhood shop owners to multinational CEOs and 4-star generals leading the DoD’s supply chain. He is a leader in the open source software movement and engineered the Peake Fellowship cyber-readiness assessment process. Tom holds a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Johns Hopkins University. He has dedicated his career to helping local businesses grow and strengthening each community served for sustainable and inclusive growth.

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