NTT Innovation Institute Establishes Executive Advisory Board

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 21, 2016) -  NTT Innovation Institute Inc. (NTT i³), the prestigious Silicon Valley-based innovation center for NTT Group, one of the world's largest ICT companies, announced today that is has formed an Executive Advisory Board (EAB) comprised of esteemed global technology experts and business leaders from various industries. The Executive Advisory Board's goal is to exchange ideas on key insights and industry trends, while providing external perspectives that challenge the status quo which is critical to NTT i3's success as a global innovation center. The EAB will work closely with NTT i3's executive leadership team. 

"The creation of an Executive Advisory Board is essential to our future successes and NTT i³ is honored to welcome Cindy Padnos, Brian Spector, Dr. Stuart Evans, Wilf Russell and Gokul Rajaram as board members," stated Nina Simosko, CEO and President, NTT i³. "Each advisor provides diverse perspectives and vast experiences from their years of dedication and work in the technology industry that will contribute greatly to our innovation exploration in the world of the enterprise. This compilation of industry stalwarts joining our Executive Advisory Board is a testament to our company's commitment to 'being innovative' in ways that really matter -- for individuals, society and business."

NTT i³'s Executive Advisory Board members include:

• Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures.
  Leveraging 25 years of high tech industry experience, Cindy focuses primarily in the Enterprise/B2B cloud and mobile computing sectors, with a particular emphasis on SaaS applications and platforms, solutions leveraging big data for business impact and new business models that accelerate customer acquisition. She is an investor and board member for Bedrock Analytics, BrightEdge Technologies, ChannelEyes, Hoopla Software, Litbit, Peerlyst, Xactly Corporation and Yozio and is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. 
  
  
• Brian Spector, CEO and co-founder of MIRACL.
  Brian Spector is the CEO and co-founder of MIRACL, a distributed cryptography company that guarantees the identity integrity of the people, apps, and things needed to run a digital business. Brian began his information security career more than 20 years ago in cryptographic development at Silicon Valley's first full disk encryption software company and has held leadership positions in development, product management and sales at Thales, RSA Data Security and McAfee.
  
  
• Dr. Stuart Evans, Director of the Emirates/CMU i-Lab, Silicon Valley.
  Dr. Evans is a Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Integrated Innovation Institute. He teaches "Innovation & Entrepreneurship", "Commercializing IP", and "Enterprise Innovation". His professional career spans research (SRI International, Stanford Graduate School of Business,), teaching (The Judge Business School, Cambridge University), consulting (Bain & Company, Menlo Park, California), investing (Sand Hill Venture Group, Menlo Park, California) and executive management (Shugart Corporation, a Xerox subsidiary, Sunnyvale, California). 
  
  
• Wilf Russell, Formerly VP, Consumer Technology Officer, Nike Inc.
  A technical visionary and change agent, Wilf brings 25+years of experience and business acumen providing a competitive edge to companies ringing from enterprise organizations to SMBs. At Nike, Wilf helped shape the digital future for the global brand, by managing the strategy and execution related to all consumer-focused technology, working with the Digital Commerce, Brand and Nike+ teams. 
  
  
• Gokul Rajaram, Product Engineering Lead at Square.
  Gokul is Product Engineering lead at Square. Prior to Square, Gokul was Product Director for Ads at Facebook. In that role, he drove the product roadmap and execution for Facebook's advertising products, which account for the bulk of Facebook's revenues. Earlier, Gokul was Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped conceive and crystallize the product in early 2003, and played a key role in its launch and growth from 2003 onwards into a multibillion dollar product line.

About NTT Innovation Institute Inc. (NTT i³)
NTT Innovation Institute, Inc. (NTT i³) is the Silicon Valley-based innovation center for NTT Group, one of the world's largest ICT companies. Focused on fostering strategic innovation, NTT i³ works with established enterprise companies to investigate new approaches to evolving into technology-first, digitally-driven businesses. Likewise, NTT i³ partners with early stage digitally-native businesses looking to expand their presence and challenger advantage. Accelerating the movement of innovation from initial idea to marketplace implementation, NTT i³ combines access to the significant global infrastructure resources, investment fund, research knowledge, and trusted long-standing customer relationships of NTT Global with its own software startup expertise and deep enterprise relationships. 

For more information, please visit NTT i³ at www.ntti3.com or on Facebook and Twitter