The University of Vermont Board of Trustees has added two new members with expertise in entrepreneurship and technology. The board also added a new student trustee.
Jodi Goldstein, executive director of the Harvard Innovation Labs, and Otto Berkes, executive vice president and chief technology officer at New York City-based CA Technologies, will serve six-year terms beginning March 1.
They succeed outgoing board members Lisa Ventriss and Richard Gamelli, who will complete their terms of service at the end of February 2018. Current trustee Robert Brennan was re-appointed for a second six-year term.
Sidney Hilker is the new student trustee. She will serve a two-year term beginning March 1, succeeding Soraiya Thura, who will complete a two-year term at the end of February 2018.
Goldstein received a B.S. degree in international business from UVM and an MBA from Harvard. As the Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Executive Director of the Harvard Innovation Labs, Goldstein oversees a cross disciplinary ecosystem that supports innovation and entrepreneurial activities across Harvard.
Goldstein has been a key member of the i-lab management team since its launch in 2011, conceiving and delivering high-quality programming and resources in a range of interest areas. In 2014, she spearheaded the Launch Lab, an incubator for Harvard alumni, and in 2016 she opened the Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab to support life sciences ventures.
Goldstein has more than 25 years of experience as a start-up executive, co-founder and investor. She has spent her career driving innovation in multiple capacities across a range of industries. She has been on the management team of several venture backed start-ups including iMarket and Planetall, Send.com, Hoteluxury.com and Mobicious. She co-founded Drync, a mobile app that allows consumers to research and purchase wine. She began her career at GE as a member of the company’s corporate audit staff, the internal consulting arm of GE, and was an investor at TA Associates, a venture capital firm.
Recently she has been featured in Fast Company, the Boston Globe and the New York Times and is a regular contributor to Fortune as part of its Entrepreneur Insider network.
Goldstein lives in the Boston area.
Berkes is currently executive vice president and chief technology officer at CA Technologies. In addition to leading CA’s technology strategy and advanced research, he is responsible for incubation of next-generation products.
Berkes received a B.A. degree in physics from Middlebury College in 1985 and an M.S. in computer science and electrical engineering from the University of Vermont in 1989.
Following engineering roles at Vermont Microsystems and Autodesk, Berkes joined Microsoft in 1993 as a senior software developer to work on the graphics system for the first version of Windows NT; he subsequently led the Windows OpenGL and DirectX development groups during their formative years. Berkes was one of the four original Xbox founders and its first engineering architect. An early champion of mobile computing, he led the development of hardware and software technologies focused on mobile devices and is co-inventor on ten patents.
After 18 years at Microsoft, Berkes joined HBO to drive the company’s digital transition. As executive vice president and chief technology officer, he was responsible for the development of HBO GO, media production, internal business systems and technology operations.
Berkes served on the board of the Northwest School in Seattle from June 2009 to 2011. He has been a board member at Stony Brook University's Wireless and Information Technology Center of Excellence since March 2016 and a member of the University of Vermont Foundation and STEM Leadership Councils since June 2014.
Berkes lives in New York.
Hilker is a member of the class of 2021 in UVM’s Larner College of Medicine. Born in Burlington, Vermont, she received her B.A. in 2014 from Harvard University.
She is a member of the College of Medicine Student Education Group and is a student ambassador. While at Harvard, Hilker worked in a psychiatric genetics lab, volunteered with Advocating Success for Kids (ASK) at Children’s Hospital Boston and rowed on the varsity crew team.
She has worked as a health policy intern for the Children’s Defense Fund and as a consulting fellow with New Sector Alliance. Prior to enrolling at UVM, she worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company in Boston, Massachusetts.
The new trustees will officially attend their first regular full board meeting May 18 and 19.
