SPEAKER: Bert Vermeulen

Senior Fellow at the DaVinci Institute, and the Founder of Corp21

Bert Vermeulen has worked around the world for a variety of businesses, both large and small, and both successful and not so successful. This includes:

• Helping to build a $160M/year tape drive business for Hewlett Packard in Bristol, UK.
• Partnering with a Colorado based-entrepreneur to grow a manufacturing business to over $25M/year in revenues and then successfully selling it. He then helped the new parent company acquire and build other similar businesses in Ireland and Hungary. 
• Providing in depth help and guidance to over 30 startups and smaller enterprises during the last 5 years, some of which have done quite well. This has provided exposure to a number of excellent entrepreneurs as well as some that were flawed and others that were lucky. 
• Creating an industry association in an emerging retail field (meal prep) and providing consulting support to over 400 enterprises in this field. 
• Doing independent research on why some companies succeed while others don’t. 
• Serving as a guest presenter on entrepreneurship at a number of universities and industry groups. 

SPEAKER: Geoffrey Lin

Intellectual Property Attorney

Geoffrey Lin is an intellectual property attorney and licensed U.S. patent attorney based in Lovells’ Shanghai office. His practice focuses on contentious and non-contentious intellectual property matters in China, as well as on a regional and worldwide basis. He advises clients on obtaining, protecting and enforcing their intellectual property rights, as well as on licensing and technology transfers.

He has litigated numerous high-profile technical patent cases in China and the U.S. In various cases and matters and particularly in preparing, filing, supporting and defending patent infringement and invalidation actions, Geoffrey regularly liaises with, collaborates with, directs or manages in-house counsel, in-house business and technical staff, technical experts, U.S. attorneys, European attorneys, China local counsel, patent counsel, and teams of Lovells attorneys.

Prior to joining Lovells, he was with Fenwick & West LLP, a large technology law firm in Palo Alto, California and with Proskauer Rose LLP, a large international law firm, in New York, New York where he practiced intellectual property litigation, transactional law, patent prosecution and counselling. He has represented clients in various industries including the mechanical, electrical, semi-conductor, pharmaceutical, medical products, software, e-commerce, telecommunications, biotechnology, and commercial products industries.

Geoffrey is a member of the American Chamber of Commerce Intellectual Property Sub-Committee and has given numerous seminars on Chinese and international Intellectual Property issues including to the European Chamber of Commerce.

Geoffrey has a B.S. in Neural Science from New York University and received his J.D. from Cornell Law School. He is admitted as an attorney in New York State and the State of California, U.S. He is also admitted before the United States Patent and Trademark Office as a patent attorney. Geoffrey speaks English and Mandarin.

SPEAKER: Lisa Calkins

CEO of Amadeus Consulting

As CEO of Amadeus Consulting, Lisa Calkins has created a distinctive model for value-added technology consulting leading to many positive, long-term client relationships. Lisa co-founded the company in 1994 with the values that remain essential to the company today: Mutual respect for co-workers and technology solutions that achieve real-world business results.

Under Lisa's leadership, Amadeus Consulting has evolved into one of the country's leading software consulting companies by assisting clients with a wide range of technology, operational and marketing challenges beyond their immediate software development needs. This pragmatic approach has helped many successful entrepreneurs get their products to market quickly with a solid, extensible technology platform for sustained business growth. Lisa continues to refine the company's best practices to meet the unique demands of entrepreneurial development projects.

Prior to Amadeus Consulting, Lisa was a senior project leader for many years with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) where she led an elite group of software architects brought in to tackle major clients' most complex and challenging projects. In addition, Lisa was selected by senior management to chair a committee to promote leadership development and integrity at the global corporate level.

Lisa is a dedicated community leader and respected mentor to many colleagues and associates. She is a past president of the Colorado Federation of Business and Professional Women, a national, non-profit organization dedicated to helping women achieve economic self-sufficiency by advancing careers, building businesses and advocating workplace equity. Lisa also served two terms as president of the Boulder BPW, one of largest local business organizations in the country.

Lisa and her husband Rob are certified scuba diving instructors and enjoy diving together under exotic seas around the world. Lisa learned passion and creativity from her mother and competitiveness and kindness from her father. She brings those values to her leadership of Amadeus.

Lisa has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Illinois.

SPEAKER: Thomas Franklin

Intellectual Property Attorney with the firm of Townsend & Townsend & Crew, LLP

With over a decade of experience with Intellectual Property, Mr. Franklin's practice generally focuses on patent prosecution, trademark prosecution, licensing and intellectual capital management. He specializes in IP audits in the due diligence and strategic planning processes. Through an IP Asset Management plan, he tailors strategy to business goals, competitive pressures and funding constraints to leverage intangible assets with intellectual property.

Mr. Franklin's technical experience broadly covers the areas of software, Internet technology, content delivery, business methods, VoIP, circuit design, imaging arrays, cryptographic design, telecommunication, electronic design tools, wireless communications, satellite communication, and telemetry systems.

Prior to entering the field of law, Mr. Franklin spent several years working in semiconductor fabrication facilities at the Naval Ocean Systems Center and Hughes Aircraft and several more as a senior engineer for Lockheed Martin. At Lockheed, he managed engineering projects involving the design of complex wireless data links, ASIC/FPGA design, digital circuits, satellite transponders, and encrypted data links.