Farzad (Zod) Nazem

Farzad (Zod) Nazem has been a prolific angel investor and advisor to tech startup companies since his retirement from Yahoo! in 2007. He has invested in more than 60 early stage companies, and sits on the boards of Hand Foundation, and The Nueva School. His area of investment is about two thirds Big Data and Cloud platforms, and one third Health and Medical. He was the Executive Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer of Yahoo from 1996 to mid 2007. He helped acquire and integrate over 50 companies and managed over six thousand engineers representing half of the company's employees. Between 1985 and 1996, Mr. Nazem held various software development and management positions at Oracle Corporation culminating in his role as Vice President of Media and Web Server Division. His tenure at Oracle also included membership in the company's Product Division Management Committee, which set overall strategy for Oracle products. Previously, Mr. Nazem was recruited from California Polytechnic State University by Rolm Corporation to be a software engineer in the VLCBX division. At age 19, he earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science with highest honors.