Bobby founded Saba in 1997 and took the company public in 2000. Today Saba, with over $130M in revenue is headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA, and is the premier global provider of strategic human capital management. Saba's applications are used by more than 19 million people worldwide. Prior to founding Saba, Yazdani served as Senior Director at Oracle Corporation.
In 2001, Yazdani was named a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Based on his leadership and vision, InformationWeek ranked Saba #27 on its Innovation 100 list and Computerworld named Saba to its list of 100 Emerging Companies to Watch in 2001.
He has successfully mentored entrepreneurs and invested in many early stage start-ups including Aardvark (acquired by Google in February 2010), Addepar, Bina Technologies, Clearspring, CleverSense (acquired by Google in December of 2011), Delphi Solutions, Dropbox, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), KissMetrics, Klout, Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI), Medialets, NextBio, Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), Webs.com (acquired by VistaPrint in December of 2011), Sociocast, Shelby.TV and more.
He holds a B.A in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Noosheen Hashemi
Board Member & Advisor
Noosheen Hashemi is a 28-year veteran of Silicon Valley with a passion for philanthropy and entrepreneurship. In 1985 she joined Oracle as a sales administrator and quickly rose up the ranks to Director of US Revenue reporting to head of US division and a direct report to Larry Ellison. Together they went on to build one of the most productive sales forces in the tech industry and double the company's revenues for five years in a row. At 27, Noosheen became one of the youngest vice presidents at the now billion-dollar software pioneer. In 1996 she helped transform the personal finance industry as vice president of Sales and Marketing at Quote.com, where she built a strong sales force to secure OEM accounts like Schwab and E*Trade, shaping Quote.com for an eventual acquisition by Lycos. Since 1997, Noosheen has managed her family office, which includes investments in private and public companies and enterprising nonprofits. Noosheen holds a B.S. in Economics from San Jose State University and an M.S. in Management from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where she was a Sloan Fellow.
Soulaiman Itani
Founder & CEO, Atheer Labs
Soulaiman has spent his career trying to understand how the world operates and how to leverage that knowledge to improve everyday life. With that core belief he created Atheer Labs. The goal is to advance human-centric computing technologies and empower users to have technology work with them in ways never thought possible only a few short years ago.
His previous work includes designing cancer tests and treatments as well as creating models for robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles. He received his Masters of Science and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Bobby Yazdani
Entrepreneur & Investor
Bobby Yazdani is an active investor in early stage technology startups. Drawing from over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience in Silicon Valley, he mentors, develops and supports entrepreneurs in their journey of building great companies.
Bobby founded Saba in 1997 and took the company public in 2000. Today, Saba, is the leading provider of Human Capital Development and Management solutions. Saba's applications are used by 31 million users from 2,200 customers across 195 countries and in 37 languages worldwide. Prior to founding Saba, Bobby worked at Oracle Corporation in various R&D; roles from 1988 through 1997.
In 2001, Yazdani was named a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Based on his leadership and vision, InformationWeek ranked Saba #27 on its Innovation 100 list and Computerworld named Saba to its list of 100 Emerging Companies to Watch in 2001.
He has successfully mentored entrepreneurs and invested in over 60 early stage start-ups including Aardvark (acquired by Google in February 2010), Addepar, Bina Technologies, Bonobos, Clearspring, CleverSense (acquired by Google in December of 2011), Dropbox, Genophen, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), KissMetrics, Klout, Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI), Medialets, NextBio, Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), PassBan (acquired by EMC/RSA in July 2013), Qwiki (acquired by Yahoo in July 2013), Webs.com (acquired by VistaPrint in December of 2011) and many more.
He holds a B.A in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Noosheen Hashemi
Board Member & Advisor
Noosheen Hashemi, is an investor and philanthropist with a passion for entrepreneurship. Since 1997, she has led her family's support of enterprising nonprofits and social change makers, co-founding The HAND Foundation and PARSA Community Foundation. Hashemi and her husband, Zod Nazem, manage their family office which includes investments in private and public companies.
Hashemi has served on multiple nonprofit boards including Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), New America Foundation and India Community Center. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an independent scholar of diasporas. She writes and speaks about how diasporas' strategic contributions in business, philanthropy, politics and mainstream culture can advance their collective social equity, influence and power. Hashemi was a ten-year veteran of Oracle Corporation where she quickly rose up the ranks to become one of the company's youngest leaders and executives. As Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Quote.com, she helped transform the personal finance industry in the mid 90s. Hashemi enjoys advising young entrepreneurs and start ups to achieve scale through operational and strategic excellence. She and her husband and her two kids live in the SF Bay Area.
Soulaiman Itani
Founder & CEO, Atheer Labs
Soulaiman has spent his career trying to understand how the world operates and how to leverage that knowledge to improve everyday life. With that core belief he created Atheer Labs. The goal is to advance human-centric computing technologies and empower users to have technology work with them in ways never thought possible only a few short years ago.
His previous work includes designing cancer tests and treatments as well as creating models for robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles. He received his Masters of Science and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Advisors
Farzad Naimi
Co-Founder & Managing Partner, RONA Holdings
Mr. Naimi brings over 26 years of successful Silicon Valley startup leadership, including co-founding four startups with successful IPOs in US, Japan and Brazil.
Mr. Naimi started his high–tech career as Head of Technology at Centex Telemanagement, a startup at the time, and led Centex to its IPO, which preceded its subsequent acquisition by MCI. He continued his career as Executive Vice President and COO at Prestige International, Japan’s largest Customer Relationship Management organization, that later had a successful IPO in Japan. Mr. Naimi was a co–founder of Genesys Labs, a leader in delivering real-time customer interaction software solutions to medium–and large–sized businesses. Genesys Labs went public and was subsequently acquired by Alcatel for $1.6 billion in 2000. He participated in a successful startup, VisaNet do Brazil, funded by Visa International and four major banks in Brazil. VisaNet do Brazil (changed name to Cielo) has since become the largest e–commerce and retail banking group in Latin America with a successful IPO in 2009 raising $4.3 billion, the largest IPO in the world that year. Mr. Naimi also co–founded several other companies including LiteScape Technologies, IQLabs, and Sentek.
S. Shankar Sastry, PhD
Dean of the College of Engineering, UC Berkeley
Dr. Sastry has been the Dean of Engineering at UC Berkeley since 2007. He is also the NEC Distinguished Professor of the Department of EECS at UC Berkeley. He has coauthored over 350 papers and nine books in subject matters such as embedded and autonomous software, computer vision, nonlinear and adaptive control, control of hybrid systems, and sensor networks and biological motor control. He has received numerous honors such as: membership with the National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the IEEE, NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, and the President of India Gold Medal.
Dr. Sastry has consulted with Fortune 500 companies such as Boeing, Ford, GM, Honeywell, IBM, HP, and GE. And is a member of the board at Crossbow, Inc. Dr. Sastry received his PhD from UC Berkeley in Electrical Engineering Computer Science.
Munther Dhaleh, PhD
Chairman of EECS at MIT
Dr. Dahleh is the current chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program at MIT. His research focus and interests includes networked systems, social networks, electric grid, transportation systems, and systemic risk. He has received various awards including the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award in 2010 and 2004, Hugo Schuck Award for Theory in 2008, and an IEEE fellow in 2000.In addition to Dr. Dahleh's academic achievements he has served as a consultant with various companies including PointRight, BAE Systems, Myworldinvesting, and Infolenz. Dr. Dahleh received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Rice University.
Ruzena Bajcsy, PhD
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Dr. Bajcsy is a current professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley. She has dedicated more than 40 years of research to the fields of artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, biosystems & computational biology, intelligent systems and robotics, graphics, and security.
Dr. Bajcsy is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine as well as a fellow of the ACM. She received her PhD from Slovak Technical University in Electrical Engineering and later an additional PhD from Stanford University in Computer Science.
Taher Behbehani
Acting Head of Strategic Alliances & Product Verticals
Taher is a Telecom/Media/Mobile executive with unique combination of corporate experience and entrepreneurial background. He started his career in strategy consulting analyzing impacts of disruptive technologies. He later launched several start-ups and successfully scaled their operations to product commercialization and growth phase.
Taher has been an executive in several large public companies including American Express (NYSE: AXP), BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), SourceFire (acquired by Cisco), and 3Com. During the course of his corporate career, ran different functional areas, including P&L;, marketing, product management, and Business Development, strategy, M&A.; In his corporate roles, Taher creates high-performance teams to drive innovation and create new growth areas. He led more than 40 partnerships and M&A; transactions; created nearly $4.5 billion of shareholder value. He continues to invest and advise disruptive start-ups in media, mobile platforms, and e-commerce. Recently, he was an investor in Cleversense (acquired by Google), iCanBuy (acquired by Informa PLC), and QuantumThink (acquired by Qualcomm). Taher has worked in Europe, Latin America, China, and Silicon Valley. Taher received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and M.S. in Engineering from Yale.
Claire Tomlin, PhD
Professor of Electrical Engineering, UC Berkeley
Dr. Tomlin is a professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley. Her research interests are in biosystems & computational biology, control intelligent systems and robotics (CIR), and control theory, hybrid and embedded systems, and biological cell networks. She is the current holder of the Charles A. Desoer Chair in the College of Engineering and is as an IEEE fellow as of 2010.
Dr. Tomlin received her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Farzad Naimi
Co-Founder & Managing Partner, RONA Holdings
Mr. Naimi brings over 26 years of successful Silicon Valley startup leadership, including co-founding four startups with successful IPOs in US, Japan and Brazil.
Mr. Naimi started his high–tech career as Head of Technology at Centex Telemanagement, a startup at the time, and led Centex to its IPO, which preceded its subsequent acquisition by MCI. He continued his career as Executive Vice President and COO at Prestige International, Japan’s largest Customer Relationship Management organization, that later had a successful IPO in Japan. Mr. Naimi was a co–founder of Genesys Labs, a leader in delivering real-time customer interaction software solutions to medium–and large–sized businesses. Genesys Labs went public and was subsequently acquired by Alcatel for $1.6 billion in 2000. He participated in a successful startup, VisaNet do Brazil, funded by Visa International and four major banks in Brazil. VisaNet do Brazil (changed name to Cielo) has since become the largest e–commerce and retail banking group in Latin America with a successful IPO in 2009 raising $4.3 billion, the largest IPO in the world that year. Mr. Naimi also co–founded several other companies including LiteScape Technologies, IQLabs, and Sentek.
S. Shankar Sastry, PhD
Dean of the College of Engineering, UC Berkeley
Dr. Sastry has been the Dean of Engineering at UC Berkeley since 2007. He is also the NEC Distinguished Professor of the Department of EECS at UC Berkeley. He has coauthored over 350 papers and nine books in subject matters such as embedded and autonomous software, computer vision, nonlinear and adaptive control, control of hybrid systems, and sensor networks and biological motor control. He has received numerous honors such as: membership with the National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the IEEE, NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, and the President of India Gold Medal.
Dr. Sastry has consulted with Fortune 500 companies such as Boeing, Ford, GM, Honeywell, IBM, HP, and GE. And is a member of the board at Crossbow, Inc. Dr. Sastry received his PhD from UC Berkeley in Electrical Engineering Computer Science.
Munther Dhaleh, PhD
Chairman of EECS at MIT
Dr. Dahleh is the current chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program at MIT. His research focus and interests includes networked systems, social networks, electric grid, transportation systems, and systemic risk. He has received various awards including the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award in 2010 and 2004, Hugo Schuck Award for Theory in 2008, and an IEEE fellow in 2000.In addition to Dr. Dahleh's academic achievements he has served as a consultant with various companies including PointRight, BAE systemictems, Myworldinvesting, and Infolenz. Dr. Dahleh received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Rice University.
Ruzena Bajcsy, PhD
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Dr. Bajcsy is a current professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley. She has dedicated more than 40 years of research to the fields of artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, biosystems & computational biology, intelligent systems and robotics, graphics, and security.
Dr. Bajcsy is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine as well as a fellow of the ACM. She received her PhD from Slovak Technical University in Electrical Engineering and later an additional PhD from Stanford University in Computer Science.
Taher Behbehani
Acting Head of Strategic Alliances & Product Verticals
Taher is a Telecom/Media/Mobile executive with unique combination of corporate experience and entrepreneurial background. He started his career in strategy consulting analyzing impacts of disruptive technologies. He later launched several start-ups and successfully scaled their operations to product commercialization and growth phase.
Taher has been an executive in several large public companies including American Express (NYSE: AXP), BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), SourceFilre (acquired by Cisco), and 3Com. During the course of his corporate career, ran different functional areas, including P&L;, marketing, product management, and Business Development, strategy, M&A.; In his corporate roles, Taher creates high-performance teams to drive innovation and create new growth areas. He led more than 40 partnerships and M&A; transactions; created nearly $4.5 billion of shareholder value. He continues to invest and advise disruptive start-ups in media, mobile platforms, and e-commerce. Recently, he was an investor in Cleversense (acquired by Google), iCanBuy (acquired by Informa PLC), and QuantumThink (acquired by Qualcomm). Taher has worked in Europe, Latin America, China, and Silicon Valley. Taher received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and M.S. in Engineering from Yale.
Claire Tomlin, PhD
Professor of Electrical Engineering, UC Berkeley
Dr. Tomlin is a professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley. Her research interests are in biosystems & computational biology, control intelligent systems and robotics (CIR), and control theory, hybrid and embedded systems, and biological cell networks. She is the current holder of the Charles A. Desoer Chair in the College of Engineering and is as an IEEE fellow as of 2010.
Dr. Tomlin received her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
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