Founders' Pledge Leadership

 

Cathy Pucher
Executive Director, ZIP Launchpad

Cathy works with aspiring entrepreneurs at SDSU's Zahn Innovation Platform Launchpad. She brings 20+ years of experience in the high-tech industry across large and startup companies to her work at the Executive Director of the ZIP Launchpad. She helped create EvoNexus, an incubator dedicated to stimulating the growth of new high technology companies in San Diego, and served as their first Executive Director. Pucher earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at University California, San Diego.

 

Tommy Martindale
Director, Technology Transfer 

As Director of the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) at the San Diego State University Research Foundation, Tommy Martindale is responsible for the protection and commercialization of technologies developed at SDSU. Tommy supports the TTO by evaluating the patentability and market potential for faculty inventions, managing the protection of faculty-developed intellectual property, and commercializing SDSU technologies through licensing. Tommy is a member of the State Bar of California and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He also contributes to the teaching team of the NSF-funded CSU Biological Sciences I-Corps site, training researchers how to move their research-based innovations out of the lab and into the marketplace. Further, Martindale is the immediate past president of the San Diego Innovation Council.

 

Alex DeNoble
Executive Director, Lavin Center Professor

Alex F. DeNoble is a Professor of Management and Executive Director of the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center in the College of Business at San Diego State University. He currently also serves as the Chair of the College of Business Steering Committee. Prior to his role in the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center, he served for 3 years as the Chair of the Management Department in the College of Business.

His primary areas of expertise include entrepreneurship and corporate innovation, technology commercialization and strategic management. He has conducted research in these areas and has taught related classes in the University's undergraduate, graduate and executive MBA programs. He has published articles in such journals as IEEE Transactions on Management, the Journal of Business Venturing, the Journal of High Technology Management Research, the Journal of Technology Transfer, International Marketing Review,and Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice.

His other professional activities encompass both executive training and strategic consulting. Recent assignments have included business plan development consulting for new and existing entrepreneurial firms, market research and analysis for technology-based companies and entrepreneurship training for Taiwanese, German, Russian, Japanese, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Finnish, Danish and U.S. executives. Over the past several years, he has conducted training programs or consulted with such companies as Qualcomm Inc., Siemens Corporation, Delta Electronics (Taiwan), the U.S. Russia Center for Entrepreneurship, Banco Nacional de Commercio Exterior (the National Export Bank of Mexico), NEC Electronics USA, Shell Technology Ventures, and Orincon Technologies (now a part of Lockheed Martin).

He received a B.S. in Accounting from Monmouth University in 1975, a M.S. in Accounting from Virginia Tech in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from Virginia Tech in 1983.