Susan Lucas-Conwell, CEO of SDForum, will share amusing anecdotes and insights from her unexpected personal and professional journey from Manhattan to Paris to Silicon Valley. Her personal story includes uprooting her French husband and four children in Paris and crossing the physical and cultural divide to California. Having been an American in Paris and being perceived a foreigner in Silicon Valley, she draws some interesting comparisons between the two cultures—the ways of doing business, schooling children, and living life.

About the speaker:
Susan is an accomplished CEO, entrepreneur, business development and marketing executive with global experience. She is the CEO of SDForum, Silicon Valley’s largest and oldest high-tech non-profit that provides education and a networking community of technologists, entrepreneurs, VCs and others. Her professional career includes marketing for General Mills and senior management positions at Cartier International, Bausch & Lomb (Ray Ban) and Chateau and Country (a French internet start-up). She also founded Clear-Day, an international business accelerator working with a portfolio of companies such as Nokia and a European private equity firm.

She graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in economic history, a Masters degree in economic history from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from The Wharton School. She is a frequent speaker at business schools and conferences in Europe and the US.