Marleen McDaniel, successful serial entrepreneur and visionary internet pioneer, will share how and why she has decided to spend her time working toward transforming education after a career of growing seven technology startups. Higher Education teaching methods go back to the time of Socrates and Plato. Ingrained methods, policies and culture have caused the education industry to be one of the most fragmented industries and the one of the slowest to change. Now, changes in education are upon us. Education 2.0 is here with a new participatory culture.

We will talk about what to expect in next generation learning in the coming years—it is social, collaborative, re-mixed and student centric, fully leveraging the amazing resources of the Internet. This talk will focus on how computers and access to “Open Education Resources” have enabled new methods of student centric teaching and how it prompts change in the role of he instructor.

Marleen has an extensive background in leadership and executive management in high technology. She is the CEO of startup education company, Onsophic. Onsophic is working in 21st century teaching that organizes Universities to fully utilize the potential of the Internet for personalized and collaborative learning.www.onsophic.com

Marleen has a record of successful entrepreneurship and is well known as CEO and President at Women.com, the first pure play Internet company. Women.com was a top 20 website who partnered with Hearst magazines, Walt Disney and Hallmark cards. This company had its IPO in 1999, merged with iVillage and sold to NBC Interactive in 2004 for $600 million. Prior to Women.com, Marleen was Executive Vice President of Interop, a Ziff Davis company. Marleen joined the founding team of Crescendo Communications, Cisco’s first acquisition. Marleen joined Sun Microsystems in its first year, and became the head of global education. Here, she created the Sparcstation, a $3 Billion business. At 3Com, Marleen launched the Ethernet as a commercial product. Marleen was instrumental taking Unix from Bell Labs into the commercial market and was co-founder of /usr/group.

Recently, Marleen worked with CEOs and venture firms mentoring, coaching, refining business plans and funding strategies. She is a coach and mentor for member of Astia and Women 2.0, organizations devoted to female entrepreneurs. Educated at UC Berkeley in Psychology. Marleen holds numerous awards for leadership and is considered one of the “wonder women” of Silicon Valley. She has been a member of the prestigious “Committee of 200” and the International Women’s Forum. She has two children in college and resides in Los Altos Hills.