Ben Nelson | |
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 Nelson in 2017 | |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania (BS) |
| Occupation(s) | Founder, Chairman, President and CEO, Minerva Project; Chancellor, Minerva University |
| Board member of | Intelligence Squared, San Francisco Opera |
Ben Nelson is an American businessperson who is the founder of Minerva Project and Minerva University.
Nelson graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Economics with Honors as a Joseph Wharton Scholar. [1] [2]
Nelson joined Snapfish in 1999. By 2002, Nelson was the CFO of Snapfish. He became CEO and president in March 2005, shortly before the acquisition of the company by Hewlett-Packard. [3] He continued to run the company following the acquisition as a subsidiary. [4] [5]
In 2011, Nelson founded the for-profit Minerva Project and received a $25 million seed investment from Benchmark Capital in 2012. In 2012, Minerva Project founded Minerva University which he is chancellor of. [6] [5] [7] [8] [9]
The University of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges and was chartered prior to the U.S. Declaration of Independence when Benjamin Franklin, the university's founder and first president, advocated for an educational institution that trained leaders in academia, commerce, and public service. Penn identifies as the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, though this representation is challenged by Princeton and Columbia since the College of Philadelphia was not chartered or commence classes until 1755 and the first board of trustees was not convened until 1749, arguably making it the sixth or fifth-oldest.
The Wharton School is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton School is the world's oldest collegiate business school, and one of six Ivy League Business Schools.
The Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, commonly known as ADM, is an American multinational food processing and commodities trading corporation founded in 1902 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The company operates more than 270 plants and 420 crop procurement facilities worldwide, where cereal grains and oilseeds are processed into products used in food, beverage, nutraceutical, industrial, and animal feed markets worldwide.
Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard; he also co-founded Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites. He is an inductee in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. Andreessen's net worth is estimated at $1.7 billion.
Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.
YouGov plc is a British international Internet-based market research and data analytics firm headquartered in the UK with operations in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
Harold Tommy Amaker Jr. is an American college basketball coach and the head coach of the Harvard University men's basketball team. He has also coached for the University of Michigan and Seton Hall University. He played point guard and later served as an assistant coach at Duke University under Mike Krzyzewski. An All-American player, Amaker set numerous records and earned many honors and awards. He took Seton Hall to the post season in each of his four seasons as their coach, helped Michigan win the National Invitation Tournament the year after a probationary ban from postseason play, and had the three highest single-season win totals in the history of Harvard basketball, the school's first six Ivy League championships and first NCAA tournament victory.
Imperial Sugar Company is a major U.S. sugar producer and marketer based in Sugar Land, Texas, with sugar refinery operations in California, Georgia, and Louisiana. The company was established in 1843 and has undergone ownership changes multiple times. The current name, Imperial Sugar Company, was established after a change in ownership in 1907. The company went through major expansion through acquisitions beginning in 1988, but filed for bankruptcy in 2001, emerging in the same year and embarking on a downsizing strategy. In May 2012, the company was purchased by Louis Dreyfus Group of the Netherlands. In November 2022, Dreyfus sold Imperial to U.S. Sugar.
Snapfish, LLC is a web-based photo sharing and photo printing service owned by Shutterfly based in San Francisco, California. It was launched in 1999 by Rajil Kapoor, Bala Parthasarathy, Suneet Wadhwa, and Shripati Acharya, and its current CEO is Jasbir Patel.
Nelson Peltz is an American billionaire businessman and investor. He is a founding partner, together with Peter W. May and Edward P. Garden, of Trian Partners, an alternative investment management fund based in New York. He is non-executive chairman of Wendy's Company, Sysco, and The Madison Square Garden Company. He is a former director of H.J. Heinz Company, Mondelēz International, and Ingersoll Rand and a former CEO of Triangle Industries.
Laurene Powell Jobs is an American billionaire businesswoman executive and philanthropist. She is the widow of Steve Jobs, who was the co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., and she manages the Steve Jobs Trust. She is the founder and chair of Emerson Collective and XQ Institute. She is a major donor to Democratic Party politicians.
Ben Nelson was a U.S. Senator and Governor from Nebraska.
Timothy M. Armstrong is an American business executive. He was formerly the CEO of Oath Inc., then a subsidiary of Verizon Communications that served as the umbrella company of its digital content subdivisions, including AOL and Yahoo!. Previously, he was the CEO of AOL Inc. from 2009 until its purchase by Verizon in 2015.
Patrick Y-Kin Grove is a Singaporean and Australian tech entrepreneur of mixed heritage.
Yuri Borisovich (Bentsionovich) Milner is a Soviet-born Israeli entrepreneur, investor, physicist and scientist. He is a co-founder and former chairperson of internet company Mail.Ru Group, and a founder of investment firm DST Global. Through DST Global, Milner is an investor in Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Spotify, Byju's, Flipkart, Wish, JD, Alibaba, Nu Bank, and many other enterprises.
Minerva University is a private residential university headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was established in 2012 by Ben Nelson using $25 million in venture funding from Benchmark Capital. All classes are conducted as seminars capped at 19 students. Students travel to and live together in residential housing in a new country each semester, starting their education in San Francisco, and then living in Seoul, Taipei, Hyderabad, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Berlin, and then ending their program in San Francisco.
Betaworks is an American startup studio and seed stage venture capital company based in New York City that invests in network-focused media businesses.
Minerva Project is an educational organization that designs and delivers educational programs through educational and corporate partners globally. Its mission is reforming education through an interdisciplinary curriculum and fully active learning pedagogy delivered on a proprietary learning environment called Forum.
SeedInvest is an equity crowdfunding platform that connects startups with investors online. The company was founded in 2012 and launched in 2013. SeedInvest has focused on building liquidity in the platform by attracting high-net-worth individuals, family offices and venture capital firms. SeedInvest screens and vets deals before allowing them to take advantage of the JOBS Act exemption permitting General Solicitation. In September 2014 the company launched a partnership with Angel Investing website Gust.
Marc Eric Lore is an American entrepreneur, businessman, investor, and NBA owner. In December 2021, CNBC reported that Lore is now the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the Wonder Group. From 2016 to 2021, he was the President and CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce. Lore was appointed in September 2016 to lead Walmart's e-commerce division when his company Jet.com—an e-commerce website launched in 2014—was acquired by Walmart, Inc. Walmart purchased Jet for $3.3 billion.
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