Props to Chris Casacchia, Research Director Meghan Kliewer and former Editorial Asst. Rebecca Mondon for weeks of work developing our page 1 feature on female representation on public company boards. The trend is positive, perhaps slow to arrive, but there’s more catching up to do elsewhere.
OCTANe boss and former Blackstone partner Bill Carpou opened the 13th annual Medical Tech Innovation Forum last week at Newport Beach Marriott Hotel, noting, “Our lunch panel will feature women in medtech.” Carpou said “women-led cos. receive only 2% of venture funding … my team and I have decided to heighten awareness.”
What The Insider wasn’t aware of was that all that initial hard work keynote speaker Henry Samueli was putting into researching the development of broadband communications at the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science was because the N.Y.-born professor “just wanted tenure.” So Buffalo.
Well, tenure’s known as the “million-dollar handshake.” Broadcom under Samueli and former student Henry Nicholas and now CEO Hock Tan has done 100,000 times better than that, becoming a $100 billion disruptor and one of the most important technology companies here or anywhere (stories, pages 1, 57).
Inspiration Point: My newly adopted hamlet, Balboa Island, has cool traditions. Some trace to the founding fathers, even a few kin to William Collins, the Riverside developer who dredged a channel and turned a sandbar into Balboa Island … shortly after the first ferry crossed the Mersey, OK, the Bay, for a dime … still just $1 and runs through midnight …
And then this week. I can’t discern who gets credit for turning The Island into the Halloween trick-or-treat go-to for thousands of families and kids—but after deftly dodging thousands of Black Panthers and Vampirinas, some from nearby, many bussed in from other OC cities—I can attest the tradition is flourishing … so many of my neighbors ensure they’re outside their elaborately decorated homes, flush with candy and smiles till the last Fortniter calls it a night. Inspiring.
Did you know? In 1953, around the future intersection of Fashion Island and Newport Center Drive, 50,000 Boy Scouts descended upon unincorporated Newport and pitched tents for the third International Jamboree, first in the West … like turning sandbars into islands, the scouts turned a dirt road into a paved one. Today Jamboree Road leads to and ends at Balboa Island. Thanks for the history lesson, Devon Douhgerty …
Scouts encore … Monster Beverage Corp. CEO and OC’s Wealthiest mainstay Rodney Sacks keynotes Boy Scouts of America-OC Annual Leadership Breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Nov. 9 at Balboa Bay Resort … Laguna eye doctor and UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute member John Hovanesian will receive the council’s Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. Hovanesian travels to his native Armenia every year with fellow Samaritans to fight blindness in the former Soviet republic.
