About Us

The Advisory Board

Christopher Lochhead – Strategic Advisor

After being the chief marketing officer at three public companies, Christopher Lochhead retired at 38.

Today he is a part-time strategy advisor. Christopher started his first company at age eighteen. Since then he has been an executive in four start-ups and has been an officer of three publicly traded technology companies: Mercury, Scient and Vantive.

Mercury Interactive Corporation, a $1B enterprise software company, was acquired by Hewlett Packard in November 2006 for $4.5B. The company was the leader in Business Technology Optimization software - now HP is. He helped grow the company from approximately $400m to over $1B from 2002 to 2006. In 1998 Lochhead helped start the Internet consulting firm Scient. They achieved $21M in first year sales, and $156M in its second year. Scient built a dominant brand, had a successful IPO, and became an early Internet leader. Lochhead joined Vantive, a customer relationship management (CRM) software company, in 1996 and helped the company grow from $25M in sales to $117M in two years. Prior to Vantive, Lochhead was the president of CRM consultant Always an Adventure International.

Dave Mandelbrot – Strategic Advisor

David Mandelbrot spent nearly 7 years at Yahoo where he started as corporate counsel in charge of mergers and acquisitions and ultimately became the VP & GM of Yahoo's Media and Entertainment business. In that role, Dave led the company's business development, product, sales programs and marketing efforts for all of the following Yahoo properties: Finance, News, Movies, Games, TV, Sports, Yahooligans (Kids) and Health.

Dave was a key force in growing the company's media and entertainment business to well over $100 million in annual revenue and also for making many of those properties #1 in their respective areas.

Before joining Yahoo, Dave was Director of Business Development and Associate General Counsel at Electronics for Imaging and Corporate Counsel at Netscape Communications.

Dave has a B.S. in Business Administration from UC Berkeley and a J.D. from the Duke University School of Law. Dave is currently the CEO of a stealth-mode startup that we aren't allowed to tell you about.

Wasim Azhar – Lecturer in Marketing, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Wasim Azhar is a Lecturer in Marketing at Stanford University as well as at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in international marketing and sales and distribution channels. He was formerly a Professor of Business Policy and Marketing, and the Pro-Vice Chancellor at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. At Stanford since 2001, he has been teaching the Global and International Marketing and Channels Management electives in the MBA program as well as the core marketing course in the Sloan Program. Wasim has also taught marketing sessions in short executive programs in Strategic Marketing Management, Executive Program for Growing Companies, Management Program for Young Entrepreneurs Organization, and the Management Program for the National Football League.

Since 2005, Wasim Azhar has also taught elective courses in the MBA and EWMBA programs at UC Berkeley. He has been placed in the elite 6 + club in teaching evaluations in all courses he has taught at Berkeley.

Wasim Azhar has taught in many short executive programs including International Marketing, Channels Management, Sales Force Management, Advertising and Promotion, Marketing of Services, Management Development, IT for Top Management, Negotiation Skills, and Corporate Planning and Strategic Management in Pakistan, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka, varying in duration from two days to three weeks. These programs were jointly conducted by McGill University of Canada and the Lahore University of Management Sciences and were attended by senior executives from leading multinational and local corporations from over 30 countries.

Wasim has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and brings his multicultural experience to his classes while also drawing on the perspectives of the diverse group of students at Stanford. He is currently on the Board of Directors of companies in the United States including Pageonce, AmZone LLC., Veri- Sys Corp, and SoftWeb Corp.