Meet the Judges

Learn about our esteemed panel of judges who will help us honor the higher education institutions with the most impactful and innovative cloud solutions. Nominations are evaluated based upon criteria including number of students impacted, cost savings, and improved IT performance.

Michael Brown

Michael Brown is a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow working with the U.S. Defense Department. He is the co-author of a Pentagon study on China’s participation in the U.S. venture ecosystem.

Through August of 2016, Michael was the CEO of Symantec Corporation, the global leader in cybersecurity and the world’s 10th largest software company with revenues of $4 billion and more than 10,000 employees worldwide.

Michael is the former Chairman & CEO of Quantum (1995-2003), a leader in the computer storage industry specializing in backup and archiving products. As CEO of Quantum, the company achieved record revenues of $6 billion as the world’s leader in disk drives for personal computers and the world’s largest tape drive business. During his tenure, Fortune magazine twice recognized Quantum as one of the 100 Best Places to Work.

After leaving Quantum, Michael served as Chairman of EqualLogic, a storage array company. Dell acquired EqualLogic in 2008 for $1.4 billion, in the largest all-cash transaction for a venture-backed company up to that time.

He has served on the Board of Trustees of the Berklee College of Music in Boston since 2013 and prior to that served on the President’s Advisory Council since 2007.  Michael received his BA degree in economics from Harvard University in 1980 and his MBA degree from Stanford University in 1984. 

Vicki Tambellini

Vicki Tambellini is President and CEO of The Tambellini Group, the world’s leading market research and advisory firm for higher education. The firm, which she founded in 2001, delivers unbiased quantitative and qualitative technology research, insight, and analysis — specifically for higher education. She is widely recognized for her expertise in current solutions assessment, presenting strategic alternatives to meet goals and mitigate risk, and contract negotiation.

Vicki has more than 30 years of experience as an award-winning software company executive, author, blogger, consultant, guest-speaker, and entrepreneur. She has authored numerous in-depth research reports on higher education, and established the Education Institution Technology Profile Database® cataloging nearly 60,000 technology selections at more than 19,000 institutions world-wide.

In addition to founding The Tambellini Group, Vicki is also the Founder and President of Edu1world, a virtual community for higher education technology professionals; and Enterprise Hive, an enterprise social business software platform for education, government and technology customers.

Vicki has received many distinctive awards and honors from companies where she held executive positions, including PeopleSoft, Oracle, and NCR. She was selected for the prestigious Elearning! Institute’s Honorary Lifetime Platinum Learning! award based on recognition of her contributions to higher education and commitment to evolve and shape the industry. In 2016, Vicki received both the MOKA Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the 2016 Eduventures Innovation of the Year Award.

Josh Becker

Josh Becker is CEO of Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company. Josh leads strategy and operations and is a thought leader on trends and leveraging technology especially cloud software for analytics. Lex Machina provides litigation data and analytics to companies and law firms, enabling them to formulate data-driven business strategies that win lawsuits.  

Josh was part of the Founding team of Dice.com (NYSE:DHX) and ran corporate development at Agile Software (sold to Oracle).

He was a Venture Capitalist at Redpoint Ventures, then a Founding General Partner of New Cycle Capital. Previously, he also worked at McKinsey & Co. and Netscape.  

He Chairs the Full Circle Fund, a coalition of technology and business leaders that collectively funds and supports leading social entrepreneurs.  

Josh holds a B.A. from Williams College, an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a J.D. from the Stanford Law School.