Russell Siegelman

Board Chairperson

Russell Siegelman has spent over thirty years in business and technology as a manager, investor, and director. Currently he is splitting his time between teaching, angel investing, and non-profit activities.

As a Lecturer at Stanford’s School of Business, he teaches classes in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Russell is a mentor and adviser to many GSB students and entrepreneurs.

He is the Board Chair of Freespira, Inc., a digital therapeutics company started by his wife, Beth Siegelman.

In the non-profit area, he has been the Chairman of the Board of the Global Innovation Fund, Chairman of the Board of Sustainable Conservation, a member of the USAID Development Lab Advisory Committee, a Trustee of the Nueva School, and a board member at the Lucille Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. He is currently a board member at Innovations for Poverty Action. He and his wife, Beth Siegelman, are longtime donors to the Jamal Poverty Action Lab at MIT.

Russell has made personal investments in over sixty technology start-ups. He and Beth have made startup grants to several non-profit impact enterprises, including Merit America, Earth Enable, and Trust Neighborhoods. They are also partner donors to the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation.

Starting in 1996, Russell spent eleven years as a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he invested in consumer and technology related technologies and markets, including software, electronic commerce, Web services, semiconductors, mobile systems, media and telecommunications.

Russell joined KPCB after seven years at Microsoft. At Microsoft he helped launch several networking and Windows products. Later he worked directly for Bill Gates, resulting in the formation the Microsoft Network (MSN), Microsoft’s online service. He also oversaw the formation of Slate.

He earned his BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Physics in 1984 and an MBA from Harvard University where he was a Baker Scholar in 1989.