Advisory Board
Dr. Charles Elachi
Former Director, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Charles Elachi is a professor of planetary science and electrical engineering at Caltech. He was the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 2001 to 2016 and during his 46-year career at JPL, Dr. Elachi was a leader in developing the field of spaceborne imaging radar. The principal investigator on numerous research and development studies and flight projects sponsored by NASA, he is currently the team leader of the Cassini Titan Radar experiment and a co-investigator on the Rosetta Comet Nucleus Sounder Experiment, and a member of the science team on NASA’s mission to Europa. Elachi is the author of over 230 publications and the holder of several patents. The recipient of numerous honors, he was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in 2006. He also has an asteroid named after him in recognition of his contributions to planetary exploration.
During his 15 years as the Director of NASA’s JPL he completed 23 successful deep space missions including landing 3 rovers on Mars (Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity); and two missions that returned extraterrestrial samples to Earth containing solar wind molecules and comet particles that are over 4.5 billion years old. In recognition of these extraordinary accomplishments the JPL/NASA mission control center was re-named “The Charles Elachi Mission Control Center” in 2016.
Shields Richardson
Entrepreneur
After graduating from the University of Southern California, Mr. Richardson began his 45+ year business career at Price Waterhouse. Working as a Financial Advisor to Professional Athletes, Fortune 500 Executives and high-net-worth individuals lead to the investment, management and ownership in the fields of Real Estate, Motion Picture Production, Insurance, the Internet, and Media companies, most notably founding and creating one of the largest National Out of Home (OOH) Media companies with over 5,000 ad panels.
Mr. Richardson was Technical Organizer for the Modern Pentathlon in the 1984 Olympic Games (Los Angeles) as well as the Jr. World Games in 1983.
A cowboy at heart, he and his family’s love of the mountains led them to move to Mammoth Lakes where he became involved in the community. Aside from the many Commissions he has served on, Mr. Richardson was elected to Mammoth Lakes Town Council, served as Mayor of Mammoth Lakes, and is currently on the Executive Committees for the Mammoth Lakes Foundation and Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra.
Pat Wilkison
Founder and Managing Partner, Integrity Partners
Over multiple decades of focus on transportation, big data, cloud, IoT and emerging classes of compute infrastructure, Pat has continuously developed and productized enabling technologies to build multi-billion dollars of enterprise value. He is best known for uniquely combining emerging technology, emerging markets & capital-efficient execution. Pat is passionate about practical applications of innovation, with acute focus on the machines and infrastructure which enable the manner in which businesses and people move, connect, communicate and transact.
He leads early stage investments in companies which uniquely focus on high value applications in mobility and modern compute infrastructure. Pat applies his operational acumen to a select group of high-performance companies, augmenting companies at the BOD level. Prior to founding Integrity Partners, Pat built Exponential VC, an early stage Southern California venture firm. Pat has decades of experience in high growth operating roles wherein he conceived and created high growth divisions within Western Digital, running Cloud and Enterprise Storage Products, and at STEC, a pioneer in high-performance solid state storage systems as their head of product. Prior to his operator roles at technology companies, Pat worked in the Technology Investment Banking Division of Lehman Brothers/Barclays, leading M&A and IPOs for a wide range of technology companies.