» Founders » Staff » Guidelines » Evaluation Criteria » Application » Grantees Founders Noosheen Hashemi Noosheen Hashemi, President of The H.A.N.D. Foundation, is a private investor and philanthropist with a strong passion for entrepreneurship and economic development. Her career began at Avantek, a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley and progressed into Oracle Corporation where she worked from 1985 to 1995 and took active part in software’s meteoric rise as an industry. Her unmatched work ethic propelled her to frequent promotions - in 1988, she became the Director of Finance and Administration for Oracle US and in 1990, at the age of 27, she was named Vice-President of the now multibillion dollar company. In 1991, she won Oracle's "Against All Odds Award" for her role in the company's financial turnaround. Her foci changed from Finance and Administration to Marketing and Business Development at Oracle and in 1996 at Quote.com, a profitable internet finance portal, where she was Vice-President of Sales and Marketing. In 1997, she left Quote.com to start a family and the company was soon sold to Lycos. Ms. Hashemi is a board member of the New America Foundation, a public policy institute whose purpose is to bring exceptionally promising new voices and ideas to the fore of our nation’s public discourse. She is chairman of the Meadowood Social Venture Fund and the PARSA Community Foundation, both focused on promoting strategic philanthropy and social entrepreneurship in the Iranian community. She serves on the board of MIT’s Iranian Studies Program as well as the advisory board of Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives. She earned a M.S. from Stanford's Graduate School of Business in Management and became a Sloan Fellow. She holds a B.S. in Economics from San Jose State University. Farzad Nazem Farzad Nazem is Chief Technical Officer and Executive Vice President, Engineering and Site Operations at Yahoo! Inc. He joined Yahoo! in early 1996 as senior vice president of engineering and was named chief technical officer in January 1997. Nazem has more than 24 years of experience in executive and technical positions. He plays a key role in developing overall company strategy and direction. He is responsible for overseeing all areas of engineering, including site operations and product development. Nazem reports to chairman and chief executive officer, Terry Semel. Prior to Yahoo!, he was vice president of Oracle Corporation's Media and Web Server Division. Previously, Nazem held various technical positions for SYDIS, Inc. and Rolm Corporation. He holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic State University.