DELEGATE PROFILES
BRIAN TRELSTAD
MARY TRIPSAS
ACUMEN FUND
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
Chief Investment Officer
Associate Professor
Brian Trelstad is the Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund, a $40m social investment fund investing in innovative social enterprises in South Asia and East Africa delivering critical health, water, housing and energy services to the base of the pyramid. He also drives Acumen’s work measuring social and financial return and is a founding executive committee member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). Prior to Acumen Fund, Brian was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in their New Jersey office. He has co-founded and advised several earlystage technology companies and social enterprises and was the lead environmental staffer for President Clinton’s Corporation for National Service. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the University of California’s College of Environmental Design.
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Professor Tripsas is an expert on the management of innovation and entrepreneurship. Her research and teaching explore the transformation of industries by radically new technology, and she is currently engaged in studies of digital publishing, digital imaging, and air taxis. Her work has been published in a number of leading journals including the Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy, and Organization Science. Her awards include the MIT Sloan Zannetos prize for the best doctoral thesis and the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division Thought Leader Award. Before Harvard, Professor Tripsas served on the faculty of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to academia, she was a strategy consultant in the Cambridge and Milan offices of the Monitor Group and worked for IBM both as a software developer and as a member of the sales force. She also served on the board of directors of Lexar Media (NASDAQ: LEXR) from 2003-2006, when the company was acquired by Micron. She earned her PhD from the MIT Sloan School of Management, her MBA from the Harvard Business School, and her BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana.
Jefferson Innovation Summit