Seattle Co-Chairs
 Chuck Gottschalk
Chuck Gottschalk is a VP – Financial Advisor at Bernstein Global Wealth Management. He also is currently President of the Seattle chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth. For the seven years prior to joining Bernstein he was a Managing Partner for Tatum, a national financial and technology executive services firm, where he led the Pacific NW practice from start-up to 50 professionals and one of the firm’s consistently top performing markets. Earlier in his career Chuck was a senior executive in three venture-backed emerging technology companies (CEO in two and CFO in one), where he successfully led equity and debt financings, strategic partnering initiatives, the spin-out of a corporate division (that ultimately went public), and the sale of two of the businesses to publicly-traded companies. He spent the first 15 years of his career at Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers).
 Arnie prentice
Arlen I. “Arnie” Prentice is Chairman and CEO of Kibble & Prentice, a Pacific Northwest financial services firm providing commercial and personal property and casualty insurance brokerage, a full range of employee benefit services, and investment advisory services to high net worth individuals and qualified retirement plan sponsors.
He also serves on the board of directors of Flow International (nasdaq), Northland Telecommunication Corporation and Pacific Marketing International. Mr. Prentice serves as a member of the USI Executive Management Board. USI is a Goldman Sachs Capital Partners IV Company. He served nineteen years on the Starbucks Coffee Company board of directors and as the non-executive chairman of Percon Inc. (nasdaq) for eight years. He is also a principal of the Prentice Family Partnership which invests primarily in early stage Pacific Northwest companies including the Northwest Drug Emporium franchise (sold to Longs Drugs), Optiva Corporation – maker of the Sonicare toothbrush (sold to Phillips), Wizards of the Coast (sold to Hasbro), Advanced H2O (sold to LaSalle Partners) and Spider Staging (sold to Flow International).
Mr. Prentice is a member of many professional and civic associations at the international, national and local levels, including the Million Dollar Round Table, the Board of Trustees for the Seattle World Trade Center, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Business Alliance and the Methow Conservancy.
seattle panel
 rick fox
Rick is an independent director of companies in diverse industries. In addition he provides consulting services to entrepreneurs and the financial services industry. Rick previously held executive, operational and financial positions at CyberSafe, Wall Data and PACCAR and is the former Managing Partner of Ernst & Young’s Seattle office. He is the Treasurer and a member of the board of directors of The Seattle Foundation and a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Visitors of the Fuqua School of Business, DukeUniversity. He serves on the board of directors of Premera Blue Cross, a Northwest managed care company, Flow International (NASDAQ – FLOW), a machine tool manufacturer, Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW), an online travel service and Univar Inc., an international chemical distributor as well as several private equity backed technology companies. He served on the board of Shurgard Self Storage (NYSE – SHU), an REIT until August 2006 when it was sold to Public Storage (NYSE – PSA) and aQuantive (NASDAQ – AQNT), an on line marketing company, until it was sold to Microsoft (NASDAQ – MSFT) in August 2007.
Rick has an undergraduate degree in business with a major in Accounting from OhioUniversity, an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business, DukeUniversity and is a CPA in WashingtonState. He is married and has two adult children and two grandchildren.
 bob george
Bob George is Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Secretary and Treasurer for Esterline Technologies. Prior to assuming his current position, he served as Esterline’s Treasurer and Corporate Controller. Before joining Esterline in 1997, Bob held management positions in finance and operations with Zurn Industries, Elgin Electronics, and Xerox Corporation. During his tenure with Esterline, the company has grown in size and scope - from $200 Million to $1.5 Billion today, and from a purely domestic focus to a global organization. Bob has led multiple capital raising initiatives; enhanced the corporation’s capital structure; and contributed strategic and technical expertise to 35 acquisitions and 8 divestitures. Bob has significant international experience as well as operations and information technology integration expertise.
He has an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a BA in economics from Drew University. While in residence at the University of Brussels, Belgium, he completed an intensive study of the European Community. Bob has presented at conferences on such topics as Finance Excellence, Leadership and Teaming, Ethical Leadership, The Role of the Controller, Strategic Outsourcing, and Client/Server Accelerated Implementation. He has been an instructor for the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) regional education series and a keynote speaker for the American Accounting Association, the IMA’s annual Controllers Conference, and the Kathoff
International EDM/PDM Users Conference. Bob is a frequent guest lecturer at Seattle area universities at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive education levels in accounting, finance, and ethics programs. In 2007, Bob was honored as the Puget Sound Public Company CFO of the Year by the Puget Sound Business Journal..
 brad tilden
Brad Tilden is the President of Alaska Airlines, overseeing Alaska Airlines’ operating divisions, as well as Marketing, Cargo, Planning and Revenue Management. Previously, Tilden served as Alaska Air Group’s Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Finance, leading the Finance, Information Technology, Planning, Revenue Management and Corporate Real Estate organizations. Before joining Alaska in 1991, he spent eight years with the accounting firm Price Waterhouse at its offices in Seattle and Melbourne, Australia.
Tilden earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Pacific Lutheran University and an executive master’s degree in business administration from the University of Washington. He also holds a private pilot’s license.
Tilden serves on the boards of Pacific Lutheran University and the Chief Seattle Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He is also a regular guest speaker in University of Washington business school classes.
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Portland Chair
 Roy Tucker
Roy, who is a Partner with Perkins Coie, is an experienced business counselor and advisor who focuses his practice on mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, securities compliance and corporate governance, and restructurings. Roy has represented issuers and underwriters in numerous public offerings and regularly advises corporate clients and private equity firms on mergers, asset sales and leveraged buy-outs.
portland panel
 john kretchmer
John Kretchmer is the CEO of American Licorice Company, the maker of Red Vines and other confection products. He’s also the chairman of Candy Alliance LLC and is a past board member of the National Confectioners Association as well as Longview Fibre Company. A former audit partner with Price Waterhouse and graduate of University of Oregon, John now lives in Bend, Oregon with his wife Gail and three teenage boys.
 Bob Walker
Robert R. (Bob) Walker was CFO of Agilent Technologies from its creation in 1999 until December of 2001. Walker created and led Agilent’s financial functions as the company was spun out from Hewlett Packard and completed its IPO. Since leaving Agilent, he has served on the boards of several publicly traded companies. He currently serves on the board and the Audit Committee of Electro Scientific Industries, based in Portland, OR. He also was national chair of Financial Executives International (FEI) and currently serves as the board chair of FEI's research foundation.
Before joining Agilent, Walker served as vice president and general manager of Hewlett Packard’s Professional Services Business unit responsible for consulting, outsourcing and customer education. He joined HP in 1975 and held a variety of financial and administrative positions including the controller for the company’s computer business. He spent four years leading HP’s Information Technology function. Walker was named HP’s first CIO and elected a vice president in 1995.
Walker received both a BS in electrical engineering and an MBA from Cornell University.
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