Eric Ball joins advisory board

IRiSS is pleased to announce the official appointment of our newest advisory board member, Eric Ball.

Eric is Co-Founder and General Partner at Impact Venture Capital, an early-stage applied-AI venture firm that emphasizes co-investment with corporates. He also serves on several boards, including: as board chair at the Archimedes Tech SPAC, cofounder and board chair of capital markets startup CapConnect+, and a board member at three of his venture firm’s portfolio companies.

Eric spent 28 years as a corporate finance executive, including 11 years as Senior Vice President & Treasurer at Oracle (where he issued $52 billion in bonds to pay for 105 acquisitions) and one year as CFO at C3 AI. He has also worked in finance at AT&T, Avery Dennison, Cisco Systems, and Flextronics. He serves on the board of two other nonprofits: the Lucas Medical Foundation and the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues. Eric received a BA with honors from the University of Michigan, an MBA and MA from the University of Rochester (where he also completed coursework toward a PhD in economics), and his PhD in Management from the Drucker-Ito School. He has taught at three universities (University of Rochester, Rutgers, and USC) and served as co-editor of the Journal of Applied Finance for five years. He is co-author of the 2012 book Unlocking the Ivory Tower: How Management Research Can Transform Your Business.

Eric’s wife, Sheryl Axline, works in executive education for Stanford GSB. They live in Menlo Park with two teenage sons.

The new academic year is poised to usher in some new and exciting changes at IRiSS, and we look forward to benefiting from Eric’s contributions to the work ahead.