Laura E. Jones - Volunteer
Laura Jones has been involved in a wide range of entrepreneurial and public service activities since she served as a receptionist for Scott McNealy and Sun Microsystems in that Silicon Valley icon’s earliest days. She then attended the University of California, Berkeley as an electrical engineering/computer science major before moving with her family to southern California, where she both continued her education and held teaching, fund raising and administrative positions with philanthropic groups focused on childhood education and care. Later, she held administrative and accounting positions with a family-owned manufacturing company in North Carolina. Having returned to Wisconsin, where she spent part of her own childhood, today Laura is continuing her education at the College of Business at UW-Oshkosh, assisting with the launch and operations of the Council For Innovation, and raising (with her husband, Paul) her four children.


Paul A. Jones - President, Board of Directors
Paul A. Jones is a proven entrepreneur, angel and institutional venture capital investor and manager with an extensive track record creating and acquiring businesses and defining and implementing business plans in diverse technology-driven industries. As a co-founder or senior manager and director, he has played a leadership role in securing more than $150 million of private and public capital for several of these firms. As an institutional investor, he co-founded a venture capital management firm, and led a $26 million capital campaign to support investments in seed and early stage life sciences companies in North Carolina. As a “hands on” personal investor in start-up technology firms, he has served on Boards of Directors and provided strategic guidance to companies that have secured an additional $150 million of private and public capital.

A creative thinker known for identifying, structuring and closing complex strategic transactions and leveraging diverse assets across multiple industries and disciplines, Paul began his career in Silicon Valley as a lawyer representing venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and their companies. In 1990, he moved to the Research Triangle region of North Carolina to co-found and serve as President of a venture-backed biotechnology company spun out of Duke University Medical Center. His entrepreneurial and investment activities in North Carolina were complimented by service in a variety of non-profit entrepreneurial support programs, including serving as President of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, where he was also recognized as an “Entrepreneur of the Year” in 1993.

A guest lecturer at several universities, including Duke and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Paul teaches part-time at the College of Business Administration at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. He also invests in, consults for and/or serves as a Director of several technology-driven companies in Northeastern Wisconsin, including The Luggage Club, Inc. and LogCentric Inc, and is the founding President of the Council for Innovation, an emerging organization housed at the UW Oshkosh Center for Community Partnerships that supports the development of an entrepreneurial high impact innovation-driven economy in Northeast Wisconsin. He earned his JD at the University of Chicago and his MBA at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. In 2003 Paul, his wife, Laura, and four children returned to Neenah Wisconsin, where they spent many years of their youth.

 
Roger Orlady - Secretary/Treasurer, Board of Directors
Roger Orlady is a senior financial and operations executive who started his own consulting firm in 2002. He often serves as a part time chief financial officer (CFO) with startup and early stage companies seeking aggressive growth through the effective utilization of innovation and technology. He is instrumental in the strategic planning, the acquisition of funding and in the operations of his clients. He has been involved in clients ranging from IT firms to manufacturers of traditional to leading edge products and has assisted them in the development and implementation of their strategies.

Prior to starting his own business, he was the chief financial executive at two manufacturing companies for nearly 20 years and led their financial, information technology and human resources functions. Part of his experience with these two companies included effectively responding to significant growth, working with venture capital firms, and starting up and running a manufacturing firm in Madison as a part of a joint venture with an Austrian partner.

Roger was a co-founder of the Northeast Wisconsin chapter of the Wisconsin Innovation Network (WIN) in 2003 and has been its only President. This was the first WIN chapter formed in over 20 years and it has been instrumental in the development of other entrepreneurial and innovation organizations in northeast Wisconsin.

Roger was recognized in 2006 as a Wisconsin Innovation Champion by the Wisconsin Innovation Service Center. He is on the Board of Directors of the Inventors Network of Wisconsin and is a founding member of the Council for Innovation, the Brainstorming Ideas Group (BIG) and the northeast Wisconsin chapter of The Hive. He served as a committee member for the first two NEW END conferences and co-chaired the first two regional business plan contests. He is also on the board of directors of the Northeast Wisconsin chapter of Financial Executives International (FEI), is a former President, and has served as treasurer of Fox Cities Greenways for the last seven years. Mr. Orlady earned a Bachelor of Science in Business with an Accounting Emphasis from the University of Southern California. He also is a CPA and a National Merit Scholar.