Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (born Sukhinder Singh in 1970) is a technology executive and entrepreneur. She has worked at companies including Google, Amazon and News Corp, Yodlee (YODL), Polyvore, and Junglee.^[1] In January 2011, she became the Founder and Chairman of JOYUS, the video shopping platform for women.^[2]

Early life and education

Singh Cassidy was born in 1970 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to parents of Sikh descent. Her family moved to Ontario, Canada, when she was two years old. She grew up in St. Catherines, in Canada's Niagara Region.^[3] Singh Cassidy graduated from the University of Western Ontario and earned her H.B.A. from the Richard Ivey School of Business in 1992.

Singh Cassidy was raised in an entrepreneurial family. Both of her parents were doctors and ran a medical practice for thirty years.^[4]

Career

Early career

Singh Cassidy started her career in investment banking at Merrill Lynch in New York. She moved to the Merrill Lynch London office 1994. She then worked as an analyst for British Sky Broadcasting.^[5]

In 1998, Singh Cassidy moved to Silicon Valley and joined ecommerce startup Junglee as head of business development. Junglee was acquired by Amazon in 1998.^[6] Following the acquisition, Singh Cassidy joined Amazon, where she led merchant business development for the first generation of Amazon marketplace. According to Bloomberg Business, she helped create "one of the company's first programs designed to deliver shoppers to merchants that carried what the buyers were looking for."^[5]

Singh Cassidy co-founded financial services platform Yodlee in 1999 with five engineering co-founders, including Schwark Satyavolu.^[5] and served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development from 1999 to 2003. In 2014, Yodlee became a public company, trading under the ticker YODL.^[7]

In 2003, Singh Cassidy joined Google as the first General Manager for Google Local & Maps, and Head of Content Acquisition for Books, Library, Scholar, Shopping and Video. There she launched Google Local and Maps, with product manager Bret Taylor and a team of engineers. In 2004, she became head of Google's international operations in Asia Pacific (APAC) and Latin America (LATAM), becoming Vice President in 2005 and then President of APAC and LATAM in 2008. Singh-Cassidy is credited with building Google's presence across 103 countries in Asia Pacific and Latin America.^[8]

In 2009, Singh Cassidy left Google to become CEO-in-Residence at venture capital firm Accel Partners.^[9] Singh Cassidy was named CEO of Polyvore in 2010,^[10] before founding JOYUS in 2011^[4]

Joyus

In October 2010, Singh Cassidy had the idea for a new platform aimed at converging content and commerce through online video as a way to increase consumer engagement with products and drive direct purchases via the video.^[11][12] She founded JOYUS in January, 2011 in San Francisco, CA. Joyus.com launched to the public in August, 2011. Singh Cassidy raised $7.9 million in seed funding from Accel Partners, Harrison Metal, Joel Hyatt, Venky Harinarayan & Anand Rajaraman.^[13] In 2012, JOYUS raised a second round of funding totaling $11.5 million from Interwest and Time Warner, as well as existing investors.^[14]

JOYUS was ranked one of the "Hot 100" e-retailing websites by Internet Retailer in 2012;^[15] and one of the "Top 25 Ecommerce Companies to Watch" by Brand Innovators in 2013.^[16] JOYUS was a winner of the 2013 Brightcove Innovation Awards^[17] and a winner of the 2013 L’Oreal Next Generation Digital Awards.^[18] JOYUS was featured by Apple as one of the best Lifestyle shopping apps for the 2014 holiday season.

#ChoosePossibility Project and theBoardlist

In May 2015, Singh Cassidy published an open letter, titled "Tech Women Choose Possibility", challenging the tech community to increase the rate of progress for women in the industry by leveraging its wealth of existing female talent.^[19] The letter was co-signed by 59 female entrepreneurs and investors. Singh Cassidy based the letter on her own experiences as a tech entrepreneur and research she conducted on 230 female founders and CEOs of tech companies.^[20]

Singh Cassidy launched theBoardlist, the first initiative of the #ChoosePossibility Project, on July 15, 2015.^[21] theBoardlist is an online marketplace that connects CEOs who are looking for board candidates with women who are peer-endorsed for private and public tech company boards. When it launched, theBoardlist included the names of over 600 women who had been endorsed by 50 investors and CEOs in the tech industry, from companies including Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Twitter, Lyft and Box.^[22]

On October 20, 2015, theBoardlist announced that it had facilitated its first placement of a woman to the board of a private tech company.^[23]

Personal life

Singh Cassidy is married to Simon Cassidy, a fellow Canadian and former hedge-fund manager who runs an independent investment firm.^[4] The couple has three children and lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Organizations founded

• Yodlee^[5]
• Joyus^[11]
• theBoardlist^[21]

Board member and advisor

Singh Cassidy joined the board of TripAdvisor (TRIP) in December, 2011 and has served on the board of J. Hilburn since August, 2012. She is a board member of Ericsson as of 2015.^[24] She previously served on the board of J. Crew Group, Inc.(JCG) and as an advisor to Twitter.^[1] In addition, she sits on the Computer Science Advisory Council at Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science,^[25] and was a member of the Advisory Network for A Woman's Nation led by Maria Shriver and The Center for American Progress (CAP) in partnership with USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.^[26]

Honors

• Named a "Power Women" by Forbes (2014)^[27]
• Featured in book, Good Leaders Learn: Lessons from Lifetimes of Leadership (2013)^[28]
• Named one of "The Silicon Valley 100" by Business Insider (2012)^[29]
• Named one of "44 Female Founders Every Entrepreneur Should Know" (2012)^[30]
• Named one of "14 Incredible Women to Watch in Silicon Valley" (2012)^[31]
• Included in Ad Age list of "Women to Watch" (2010)^[32]
• Selected as TechFellow Awards’ first General Management Fellow in recognition of outstanding innovation in General Management (2009)^[33]
• Named by Fortune as one of "tech's next-gen leaders" and featured on the cover of the annual Most Powerful Women Magazine addition (2008)^[34]

Notable Speaker

• Keynote Speaker, Retail Council of Canada, Store 2015^[35]
• Keynote Speaker at IRCE 2014 – Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition^[36]
• Keynote Speaker, D2C Convention 2014^[37]
• Keynote Speaker, Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Thought Leadership Series, 2012^[38]
• Keynote Speaker, SVB CEO Summit West, 2012^[39]
• Speaker, AllThingsD Asia, 2011^[40]
• Keynote speaker at DLDWomen, 2010^[41]
• Keynote Speaker at India Conclave, 2007^[42]
• Featured in book, Innovation nation : Canadian leadership from Java to Jurassic Park (2002)^[43]

Angel Investor

Singh Cassidy is a select angel investor whose investments include:

• Stitch Fix^[44]
• the Real Real^[45]
• Soma Water^[46]
• J. Hilburn^[47]
• Heartwork

References

External links

• Sukhinder on Twitter
• JOYUS on Facebook
• JOYUS
• theBoardlist