Bio

A native of Hungary, George Sarlo and his college classmates in Budapest started an anti-government protest that grew into a full-scale rebellion, only to be crushed by the Soviet Army. After escaping to Austria he came to America as a refugee. George co-founded Walden Venture Capital with Art Berliner. Later, he also co-founded Walden International and Walden Israel, both of which spun out as stand-alone entities. At Walden, George led the successful investments in Elantec (Intersil), Rugged Digital Systems, Microchip, Vitesse Semiconductor, InVivo (NASDAQ), Computer Communications, RasterOps and Terayon, among others. Prior to Walden, George was an engineer at Hughes Aircraft and a Portfolio Manager at Capital Research. George also was the Founder and Chairman of Ashfield & Co., an investment management company in San Francisco with over $4 billion under management. Ashfield was sold to Old Mutual plc (LSE:OML) in 2007. George has served on the boards of numerous charities and educational institutions, including the International Rescue Committee, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, University of California San Francisco Foundation, KQED and Interplast. His Sarlo Foundation supports human rights, education and health issues and the annual Sarlo Foundation Distinguished Humanitarian Service Awards, Education: George earned a Master's Degree in Business Administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Arizona. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the University of San Francisco.