The Commonwealth Club of California Honors Innovators

A group of outstanding individuals were honored recently at the Commonwealth Club’s 28^th Annual Distinguished Citizen Awards Gala in San Francisco. With this year’s theme of “Beyond Boundaries,” each honoree has dramatically broken boundaries in their field, whether boundaries of politics, technology, gender, or science. Their work and vision reflect the Commonwealth Club’s commitment to leadership and citizens who work to improve our society. The Club’s name, Commonwealth, means an alliance for common interests and the common good.

As a member of the Commonwealth Club of California, I have been attending this annual awards evening for the past few years and I was incredibly impressed with the list of  this year’s honorees, which included Dr. Chuck Geschke, Ambassador James Hormel, Robyn Denholm, Elizabeth Holmes and Dr. Charles Munger, Jr. The Annual Distinguished Citizen Award Gala was splendidly emceed by Dan Ashley, anchor at ABC7 News.

Dr. Charles Geschke co-founded Adobe in 1982 with Dr. John Warnock, driving technology innovations that forever transformed how people create and consume content across every screen. A respected and inspiring industry leader, Dr. Geschke was instrumental in developing some of the software industry’s most pioneering technologies. Through his vision and passion, Dr. Geschke helped build Adobe from a start-up into one of the world’s largest software companies.

Today, he and Dr. Warnock are co-chairmen of Adobe’s board of directors and continue to shape the direction of the company with more than $4 billion in annual revenue. Dr. Geschke has served as chairman of the board with Dr. Warnock since September 1997. Prior to co-founding Adobe, Dr. Geschke formed the Imaging Sciences Laboratory at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and was a principal scientist and researcher at Xerox PARC’s Computer Sciences Laboratory. Among many awards, Dr. Geschke, along with Dr. Warnock, was the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, one of the nation’s highest honors bestowed on scientists, engineers and inventors.  Dr. Geschke holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University as well as a master’s degree in mathematics and an A.B. in classics, both from Xavier University. Dr. Geschke received the Commonwealth Club’s prestigious William K. Bowes Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ambassador James Hormel was honored for his lifelong commitment to human and civil rights and his outstanding civic leadership locally, nationally, and internationally. The Honorable James Hormel has devoted his life to the advocacy of basic human rights, social justice, and the well-being of all individuals creating, funding, and initiating major programs addressing these concerns and seeking to involve others in public service.

Hormel served as United States Ambassador to Luxembourg from June 1999 to December 2000. He was alternate representative of the U.S. delegation to the 51st United Nations General Assembly in 1996.  He also was a member of the U.S. delegation to the 51st U.N. Human Rights Commission, which met in Geneva in early 1995. Also in 1995, and again in 1997, he served on the Western States Regional Selection Panel for the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.  For more than 25 years, Hormel has been instrumental in developing resources for organizations serving people affected by HIV and AIDS, substance abuse, and breast cancer. He has served as a member of the board of directors of the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.  He was a founding director of the City Club of San Francisco, a club created to bring together community leaders of diverse backgrounds. Hormel has five children, fourteen grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.  He currently resides in San Francisco with his husband, Michael P. Nguyen.

Robyn Denholm – As Chief Financial and Operations Officer at Juniper Networks, Robyn Denholm is responsible for the company’s finance, administration and business operations, which include planning, IT, real estate, investor relations, internal audit, manufacturing operations, and business transformation functions. She chairs Juniper’s Operating Committee, and oversees operational excellence programs, partnering with the executive team to ensure a uniform, efficient and scalable infrastructure for the entire company. Denholm has over 15 years of senior leadership experience. In August of 2014, Denholm was appointed to Tesla Motors’ Board of Directors and chairs their Audit Committee. From 2008-2013, she served on the Board of Directors of Echelon Corporation.  Denholm was recognized by the National Diversity Council as one of the top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology in 2014 and 2015, named to Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Women of Influence list and in 2011, was a Bay Area CFO of the Year finalist. In 2010, she was on the Profiles in Diversity Journal’s Women Worth Watching list and won the 2009 Institutional Investor All-America Executive Team Leadership and Investor Relations Award. Denholm has served as a steering committee member for the Wall Street Journal CFO Network since its inauguration.

Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 to shift America’s health care paradigm from one focused on reactive care to one in which early detection and prevention are a reality.  By improving individuals’ access to lab tests, Theranos makes actionable health information available to people at the time it matters, empowering them with the information they need to own their health. Theranos is revolutionizing diagnostic testing through technological innovations that have made it possible to quickly process a full range of laboratory tests at prices that are 50% to 80% below Medicare reimbursement rates. Theranos is making the diagnostic testing industry more transparent by publishing all its prices, charging everyone the same prices, and voluntarily submitting all of its tests to the FDA for review. In 2015, Ms. Holmes worked with leaders in Arizona to pass the first law that expressly recognizes individuals’ right to directly access laboratory tests without first obtaining an order, which often requires justifying a health concern or relying on insurance eligibility. Elizabeth serves as a U.S. Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, and she is a member of the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the 2015 TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Dr. Charles Munger, Jr., a physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, earned his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford. He has been active in state Republican politics, pushing a more moderate platform for the party. He fought to change California’s congressional redistricting policy. He sponsored and heavily donated to 2010’s Proposition 20, which removed elected representatives from the process of drawing new congressional districts. In 1989, he married attorney Charlotte Lowell, a Harvard Law School graduate. Munger is a one of eight children of Charles Munger, the vice chairman of financial holding company Berkshire Hathaway.

Founded in 1903, The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation’s largest and most active public affairs forum, with about 22,000 members.  Based in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, the Club hosts over 450 town hall meetings, conversations, lectures, performances, and discussions each year on issues of regional, national and international significance. Visit www.commonwealthclub.org for more information.

Lina Broydo immigrated from Russia, then the Soviet Union, to Israel where she was educated and got married. After working at the University in Birmingham, England she and her husband immigrated to the United States. She lives in Los Altos Hills, CA and writes about travel, art, style, entertainment, and sports. She hardly cooks or bakes, with no borsch or piroshky on her home cooking menu. Therefore, she makes reservations and enjoys dining out, mostly sushi.

By Lina Broydo