Stanford • NVCA Venture Capital Symposium 2020
Laurie Yoler
Independent Board Director and Strategic Advisor, Zoox Inc.
Laurie Yoler is an experienced board director and strategist skilled in advising companies and founders in imagining, building, and scaling disruptive technologies. She is known for taking a holistic, enterprise-wide view to quickly assess and shape technology into new, differentiated products and services. She is savvy in fundraising, M&A strategy and negotiations, intellectual property strategy, and in devising complex, unconventional strategic alliances.
Yoler has served on the boards of public, private and non-profit organizations. Most notably, she served as a Founding Board Member of Tesla Motors, serving on the board of directors from the earliest days, and on the board of advisors through taking the company public. She also served on the board of Interactive Investor International in London, through taking the company public, and until its acquisition by AMP Bank.
She currently serves on the board of directors of Zoox, Noon Home, and the Computer History Museum, and on the advisory boards of Accenture, Platform Science, Precise.ly, AI4All, and the Washington State Frank Fellows Entrepreneurship Program. She is also an active angel investor with Broadway Angels and HealthTech Capital.
Yoler has been an integral part of the development and launch of many new innovations and products, both from within large companies like Qualcomm, Visa, Sun Microsystems, and Accenture, and as one of a small group of founders/investors of a new entrepreneurial venture with a radical idea like Tesla Motors, DNA Direct, and Packet Design.
Most recently, Yoler was President of Qualcomm Labs and SVP of Business Development for Qualcomm, driving new internal innovation, and exploring and closing new strategic partnerships and joint ventures. Previously, Yoler was a founding managing director at GrowthPoint Technology Partners, advising entrepreneurs in building strategic alliances, completing M&A transactions and raising capital.
Yoler graduated summa cum laude from Washington State University with a bachelor’s degree in management information systems. She completed a semester in the international business program at the University of Copenhagen and later completed executive management programs at Kellogg, Stanford and INSEAD. Yoler has been very active in continuing her education at Stanford in board governance, biotechnology, biochemistry, neuropsychology, neuroscience and geology.
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