“What I love about tech. esp., in Silicon Valley is that there’s never a dull moment. Established companies continue to reinvent themselves, i.e. Apple with the iPod, and there’s never a shortage of snappy startups nipping at the heels of the big guys.”

BIO

Lisa Kelaita is a founder and principal at New Venture Communications. She has more than 20 years of strategic communications experience in Silicon Valley and has managed and executed public relations campaigns for dozens of young companies as well as some of Silicon Valley’s most seminal technology companies. In addition to managing NVC’s operations and growth, Lisa is directly involved with many of the Firm’s clean tech, venture capital and software clients developing and implementing programs, and working closely with the NVC team.

BACKGROUND & RELATIONSHIPS

Executive VP and GM, Shandwick International. For five years, Lisa ran the Silicon Valley office of Shandwick International, now Weber-Shandwick, the largest public relations firm in the world. During her 11 year tenure at Shandwick, Lisa worked with seminal technology companies at critical stages of change and growth. These include:

• Orchestrated global product launches and managed Symantec’s corporate communications program including, executive transition from founder and CEO Gordon Eubanks to John Thompson, current CEO and president.
  
• Managed communications for Octel, the voice processing leader, in its early years and worked with the company until it was purchased by Lucent for $2 billion.
  
• Launched, managed and drove a communications program for Versit, an industry consortium comprised of Apple, IBM, Siemens and AT&T that set out to create and build support for voice-data integration standards.
   

Drove high-profile Issues-based campaigns: Over her career, Lisa has worked with dozens of service, as well as product companies and managed campaigns for various industry trade associations, including AEA, the American Electronics Association, SIA, the Semiconductor Industry Association, and Kaufman Fellows Program, a training and development program for individuals going into venture capital positions. 

A decade experience with VC firms: Over the last 10 years, Lisa has worked and managed programs for multiple venture capital firms ranging from large billion dollar funds, such as US Venture Partners to life sciences/medtech investors in DeNovo Ventures to early-stage SaaS venture firm, Emergence Capital.
 
Principal and Founder, NVC: As principal and founder of New Venture Communications, Lisa manages and works closely with the team and clients in the telecom, BI, clean tech and venture capital markets.
 
Read Lisa’s NVC blog postings. 

EDUCATION