Heidi Mason / Managing Partner, Bell Mason Group
has spent more than twenty-five years in Silicon Valley, immersed in its ecosystem and venture-backed start-up community, as an entrepreneur focusing on start-up development and corporate venturing (CV) consulting.In 1990, she cofounded the Bell Mason Group, a specialty management consultancy dedicated to improving corporate venture program development and impact. Mason developed the corporate venturing framework and assessment methodology that serves as a foundation for much of the Bell Mason Group work. BMG clients have spanned the globe, across industry sectors, including Citigroup, Merck, Chevron, Philips, and Coca Cola. She has held numerous venture board seats over the years, along with strategic advisory board roles with large, global companies. Under her leadership, BMG has partnered with a variety of leading CV specialty service providers to accelerate quality CV program and platform development (in legal, compensation, innovation strategy, and accounting/tax). She has also been instrumental in guiding industry research and standards development that support CV practice professionalization and quality repeatability.
She became a Strategic Advisory Board member for Global Corporate Venturing shortly after its founding in 2010. She is also a multipublished author (including The Venture Imperative: A New Model of Corporate Innovation, Harvard Business School Press).
Mason holds a degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with honors.
Liz Arrington / Partner, Bell Mason Group
has spent decades advising global corporations on the development of best-practice venturing and innovation programs, with emphasis on performance management strategies and systems.She also collaborates with leading industry organizations such as Health Evolution Summit, J Thelander, and Global Corporate Venturing to develop specialist CV content and professional programs. She has worked extensively with venture-capital-backed start-ups around the globe to address nascent market development opportunities.
Arrington began her corporate venturing career with Mitsubishi International Corporation, in Silicon Valley, where she and Mason were first introduced. She subsequently spent eight years in Asia, where she cofounded the Asia-Pacific practice of VIA international, a global “routes to market” consultancy, and pioneered the firm’s venturing advisory practice. Shortly thereafter, she joined forces with BMG and spearheaded its successful introduction into ASEAN, North Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Arrington relocated to Silicon Valley in 2001.
Arrington is a director of Tack Gives Back, a nonprofit supporting equine- and other animal-facilitated therapy organizations. She holds an MBA in marketing and finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and an honors undergraduate degree from Harvard College.
James Mawson / Partner, Global Corporate Venturing
has twenty years of financial and technology journalism, including roles at Financial Times Business, Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal and Thomson Reuters. As well as editing Private Equity News, James coordinated leveraged buyout and venture capital coverage for use by other titles in the Dow Jones and News Corporation group and acted as a spokesman on BBC radio and television.In 2010 Mawson founded Mawsonia, the publishing company he leads as CEO and editor-in-chief, and from which he launched Global Corporate Venturing (GCV); this was followed by the launch of his second publication, Global University Venturing (GUV) in 2012 and the third, Global Government Venturing (GGV), in 2014.
Mawson is a widely acknowledged speaker, a published author, and a pioneering force behind development of the preeminent media and events company providing the community with forums for exchange, data and information resources, and collaboration and workflow tools, such as GCV Connect and GCV Analytics, under the GCV Leadership Society, the new and improved professional trade organization that serves global corporate venturing and innovation (CV&I) professionals. The GCV Academy also offers professional development curricula and training courses for aspiring professionals and other corporate personnel who need to improve their skills and better understand corporate venturing practices and program structures.
He is also a director of the London Press Club and has acted as a pro bono editor for the European Venture Philanthropy Association monthly newsletter. Mawson graduated from King’s College, London.
