NVIDIA today announced that it has added some power to its board of directors with Michael McCaffery, a veteran asset-management executive and investment banker, and Persis Drell, a physicist and dean of the Stanford School of Engineering. This new appointment expands NVIDIA’s board to 12 members.
Michael, age 61, is chairman and managing director of Makena Capital Management, which he co-founded 10 years ago. From 2000 to 2006, he served as president and CEO of Stanford Management which oversees Stanford University’s endowment. He was previously chairman and CEO of the Robertson Stephens and Co. investment bank.
Persis, age 59, has been on Stanford’s faculty since 2002 and was named dean of the Engineering School in September 2014. She served from 2007-2012 as director of the U.S. Department of Energy SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and is a professor of materials science, engineering and physics. She was a Cornell University physics faculty member from 1998 to 2002.
“Mike and Persis are outstanding additions to our board of directors,” said NVIDIA president and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. “Mike brings deep business, financial and public market knowledge, as well as extensive executive management and corporate governance experience. Persis has exceptional credentials as a researcher, administrator and leader at the highest ranks of academia. Her track record guiding innovation in science and technology is world class.”
Michael serves as a trustee of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust and is a director of C3 Energy. He is a member of the advisory boards of Accel Partners, Crosslink Capital, Sageview Capital, Silver Lake Partners, SPO Partners & Co. and Stadium Capital Management.
He graduated from Princeton University, where he was an outstanding scholar-athlete and received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University. He then attended Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received an MBA.
Persis is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. She has been recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award.
She has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as a postdoctoral scientist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.