Our team

+ Bio

Barb is Partner and General Counsel of Casimir Holdings and the President of Mae Philanthropies.

Barb is an accomplished executive with over two decades in high-tech legal and corporate leadership. Barb’s dynamic and empathetic leadership is guided by her commitment to responsible innovation, ethical corporate citizenship, and corporate social responsibility. She holds a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in Philosophy, summa cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame.

Early in her career, Barb worked at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and excelled in guiding tech giants and their founders through complex regulatory and transactional issues. Her clients included industry leaders such as Apple, setting a precedent for her focus on innovation and corporate integrity.

As General Counsel and Vice President of Corporate Development at Digital Chocolate, Ms. Izzo managed legal, finance, and corporate development, driving the company’s strategic initiatives alongside Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. As Managing Director at Intel Capital, she oversaw significant global investments, exits, and joint ventures, including Intel’s $3.2 billion mission critical and highly accretive 2012 investment in ASML. As Chief Legal Officer and Chief Privacy Officer at Flurry, she successfully steered the company through its acquisition by Yahoo and was instrumental in defending and resolving high-profile privacy lawsuits and regulatory inquiries.

Due to her success at blending business acumen and legal expertise to resolve complex interdisciplinary issues, Ms. Izzo became a sought-after strategic advisor to multinational corporations and startups alike. Her work with WhatsApp as a leader of its global regulatory strategy was instrumental in WhatsApp’s $17 billion acquisition by Facebook; at AdMob, she used her regulatory expertise to help close the company’s acquisition by Google; and as an advisor to musical.ly, she helped to drive the company’s phenomenal growth and acquisition by ByteDance.

Over the course of her career, Ms. Izzo has played critical roles as an executive and an advisor to both venture capitalists and founders. She has used an innovative, multi-faceted, and integrated approach to resolve founder disputes, contribute to successful IPO/private market exits, resolve investigations and regulatory inquiries, manage investments, establish critical policy and safety committees, and create/support corporate foundations and other philanthropic initiatives. She has built and led teams in finance, legal, human resources, corporate development, and corporate responsibility to drive strategic growth as well as to shape and execute company vision.

In addition, Barb is dedicated to community service and advocacy. She currently serves on the board of directors of Muttville Senior Dog Rescue and the advisory board of Disability Rights Advocates. Barb also works as an animal care volunteer and trainer with various organizations such as Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA.

+ Bio

Jim Goetz is a Partner at Sequoia Capital, where he has been affiliated as both an entrepreneur and investor for 25 years. Jim and his partners have made historic early investments into a cadre of category-defining technology companies, including Apple, Cisco, Google, Nvidia, Oracle and PayPal — and more recently during his tenure — AirBnB, ByteDance, DoorDash, Github, Hubspot, Instagram, LinkedIn, Robinhood, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Square, Stripe, TikTok, Toutiao, Unity, WhatsApp, YouTube and Zoom. Sequoia’s close alliances with young founders have helped transform fledgling companies into institutional household names exceeding $5 trillion in total market cap, an industry record.

Jim was appointed Steward of Sequoia Capital in 2012, where he co-led the global partnership with Neil Shen and Doug Leone until 2017. Prior to serving as Steward, Jim co-led Sequoia’s venture business with Roelof Botha. In 2009, he spearheaded the expansion into the long/short hedge effort, Sequoia Capital Global Equities. Jim apprenticed under Sir Michael Moritz until he became a Partner in 2005.

Prior to joining Sequoia Capital as an investor, Jim co-founded VitalSigns in 1996. Sequoia led its Series A fundraising and Pierre Lamond joined the board. VitalSigns became the pioneer in application performance management. By the turn of the century, the company had established itself as a profitable market leader deploying more than 25 million agents and generating more than $100 million in annual sales.

Throughout Jim’s early career, he served as Vice President of Network Management at Synoptics (SNPX) and held various engineering and marketing roles at AT&T, AT&T Bell Labs and Digital Equipment. Jim earned a BS in Electrical/Computer Engineering from the University of Cincinnati and an MSEE Computer Systems from Stanford University.

Jim is a board member of Intel Corporation (INTC), Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and numerous private companies. After relocating to Florida in 2019, Jim has increased his effort on Casimir Holdings and Mae Philanthropies. Through his philanthropic work, Jim promotes digital inclusion, supports tuition costs for low-income university students and funds criminal justice reform. He is the Founder and Chairman of Mae Philanthropies & Casimir Holdings. Jim also Co-Chairs the Stanford Engineering Venture Fund.