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As twilight fell over San Francisco, members of the ���㽶��Ƶ community gathered on Sept. 4 for a celebratory dinner to welcome Steve Mandel ’78, Mark Mader ’92, and Brent Frei ’88, Thayer ’89, into ���㽶��Ƶ’s Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame.

The induction—part formal recognition, part fireside storytelling—set the stage for the the following day, which had a record 600 registrants and brought together ���㽶��Ƶ founders, investors, faculty, more than 30 current students, and alumni from five different decades.

The Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame and the Entrepreneurs Forum are organized by the , and attendees came from such entrepreneurial hotbeds as New York, Austin, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Hong Kong.

offered a forward-looking vision for ���㽶��Ƶ’s entrepreneurial network during her remarks at the forum.

“Now is the moment to go further—to make Magnuson a flywheel of the entire system: integrating student ventures with faculty R&D, better connecting our entire system, fueling more successes, whether faculty or student, and fully engaging with this extraordinary alumni network. We can build an ecosystem where alumni are more than mentors—but employers and investors in our best ideas,” President Beilock said.

The Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame, launched in 2023, brings to the spotlight alumni whose ventures have reshaped industries and inspired future leaders. This year’s honorees bring a combined legacy of visionary leadership, industry disruption, and global impact, embodying the values ���㽶��Ƶ champions through the Magnuson Center and ���㽶��Ƶ’s growing network of alumni innovators.

“Each of these inductees represents a bold idea brought to life,” said , founding executive director of the Magnuson Center. “They demonstrate the extraordinary ways ���㽶��Ƶ alumni continue to shape the world—driving innovation in finance and technology while sharing their knowledge to inspire the next generation of builders, founders, and problem-solvers.”

The 2025 inductees

Steve Mandel ’78

Mandel is the founder of Lone Pine Capital, one of the world’s leading investment management firms. Since its founding in 1997, Lone Pine has grown into a globally recognized hedge fund with a focus on long/short equity strategies. Mandel’s career began as a consultant with Mars & Co., followed by roles as a consumer and retail analyst at Goldman Sachs, and later managing director and consumer analyst at Tiger Management. His investment philosophy emphasizes disciplined research, long-term value creation, and a global perspective, earning him a reputation as one of the most respected leaders in the hedge fund industry. Mandel served on the from 2007 to 2015, including as its chair.

Mark Mader ’92

Mader is CEO and co-founder of Smartsheet, a modern enterprise work management platform serving companies across the globe, including over 85% of the Fortune 500. With over three decades of experience, Mader is a recognized leader in technology, having been named Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in Technology for the Pacific Northwest. He serves as a board member of ZoomInfo and of the University of Washington Information School. A dual citizen of Germany and the United States, Mader has spent considerable time working and living abroad and applies that global perspective to understanding the unique needs and goals of Smartsheet’s customers and partners.

Brent Frei ’88, Thayer ’89

Also a co-founder of Smartsheet, Frei, who majored in mechanical engineering, played defensive tackle for the Big Green and learned much about life from farming wheat and cattle with his parents in Idaho. He has co-founded four companies. In 2001, the Smithsonian Institute recognized him as a “Pioneer in Technology.” Ernst and Young named him a 1997 Entrepreneur of the Year. He took both Onyx Software and Smartsheet from inception through IPO in the software technology space—each achieving in excess of $1 billion market capitalizations. His HarvestWest company was a farmland investment fund that enabled investors to own farmland in the Pacific Northwest as an alternative asset class. His current venture, TerraClear, is a combination of his passion in agriculture and his experience in technology. TerraClear is building autonomous mapping and rock-picking robots to clear agricultural fields of rocks, weeds, and pests.

Launched in 2023, the ���㽶��Ƶ Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame celebrates the innovative leadership of alums and counts among its inductees James Coulter ’82, Keith Dunleavy ’91, Steven Hafner ’91, Shonda Rhimes ’91, Lew Cirne ’93, and Chris Meledandri ’81.

Record attendance at Forum, with a focus on AI

The ���㽶��Ƶ Entrepreneurs Forum, one of the Magnuson Center’s signature convenings, attracted a record 600 registrants. The all-day program featured 72 speakers across 20 sessions, with artificial intelligence emerging as a central theme alongside panels on resilience, biotech, fundraising, brand and commerce, and media growth.

A volunteer effort that takes eight months to plan and organize, the forum is led by the 20-member board of the Magnuson Center, many of whom organized or facilitated panels and conducted one-on-one workshops.

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From left, President Sian Leah Beilock, Jeffrey Immelt ’78, Hall of Fame inductee Steve Mandel ’78, Andrea Johnson ’91, chair of the Magnuson Center Board of Advisors, ���㽶��Ƶ trustee Jeff Crowe ’78, and Magnuson Center Executive Director Jamie Coughlin at the Entrepreneurs Forum in San Francisco. (Photo Courtesy of the Magnuson Center) 

Highlights included:

• A fireside chat explored Insights on Innovation with Maia Josebachvili ’05, a member of the Board of Trustees, and former trustee Jeff Immelt ’78, the former chairman and CEO of General Electric
• Multiple AI-focused panels, such as Spotlights on AI and View from the Operators: Where AI Is Heading, which gathered founders, venture capitalists, and in-house builders to debate commercialization, product strategy, and safety
• From Molecule to Machine: Scaling Biotech with AI, which examined how machine learning accelerates discovery and translation across the life sciences
• Sessions contrasting paths to growth: Bootstrappers with Big Wins versus Backers & Next Gen VC, which offered differing playbooks for capital, control, and scale
• Conversations on brand and commerce, and a media-focused fireside chat on new models for audience growth
• Strong student engagement, as current students moderated panels, asked questions in plenaries, and connected with alumni mentors in networking sessions.

Beilock brought to light her vision for AI throughout the ���㽶��Ƶ student experience, “where AI is not just used as a tool in our classrooms—but is woven into every facet of the ���㽶��Ƶ student experience, from learning to write with it in first-year seminars to Tuck MBAs…to dialoging with it to make discoveries in brain research, as professor Dan Rockmore just , so that when it comes time to discover and innovate, our students and faculty know exactly how to make it work for them.”

Beilock also invoked ���㽶��Ƶ’s history of faculty-student collaboration as a model, noting mathematician and future ���㽶��Ƶ president John Kemeny’s alongside students who were integral every step of the way.

to get more information, such as announcements about future Entrepreneurs Forums.