Steve Linowes, Damballa, Inc.
Mr. Linowes has spent the past 20 years working in the technology field for leading companies in the industry. Currently, he is the CEO of Damballa, Inc.
Steve moved to Atlanta nine years ago from Seattle and he is originally from the other Washington (DC) where he is one of the few native Washingtonians. In his work life, he has held key executive positions at Yahoo! and Microsoft, as well as several entrepreneurial companies working in a variety of roles including product, marketing and corporate development. He has a history of taking early stage technology and delivering it successfully to the mass market being adopted by millions of customers worldwide. He has consulted with entrepreneurs and early stage companies on a variety of strategic issues including M&A, product and business operation. He has been responsible for different products you may have used including several of the Windows products (Windows 95) and Internet Explorer.
He likes to use his knowledge of technology and business to transform community organizations on both a national and regional level. In 2000, he established TechBridge– a nonprofit dedicated to providing technology products and services to other non-profits. During his tenure as founding board chair, TechBridge worked with over 100 nonprofits, had an annual operating budget of $1.6 million, employed 12 full-time staff and facilitated the donation of more than $2 million worth of software annually. He still is very active with that organization and is the chair of its Advisory Board. In addition to TechBridge, he has worked with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) to establish their technology initiative resulting in a $100 million donation by Microsoft. Currently, he is on that organization’s Commission for the 2nd Century which is responsible for developing a strategy for taking that movement (including its 4.5 million kids and hundreds of thousands volunteers and staff) into their second century of service.
In addition, he’s a very active volunteer. He’s also on the board of the Davis Academy School, the Neighborhood Fund – a program of The Community Foundation, member of the Atlanta Downtown Rotary, and has recently been chosen to participate in the national Wexner Heritage Foundation program, which educates Jewish communal leaders in the history, thought, traditions and contemporary challenges of the Jewish people. He has served on the Board of Visitors of Emory University, the advisory board of the Technology Association of Georgia and the Atlanta Regional Arts Task Force. He is a graduate of the Metro Atlanta Arts and Cultural Coalition leadership program, the American Jewish Committee leadership program and the Leadership Seattle program. Steve holds a BS in Computer Science Engineering from University of Michigan and an MBA from Carnegie-Mellon University. He has a patent pending for displaying real time media broadcasts with pages of related information.
He is married and has five children. He enjoys spending time with his family, tinkering with old clocks, coaching his children’s basketball teams and volunteering with the family monthly at the Atlanta Community Food Bank.