Dr. Christine Gulbranson is a highly accomplished technology and innovation executive with a proven track record of building new markets and transforming a diverse array of industries, including energy, AI/big data, mobility, materials, agriculture, education, and healthcare. Christine is an advocate for innovation and its key drivers to transform markets and societies, as she details in her acclaimed book, TRANSFORMATIVE INNOVATION®: Today’s Capital Drives Tomorrow’s Exponential Growth & Profits to Advance the World.
Christine is CEO and Managing Partner of Nova Global Ventures, a fund focused on AI and disruptive technology partnering with Global Corporate Venturing utilizing proprietary data to co-invest alongside top firms. She previously served as CEO and Director of a Silicon Valley private family foundation/office funded by Sergey Brin and Chief Innovation Officer of the University of California System overseeing $100B+ technology investment portfolio of over 13,000 technologies (e.g. CRISPR), $37B operations budget, $1B+ in sales while building the UC innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem from over 280K students, 227K employees and 2 million living alumni with investors, industry and government. Dr. Gulbranson has been an advocate for the responsible use of AI. As CIO of UC she employed the first utilization of AI of any university globally to aggregate their patent portfolio across all verticals, increasing monetization and ROI.
Christine built the first ‘US Chamber of Commerce for Advanced Energy’ (AEE) and the first renewable energy accelerator, NIREC.
Dr. Gulbranson has over 25 years of investing in companies in EMEA, APAC & US. She was General Partner at VC firm GCP and senior investment advisor to a European family office. Christine was a television personality for Discovery Channel as a judge on The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius to find the world’s next great innovator, which aired in over 100 countries, and a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Christine is a board member with over 25 years of experience in public, private and non-profit boards and currently serves as an independent director of Correlate Energy (CIPI), chairing the nominating/governance committee and serving on the compensation and audit committees.
Dr. Gulbranson has been recognized by Silicon Valley Business Journal as one of the top 40 Under 40 business leaders in Silicon Valley, as innovator for the twenty-first century by MIT’s Technology Review, and as UC Davis’ distinguished engineering alumni in business.
Christine grew up in rural Northern California and Germany and is a first-generation college graduate. By age twenty-five, she earned five degrees from UC Davis – a BS in physics, a BS, MS, and PhD in materials science and engineering, and an MBA. She holds patents in the fields of nanotechnology and lighting.
