Board of Directors
Alka Subramanian, Ph.D., Executive Director
Alka Subramanian has been working as a Director/Executive Director at Power of Love since founding it in 2002. She is a strong force at the Foundation toward empowering women and caregivers, and using love in fighting the epidemic. Alka evaluates and manages the partnerships with the grassroots organizations we support, as well as coordinating all financial, legal, and reporting work.
Alka has 15 years of experience in the field of international economics and development. She has published extensively and presented her research in multiple international conferences and proceedings. Her specialization is in building business channels and small businesses. Prior to founding Power of Love, Alka was a tenured Professor of Marketing at the University of South Dakota where she taught for seven years.
She is married and has 3 wonderful children who are all very supportive of her work. She has a Ph.D in Marketing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Suresh Subramanian, Ph.D., Director
Suresh Subramanian is the co-Founder of the Power of Love Foundation that focuses on community-based HIV/AIDS programs in Africa and Asia. Between 2000 and 2005 Suresh traveled and lived extensively in Zambia and Kenya helping build the Power of Love Foundation's community care projects.
Prior to his move into the HIV/AIDS space, Suresh Subramanian spent 15 years in the high-tech sector in middle and upper management at various Fortune 200 companies. He has served as Vice President, Marketing, and Vice President Strategic Partnerships at Gateway, Inc. At present he works at Hewlett Packard as head of online sales for PCs and Printers.
Suresh is also the co-Founder of the Community Innovation Lab at MIT, Cambridge, a unique organization focused on building innovations for poor communities worldwide.
Suresh's degrees include undergraduate and graduate degrees in Engineering and Business and a Ph.D. in Business.
Jim Gentry, Ph.D., Director
Jim Gentry is the Maurice J. and Alice Hollman Professor of International Business and Marketing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Jim Gentry has taught on the business faculties at Kansas State University, Oklahoma State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Nebraska. He is the editor of the AMS Review, the North American editor of the Journal of Consumer Behavior and serves on the review boards of the Journal of Business Research, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Marketing Education, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, and formerly served on the review board of the Journal of Marketing Research. He is a Past President and Fellow of the Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning. In 1987, he was selected the outstanding Instructor of Graduate courses on the Oklahoma State campus. He has coordinated the Mittelstaedt Doctoral Symposium held at the University of Nebraska since its inception in 1992. He has authored (or more frequently, co-authored) over 50 articles, ten chapters in edited books, and over 150 conference papers. His current research interests are changes in consumption due to life-event transitions, family decision making, differences in decision processes across cultures, and the evolution of marketing processes in transition economies.
Jim earned his Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering from Kansas State University, and his Master’s and Doctorate in Business Administration from Indiana University.
Dan Pittard, Director
Dan Pittard has more than 30 years of business experience, as a senior executive, entrepreneur and venture angel. In addition to being a Chairman and Managing Partner of IdeaEDGE Ventures, Pittard currently serves on the Board of Directors of several start-ups. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for M7 Networks, a company founded by ideaEDGE Ventures.
Prior to joining ideaEDGE Ventures, Pittard was Senior Vice President, Strategy and New Ventures for Gateway, where he was the Chief Strategy Officer charged with business development, acquisitions and new ventures. His earlier experiences include serving as a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he served industrial, consumer and technology clients in North America, Europe and the Far East. Pittard also served as Group Vice President at Amoco with full P&L responsibilities for consumer and commercial businesses with over $8 billion in sales, where his functional reports included Brand Marketing, Research and Development, Information Technology and Manufacturing. As Senior Vice President for Frito-Lay, Pittard was in charge of new businesses reaching over $75 million in sales and achieving double-digit share and break-even the first year.
Pittard received his Bachelor of Science degree from Georgia Institute of Technology with honors. He is a former member of the Georgia Tech Advisory Board to the College of Computing and is past Chairman of the Advisory Board to the President. He earned his Masters in Business Administration from Harvard University.
Peter Shier, Director
Peter has been with Foote Cone & Belding for over five years and has helped to grow the agency into one of the top agencies in Canada. Under Peter's leadership, the creative reputation of Foote, Cone and Belding in Canada has grown, evidenced by the firm's first Gold from the prestigious Communications Arts Magazine as well as a Gold at Canada's own ad showcase, the Marketing Awards. Peter was elected by his peers to become Chairman of the Institute of Communications and Advertising (ICA) in 2004.
Prior to Foote Cone & Belding, Peter has been a senior partner in Russell Inc., one of Canada’s most respected Branding and Design consultancies. He was responsible for creating and building Russell’s Internet business which, in just two years, accounted for almost half of the company’s revenue. Clients included RSA Security, Mercator, Mediaconsult.com, and a host of other high tech companies.
Peter has also worked for over sixteen years in the advertising industry as VP, Client Services Director at J. Walter Thompson, and in senior management at Cossette, Saatchi and Saatchi and Vickers & Benson. He has experience providing strategic guidance and managing brands like Gateway, Kellogg's, Kodiak, Pepsi, British Airways, Bell Mobility and other blue chip companies.
Peter also spent time on the client side as VP Marketing Director for Timothy’s World Coffee, as well as for the Toronto Argonauts football team in the CFL.
Prior to his life in the communications industry, Peter spent six years playing professional hockey in North America and Europe. Peter is a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University in New York.
Zeke Valtz, Director
A graduate of Wesleyan University in 1991 (Classical Civilization), Zeke’s lifelong passion for aviation led him to his first position at a small aircraft start-up in Idaho. Shortly thereafter, the company folded and he switched to a more established company, outside of aviation, in California. He rapidly worked his way through several Operations and Finance positions.
In 1995, Zeke started his MBA at Indiana University. After graduating in 1997 (Strategic Planning & Operations) he joined Gateway 2000 as an Operations and Finance analyst in the sales organization. A year later, he joined the Strategic Planning department.
In 1999, Zeke got married and consequently moved. He stayed in the technology industry, joining Organic Inc., a San Francisco based e-commerce consulting firm. He rapidly grew dissatisfied with the nature of the work and decided the time was right to leave the corporate world; aviation was calling.
After much analysis, Zeke determined there was an opportunity to build a business in the flight training industry. From 2000-2002, Zeke received additional training, worked for an established flight school, and conducted market research. In February 2002, he started his own flight school business in Providence, RI: Horizon Aviation. Since then, the business has grown, has two locations, and is the market leader in both areas. Additional locations will be added as opportunities arise.
As Horizon Aviation became reasonably secure and established, Zeke was looking for an opportunity to contribute to the world-at-large, outside of Horizon. This led him to be on the Board of the Power of Love Foundation.
Deanna Burns, Director
Deanna has worked in various organizations including Gateway Computers, Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin. At present, Deanna is with Serra High School in San Diego and loves working with her students. She is very active in the community and enjoys working with her Church, the Cub Scouts, and her son’s High School. Deanna has two wonderful children, a supportive husband, and they live in San Diego.