Every year, Santa Cruz Works honors select persons in our community who have contributed to the growth of our tech community. In early 2021, we had Hometown Heroes for those persons who significantly helped us get through the year of COVID and wildfires. Now it is time for our annual Titans of Tech. Nominations have closed. The awards dinner event shall be held at 6pm PT on Wednesday, March 2, 2022 (delayed due to Omicron surge). We greatly hope that this will be an in-person + streaming event. As long as these variants do not advance, it will be fantastic to see everyone again.

Current Nominees for 2021

• Alex Gershenson / Supply Shift - making the world a better place via supply chains, while growing the next local unicorn.

• Ann Morhauser / Annie Glass - Ann’s unique glass skills has delivered pieces of art all around the world.

• Alexander Wolf / Dean of Baskin School of Engineering - visionary leader of engineering programs, including the Genomics Institute, and architect of efforts to create an antiracist school of engineering.

• Andrew Devlin / PitchHub - Andrew is the ultimate entrepreneur always innovating, solving pains, and serving his customers. He understands the importance of new technology and how it can help peoples lives and exactly meet their needs.

• Becca Fenwick / UCSC - Becca Fenwick is an expert in the field of drone technology and operations, a very male-dominated field, and she has risen as a regional leader.

• Ben Porterfield & Lloyd Tabb / Looker - Ben and Lloyd created one of the most successful tech companies in Santa Cruz history. Looker started in Cruzio in 2012, and now occupies 4 floors in downtown Santa Cruz.

• Bill Putnam, Jr. / Universal Audio - he premier home recording studio company in the world. Founded in 1958 by his father Bill Putnam Sr., Universal Audio has been synonymous with innovative recording products since its inception. A favorite engineer of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles and more, the late Bill Putnam Sr. was a passionate innovator who is widely regarded as the father of modern recording — with many of his legendary studio and equipment designs still in use today.

• Brandon Napoli / SBDC - helping hundreds of entrepreneurs and businesses throughout our county.

• Carlos Maltzahn / UCSC - founder and the director of the UCSC Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS). CROSS takes an innovative approach to provide UCSC students opportunities to get engaged in the industry via Open Source.

• Chris Bley / Air Space Integration, DART, ROPE Partner, coordinations / collaboration between University Alaska, Fairbanks, MBARI, NOAA, NPS and one of the companies Quantum Systems down at *AirSpace Integration*, working on a beyond visual line of sight FAA application.

• Chris Miller / Cloud Brigade - engaging the community since 2008, established intern and apprenticeship programs in tech (44 alumni so far), creating AI that punishes Pooping Dogs.

• Hilary Bryant / Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County - first surfing mayor of Santa Cruz now works with various non-profit organizations.

• Holger Schmidt / UCSC - inventor of ultra-sensitive antigen test for Covid-19 and influenza virus.

• James Hackett & Chris Frost / Equal Access Santa Cruz - providing broadband access to low-income households.

• James O’Conner / Innovation Within - CEO/Founder of the Discovery Platform based upon Steve Blank’s Lean Startup methodology. This platform is used by thousands of entrepreneurs around the world.

• Michael Sikand / Our Future - creator of a short-form social media content targeting GenZ, saw an increase from several thousand to 200M+ viewers in one month. The new media mogul is here in Santa Cruz.

• Niall Macken / Spanner - a seasoned engineer who brought product design to Santa Cruz.

• Nicole Beck / 2ndNATURE Software - a PhD in aquatic science and a passion for the environment. Ever seen the bumper sticker “Keep Tahoe Blue?” Yeah that was Nicole putting science into practice to help preserve one of our most precious ecosystems for all to enjoy as well as future generations.

• Philippe Kahn / FullPower Technologies, LightSurf, Borland - possibly the most prolific entrepreneur ever to sail Santa Cruz waters, credited with creating the first complete camera phone solution, and 235+ more patents.

• Roya Pakzad / Taraaz Research - an extraordinary emerging leader in the fields of technology and human rights.

• Shiloh Sacks / Wonderfil - a young electrical engineer undergrad at UCSC who has built her first company.

Nominations have closed. We will announce the finalists in early January 2022.

Past Awardees

Who were the past awardees? Check it out. Additional video links to be uploaded by EOY.

2020

• Mark Randolph / NetFlix

• Nina Simon / MAH

• David Haussler / UCSC Genomics

• Alexandra Navarro / Digital NEST

• LeBaron Meyers / #NotMe

• Jason Borgen / SC County Office of Education

• Sam Paschel / Zero Motorcycles

• Aaron Huang / student at UCSC

• Brad Barbeau / CSUMB

• Joe Burton / Poly

2019

• John Felts / Cruz Foam

• David Dennis / Microsoft, Ventana

• Guy Kawasaki / Remarkable People

• Chrissy Meyer / Root Ventures

• Robin Hunicke / Funomena

• Socrates Rosenfeld / Jane Technologies

• Sara Isenberg / Santa Cruz Tech Beat

• Orion Melehan / LifeAID

2018

• JoeBen Bevirt / Joby Aviation

• Darrin Caddes / Poly

• Doug Erickson / SC Works

• Heidi Schriefer / Looker

• Ted Holladay / Holladay Design

• Jeremy Almond / PayStand

• Bonnie Lipscomb / City of SC Econ Dev

• Justis Earle / Hansnap

• Keri Waters / Buoy

2017

• Ken Kannappan

• Ryan Evans / Inboard

• Sol Lipman / YaDoggie

• Jacob Martinez / Digital NEST

• Toby Corey / SolarCity, Tesla

• Peggy Dolgenos / Cruzio

• Drew Meyer / Amazon

• Mohamed Abousalem / UCSC

• Margaret Lawrence Rosas / Looker