David Austin is GM of Startup Programs at PCH International. There he oversees the premier hardware accelerator Highway1 and manages PCH Access, a program at PCH that provides hardware startups with premium design, engineering, manufacturing and fulfillment services, as well as startup friendly finance and credit terms and access to worldwide channels of distribution. David brings 30 years of engineering, development and investment experience to this role. An expert in identifying emerging technologies and launching successful ventures, David is responsible for helping reduce the barriers to market entry for startup companies.

Prior to joining PCH, David was program director for Media Camp at Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. There, David defined, launched and executed a new accelerator program targeting early stage technology companies in the media industry. David spent 17 years at Apple, first in senior product and business development roles, and later rejoined as a senior director focused on consumer product development. David has also held executive and investment related roles in venture capital firms, and is co-founder of Andiamo Ventures, Inc. and founder of Sunair Ventures LLC.

A graduate of Eastern Washington University, David has a bachelors of science degree in math and computer science. David holds several patents in storage and data structure management. A long time Bay Area resident, David lives in San Francisco and is raising two amazing children. He is also a private pilot.

Lesley believes speech and language tech can stretch the compassion and wisdom of humanity around the globe by connecting humans to each other and each other’s knowledge. She has been a technologist at Microsoft for 10 years, where she is a Principal Program Manager Lead. Lesley and her teams have delivered the tools, tech, and data that have scaled speech and intent understanding through massive growth. Her Ph.D. is in Linguistics from the University of Washington, with her research expertise in acoustic phonetics/phonology and intonation systems. A strong advocate for building diverse planning and design teams, Lesley believes diversity directly accrues to product quality and robustness, and it helps to limit the gaffes borne of unconscious bias. And, diverse teams are way more interesting and fun. In her free time, Lesley likes to generate pop-up performance art, practice yoga, invent orthographies for use in the arts, and occasionally jump out of airplanes.