San Francisco, CA, and Philadelphia, PA — The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has announced that undergraduate alumnus, Josh Kopelman, will be the featured speaker at the School’s 2015 graduation ceremony for the MBA Program for Executives at Wharton | San Francisco. The ceremony will take place May 3, 2015, at Nourse Theatre, 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco, CA. Mr. Kopelman is a serial entrepreneur and seed stage investor. His company, First Round, is one of the most active venture capital firms in the country.
“Josh personifies the very spirit of Wharton in San Francisco, using innovation and entrepreneurship to achieve his success and, in turn, to fund other worthy ventures,” said Geoff Garrett, Dean of the Wharton School. “He has generously given his time and advice to many a student on campus. We are honored to have him speak to our graduates on the West Coast.”
Mr. Kopelman’s entrepreneurial career began in 1992 as a Wharton undergraduate when he co-founded Infonautics and eventually took it public. In July of 1999 he founded Half.com and it quickly became one of the largest sellers of used books, movies and music in the world. Half.com was acquired by eBay in July 2000. In late 2003 Josh helped to found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world’s first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later.
Since founding First Round in 2004, the firm has invested in nearly 300 emerging technology startups. Mr. Kopelman has been named as one of the top ten ‘angel investors’ in the U.S. by Newsweek magazine and is an inventor on thirteen U.S. Patents for his work in Internet technology. In June 2000, he was awarded Ernst and Young’s prestigious “Entrepreneur of the Year” award for the Greater Philadelphia region.
Previous graduation speakers at Wharton | San Francisco have included Carol Bartz, Arthur Bilger (W’75), Jon Huntsman Jr. (C’87, HON’10), Ken Moelis (W’80, WG’81), Paul S. Otellini and David Pottruck (C’70, WG’72). Wharton established a campus in San Francisco due to the strong belief that business executives would be well served by the option to pursue a robust, full-curriculum Wharton MBA without the need to cross the United States. The School has graduated nearly 1,000 students from its Wharton MBA Program for Executives in San Francisco.
Information about the Wharton School’s graduation ceremony is available at: http://graduation.wharton.upenn.edu. Information about the University of Pennsylvania’s 259th commencement ceremony is available at www.upenn.edu/commencement.
About Wharton | San Francisco and the Wharton School
Wharton MBA Program for Executives in San Francisco was one of the first programs launched at Wharton | San Francisco, the School’s campus in San Francisco. It offers the same MBA degree, rigorous curriculum, top Wharton faculty and high level of students as the traditional MBA program on Wharton’s main campus in Philadelphia. A residential program, students attend classes on alternate weekends and during two week-long sessions in the summer. Because Wharton students live and work together during focused on-site sessions, students have an opportunity to forge close connections with classmates as well as to foster teamwork skills. In addition, the integration of work and study provides a living laboratory for applying knowledge.
Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. With a broad global community and one of the most published business school faculties, Wharton creates economic and social value around the world. The School has 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 9,000 participants in executive education programs annually and a powerful alumni network of 93,000 graduates.
