Magdalena Yesil, Atherton, Calif.

Yesil has been active in Silicon Valley for more than 25 years. She most recently was a venture capitalist at US Venture Partners (USVP), making investments in information technology start-ups. She has been an early-stage investor in several successful companies, including Salesforce.com, 3Ware, Valicert, Securify and Claria. She joined USVP after a successful career as an entrepreneur, founding two electronic commerce companies, CyberCash, a pioneer in the secure electronic payment systems area, and MarketPay, a software company. She also was part of UUnet in its early days and was chosen Entrepreneur of the Year in 1997 by Red Herring magazine. She started her career as a semiconductor design engineer at Advanced Micro Devices. Yesil holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, both from Stanford University. She is the author of Creating the Virtual Store, published by John Wiley & Sons. Yesil and her husband, James Wickett, are Duke parents (Justin, ’10).