Board Members

Elected 2025

William M. Coughran, Jr. is a technologist with over two decades of experience in large-scale computing and networking systems. He is known for his influential role as a Silicon Valley executive, mentor, and investor, helping ambitious startups grow into transformative companies. 

Dr. Coughran began his post-graduate career at Bell Labs, contributing to many significant projects, including the development of distributed systems and applications for modeling and verification methods. He eventually became VP of the Computing Sciences Research Center, which was pivotal in creating C and C++ programming languages and the UNIX, Plan 9, and Inferno operating systems. He co-founded Entrisphere®, later acquired by Ericsson, and served as its CEO until 2002. In 2003, he joined Google, progressing to SVP for research and systems infrastructure, overseeing various projects including Chrome, YouTube, and Google Maps. Since 2011, he has worked at Sequoia Capital as a partner and coach for technology startups. While at Sequoia, he served as an advisor to Google until 2015. 

Dr. Coughran holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in mathematics from Caltech and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Stanford. He has served and currently serves on various academic councils (e.g., Caltech's IST Advisory Council), corporate boards (e.g., Quantum Circuits, Lilt, Alkira, Graphiant, Oso, Stairwell, Prelude), and a non-profit board (San Francisco Opera). He has held various adjunct and consulting faculty positions at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Duke, and Stanford. In 2024, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Caltech.  

Dr. Coughran and his wife, Bridget, reside in Los Altos Hills and have been married for over 50 years.

Standing Committees: