Susan joined Charles River Ventures with 12 years of operating experience working with early stage technology ventures. Susan is a member and former CMO of the Apache Software Foundation, one of the world’s most influential open source software organizations. Susan’s roots in the open source community stems from her long-abiding interest in how technology catalyzes social and economic change. She began her career as the chief architect of an early massively multiplayer online game and has remained active in online gaming. She was the Executive Producer of GXMod, a widely popular, award winning Quake 2 enhancement. Susan also contributed to components of the open source Nebula 3D graphics and game engine. She remains active in online gaming and social entertainment and was a coproducer of the recent Virtual Goods Summit.

Prior to her open source contributions, Susan was the VP of Strategic Alliances for Predictive Systems, a NASDAQ-listed security services firm that was acquired by International Network Services (INS) in 2003. Susan also served as the VP of Strategic Development for Opus360, a provider of on demand human resources and project management solutions. Susan led the development of Opus360’s business strategy and helped steer the company to a public offering in 2000. Prior to Opus360, Susan was the Director of Development at USWeb/CKS, where she led the development and design of some of the world’s first community-centric consumer Internet businesses.

Susan received her BA from Tufts University and an MBA with distinction from Cornell University.