Don Drinkwater
Senior Vice President, Awards and Recognition
Don Drinkwater is Director of Licensing for the Bose Corporation. He is the 2013 winner of LES’s
Frank Barnes Mentor Award for his significant contributions to the field of licensing through his extraordinary professional mentorship activities.
Prior to joining Bose, Mr. Drinkwater directed licensing activities for 3Com Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Compaq Computer, as well as serving as a director for PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Intellectual Asset Management practice.
A long-time member of LES (USA & Canada), he has been a very active leader in the High Tech Sector, where he served as Chair from 2009-2010. He has also chaired the Computer Hardware and Consumer Electronics committees, has published numerous articles
in les Nouvelles (the Journal of the Licensing Executive Society International) and has presented IP issues at Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) events.
Mr. Drinkwater holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a Master of Business Administration
from Clark University.
Bob Held
Senior Vice President, Sponsorship
Bob has been in the business of intellectual property since 1998 and has orchestrated hundreds of IP transactions around the world in multiple industries. Bob has been active in the Licensing Executives Society (LES USA & Canada) since 1998 having served on the Board of Directors from 2012-2020, and most recently as Past President and Chair of the LES Board of Directors 2018-2019. Other notable LES roles have been in Sector leadership, meetings planning, co-chair & co-author of the High-Tech Sector Royalty Rate and Deal Terms Surveys for 2011, 2014 & 2017 and Senior Vice President –Business Continuity. Bob currently holds the position of Senior Vice President – Sponsorship on the LES Board Management Council.
Bob is the President of Held Intellectual Property, LLC, a full-service intellectual property business consulting firm – www.heldip.com. From 2011 to 2016 he worked for TeleCommunication Systems, Inc. (TCS) in Annapolis, Maryland as the Vice President, Intellectual Asset Management, responsible for the strategic management and monetization of TCS’s IP portfolio. All assets of TCS were acquired in February 2016. Immediately prior to joining TCS, Bob worked for Northrop Grumman Corporation, Electronic Systems Sector from 2003-2011 as the Director of the Intellectual Property & Strategic Technology Agreements business unit; and from 1998-2003 he worked at the IP firm British Technology Group (BTG) International.
Bob has been a Certified Licensing Professional (CLP) since 2008 and was named to the “IAM Strategy 300 – The World’s Leading IP Strategists” from 2015 through 2020. Bob received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Villanova University and his MBA from Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business.
Jack Lu
Senior Vice President, Economic Analysis & Survey
Jack Lu, PhD, CFA is the Founding Partner and Chief Economist of IPMAP. An economist and financial analyst with an engineering background and research credentials, Jack specializes in economic study, financial analysis, assets valuation, and strategic advisory for IP transactions & litigation, and for IP-intensive corporate transactions and disputes in financing (VC & PE), M&A, equity investment, and distressed assets investment. Jack’s research and consulting services deliver valuation reports, pre-transaction studies, fairness opinions, market & competition analysis, pre-litigation & pre-assertion assessments, settlement & mediation packages, damage contentions, and damage estimates.
Before founding IPMAP in the spring of 2014, Jack served as Senior Economist, Director of Economic Analysis, and the Chief Economist at another economic consulting firm, where he conducted economic damage analysis for IP and other commercial litigation, developed two generations of financial distress forecast models for a major turnaround management firm, and operated the financial distress forecast & advisory practice. Prior to that, he worked briefly at a Montreal-based investment consulting
firm as an investment analyst, and interned with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington DC.
Jack is also an active researcher and publisher. His studies in intellectual property, patent markets, financial markets and other economic issues have been published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Cambridge University Press, Business Economics, Licensing Economics Review, IAM Magazine, IPWatchdog.com, and Les Nouvelles, the Journal of the Licensing Executives Society (LES) International. He was an expert speaker at IP forums organized by Duke Law School, LES, London IP Summit, and other
entities, and his comments have appeared in CFA Magazine, Licensing Economics Review, and LES Insight. He co-authored the High Tech Royalty Survey Reports for three consecutive Surveys in 2011 (the inaugural survey), 2014 and 2017, penning the chapters on economic and financial analysis. His most recent research can be found at his SSRN author page at http://ssrn.com/author=230071.
After receiving his B.E. in electrical engineering and M.Ph. in technology management, Jack studied economic policy and received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter holder and a member of the CFA Institute, the National Association for Business Economics, and the Licensing Executives Society. He has been actively involved in supporting these organizations, including serving on the Executive Committees of 2011, 2014, and 2017 LES High Tech Royalty Survey.
Nicole Nan
Senior Vice President, Young Members Congress
Brian O’Shaughnessy
Senior Vice President, Public Policy
David Powsner
Senior Vice President, Meetings
Matteo Sabattini
Senior Vice President, Standards
Mark Shelley
Senior Vice President, Education
Marc Schwartz
Senior Vice President, Communications & Technology
Jennifer Souter
Senior Vice President, Chapters
Jennifer Souter is the Director of Patents and Licensing at WiSys, a nonprofit organization that works with faculty, staff, students and alumni of the University of Wisconsin System (UW System) to facilitate cutting-edge research programs, develop and commercialize discoveries, and foster a spirit of innovative and entrepreneurial thinking across the state.
At WiSys, Mrs. Souter helps to lead the technology transfer operations across the 11 Regional Comprehensive Campuses within the UW System and is responsible for managing WiSys’ patenting and licensing initiatives as well as its applied research grant programs. Jennifer is also responsible for managing other outreach efforts aimed at promoting innovation, research and collaboration across system campuses. Prior to joining WiSys, Jennifer managed the life and health science portfolio of intellectual property (IP) at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and started her career in technology transfer at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Mississippi.
Jennifer and has over 16 years’ experience in R&D, IP management, and commercialization of technologies developed out of the academic base. Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of West Alabama and a Master in Business Administration from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland.
Griffin Strader
Senior Vice President, Young Members Congress
Griffin Strader is a Senior Manager of Business Development at Sun IP. He is deeply experienced in working with law firms and corporate legal teams to optimize their patent translation and foreign filing services. Prior to entering the IP sphere, he represented the medical industry as a business development manager. As a United States Army veteran he spent 5 years serving at Fort Drum after graduating from West Point.