Jerry Yang

Yang, who co-founded Yahoo! in 1995, served on its board and as a member of its executive team until 2012. He served as chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2007 to 2009.

In 2012, he founded AME Cloud Ventures, which invests in seed-stage to later-stage technology companies that are focused on gathering or creating unique data at every stage of the data stack – from infrastructure all the way to applications, mobile technology and sensors. AME Cloud Ventures is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

At Stanford, Yang served on the Board of Trustees from 2005 to 2015, including as a vice chair. Currently, he is a member of the advisory board of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program and of the director’s advisory committee for the Cantor Arts Center. He also serves on the School of Engineering’s Accelerator Task Force.

Previously, Yang served as a co-chair of the Campaign for Undergraduate Education (2000-2005) and on the executive committee of The Stanford Challenge (2006-2011), which raised $6.2 billion for a new model of research and teaching on the environment, human health, international affairs and other issues. Yang also served on the advisory council of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and of the School of Engineering, and served on the task force of the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

As philanthropists, Yang and his wife, Akiko Yamazaki, ’90, have been supportive of many areas of the university, including naming the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building – best known on campus as Y2E2. In addition, they established an undergraduate scholarship fund, contributed to the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program, and supported Stanford Athletics, Bing Overseas Studies and the Bing Concert Hall.

At Stanford, Yang was also involved in endowing the Yahoo! Founders Professorship and the Filo/Yang Faculty Fund.

Yang, who earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Stanford in 1990, has also served as co-chair of his reunions for Reunion Homecoming.

Currently, Yang sits on the boards of Alibaba, Workday and Lenovo, and serves as a senior adviser and board observer of Didi Chuxing. He also serves as a director of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation and a trustee of Dunhuang Foundation (USA). He is a member of the Committee of 100 and the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served on the boards of Cisco Systems and Asian Pacific Fund of San Francisco.