Peter Thiel
Category: Billionaires
Company: Clarium Capital
Industry: Technology
What Makes Him Haute: Thiel is currently president and the chairman of Clarium Capital’s investment committee, which oversees the firm’s research, investment, and trading strategies. He’s also managing partner at The Founders Fund. Before starting and Clarium, Thiel was chairman and CEO of PayPal, which he co-founded in December of 1998; four years later, it was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Category: Thinkers
Company: San Francisco Symphony
Industry: Music
What Makes Him Haute: Thomas is Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, and Principle Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Starting in 2004, Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have embarked on a multi-tiered media project known as Keeping Score, which was designed to make classical music more accessible to a new, and youthful, audience.
Maxx & Trevor Traina
Category: Entrepreneurs
Industry: Technology
What Makes Them Haute: His official bio on HuffingtonPost.com, where he contributes as a guest columnist, credits Trevor Traina as a San Francisco-based technology entrepreneur, but he is also quite a fixture of high society in the Bay Area. He’d have to be, with someone like Dede Wilsey for a mother. And then there’s his half-brother Maxx Traina, the son of Danielle Steel and vintner John Traina. Maybe not quite as boldfaced on the social pages, but still a respected member of San Francisco’s elite.
Dede Wilsey
Category: Philanthropists
Company: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco
Industry: Art & Culture
What Makes Her Haute: Her great grandfather, Herbert Henry Dow, was the founder of Dow Chemical. Her father was U.S. ambassador to Luxemburg and Austria, as well as White House Chief of Protocol under Dwight Eisenhower. Today, she is a prominent figure in the art and culture spheres of San Francisco, having spearheaded the rebuilding of the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. She currently sits on the boards of the San Francisco Ballet and the San Francisco Opera and is the president of the board of trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Ann Winblad
Category: Entrepreneurs
Company: Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Industry: Venture Capitalism
What Makes Her Haute: The firm she co-founded was the first venture capital fund to invest exclusively in software companies. She’s been involved in entrepreneurship in the software industry for more than 30 years; in 1976, she co-founded Open Systems, an accounting software maker, with a $500 investment, which she sold six years later for some $15 million. She’s been consulted by some of the biggest names in tech, and serves as a director for Voltage Security, Krillion, Mulesource, and Star Analytics.
Anne Wojcicki & Sergey Brin
Category: Power Couples
Company: 23andMe & Google
Industry: Personal Genetics & Technology
What Makes Them Haute: He’s a co-founder of Google—need we say more? She partnered with Linda Avery to found 23andMe, a company that profiles personal genetics to help determine the role that genes play in everyone’s lives, with a goal of creating personalized medicine. Google provided a bit of the start-up capital for this venture.
Jessa Wu
Category: Philanthropists
Company: San Francisco Symphony
Industry: Philanthropy
What Makes Her Haute: Just before the start of the social season in San Francisco, we caught up with Jessa Wu for the September/October issue. 2009 was her year to shine as she chaired the San Francisco Symphony’s most important annual event—the Opening Night Gala. Her passion for classical music and penchant for fundraising events ensured the night was a smashing success. The Hong Kong native has called the City by the Bay home for almost 20 years and cut her teeth in the gala-planning process when she first became involved as an honorary chairperson of the Chinese New Year Celebration Concert in 2004.
Jed York
Category: Entrepreneurs
Company: San Francisco 49ers
Industry: Football
What Makes Him Haute: At only 29 years old, he is the owner and president of one of the most storied and celebrated football franchises in all of the NFL—the San Francisco 49ers. (And also our youngest cover subject.) Since 2000, the team had been run by Jed’s parents, John and Denise DeBartolo York, who took over after the retirement of Denise’s brother, Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. The 49ers first entered the family by way of Jed’s grandfather Edward J. DeBartolo Sr., who purchased the franchise in 1977. Under the eldest DeBartolo’s watch, the team flourished into an NFL dynasty, and his son Eddie continued the trend during his tenure as president and owner. “The Team of the ’80s” won five Super Bowl championships during the decade and the early part of the following. Jed’s goal is to return the team to its former glory.
Mark Zuckerberg
Category: Billionaires
Company: Facebook
Industry: Technology
What Makes Him Haute: The Web 2.0 wunderkind designed the perfect vessel to make social networking appeal to the increasingly addicted masses; he actually made it useful for everyone, whether young or old, hip or geeky. At 26 years old, Zuckerberg represents tech’s next generation of connected users. It also helps that in 2007, Microsoft bought a stake in the company, valuing it at $15 billion, making Zuckerberg the youngest member of Forbes’ billionaires list in 2008, although he fell below the billion mark in 2009.
Andrea Zurek
Category: Entrepreneurs
Company: XG Ventures
Industry: Venture Capitalism
What Makes Her Haute: Once the first sales manager at Google, Zurek is a founding partner in XG Ventures, which provides capital for Internet startups. Even more haute: she’s a professional auto racer.
