Michael Zigman

Michael Zigman is committed to work for the advancement of the mutual goals and shared interests of education, science and business. He is the founder and President of Partners in College Aid, a privately funded financial aid network that will aggregate and distribute scholarship money to lower-income students studying science, mathematics and engineering. This Internet-based network will be more direct, transparent, efficient and personal than present fundraising methods, and therefore will raise more funds to enable lower-income students to complete college at higher rates than they do today.

From 2004 through 2009, Mr. Zigman was a Managing Director at WR Hambrecht + Co and spearheaded the firm's technology investment banking efforts. WR Hambrecht + Co pioneered the Dutch auction IPO process, which was used with great success by Google, Clean Energy Fuels (owned by T. Boone Pickens), NetSuite (owned by Larry Ellison), Morningstar, Rackspace and others. Mr. Zigman has extensive experience in private and public financing, private equity, mergers and acquisitions and other advisory roles.

Prior to WR Hambrecht, Mr. Zigman was a Managing Director at SoundView Technology Group, which had been spun out of Gartner Group, the leading information technology research firm. Mr. Zigman was at SoundView from 1994 through 2004. In addition to heading the firm's software investment banking group, he was also the primary liaison between SoundView and Gartner. He came to SoundView from Dean Witter Reynolds, where he was an early member of that firm's technology investment banking group.

Mr. Zigman serves on the Board of Trustees of The Graduate Center Foundation. The Graduate Center is the doctorate-granting body of The City University of New York and houses some of the nation's leading academic programs. Mr. Zigman also serves on the Board of Trustees of Macaulay Honors College, the highly selective honors college of The City University of New York. The City University of New York is the world's largest urban public university and is comprised of 23 institutions serving over 250,000 students.

Mr. Zigman holds a BA from Dartmouth College and attended Stuyvesant High School. He was born and raised in New York City.