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The Citrine team is excited to welcome Raymond Nasr and Cyrus Wadia to our Advisory Board. They will advise our team on matters ranging from materials and communications to strategy and government relations. 

Raymond Nasr

Raymond Nasr is the former Director of Executive Communications at Google Inc. He held this role from 2001 to early 2005 and was responsible for several aspects of the public communications for the senior management of the company, including Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt as well as Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. 

Prior to Google, Nasr was Director of Corporate Relations at Novell Inc, where he led the company’s corporate and government relations efforts. Before Novell, Nasr held various positions in the areas of public relations and corporate speechwriting at Apple Computer Inc, and at Sun Microsystems Inc.

Since 2004, he has been part of the team teaching ‘Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship’ at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) at Stanford University, and in 2014 he was appointed Lecturer at the GSB. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Saïd School of Business at Oxford University.

Currently, Nasr maintains a communications consultancy where he has advised a number of start-up companies and venture capital firms, including Pandora Media, Inc., Twitter, Inc., Snapchat, Inc., Square, and Innovation Endeavors. In addition, Nasr is a Senior Advisor on Communications at Silicon Valley Bank. He is also a past President of the Churchill Club, a Silicon Valley-based business and technology forum.

Nasr received his BA in Communication Studies from UCLA (1984), and his Law Degree with Honors from Pembroke College, Cambridge (1986).

In June of 2007, Nasr became a Certified Sommelier through the London-based Court of Master Sommeliers.

Cyrus Wadia

Cyrus is the former Assistant Director for Clean Energy & Materials R&D with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he worked on Federal policies to accelerate innovation and deployment of advanced material systems for clean energy, national security, and human welfare. 

He is on leave from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) and the Haas School of Business where he holds a dual appointment as: Co-Director of Clean Tech to Market and Research Scientist. His research has been motivated by the pursuit of new low cost energy technologies using earth abundant materials. For his work with novel solar cells, Cyrus was a recipient of the MIT TR35 Young Innovator award.  

Prior to his work at LBNL, he spent seven years in Silicon Valley launching new technology to market. First as an engagement manager with R.B. Webber & Co where he worked with over 15 different venture backed startups; and next as a Senior Product Manager with AvantGo, where he completed several successful new product introductions. 

Cyrus earned his PhD in Energy & Resources from U.C. Berkeley and holds both an M.S. and S.B. in Chemical Engineering from MIT.