Dr. Robert Valli '82

In his time as a member of UC Berkeley Sigma Alpha Epsilon (BA ’82) Dr. Valli was the Beta chapter’s Pledge Trainer, Social Chairman, and Budweiser Campus Ambassador. As a Budweiser Ambassador, he raised over $50,000 for Muscular Dystrophy Foundation and the United States Olympic Committee during two of Beta’s charity events. In his own words "outside of meeting my wife Veronica and the birth of my four children the Bro Experience is the highlight of my life!” Robert’s extensive success after graduating from Berkeley began in the heart of Silicon Valley at Stanford Graduate School of Business (SEP ’95) where he now holds a number of technology ventures and in 2006 Robert became the Director for Advancing Innovation at non-profit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The Kauffman’s renowned platform for all-things-entrepreneurial, offered a lens by which to observe the interchange of academia and industry. In 2009, Robert decided to become Dr. Robert Valli at Cambridge University (Ph.D. ’09) by attending the Center for Technology Management and School of Engineering. Since then, Dr. Valli has forged long-term relations throughout the globe as a lecturer and adviser to entrepreneurs, companies, universities, and government policymakers. He has overseen hundreds worldwide student-consulting engagements spanning Asia, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa. Additionally, Dr. Valli hosted The Global Commission for Advancing Innovation at King’s College (Cambridge) gathering philanthropists, investors and Chief Scientists from the EU, USA and Israel. He spent a number of years consulting at the University of Illinois on Business, Biomedical Sciences, and Global Immersion Programs. His most recent accomplishment is as President & CEO, Professor of Technology Management at Sierra Nevada University in Incline Village, Nevada. Where he oversaw a thriving program that faced many challenges similar to small private schools, most noticeably creating the Academic Leaders Without Borders Program to ignite change, collaboration and emboy the new values he wished to implement in the school. Sierra Nevada soon got acquired by University of Nevada Reno and Valli’s position was soon eliminated in July 2021. Today, Robert enjoys watching his oldest son Matthew pledge SAE at CU Boulder.