Kim Polese

Chairman, ClearStreet

203 - Insiders' Insights on Technology Trends

Kim Polese is a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and innovator. Currently she is Chairman of ClearStreet, a social finance startup focused on helping people eliminate debt and achieve long-term financial health.

Kim recently served as CEO of software company SpikeSource, which pioneered the industry's first self-service automated app validation platform to help accelerate software and platform innovation through the validation of “any app on any platform” for the world's App Stores. Prior, Kim co-founded Marimba, which helped to usher in a new era of systems management software for the Internet age. She served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of Marimba, leading the company to profitability and a successful public offering prior to its acquisition by BMC Corporation in 2004.

Before co-founding Marimba, Kim worked in software management at Sun Microsystems and was the original product manager for Java, leading its launch in 1995. Prior to joining Sun, she was a consulting engineer at IntelliCorp Inc., helping Fortune 500 companies in the development of expert systems. Kim earned a Bachelor's degree in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley and studied Computer Science at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is an Aspen Institute Crown Fellow and serves on several boards, including the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the University of California President's Board on Science and Innovation, UC Berkeley's College of Engineering, the Long Now Foundation, and the Global Security Institute.