B.J. Cassin is the Chairman and President of the Cassin Educational Initiative Foundation, which he founded in August of 2000.  Mr. Cassin graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1955.  After five years in the U. S. Marine Corps, he spent the next nine years in sales, sales management, and marketing with Tidewater Oil, Crown Zellerbach, and Memorex Corporation.  In 1969, Mr. Cassin co-founded Xidex Corporation, which achieved Fortune 500 status in 1987 with sales of $752 million and 7,000 employees worldwide.

In 1979, Mr. Cassin left active management with Xidex and became a venture capital investor.  A founding investor in a number of technology companies, he is currently Chairman of the Board of Cerus Corporation, and on the board of four private companies.  In addition, he is the Chairman of the Board of both the Cristo Rey Network and the NativityMiguel Network.”

Mr. Cassin is a financial founder of the following public companies:  Advanced Fibre Communications, Cadence Design Systems, Centex Telemanagement, Cerus Corporation, Endosonics Corporation, Equatorial Communications, Extricity (Peregrine Systems), Laserscope, Maxtor, PDF Solutions, Quantum Corporation, Quantum Health Resources, Racotek, Scientific Microsystems, Stratacom, and Symphonix Devices.  He also founded several companies that were sold privately including CardioRhythm (Medtronic), Metricon (Johnson & Johnson), and Mountain Computer (Nakamichi).

Mr. Cassin was a Director and President of the Association of Image Information Management, a 10,000-member trade association.  He also has served as Director of the Daper Investment Fund at Stanford University and for three years on the Advisory Board of the Business School of Santa Clara University.  He was a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Mary's College of California, serving as chairman from 1995-1999.  He and his wife, Bebe, live in Los Altos Hills, California and have five children and six grandchildren.