Penny Herscher
President and CEO, FirstRain, Inc.

Penny joined FirstRain in 2004 with the mission to solve the qualitative information overload problem of the institutional investor. She has developed FirstRain as the leading search-driven research provider to the financial services market.

Prior to FirstRain, Penny was Chairman and CEO of Simplex Solutions where she led the company to an IPO and through the sale to Cadence Design Systems. She continued at Cadence as Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager of a major division. An executive at Synopsys, Penny started her career as an R&D engineer with Texas Instruments then Daisy Systems.

Penny serves on the boards of FirstRain, Rambus, the Anita Borg Institute, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte and CCPY (California Community Partners for Youth). Penny speaks on entrepreneurship, career management and technology challenges and has given talks at Berkeley, Stanford, BU and Santa Clara business schools as well as for numerous industry organizations and women’s career development organizations. She holds a B.A. with honors in mathematics from Cambridge University in England.