Stanford Board of Trustees elects four new members
The four new trustees – Amy Brooks, Marisa Brutoco, Amit Sinha, and Giuseppe Zocco – begin their six-year terms on Oct. 1.
Four distinguished alumni will join the Stanford University Board of Trustees for six-year terms beginning Oct. 1.
The new trustees include Amy Brooks, the National Basketball Association’s president of team marketing and business operations and chief innovation officer; Marisa Brutoco, a partner at Sheppard Mullin and team leader of the firm’s national technology transactions team; Amit Sinha, a partner at Goldman Sachs, and chief investment officer and global head of life sciences investing for Goldman Sachs Asset Management; and Giuseppe Zocco, co-founder of the international venture firm Index Ventures and the international investment firm Medicxi, and co-founder and chairman of advisory firm HeritagePlus.
“The Stanford Board of Trustees and the university as a whole are truly fortunate to soon welcome these four new members,” said board Chair Jerry Yang. “They bring a range of valuable experiences, diverse insight, and thoughtful stewardship for the university.”
The new trustees were elected through the alumni nominations process, in which every three years the Stanford Alumni Association’s (SAA) Alumni Committee on Trustee Nominations and the board’s Committee on Trusteeship present four names to the board for election. Eight seats on the board are reserved for trustees nominated through this process.
Amy Brooks
Amy Brooks (Image credit: Courtesy Amy Brooks)
Amy Brooks is the National Basketball Association’s president of team marketing and business operations and chief innovation officer.
At the NBA, Brooks leads the Global Strategy and Innovation Group, which develops and executes new initiatives and global strategic priorities for fan and business growth. She also directs team marketing and business operations, which support business growth at all NBA, WNBA, NBA G League, and NBA 2K League teams.
Brooks also serves on the national board of directors for Positive Coaching Alliance.
Prior to joining the NBA in 2005, she worked for the management consulting firm Bain & Company and for Sun Microsystems in product marketing.
As an alum, Brooks has served on the Buck/Cardinal Club board and is a long-time student mentor and Graduate School of Business (GSB) admissions volunteer. She has been a frequent guest lecturer at the GSB and is a member of a GSB Advisory Council ad hoc committee to build connections for undergraduate students interested in business.
Brooks earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford in 1996 and her Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford in 2002. While a student, Brooks was a walk-on to Stanford’s conference-winning and Final Four women’s basketball team, where she was a noted team leader off the court.
Brooks lives in Darien, Connecticut.
Marisa Brutoco
Marisa Brutoco (Image credit: Courtesy Marisa Brutoco)
Marisa Brutoco is a partner at Sheppard Mullin’s Orange County and Silicon Valley offices and a team leader of the firm’s national technology transactions team.
Brutoco was previously in-house counsel at Amazon, Google/YouTube, GoPro, and Apple, as well as outside counsel at Wilson Sonsini and Davis Wright Tremaine.
She serves on her firm’s national pro bono committee and was a founding member of pro bono committees at previous technology companies. Brutoco is a member of her office’s diversity and inclusion working group and is active in the firm’s national Latinx group.
Brutoco has served on the SAA Board of Directors, as the SAA board liaison to the Stanford Associates Board of Governors; the Stanford Athletic Board; Stanford’s Lifelong Engagement and Advocacy for Development (LEAD) Council; and the Stanford Law School Board of Visitors, and as co-chair of the Stanford Law School Silicon Valley Law Society.
Brutoco received the Stanford Associates Governors’ Award in 2023.
Brutoco was a founding board member of the Santa Clara University-based Institute of Sports Law and Ethics and served on its executive committee. She is on the board and volunteers as a strategic advisor for the regional chapter of ChIPs, a national nonprofit advancing women in intellectual property and technology law and policy.
Brutoco earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford in 2000 and her law degree from Stanford in 2004. She lives in San Juan Capistrano, California.
Amit Sinha
Amit Sinha (Image credit: Courtesy Amit Sinha)
Amit Sinha is a partner at Goldman Sachs as well as the chief investment officer and global head of life sciences investing for Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Sinha began his career at Boston Consulting Group, where he focused on strategic and operational improvement projects for biotechnology companies. In 2004, he joined the health care investment banking team at Goldman Sachs, where he advised on and executed capital raising transactions, as well as mergers and acquisitions for biotechnology companies.
From 2014 to 2021, Sinha served as global head of biotechnology investment banking at Goldman Sachs and executed more than $200 billion in publicly announced and closed transactions in the biotechnology industry. In 2021, Sinha joined the asset management division of Goldman Sachs to lead the firm’s investment business in life sciences. He leads an investment team focused on making investments in emerging therapeutics companies and related adjacencies, including life science tools and diagnostics, with a global focus on opportunities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
He also sits on the boards of MOMA Therapeutics and TORL BioTherapeutics.
Sinha has served on the board of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health since 2016 and as a non-board member of the strategic planning committee for three years prior. Earlier this year, Sinha joined the board of Stanford Health Care.
Amit earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biological sciences at Stanford in 1999 and a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School in 2004. He lives in Hillsborough, California.
Giuseppe Zocco
Giuseppe Zocco (Image credit: Courtesy Giuseppe Zocco)
Giuseppe Zocco is co-founder of the international venture firm Index Ventures and the international investment firm Medicxi.
As a founder, Zocco spearheaded the launch of several innovative tech funds, including the first Index Ventures fund in 1998, the first Index Growth fund in 2007, and the first Medicxi Growth fund in 2017. Prior, Zocco spent five years as a consultant with McKinsey & Company in several European offices.
Zocco has served on the board of directors of several Index Ventures investments that became large public companies or were acquired, including Zendesk, RPX, Virata, Milestone Systems, Ciao.com, and Adconion Media Group.
Zocco serves on the board of several private companies and nonprofit organizations, including his family’s Swiss philanthropic association, The Rada Zocco Foundation, which supports education, cultural heritage, and the arts.
Zocco also recently co-founded and is chairman of HeritagePlus, a multi-family-office advisory firm based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Zocco is a member of the GSB Advisory Council and has served on the SAA Board of Directors. As past president of the Stanford Club of Switzerland, he was a lead organizer of the first International Alumni Weekend in Geneva in 2017 and has connected Stanford leaders to the World Economic Forum in Davos for the past several years.
Zocco earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in corporate finance from Bocconi University in Milan in 1988 and a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford in 1994. He is based in Geneva, Switzerland.