Voice of Dance - About Us

Lori Smith Sparrow

Ten years ago, Lori Smith Sparrow founded Voice of Dance.com with investment banker F. Warren Hellman. The site is now considered one of the premiere dance sites on the web and Ms. Sparrow was recently interviewed in The New York Times on the subject of dance and the Internet.

Prior to founding Voice of Dance, Ms. Sparrow was a consultant for non-profit organizations and accumulated extensive experience in capital campaign strategy, major gift development, corporate sponsorship and giving strategies.

As the Capital Campaign Director for San Francisco Ballet, she was responsible for a $27.5 million capital campaign that became the most successful ballet campaign in history when it raised over 33 million dollars.

She was also the Major Gifts Director and Corporate and Foundation Director at the California Academy of Sciences - one of the ten largest natural history museums in the world and one of the oldest in the United States. During her service, she exceeded fundraising goals each year and succeeded the fundraising goal by one hundred percent in her last year of service.

Ms. Sparrow holds a B.A. in Psychology and Honors in the Issues of the 20th Century from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the graduate of the Outward Bound Sailing School in Hurricane Island, Maine and The Fundraising School's Major Gifts and Planned Giving programs. She has received an E-Commerce Certificate from the Haas School of Business and graduated from Stanford University's Advanced Management School. She lives in Marin County with her husband and two daughters.

Warren Hellman

F. Warren Hellman, Co-Founder and Chairman

F. Warren Hellman is the Chairman of Hellman & Friedman LLC, a private equity firm based in San Francisco with additional offices in New York and London. The firm, which he co-founded in 1984, is currently investing its sixth fund, Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners VI, L.P., with over $8 billion of committed capital. Through its 23 year history, Hellman & Friedman has raised and managed more than $16 billion in capital. Hellman & Friedman's objective is to invest long-term equity capital to support the strategic and financial objectives of outstanding management teams operating businesses with defensible positions in growing markets.

From 1977 to 1982, Mr. Hellman was a general partner of Boston-based venture capital firm Hellman, Ferri Investment Associates. From 1982 to 1985 he was a general partner of Matrix Partners (the successor to Hellman, Ferri). From 1962 to 1977, Mr. Hellman was a partner at Lehman Brothers in New York, where he served as head of Lehman's Investment Banking Division and president and director of Lehman Brothers.

Mr. Hellman is a director of various public and private companies including Levi Strauss & Co.; D.N. & E. Walter & Co.; Sugar Bowl Corporation and others.

Mr. Hellman's civic and philanthropic activities include serving as past Chairman and present trustee of The San Francisco Foundation; Co-Chair of the Governor's Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth and Member of the Governor's Council of Economic Advisors; member of the Advisory Board of the Walter A. Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley; trustee of the UC Berkeley Foundation, trustee emeritus of The Brookings Institution; board member of the Committee on JOBS; board member of the S.F. Chamber of Commerce and Bay Area Council; Chairman, Voice of Dance; and board member of salesforce.com/foundation. In 2005 Mr. Hellman was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mr. Hellman twice completed the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile foot race from Squaw Valley to Auburn, and five times completed the Tevis Cup, a 100-mile horse race over the same course. He is also a five-time age group national champion in Ride and Tie (combination of cross-country running and endurance horseback riding). He lettered at UC Berkeley in Water Polo. He is also a 5 string banjo player and is the Founder and Principal sponsor of the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

Mr. Hellman is a graduate of the University of California in Berkeley (1955) and Harvard Business School (1959).

Rob Capili

Robert Capili is a dancer and software developer who has been working with the internet since 1992. He started his first internet consulting company while in college and served as the first online editor for the Oklahoma Daily.

After earning a degree in Letters, he moved west to pursue fame and fortune in the tech boom of the 90's. During that time, he wrote articles for Wired online, spoke at conferences, and consulted for various companies, large and small.

Tired of the cold water surf, Rob moved to Hawaii in 2000 in order to enjoy better waves and warmer weather.

While working in Honolulu, he designed and built one of the world's first mobile MLS systems, allowing real estate agents full access to listing data on their cell phones and PDA's. He also developed content management systems that were used to power projects for the government of Japan, Hilton Hawaiian Village, YellowPages.com, and Bank of Hawaii.

Rob is currently the Chief Technologist for Voice of Dance. He enjoys using new and emerging technologies to create interesting applications that are fun to use and profitable to deploy. Current areas of interest include social networking, geolocation, and monetization. Rob's work has been cited in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Online, front page of Digg and other publications of ill repute.

When he is not programming, he enjoys dancing Salsa, training Jiu Jitsu, and spending time with his wife and kids.