Brilliant minds in technology and business will be converging in Seattle to take part in Discovery Institute’s COSM 2021 this November. Among those minds will be Hope Cochran, mother of three, CFO extraordinaire, the first female managing director of Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group, and former opera singer.

Opera singer?

Yes. In fact, Cochran is a classically trained vocalist. She earned a dual degree at Stanford in economics and music. At the start of her career, she would do “audit by day and opera by night” (as she told Armoire in 2019). 

“…I could not imagine, not taking music lessons,” Cochran explained in a podcast released earlier this year. “And if you joined on as a major, you got to take them for free. So, I signed up as a music major and took all of my music classes for free. And then felt guilty a couple of years in and realized I actually better complete the major. So, I ended up graduating with the econ and the music major.”

She credits her economics major for landing her a career, but the music major for developing the skills needed for that career. The skills she learned on the stage – skills in remaining calm through chaos – have helped propel her entrepreneurial successes.

Since her auditing and opera days, Cochran launched SkillsVillage and served as CFO at Clearwire and King Digital. 

GeekWire writes that she has “experience with both large tech corporations and small startups” and “helped guide both King Digital and Clearwire through their initial public offerings.”

Reports Business Wire:

Cochran was most recently the CFO of King Digital, the creator of Candy Crush and other successful mobile games, where she helped the company manage explosive employee and revenue growth, guided the company’s IPO and successfully completed a $5.9 billion acquisition by Activision in early 2016. Prior to King Digital, Cochran was CFO at Clearwire, a telecom company that navigated the complicated world of spectrum, partnerships and competition as the modern wireless industry took shape. While at Clearwire she brought the company through $12 billion of capital raises including an IPO, secondary offering, multiple debt offerings and strategic investments from large public companies.

Cochran started her career as an entrepreneur and founder of SkillsVillage. A company she grew to 200 employees and $10 million in revenue. Acquired by PeopleSoft and folded into their larger platform, SkillsVillage created a system for companies to easily manage contract labor.

Cochran is a multi-talented powerhouse, sure to bring wisdom and insight to COSM. Register now to reserve your spot.