Board of Directors

Peter Friedman, Chairman & CEO of LiveWorld

Peter Friedman is a social media visionary and veteran with over 38 years of experience in the space (26 at LiveWorld and 12 at Apple). He’s provided multiple global brands with strategic social media guidance and delivered hundreds of social media programs for them in multiple countries and languages. These include Unilever’s Dove Campaign For Real Beauty; HBO’s original show character-driven web site community; the American Express Member’s Project; Walmart’s social media programs; MINI Cooper’s Member’s Lounge; and one of the social media platforms that started it all, Apple’s revolutionary, industry-wide social network called AppleLink.

Peter founded LiveWorld to help people and brands leverage the transformative power of online dialogue and relationships to create value together that they couldn’t do alone. He raised over $100 Million in private rounds and an IPO, grew the company to hundreds of employees, and managed its downsizing, survival, and re-invention through multiple market crashes, recessions, and resurgences. Prior to LiveWorld, Peter was Vice President & General Manager of Apple’s Internet Services Division, overseeing the creation and management of social media services such as AppleLink, eWorld, AOL, and Salon. His Apple tenure includes being a member of the original Macintosh division.

He is a also a fine art photographer, celebrated public speaker, and author. Peter’s books include The CMO’s Social Media Handbook, A Step By Step Guide For Leading Marketing Teams in the Social Media World  and Is Privacy Dead in the Digital Age? Peter holds a bachelor’s degree in American History from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman and CEO of The C-Suite Network

Jeffrey Hayzlett is a change agent, focusing on leadership, innovation and change management to drive business growth. His signature humor and big, bold approach engages audiences to start thinking differently about their business. Jeffrey motivates audiences to become change agents and leaves them inspired to think big and do bigger.

With decades of experience in business growth, communications, leadership and marketing, he shares his many successes – and failures – to give your company a new perspective on creativity, innovation, marketing, management and customer service.

An online marketing, social media and mobile marketing expert, Jeffrey explores up-to-the-moment trends to help business survive and thrive in the increasingly competitive digital landscape and the future of marketing. He receives standing ovations and is considered a top professional speaker in the business and marketing industries. In short, Jeffrey is a subject matter expert that will knock your socks off and keep your audience wanting more.

Bill Cleary, Senior Partner and Owner at Cleary & Partners

Bill Cleary leads Cleary & Partners, a small marketing firm based in Saratoga, California. In addition he sits on numerous boards; including Santa Clara University (business school), SUNY at Stony Brook (Human Origins, Dr. Richard Leakey), Wildlife Direct (Nairobi, Kenya), PGP and the Hillbrook School. Bill continues to work with web-based companies—and he is currently seeking companies to work with in the various “green sectors.”

He began his marketing career in New York City in 1979, working on such formidable brands as Pepsi®, Pizza Hut® and Welch® Foods. In 1981 he joined Apple Computer and moved to Cupertino, California. In his four years at Apple, Bill played an instrumental role in the development of marketing programs, including sales promotional efforts, advertising and merchandising. In 1986, he joined Activision as the VP of Marketing. In 1987, he founded Cleary Communications, which later became CKS Group. While at CKS, he worked with partners Tom Suiter and Mark Kvamme to build an extraordinary company that helped launch major web-based brands including eBay, Amazon, Excite and Yahoo.

Bill attended school in New York (SUNY Buffalo), receiving degrees in Social Science with an emphasis in anthropology. In addition, he participated in the Fullbright-Hays program in Cairo, Egypt at Ain Shams University.

Michael A. Gold, former CEO and President of Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA)

Michael A. Gold was the CEO and President of HMSA until he retired at the conclusion of 2017. During his 43-year career at HMSA, he also served at the Chief Operating Officer and its Executive Vice President and Assistant Treasurer. Throughout his illustrious career working for HMSA, he gained extensive knowledge in underwriting, marketing, provider services, customer relations, account services, community relations, and corporate planning.

Gold is recognized as a visionary whose new ideas and practices have improved the health and well-being of Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association members and everyone in Hawaii. Those accomplishments during his tenure include: creating HMSA’s Online Care®, the first telehealth system in the nation offered by a health insurer, introducing Blue Zones Project® to Hawaii, a community-wide initiative to help make the healthy choice the easy choice for everyone in the state, partnering with digital health care leaders to put all of a person’s health on a single digital platform, and establishing HMSA Centers, state-of-the-art spaces that bring HMSA into communities and closer to members for servicing, sales, and educational programs.

Further, Gold formed strategic partnerships with Hawaii Pacific Health and The Queen’s Health Systems to improve the health of HMSA members and all patients. Also, he was integral in leading the forward-thinking implementation of payment transformation, which worked with Hawaii doctors and national health care leaders to transform insurance payments, reimbursing doctors for improving their patients’ overall physical, mental, and emotional health. HMSA grew to more than 732,000 members under the leadership of Gold as CEO, and was named Hawaii’s top company in 2015 and 2016 by Hawaii Business magazine.