Richard Yanowitch joined Emergence Capital as a Venture Partner in 2008. As Founder and Chairman of The Entrepreneurs Group, Richard serves as an independent director on the boards of numerous digital media and social media companies, including video ad network Yume, mobile social network Mig 33, enterprise social media provider  Lithium, and social gaming platform Raptr. He also serves as an independent advisor to various venture capital firms and their portfolio companies, including Accel Partners, where he served as venture partner.

Richard previously served as Vice Chairman and independent director of the NDS Group, a $700 million market leader in digital media technologies, and as Senior Consultant to News Corporation, where he reported to Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch. Prior to that, he served for five years as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of VeriSign, and for six years as Vice President of Corporate Marketing for Sybase. He maintains investment positions in over fifty venture capital funds around the world, spawning the growth of some 1,200 new companies.

Richard serves as a board trustee of the Bay Area Discovery Museum and is founder of The Yanowitch Philanthropic Trust, which supports a broad spectrum of non-profit and charitable causes. He also serves as a senior advisor to national congressional leaders on economic leadership, entrepreneurialism, and innovation. Richard received a B.A. in the Honors Program for Classical Studies at Swarthmore College and a MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is married to Wendy Shuman Kesser, a former Executive Producer for ABC News in San Francisco, and they have two children. His avocations include foreign languages, jazz and classical music, art and international history, and epic literature.