honorees

Director's Award

William K. Bowes, Jr.
Founding Partner, U.S. Venture Partners

William K. Bowes, Jr., a founder of U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), has been an active and prominent venture capitalist in the Bay Area for nearly thirty-five years. Prior to founding USVP, Bill established himself as a leading venture capitalist in the San Francisco Bay Area with such major successes as Amgen, where Bill was the founding shareholder (and its first Chairman and Treasurer); Cetus (Director); Raychem (Director); and Dymo Industries, among others.

At USVP, Bill sourced and led the firm's investments in Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, Applied Biosystems, Cardio Vascular Imaging Systems, Devices for Vascular Intervention, Glycomed, Sun Microsystems, and Ventritex, among others. Before founding USVP, Bill was a Senior Vice President and Director of Blyth Eastman Dillon & Co. (formerly Blyth & Co., Inc.), where he worked from 1953 until 1978, and was a consultant to Blyth Eastman Paine Webber from 1978 to 1980.

Bill has a BA in economics from Stanford, an MBA from Harvard, and served in the U.S. Army Infantry in the South Pacific and Japan during and after World War II. Activity in the nonprofit arena includes: Board of Directors of the UCSF Foundation and Chairman of Mission Bay Capital Campaign; Executive Committee of San Francisco Conservatory of Music; Board Chairman of the Exploratorium (a leading interactive science museum); and Board Member of the Asian Art Museum, Grace Cathedral, and the Hoover Institution.

He's also on the Advisory Council of Stanford University's Bio-X initiative; the UCSF/UC Berkeley/UC Santa Cruz QB3 initiative; and Harvard Medical School - Partners Healthcare Center for Genetics and Genomics initiative. These initiatives are bringing all relevant technologies to bear on medical research.