Ben Slivka

Ben is an investor, philanthropist, and software engineer with a passion for education.

Ben previously served as Co-Founder and Chairman of DreamBox Learning (acquired by Charter Fund via Reed Hastings), a Director of TeachFirst (acquired by Editure), Vizrea (acquired by Microsoft) and GroundSpring.org (acquired by Network for Good), and on the Advisory Board of UIEvolution (acquired by Square Enix).

Ben spent 14 years at Microsoft, where he worked on OS/2, MS-DOS 6, Windows 95, the Java VM, and MSN. He started the Internet Explorer team in 1994 and led it through the release of IE version 3.0 in 1996. IE 3.0 beat Netscape 3.0 in press reviews and achieved 30% market share by the time IE 4.0 released in 1997. Ben installed Microsoft's first production LAN in 1985, proposed the FAT32 file system in 1990, led the team that wrote the Win32 API specification in 1991, and started and led the team that created CAB software distribution files in 1993. His work at Microsoft and DreamBox Learning resulted in 22 issued U.S. patents. Ben also worked brief stints at Amazon and IBM.

Ben and his wife Lisa created the Wissner-Slivka Foundation in 1997, primarily focused on supporting education. His non-profit engagements include Garfield High School Foundation and Social Venture Partners, where he spent five years as the lead partner for Seattle MESA.

Ben earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science and a B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University, where he has served as a Trustee since 1998.

• The Web is the Next Platform (May, 1995)

  • December 1994 to May 1995
  Team Members: Ben Slivka

  This memo captured my ideas about how the Web would surpass Windows as a focus of software developer attention.
  [Note: Click on the title above to view the PDF of the memo.]

1. User Interface Design
2. Digital Photography
3. Software Development
4. x86 Assembly
5. C
6. Fortran
7. COMPASS (CDC assembly)
8. Software

• Northwestern University

  Trustee
  • October 1998 to Present

  Ben serves on the Alumni Releations and Development, Finance, and Information Technology committees of the Board of Trustees. In the past he has served on the Major Gifts committee. He and his wife Lisa host a party for new and returning undergraduate students from the State of Washington each summer and he occasionally speaks on campus.

• Garfield High School Foundation

  Director
  • May 2002 to Present

  Started in 2002, Garfield HS Foundation's mission is to raise money to support current students of Garfield High School in Seattle, WA. See www.GarfieldHSF.org for more information.

• Social Venture Partners -- Seattle

  Partner
  • January 1998 to January 2013

  Served on K-12 Grant Committee in 2002-2003 and was Lead Partner for SVP investment in Seattle MESA from 2003-2008.

• TeachFirst.com

  Director and Investor
  • May 2003 to December 2008

  TeachFirst aimed to increase student achievement by increasing teacher quality and effectiveness. It did this by implementing and sustaining school-based collaborative professional development aligned to student learning needs.

• UIEvolution

  Advisory Board Member
  • 2002 to 2004

  UIEvolution built a small cross-platform run-time for mobile phones before smart phones became popular. It was sold to Square Enix in 2004.

• Vizrea

  Investor and Directgor
  • 2005 to 2006

  Vizrea was focused on mobile phone photo sharing before that wave was high enough.

• Groundspring.org

  Director
  • March 2003 to September 2004

  Groundspring.org provided a web-based non-profit donation platform with simple communication tools.

Websites:

• Personal Website
• NU Class of 1982
• Banderooge

Honors and Awards:

6,347,398 Automatic software downloading from a computer network
6,256,668 Method for identifying and obtaining computer software from a network computer
6,192,432 Caching uncompressed data on a compressed drive
6,141,018 Method and system for displaying hypertext documents with visual effects
6,061,695 Operating system shell having a windowing graphical user interface with a desktop displayed as a hypertext multimedia document
6,049,671 Method for identifying and obtaining computer software from a network computer
5,915,129 Method and System for Storing Uncompressed Data in a Memory Cache that is Destined for a Compressed File System
5,845,084 Automatic data display formatting with a networking application
5,815,705 Method and computer system for integrating a compression system with an OS
5,572,206 Data compression method and system
5,493,649 Detecting corruption in a computer program at execution time using a checksum
5,455,577 Method and system for data compression