The Nozzl Board
John A. Beaulieu, Chairman
John A. Beaulieu co-founded Cascadia Pacific Management, LLP, a venture capital fund in Portland, Oregon, in 1990 and has been actively involved in finding, financing, and assisting in the growth of more than 70 emerging growth technology-based companies since 1986.
Prior to his career as a venture capitalist, Beaulieu spent more than two decades as a corporate executive and manager. He has been president of Steelcraft Corporation and held general management positions at American Standard and Evans Products. Earlier executive employment was at Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor Co. and Arthur Young & Co.
In addition to Nozzl Real-Time Technologies Inc., Beaulieu also serves as chairman of Westport Innovations Inc., a British Columbia-based developer of environmental technologies that enable vehicles to operate on clean-burning alternative fuels.
He also is a member of the board of directors of Mala Noche Resources Corp., a mineral and exploration company, other privately held venture-backed enterprises, and one socially focused organization.
Beaulieu received a Bachelor of Commerce degree (1956) and a Master’s of Business Administration degree (1963), both from Santa Clara University of California.
Retha Hill, Member
Retha Hill is director of the New Media Innovation Lab and Professor of Practice at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Hill joined the Cronkite faculty in 2007 after nearly eight years at BET, where she was vice president for content for BET Interactive, the online unit of Black Entertainment Television and the most visited site specializing in African-American content on the Internet. In that senior role, she was in charge of content strategy and convergence with the television network.
Before joining BET, Hill was executive producer for special projects at washingtonpost.com, developing new products for The Washington Post’s Web site. She joined The Post’s early online operations in 1995 as the editor for local news, arts and entertainment.
Hill is the recipient of the New Media Catalyst Award, given by the National Association of Minority Media Executives. She also has been president of the Washington Association of Black Journalists and a fellow at the McCormick Tribune Management program and the Al Fitzpatrick Leadership Development Institute.
An adjunct professor at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, Hill has been a frequent guest speaker at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the Poynter Institute, the Online News Association, the American Press Institute, the Freedom Forum and the National Press Club.
Steve Woodward, Member
Steve Woodward is a founder and chief executive officer of Nozzl Real-Time Technologies Inc. He launched Nozzl after three decades in the news industry as a general manager, editor and reporter.
In the 1980s, he was a senior member of the team that founded American City Business Journals Inc., the nation’s largest publisher of local business weekly newspapers, and edited three of ACBJ’s startup papers. He has been business editor of two major metropolitan dailies, The Oregonian and the Hartford Courant.
He began his career at The Kansas City Star, where he shared in the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the deadly collapse of a downtown hotel’s skywalks.
Woodward graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English from Wright State University (1975), where he was the school’s first Presidential Scholar. He received a master’s degree from the prestigious University of Missouri School of Journalism (1979).
