Glen McLaughlin

Inducted 2001

Glen McLaughlin is president and CEO of Venture Leasing Associates in Saratoga, a financial services company that provides equipment lease financing to promising startups. It has provided more than $250 million of financing to companies since its inception in 1986. He's also an angel - or at least a member of the Band of Angels. That's the name adopted in 1995 by an alliance of angel investors in Silicon Valley, one of the first groups of its kind in the nation. Mr. McLaughlin was one of the founders. He has been an active venture investor since the 1980s. Mr. McLaughlin has founded more than 15 companies in his career, and has served on 32 corporate boards. An accounting major at the University of Oklahoma, he earned his bachelor_s degree in 1956. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force as a troop carrier pilot, he went to Harvard University for an MBA degree. From there his career took him through a variety of industries, including Foremost-McKesson Inc., MacFarlane_s Candies and Memorex Corp. His board memberships have including hospitals, universities, banks and insurance companies. But Mr. McLaughlin has found time to contribute to the community too, including terms as president of Junior Achievement of Silicon Valley and Monterey Bay in 1978-79 and chairman in 1980-81. He also has been involved in the Boy Scouts of America, the American Cancer Society and the Mexican Heritage Center in San Jose. As philanthropists, Mr. McLaughlin and his wife, Ellen, have donated millions of dollars and raised even more. At his alma mater in Oklahoma he established the annual $10,000 McLaughlin Prize for educational and research activities in business accounting ethics, particularly in the production and dissemination of financial information. He also has endowed a chair in business ethics at the university. On top of all that, he's been able to develop his hobby in antique maps. His writings about early maps of California have been published by the California Map Society.