As part of the Distinguished Lecture Series the Entrepreneurial School© welcomed H.E. Trevor D. Traina, US Ambassador to Austria, at the MCI.
© MCI
On January 22, 2018, President Donald J. Trump nominated Trevor D. Traina to be United States Ambassador to the Republic of Austria.
Prior to his appointment as America’s representative to Austria, Ambassador Traina was a technology entrepreneur and philanthropist based in San Francisco. Ambassador Traina’s first foray into tech entrepreneurship was as the founder of CompareNet, Inc., the original online product comparison platform, which was sold to Microsoft in 1999. He was chairman of StepUp Commerce, which was sold to Intuit in 2006. He founded Schema Logic, which was sold to SmartLogic in 2011. He co-founded DriverSide, a venture-funded startup in the online automotive space, which was sold to Advance Auto Parts in August 2011. In 2011 he founded Traina Interactive, which operates the unique life experiences provider, IfOnly.com.
Ambassador Traina served on many charitable boards including the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Gladstone Institute for Medical Research, San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, and Venetian Heritage. He also previously served on the board of the Dow Foundation, a $500 million family foundation, and on the City of San Francisco’s technology advisory council.
Ambassador Traina earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a special diploma in social studies from Saint Catherine’s College at Oxford in the United Kingdom. He received a master’s degree in business administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
