Vanessa Wittman, a top financial executive with strong public and private company experience, most recently served as Chief Financial Officer of Dropbox Inc. She went to Dropbox in early 2015 from Motorola Mobility, a Google company, where she served as Senior Vice President and CFO. Prior to Google, she was CFO and Executive Vice President at Marsh & McLennan Companies, and helped resolve the Adelphia Communications bankruptcy as its EVP and CFO.  Previous roles include corporate development at Microsoft, venture capital at Sterling Payot and investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Ms. Wittman currently serves on the Boards of Sirius XM and Ulta Beauty, acts as a special advisor to Facebook’s Building 8, and is as an independent member of FIFA’s Finance Committee. Ms. Wittman played Varsity Women’s Tennis at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with B.S. in Business Administration in 1989.  In 1993, she received an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, where she was a Shermet Scholar. Ms. Wittman will share her thoughts on preparing to be uncomfortable during a discussion with James Leloudis, Professor of History, Associate Dean for Honors Carolina, and Director for the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences. The Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture was established by alumni James and Jonathan Gold to honor the memory of their father, Hillard Gold, a member of the UNC Class of 1939.