Georgia Gwinnett To Graduate 455 On Thursday

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — More than 450 students will receive bachelor's degrees from Georgia Gwinnett College on Thursday, in the school's largest-ever fall graduation ceremony.

The ceremony will be at 10 a.m. at the Infinite Energy Center Arena in Duluth.

It will include the commissioning of two U.S. Army officers and will mark the graduation of the second half of GGC's charter nursing class.

Sanjay Parekh, a serial technology entrepreneur, will present the keynote address.

Parekh is co-founder of Prototype Prime, a startup incubator based in Peachtree Corners, and associate director of CREATE-X at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

He also runs Founder Fables, an off-the- record conference for founders and co-founders. Previously, he launched Startup Riot, an Atlanta conference for startups which pioneered the three-minute, four-slide presentation format.

He was co-founder and the founding CEO of Digital Envoy, as well as the inventor of the company's patented NetAcuity IP intelligence technology. This technology allows for geographic targeting of content, information and security for billions of Internet users every day.

Starting in 1999, Parekh led Digital Envoy to raise $12 million in angel and venture funding. The company was acquired by Landmark Communications in June 2007.

Parekh has been named a Technology Pioneer with the World Economic Forum (2002, 2003), one of MIT Technology Review’s top young innovators (2003), one of 10 Outstanding Young Atlantans (2004), an American Marshall Memorial Fellow (2004), one of the "Top 40 Under 40" Georgians by Georgia Trend (2004), a fellow with the BMW Foundation (2008, 2009), a Kentucky Colonel (2012), one of the "40 Under 40" by Atlanta Business Chronicle (2013) and a member of Leadership Atlanta (Class of 2014).

A Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Parekh serves on the Board of Visitors for Emory University, and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Parekh has also served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

Parekh holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (1996) where he also was inducted into the College of Engineering's Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni (2013).

He also holds a master’s in business administration from Emory University's Goizueta Business School (2016) where he participated as a Goizueta Advanced Leadership Academy Fellow.

Photo courtesy Georgia Gwinnett College