Board of Directors

Michael Skarzynski

President and Chief Executive Officer, Iptivia

Michael Skarzynski is responsible for Iptivia's corporate strategy and worldwide business operations. Prior to Iptivia, Michael was managing director of Red Lion Technologies, responsible for the firm's strategic business thrust to capture contracts to design and build government agency communications networks. He has over twenty years of global executive management experience in the communications and software industries as CEO of Performance Technologies, CEO of the Xebeo IP Switch Venture, acquired by UTStarcom, and earlier as an executive with AT&T Network Systems/Lucent Technologies and with Motorola. During the Administration of President George H. Bush, he served as Assistant Secretary of Trade Development at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Michael holds a B.S.F.S. from Georgetown University and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University. He is a member of the Council on Competitiveness, the National Defense Industrial Association, the Navy League of the United States, the Association for Corporate Growth and a 49er with the Young Presidents Organization (YPO).

Back to Top

Roch Guérin

Founder, Iptivia
Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Roch is an accomplished academic as well as successful entrepreneur and businessman. He earned an engineering degree from ENST, Paris, France, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Caltech. He joined the electrical and systems engineering department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1998, where he is the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of telecommunications networks. Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, he spent over twelve years at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in a variety of technical and management positions. While on partial leave from the University of Pennsylvania, Roch founded Ipsum Networks, a company that pioneered the concept of route analytics for managing IP networks.

Roch has published over 100 papers in international journals and conferences and holds more than 25 patents. He has been active in standards organizations, such as the IETF. His main research interests focus on networking and on how networks are best used by different types of applications, with an emphasis on the development of robust solutions that require minimum involvement by the network.

Roch is a Fellow of the IEEE and in 1994 he received an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award for his work on traffic management. He was on the technical advisory board of France Telecom for two consecutive terms and was on the technical advisory board of Samsung Electronics. Roch has consulted for many companies in the networking area and served as an expert witness in numerous litigations in the field of communications and networking systems.

Back to Top

Philip Eliot

Principal, Paladin Capital Group

Philip focuses on sourcing, negotiating and monitoring investment opportunities for the Paladin Homeland Security Fund and Paladin Capital Partners Fund. Prior to joining Paladin, he spent seven years in early stage venture capital funds. Most recently, Philip was a vice president at Core Capital Partners, where he led investments in software and infrastructure companies including SilverStorm Technologies (acquired by QLogic, NASDAQ: QLGC) and RulesPower Corp. (acquired by Fair, Isaac; NYSE: FIC). In addition, he worked at FBR Technology Venture Partners, a $200 million early stage venture capital fund that focused on software and telecommunications companies in the mid-Atlantic region. Prior to joining FBRTVP, Philip was a consultant at Dean & Company, where he worked in the telecommunications and utilities industries, focusing on strategy and business plan development for companies entering the deregulated local telephony and electric power markets. He also worked with Dean & Company's private equity practice in conjunction with Bessemer Holdings evaluating investment targets in both the United States and Germany. Philip received a B.A. in Physics with Honors from Harvard University.

Back to Top

Gerry Butters

Advisor, OmniCapital Group

Gerry's career of more than 39 years includes appointments as president of NTI (a Nortel Networks US subsidiary); chairman of the board of AGCS (a joint venture of GTE and AT&T); president of Lucent Technologies' Global Public Networks; and president of Lucent's North American Marketing, Sales and Services. While at Lucent, he formed the Optical Networking Group and became its first president. Since retiring from Lucent in 2000, Gerry has remained active in the technology sector, serving as a board member and advisor to several innovative companies. He is a Fellow of the International Engineering Consortium.

Back to Top

Jack Hembrough

Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Leostream Corp.

Jack joined Leostream after leading Application Security, Inc., a software security company, as president and CEO from inception through its first five years and, subsequently, as chairman of the Board. He joined Application Security from Authentica, an application encryption software venture. Prior to Authentica, Jack was senior vice president of worldwide sales for SafeNet, Inc. a publicly traded encryption technology company that provided chips and software to fuel the VPN equipment marketplace.

Jack was the 14th employee of Raptor Systems, one of the first firewall companies. At Raptor, Jack built the global sales channels. After Raptor went public, he was appointed vice president and general manager of European operations and created Raptor's European organization, headquartered in Amsterdam. Jack has held sales management positions with Network Systems and with Motorola / Codex, and has served in the US Air Force.

Jack earned an M.B.A. with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in chemistry from the United States Air Force Academy.

Back to Top