Board of Directors
Raul Valdes-Perez
Raul led Vivisimo since co-founding it in June, 2000 until June 2009, when he became executive chairman. During his tenure, he was recognized as a 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (North Central Region), top ten reader favorite for Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine, twice a CEO of the year finalist by the Pittsburgh Technology Council, CEO Communicator of the Year by the Public Relations Society of America (Pittsburgh chapter), and an Outstanding Alumni Career Achievement by the University of Illinois at Chicago. Before Vivisimo, Raul was on the Carnegie Mellon University computer science department faculty, where his research on new methods and applications of knowledge discovery led to publishing nearly 50 journal articles in natural, social and computer science. He has been a principal investigator on seven grants (one active) from the National Science Foundation, served on its advisory committee for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, and was an action editor of the journal Machine Learning. Raul received a Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon in 1991, where his adviser was Herbert A. Simon (Turing Award 1975 and Nobel Laureate 1978) and B.S. and M.S. degrees in information engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Kevin Calderwood
Kevin Calderwood was a founder and managing partner of Amp Capital Partners, a venture capital firm based in Reston, VA and Palo Alto, CA. In conjunction with Amp Capital's hands on investment philosophy, Kevin served in executive management for two Amp Capital portfolio companies. He was the Chairman of the Board of iDirect Technologies until the fall of 2005 when the company was sold to Vision Technologies Electronics, Inc. He also served as the CEO of Amp Resources, a renewable energy company, purchased by the Italian electric utility, ENEL. Prior to Amp and Until March 1999, he was responsible for the Baan Company's Global Customer Base, President of Baan's Global ERP Business Unit and also served as Executive Vice President of the Baan Company, N.V. He was also a member of the Management Board. Prior to this position, Kevin was President of the Baan Americas Business Unit consisting of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. He joined Baan as Vice President of Sales and Marketing in 1993 when Baan's U.S. operation was in its infancy. He joined Baan from PRC, Inc where he served as Vice President of Sales. Prior to PRC, he held a number of sales management positions at Oracle, serving last as a regional sales manager. Kevin earned a Master of Management degree with an emphasis in marketing and finance from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. As an undergraduate at Northwestern, Calderwood earned a B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering. He was also a member of the varsity football team and subsequently served as a graduate assistant coach.
Phil Carrai
Phil Carrai has 25 years’ experience in software, services and media businesses, holding executive management and board positions in public, private and early-stage companies. Phil is the executive vice president of the $100M IT Solutions Group for Kratos Defense, Inc., where he is responsible for all aspects of business operations and sales for the group, which provides professional services and software products focused on network design, engineering, workforce competency and Web 2.0 solutions. Previously, he was the CEO of Ai Metrix, an OSS telecommunications company that he restructured into a software company focused on the defense and commercial markets and sold to SYS Technologies in 2006. He is a former managing director for the Morino Group and special adviser to General Atlantic, Inc. During that period, he served as the executive chairman for U.S. mobile media leader Ztango until its sale to Widerthan.com (now part of Real Networks), and an active board member for Internosis, a commercial and federal services provider, until its sale to EMC. Phil also was the CEO of McCabe and Associates, a testing and analysis software company, growing revenues substantially during his tenure, and remained with the company as chairman until its sale to a private equity firm. Between 1989 and 1996, Phil held a number of executive positions at Legent, where he managed or was directly involved in numerous product launches, channel and international expansions, new product development and mergers and acquisitions, including the merger with Computer Associates. He earned his MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, and undergraduate degrees in information systems and accounting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
John Kealey
John Kealey is an experienced senior executive with over 25 years in the communications and information technology industries. He is the former President and CEO of iDirect Technologies, which he joined when the company was a pre-revenue turnaround and helped grow organically to over $120 million in annual revenue and a position of global leadership in satellite routing technology when it was acquired by Singapore Technologies (ST) in November, 2005. He was selected by Via Satellite magazine as the "2004 Satellite Executive of the Year", and The Ernst and Young Washington DC Area Communications "Entrepreneur of the Year" for 2005. Earlier he was CEO and founder of TenFold Communications Inc., an enterprise software company and subsidiary of TenFold Corporation. Kealey spent much of his early career at SBC Communications, holding a number of senior positions there, including President of its wireless messaging business. He was also a senior executive at The Continuous Learning Group, a premier boutique leadership consulting firm. He founded the firm's merger and acquisition integration practice and continues to maintain a relationship with the firm. He began his career at Coopers & Lybrand and holds an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.
Mark Morrissette
Mark has been in the venture capital industry since 1995. Prior to joining North Atlantic Capital in 2000, he worked at Advent International in Boston, and in consulting at CSC Index in Cambridge, MA. He earned a BA from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is the past President of the Board of the Northeast Regional Association of Small Business Investment Companies.
Jerome Pesenti
Jerome is chief scientist and co-founder of Vivisimo. In this role, Jerome acts as the visionary for the company driving development and delivery of Vivisimo's products. He also plays a crucial role in the company's overall strategic vision and growth. Before Vivisimo, Jerome was a visiting scientist at Carnegie Mellon University's computer science department, carrying out research on document clustering, data mining and artificial intelligence. Jerome is a frequent presenter at industry conferences including Microsoft's US Public CIO Summit, ICIC 2006 Conference, Life Sciences Conference and ASIDIC. He is an alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. His academic degrees consist of a B.S. in philosophy from the Sorbonne, an M.S. in cognitive science from the University of Paris IV, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in pure mathematics from the University of Paris-Sud.
