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Management Team

John Kealey Chief Executive Officer 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.

Kevin Calderwood President 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.

Jerome Pesenti Chief Scientist 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.

Christopher Palmer Chief Technology Officer Chris is the chief technology officer and co-founder of Vivisimo. Chris brings over 15 years of experience in research labs and academia to the company. In his role as CTO, Chris oversees the designing and building of its core enterprise search technology, which powers the search engines of worldwide organizations. Prior to Vivisimo, Chris was a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, working on database and data-mining problems. He has authored more than 20 papers in a variety of disciplines including text databases and information retrieval, distributed systems, relational databases, data mining, groupware and clustering. Chris received a M.S. degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo.

Jorge Forgues Chief Financial Officer Jorge Forgues brings nearly thirty years of experience in financial management in the technology industry to Vivisimo. In his current role at Vivisimo, Jorge oversees the Company’s financial, accounting, human resource and administration activities, and also plays an instrumental role in many of its strategic initiatives. Jorge joins Vivisimo after serving as Chief Financial Officer of Avail-TVN, a $55 million digital media company. Prior to joining Avail-TVN, Jorge was CFO for iDirect, Inc., a $150 million global company selling equipment and software to network operators for broadband connectivity through satellite link. At iDirect, Jorge was instrumental in selling the company to a foreign investor for $165 million in November 2005. Previous to iDirect, Jorge was the CFO and COO at Inter.net, a $100 million international internet service provider (ISP) for five years with presence in 15 countries. Previous to Inter.net, Jorge held several senior financial management positions at PSINet Inc, TREEV and Globalink. Jorge is also a a CPA, a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). He received the "Private Company CFO of the Year" award in 2006 given by the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC). He has earned both a B.S. in Accounting and an MBA in Finance from George Mason University.

Rock Arkie Senior Vice President of Services and Support Rock Arkie brings more than 20 years experience in the technology industry to Vivisimo as its Senior Vice President of Services and Support. In this role, Rock oversees and leads Vivisimo’s client services and support initiatives to increase customer satisfaction, strengthen retention, and grow revenue. Formerly serving as SVP of Operations at iDirect Technologies, Rock led the development of a world-class infrastructure to allow the company to grow from a 10 million dollar company to beyond $150 million. Prior to iDirect Technologies, Rock served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Marconi Services – Americas (formerly Fore Systems). Serving a dual capacity as GM for Americas service operations and Vice President for Global Services Marketing, Rock oversaw not only the service delivery and P&L, but was responsible for all professional services product management, marketing communications, marketing intelligence, vertical marketing programs and marketing support services. With experience spanning across system engineering to network operations and telecommunications infrastructure design and management, Rock has also held various positions within IBM, the banking industry, 3Com, and the Government. After attending college, Rock served in the United States Navy for 6 years receiving the following recognitions: Naval Achievement medal, National Defense medal, and Sikorsky winged S (for lifesaving mission).

Tom Sands Senior Vice President of Engineering Tom Sands oversees all R&D, application development and technology for Vivisimo as its Senior Vice President of Engineering. Prior to joining the company, he served as General Manager at ECI Telecom. In this role, he successfully managed the ramp of production, customer support and R&D to build a sustained business. As its VP of Engineering, he led a team of 150+ in Pittsburgh, PA and Bangalore, India to successfully deliver a 400G Carrier Ethernet platform. The platform received Light Reading’s Leading Light Best New product of the year 2008. Prior to joining ECI Telecom, Sands served in several technology business and engineering positions at Fore Systems (now part of Ericsson), where he succeeded on many levels. In his most recent position at the company as its Director of Technology and Collaboration, he was recognized for several highly successful multi-national projects, where development was spread across groups throughout the United States and Europe.

Dennis Brestensky Vice President of Operations Dennis has led operations for Vivisimo since mid-2001. He's a veteran entrepreneur who brings over 17 years of experience in developing early-stage businesses and leading operations, most recently as a VP for Stars and Stripes Omnimedia, a venture-backed start-up where his skills were invaluable to the early success and growth of the company. He served as the President of a technology and inventory control start-up that exceeded a million dollars in revenue the first year. He was the Regional Director for Karrington Health where he developed four new regions, led a team of 140 employees and held overall responsibility for a $25M P&L that helped position the company through IPO to acquisition. Dennis holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University with concentrations in entrepreneurship and finance.

Tracey Mustacchio Vice President of Marketing Tracey Mustacchio brings more than 20 years of marketing, business development and product management experience to Vivisimo. In her current role at Vivisimo, Tracey is responsible for the company’s global marketing initiatives, including its go-to-market and product strategies. Prior to joining Vivisimo, Tracey served as Chief Marketing Officer for TraceSecurity, an innovative SaaS-based security compliance provider.  Previous to TraceSecurity, Tracey held senior level marketing and product management positions at McAfee, Verisign, Secure Software (acquired by Fortify Software), and Business Evolution (acquired by Kana). During her tenure at McAfee, she led product marketing and product management for all product lines which played a pivotal role in growing revenue from $25 million to more than $900 million. At Business Evolution, she successfully positioned the company as a strategic eCRM provider and was instrumental in the company’s sale to Kana Communication for $140 million. Tracey also operated her own strategic marketing consultancy which specialized in providing marketing and product management consulting to fast growing companies. Tracey earned B.A. degrees in Math/Computer Science and Philosophy from Virginia Wesleyan College where she graduated as 1 of 10 Wesleyan Scholars.

Joe LeBas Senior Vice President & General Manager, Americas Joe LeBas brings to Vivisimo a proven record of generating customer demand and building market share across several industries and around the world. Joe most recently was managing director of North American sales at PolyServe, where he was instrumental in leading the infrastructure software company's growth in the U.S. commercial and federal government markets. Prior to PolyServe, Joe spent several years at PeopleSoft, Inc. where he helped pioneer the software leader's global accounts program. As director of global accounts, he led a worldwide team responsible for extending business relationships with a number of PeopleSoft's most visible international customers. Before joining PeopleSoft, Joe held the position of vice president of strategic accounts for Corporate Express, a $9B business-to-business services company. Earlier in his career, Joe held a variety of sales, key account and sales management positions with Revlon, Boston Scientific Corporation and AEI Music. He holds a B.S. in advertising from the University of Florida.

Bob Carter Vice President & General Manager of Federal Bob Carter is Vivisimo’s Vice President and General Manager of Federal. In this capacity, Bob oversees all business development, sales and operations for Vivisimo in the public sector. Bob joined Vivisimo after serving as Vice President of Federal Operations at Network General Corporation, acquired by NetScout Systems in November 2007. During his tenure at Network General Corporation, he led and grew a $40+ million dollar federal practice with a year-over-year revenue growth of more than 50 percent. Prior to Network General, he oversaw the public sector practice at Plumtree Software, where he doubled the public sector business every 2 years with more than a 45 percent growth each year in a highly competitive market. Carter began his career in the high-tech field more than 20 years ago at Texas Instruments.

David Harrower Vice President & General Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) David Harrower brings over 15 years of international business experience to Vivisimo as its Vice President & General Manager for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. With extensive experience and success in the management of pan-European business units of international emerging companies, David is responsible for developing business strategy, growing the existing customer base and building new alliance partnerships to support Vivisimo’s global expansion. Prior to joining Vivisimo, David was a Regional Vice President of iDirect Technologies where he grew the business unit 40% with revenues of $32M and opened up new markets where iDirect had little or no presence. Before joining iDirect, David oversaw the International Client Service and Business Development at Brodeur Worldwide. He also has corporate communications experience with significant roles with Fitzgerald Communications, Fleishman-Hillard and Hill & Knowlton. David received an MBA from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and a BAH History from Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, Canada. He lives in Prague, Czech Republic.