Management Team
Jeff Thermond, President and CEO
Jeff's 30-year career encompasses an impressive track record in leading and growing large organizations in global broadband and data networking markets. He led the team that established Broadcom's first foray into wireless products which grew to a quarter of a billion dollars in five quarters. Before becoming a part of Broadcom, Jeff was the CEO of Epigram which pioneered the high speed home networking marketplace for semiconductors, which has grown into a multi-hundred million dollar market today. He later architected the sale of Epigram to Broadcom for what was the largest amount ever paid for a pre-revenue semiconductor start-up. He also served as vice president and general manager of 3Com's enterprise router business, growing it from $60 million to $350 million during his tenure. Jeff holds an MBA in marketing from Indiana University and a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from Yale University.
Dan Maltbie, Founder and Chief Product Officer
Dan is a 27-year veteran of the networking industry focused on the design and development of new technology and products ranging from storage switches and IP routers to video encoding systems and Ethernet fabric switches. Before co-founding Woven Systems, Dan served as vice president of engineering at Sanera Systems, a provider of director-class Fibre Channel switches, which was later acquired by McDATA. Before Sanera, he was vice president of engineering for Caspian Networks where his team developed a telecom-class IP router. Previously, he was vice president of engineering at DiviCom, a video encoding system provider which is now part of Harmonic Lightwave. Earlier Dan held engineering and management roles of increasing importance at Hewlett Packard, where he represented the company in Ethernet IEEE 802 standards activities. Dan studied computer science and astrophysics at Indiana University.
Bert Tanaka, Founder and CTO
Prior to co-founding Woven, Bert was the principal system architect at Caspian Networks, where he drove design and development of a large scalable IP flow-based router. Before Caspian, he served as Chief Scientist at Boeing’s Communication and Information Systems Division. He also worked as a senior technical engineer with Stanford Telecom, which was later acquired by Newbridge Networks. Earlier in his career he taught graduate level courses in communication and networking theory and systems at Johns Hopkins University. Bert received his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering at Washington University.
James Liao, Vice President of Software Engineering
James was most recently director of integration for Penguin Computing, where he architected and supported technical computing clusters using Ethernet and InfiniBand. Prior to Penguin, James served as vice president of engineering for 3UP Systems. At 3UP, he led development and implementation of a Layer 4 load balancer and traffic shaper, and an integrated Layer 2/3 Gigabit Ethernet/10Gigabit Ethernet switch and fault-tolerant systems management subsystem for the company’s blade server product line. James received a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Michael Langley, Vice President of Sales
Michael (Mike) Langley brings more than 18 years sales experience in complex network sales environments with proven success in building high quality sales organizations, penetrating new territories and managing large-scale sales campaigns with Fortune 500 companies, service providers, and government agencies. Prior to Woven, Mike served as vice president of North American sales at Force 10 Networks, where he built and motivated a highly successful sales team, doubling sales year over year and delivering record revenues for Ethernet switching solutions. Before joining Force 10, Mike served as a major account manager at Cisco Systems, supplier of networking equipment for the Internet, where he consistently earned 100% quota achievements selling end-to-end network solutions to the top Fortune 500 companies. Earlier in his career, he held sales management positions at Interphase, Network General, and Cabletron Systems. Mike holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and International Studies at California State University-Chico.
Joseph Ammirato, Vice President of Marketing
Joe brings over two decades of strategic product management experience defining next-generation product lines in networking software and hardware. His unique combination of skills includes 12 years of experience in marketing management and 14 years of software engineering and program management. Most recently, Joe was senior director of product marketing for the entire Catalyst 4500 and 4900 product lines at Cisco Systems. Before that he was senior director of product management in charge of Cisco's access routers, where he was responsible for product strategy and roadmap, outbound marketing, and competitive product positioning. Prior to Cisco, Joe held senior-level positions with a number of successful companies including 3Com, Borland International, Ashton-Tate, and Sun Microsystems. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in General Sciences from Cornell University.
Richard Hsieh, Senior Director of Product Management
Richard has amassed nearly 20 years of product management, engineering and software design expertise. With Cisco since 1996 and most recently as director of product management in Cisco's Gigabit Systems Business Unit, he was responsible for all product management aspects of Cisco's Catalyst 4500 Gigabit Ethernet Switching product family. Prior to that he held key product management roles at Cisco, including senior product manager of the Wireless Access Business Unit and product manager for the Desktop Switching Business Unit. Prior to Cisco, Richard worked at Asante Technologies, Sun Microsystems and Tandem. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Santa Clara University, a Master of Science in Computer Science from Michigan State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.