Management Team
Eric Armstrong – President & CEO
Eric Armstrong joined Kontiki in 2002 and was appointed President in May 2008, when the business spun-out of VeriSign, Inc. At VeriSign Eric was Vice President of Sales for the Global Media & Entertainment Market. Prior to Kontiki, Eric spent most of his career at DiviCom, Inc., an industry leader in digital video networking. Eric is a digital media veteran, working as a video compression software engineer in the early 90s for TV, Video Conferencing and Digital Telephony applications. Mr. Armstrong holds a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University.
Wade Hennessey - Chief Technical Officer
Wade Hennessey is Kontiki's Chief Technology Officer and a co-founder. In other ventures, he most recently served as VP of Engineering for America Online's Product Personalization division. Before AOL's acquisition of Netscape, Wade was instrumental in developing personal software services such as My Netscape. Prior to his post at Netscape, Wade worked on real-time memory management at Kaleida Labs and consulted for organizations such as Sybase, DEC, and Xerox PARC, working on system-level software like databases and compilers. In 2002, Wade was named one of InfoWorld's 25 Most Influential CTOs. During his studies at Stanford, he performed research in robotics, taught introductory Lisp programming, and published a Common Lisp programming textbook. Wade earned both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Bill O'Neill - VP of Customer Management
Bill O'Neill joined Kontiki in 2004 as Director of Sales, was later promoted to VP, and in January, 2009 was appointed to his current position where he leads Kontiki’s growing sales and services teams which includes a direct sales team, expanding sales partner relationships, and technical pre and post sales engineering and deployment resources. Bill has over 20 years experience leading sales, marketing, operations and support functions with both large and start-up enterprises. Prior to joining Kontiki, Bill was the VP & General Manager for Frontier Communications where he was responsible for the overall operations and P&L of the company’s west region. Bill has held various sales and marketing leadership positions at Hekimian Laboratories, ATT and Pacific Bell over his career. Mr. ONeill holds a B.S. in Managerial Economics from UC Davis, and an M.S. in Management Information Systems from Cal State University at Sacramento.
Karen Castagnera - Vice President of Operations and Support
Karen and her team provide 24/7 monitoring of Kontiki applications and customer care support to enterprise customers. Karen has extensive experience leading IT, Operations and Customer Care teams for start-up, emerging and established businesses. Karen joined Kontiki’s Operation team in 2001. In addition to her eight-years of progressive responsibility at Kontiki, Karen’s leadership experience includes management oversight of enterprise operations at VeriSign, Responsys, Baan, Cisco-- and government operations at NASA Ames Research Center and the Department of the Army. Karen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Psychology from Towson State University and a Master of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
Christine Costa - Vice President of Finance
Christine Costa initially joined Kontiki in 2001 as Director of Finance until its acquisition by VeriSign, and rejoined Kontiki in May 2008 as VP of Finance. Christine brings over 18 years of financial management expertise with technology companies. Prior to Kontiki, Christine was VP of Finance of DVDPlay and previously provided CFO and senior financial consulting services to a portfolio of software venture-backed private companies and public companies. Prior to that, Christine served as Corporate Controller for Rightpoint Software, a data mining solutions software provider that E-Piphany acquired, and was an audit manager in the software practice of KPMG in San Jose managing audit, IPO and M&A services. Christine holds a bachelors degree from Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris, France, is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and a Certified Public Account in California.
Kevin Crayton - Vice President of Business Development
Kevin is a seasoned technology executive with nearly two decades' experience in Business Development, Product Management and Professional Services. At Kontiki, Kevin spearheads the development and management of Kontiki's partners, which includes channel partners, referral partners and technology alliances. Kevin is also responsible for Kontiki’s Eastern Region direct sales, with a focus on enterprise software sales to the corporate and public sector market segments. Prior to joining the Kontiki team at VeriSign, Kevin excelled in a variety of leadership positions at Nextel, Scient and PRTM. At Nextel, Kevin had P&L responsibility for the Embedded Solution Product Line. At Scient, Kevin ran the Electronic Markets European Business Unit out of the Munich, Germany office. Kevin has a BA in Computer Science from SUNY Potsdam, and a MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Kevin is based just outside of Washington, DC.
Joe Ghazal - Vice President of Engineering
As Vice President of Engineering, Joe Ghazal rejoins Kontiki with over 15 years of experience building and managing engineering organizations that have delivered highly scalable software solutions. During his first tenure at Kontiki as Director of Engineering, Joe was instrumental in the development of the first generation of our software. He is now responsible for Kontiki’s Product Development, Quality Assurance and Product Management organizations. Prior to re-joining Kontiki, Joe served as Vice President of Engineering at Aggregate Knowledge where he led the Engineering and Operations teams in developing a next generation behavioral targeting ad platform. Joe has also served as Vice President of Professional Services at Motricity where he led multiple engineering teams in developing highly scalable, service-based content delivery platforms for mobile network operators such as AT&T Wireless, as well as global media brands such as MTV and Universal Music. Joe began his career at Lotus Development Corporation (acquired by IBM). He earned a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from San Jose State University.
Rob Nunes - Vice President of Marketing
Rob Nunes joined Kontiki in 2008 and brings over 25 years of high-technology leadership as well as marketing and corporate communications experience to the company. As Vice President of Marketing, Rob is responsible for overall market strategy, demand generation, and product marketing and marketing communications. Over the past five years, Rob has specialized in demand generation for enterprise software companies, focusing on the development of new markets and sustainable customer growth. Prior to Kontiki, Rob was Vice President of Global Demand Generation Cordys, Inc., a global provider of Business Process Management software, and held management positions at both Borland and BackWeb Technologies. Rob began his career with Hewlett Packard and spent ten years at Silicon Graphics, Inc., where he became Senior Director of Business Development and then Senior Director of Worldwide Field Operations.
Jacco Van der Kooij - Vice President of Sales
Jacco is Kontiki’s Vice President of Global Sales, bringing to the company 15 years of professional sales and business development experience in the media and entertainment, UGC and broadcast markets. Jacco worked at Verisign-Kontiki and SkyStream where he was responsible for the lion share of the sales leading to a successful acquisition by TandbergTV/Ericsson. At VeriSign, he applied the company’s technology to content distributed by studios through on-line video portals and on-line movie rental services. At SkyStream, he helped to develop groundbreaking solutions to deliver video content securely to end-user via telco, cable and satellite networks. He also spent five years with Philips Television Laboratories where he managed the successful execution of numerous worldwide broadcast contracts. While at Philips, Jacco was selected as a member of the task force to develop strategic hardware, software and advance services for the broadcast and consumer market in the US.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/IndoJacco
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