Board of Directors

Bob Ferchat is an industry veteran with many years experience in management positions, serving in senior executive roles in a number of companies including Northern Telecom Canada and Ford Canada. He retired as Chairman and CEO of BCE Mobile Communications (Bell Mobility) in 1999, during his four year tenure the customer base grew from 300k to 2 million. Prior to BCE Mobile Bob served two years as Chairman and CEO of TMI Communications, a satellite service company and prior to that served as chairman of Atomic Energy of Canada. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Brookfield Homes, 01 Communique, and CellBucks Payments Network Inc. He has authored two books, ‘One Plus One = Three’ and more recently ‘Tangled Up In The Past’. He has also authored many commentary letters on the subject of general management.

During the past years Bob has also been active in fund raising for several United Way and Junior Achievement campaigns, and more recently for his local hospital, Credit Valley, where he chaired a $50 million campaign for an oncology treatment center.

Neil Ferris has over 30 years of experience in working with companies in the high technology industry. Neil will work with the BTI Board of Directors, helping to guide the overall strategic development of the company’s market expansion.

Neil was a member of the founding team of Apollo Computer, and founder and CEO at Fluent, leading the company through to acquisition by Novell. In addition, Neil was CEO of Giganet, a significant storage networking company, which was acquired by Emulex Corp for an estimated $650M. Ideally positioned to become the leading provider of Intelligent Service Edge solutions, BTI will capitalize on Neil’s expertise in helping companies mature and achieve world-class status.

Neil also serves as the Chairman of the Board for the University of Massachusetts Marlboro Hospital and is a board member of Enfora, InterSense, and New Horizons corporations. Neil is also an active consultant to a number of venture capital firms and newly formed technology-based companies.

As President, Steven works closely with the BTI Executive Team, and provides strong leadership to the company overall. Steven is responsible for ensuring that all parts of the organization are working together towards BTI’s overall objectives and for the health and success of the business. With over 20 years’ experience in the networking and communication industries Steven has experience of successfully impacting on global supply-chains and managing strategic partnerships, business planning to optimize allocation of resources, and positioning to maximize business growth, and expansion to maximize profitability.

Steven’s career has included time as CFO with Retix (one of the early public networking companies), CFO/COO with SONOMA Systems (OEM relationships with Newbridge and Siemens and sold to Nortel in 2000), CFO/COO with Internet Photonics (spin-out of Bell Labs, sold to Ciena in 2004 and designer of the CN4200), and post acquisition VP, Sales Operation with Ciena. Most recently he was CFO and COO at Zetera Corporation, a network storage technology company.

Dave leads Kodiak’s investment efforts into high growth information technology markets and has over 15 years of venture investing experience. He focuses on a broad range of opportunities in information technology including grid computing, wireless communication, mobile computing, broadband communication and green IT. He represents Kodiak on the boards of Application Security, BTI Systems, Enfora, Symwave, Vette Corp and Vivace. He is also an observer on the boards of Cortina and RMI.

Prior to founding Kodiak in late 1999, Dave ran a highly successful seed stage investment company called Furneaux & Company between 1995 and 1999. In 1993, Dave was a member of the early team at Chrysalis Symbolic Design, a semiconductor design company, and was responsible for directing east coast and major account sales. The company was later acquired by Synopsys. Prior to that, he was a telecommunications analyst with the National Conference. During his career as an entrepreneur, investor and fund manager, Dave has been directly involved in the conception, founding, launching and operations of many high growth companies in the information technology landscape. Selected earlier investments include ALIS (Karl Zeiss), Auroranetics (Cisco), Extreme Packet Devices (PMC-Sierra), Philsar (IDT), Skystone (Cisco), Telica (Alcatel/Lucent) and Watchfire (IBM).

Dave holds a B.A. from Colorado College, Phi Beta Kappa.

Statement of Purpose
“Working with talented entrepreneurs that have the drive and the sense for what it takes to build great companies is what it is all about for me. It is what draws me to do it again and again.”

George Chase currently serves as Group President and Chief Operating Officer for Fujitsu Network Communications. With more than 30 years of experience in the telecom industry, George oversees the company's operations, engineering and development, product planning, product marketing and sales divisions. His communications career began with 16 years tenure at AT&T Network Systems (now Lucent Technologies), where he had a number of assignments of increasing responsibility. He went on to Rockwell Transmission Systems, Inc. to serve as Director of Product Management, Central Region Sales Director and Vice President of Sales.

In 1990, George joined Fujitsu Network Transmission Systems, Inc. as the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, responsible for all transmission and switching product sales, business management and marketing. When Fujitsu Network Communications formed in 1996, George was appointed to an identical position within the new company. In April 1997, he was promoted to the position of Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. He left Fujitsu to join Hook Partners, a Dallas-based Venture Capital firm, and returned in 2002 to assume his current position.

George serves on the board of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), a United States based body accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) that is committed to rapidly developing and promoting technical and operations standards for the communications industry. He is also a member of the Lamar Engineering Advisory board.

George holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Lamar University and an MBA from Oklahoma City University.

Richard Charlebois joined GrowthWorks in March 2005, bringing 25 years of venture capital experience in the Ottawa area. Before joining GrowthWorks, he was the president of Capital Alliance Ventures Inc., which was merged with GrowthWorks Canadian Fund in December 2005. Prior to that, he was a vice president and co-founder of Noranda Enterprise Ltd., the venture capital arm of Noranda Inc.

Richard has a bachelor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo and is a Chartered Accountant.

Richard is currently responsible for the GrowthWorks office in Ottawa.

Mr. Campbell is a Senior Advisor for JPMorgan Chase & Co. He serves as President of Sanoch Management, a consulting and investment firm for financial companies, start-ups, and venture capital firms.

Previously Mr. Campbell was Chairman of Bank One Card Services. He also served as Chairman of Visa International, leading the organization to its IPO in 2008, the largest in U.S. history.

Prior to this Mr. Campbell was Chief Executive Officer of Citigroup?s Global Consumer Business. He spent 28 years at Philip Morris, including five years as Chief Executive Officer of Philip Morris USA.

Mr. Campbell holds Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Alberta and a Master's Degree in Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario. He is a member of the Canadian Advisory Board to the Woodrow Wilson Institute.

Paul joined VG Partners in 2005. He has more than 25 years of technology experience in advanced technology design, R&D management, and product/business management, and currently specializes in communications and semiconductors. Before VG Partners, Paul worked in various senior roles at Nortel Networks/BNR.

Paul holds a Bachelor of Science (B.A.Sc. Electrical Engineering) from the University of Waterloo, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Queen’s University.

Mr. Giffen is an Advisor/Director to various technology companies and investment funds, including Descartes Systems Group ( Chairman ), Corel Corporation Inc., MKS Inc., Absolute Software Inc and Ruggedcom Inc.

Previously Mr. Giffen acted as an Advisor/Board member to Macromedia, which sold to Adobe Systems Inc for $4 billion, XDL Venture Fund and Helix Venture Funds. He was also a member of other boards, and an advisor to numerous other companies, including DPS Inc, Sierra Systems Inc, Open Text Inc, Financial Models Inc., 724 Solutions Inc. (Chairman), Algorithmics Inc., DWL Inc, Changepoint Inc., and MGI Software Inc..

Mr. Giffen holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow , Scotland.and is a member of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.