ACCEDIAN - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Advisory Board Member of the Center for a New American Security
- Co - Founder and Managing Principal of Bridge Growth Partners
Alok Singh is a Co-Founder and Managing Principal of Bridge Growth Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on technology and technology-enabled financial services. He is also a Director of Salient CRGT, a Bridge Growth Partners portfolio company, and AlphaCat Reinsurance, an affiliate of Validus Holdings.
Prior to founding Bridge Growth Partners in June, 2013, Mr. Singh was a Managing Director at New Mountain Capital. Over the course of nearly 12 years there, Mr. Singh served as Chairman of Red Prairie and JDA Software, and as a Lead Director of Deltek, Ikaria Holdings, Camber Corporation, Stroz Friedberg and AmWINS. He also served as a Director of Validus Holdings, EverBank Financial Corp., and Avantor Performance Materials.
Mr. Singh began his investment banking career at Bankers Trust, where he was a founding member and Managing Director of the Mergers & Acquisitions Group and later became responsible for the firm's investment banking activities in the consumer and retail sectors, leading relationships with a number of major multi-industry and consumer product clients. Mr. Singh was elected a Partner of Bankers Trust in 1994, and in 1997 he joined the financial sponsors group of BT Alex.Brown. In 2001, he joined Barclays Capital, where he established and led the Corporate Financial Advisory Group before joining New Mountain in 2002.
Mr. Singh is an advisory board member of The Center for a New American Security, a member of the Dean's Council of Weill Cornell Medical College, and a member of New York University's Stern School of Business Board of Overseers. He received his B.A. in economics and history and his M.B.A. in finance and international business from New York University.
Anthony is responsible for driving, supporting, and scaling Accedian's presence in the Asia Pacific region. He applies his previous experience in international sales strategy, product management, and operations at Ciena and Nortel to create strong engagement with customers and partners.
He holds a bachelor's degree in business (accounting/finance major) and a Master of Business Administration from University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Board of Directors of CRH
- Vice Chairman of EMC
William J. (Bill) Teuber Jr. is the former Vice Chairman of EMC Corporation, where he held the role from May 2006 until September 2016, when Dell Technologies acquired the company.
As Vice Chairman of EMC, Teuber focused on strategy and business development in emerging markets and assisted with government relations. In addition, he sponsored EMC's largest customer accounts and worked closely with EMC Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci and the company's executive team to develop future leaders of the company. From 2006 to 2012, he oversaw EMC's global sales and distribution organization, responsible for driving EMC's growth and market leadership worldwide. In addition, he was EMC's Chief Financial Officer from 1996 to 2006, responsible for the global financial operations of EMC's consolidated business worldwide, including financial planning and reporting, balance sheet management, foreign exchange, audit, tax, treasury, investment banking, governance and investor relations programs.
Teuber is a member of the board of directors of CRH, a global diversified building materials group based in Ireland, of Popular Inc, a diversified financial services company based in Puerto Rico that includes Banco Popular as a holding, where he serves as Lead Independent Director, and of Inovalon Inc., a leading healthcare technology company based in Bowie, Maryland. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of The College of the Holy Cross, located in Worcester, Massachusetts.
He holds an MBA degree from Babson College, a Master of Science in Taxation from Bentley College, and a Bachelor's degree from The College of the Holy Cross.
Carlo Fidanza has over 20 years of experience in human resources and has held several human resources leadership roles in a variety of technology based organizations throughout his career. As Accedian‘s Chief People Officer, Carlo is helping to accelerate Accedian's transformation through leadership, differentiated talent management, attracting and developing the best talent and building a culture of engagement, agility and innovation. He has a unique blend of traditional Human Resource experience with a strong business understanding.
Prior to joining Accedian, he was Senior Manager of Human Resources at Nuance Communications in Montreal. From 2004-2009 he worked for Verint Systems Canada as Director of Human Resources where he was involved in growing the organization to a global product development site. Prior to Verint, he worked in various human resources roles at Pfizer, Nortel Networks and Future Electronics.
Carlo is a Chartered Human Resources Professional (CRHA) and is a member of L'Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés. He holds a Graduate Degree in Leadership and Change Management, a Certificate in Business Administration, as well as Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Relations from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
As General Manager & Vice President Sales, CALA Region, Carlos Brito is responsible for driving, supporting, and scaling Accedian's presence in the Latin America region. He applies his previous experience in sales and marketing leadership roles at ECI, Juniper Networks, Genband, Nortel Networks, and Lucent/Alcatel-Lucent to create strong engagement with customers and partners.
Carlos has more than 25 years of experience in information and communications technology, as well as knowledge of the financial sector where, among other things, he was part of an elite managerial program with Unibanco, and was part of the team involved with merging of their telecom network with the Nacional Bank network. He holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering (emphasis on telecom) from Faculdade de Engenharia Industrial, a graduate degree in marketing from ESPM, and an MBA in finance from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Callahan Advisors
Daniel H. (Don) Callahan is the founder and chief executive officer of Callahan Advisors, LLC, consultants helping global organizations achieve digital transformation.
Acknowledged internationally as a leader in both the financial services and technology industries, Mr. Callahan was most recently the chief administrative officer and global head of operations and technology at Citigroup. Previously he held senior management positions at IBM, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. He retired from Citigroup in December 2018 and now serves on the boards of Tata Consultancy Services, Ltd. as well as WEX, Inc., Accedian and Kore ai.
At Citigroup, Mr. Callahan managed a complex set of businesses and services spanning more than100 countries, a multi-billion dollar operating budget and critical systems infrastructure including the bank's cyber security initiatives. He most recently led a top-to-bottom transformation of operations and technology, helping move the global bank from a collection of independent and dispersed entities into a lean, fully integrated enterprise. Mr. Callahan also established globally consistent technology standards and governance, and migrated critical functions to an integrated, managed, shared services model.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Callahan spent 12 years at IBM, where he held a number of management positions, including director of strategy for IBM Japan.
He currently serves on the business committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as a fellow at the Foreign Policy Association and on the boards of the American Red Cross New York Region and the New York Hall of Science. He holds a bachelor's in history from Manhattanville College, where he serves as trustee chair emeritus.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Board
- in 2017 As Chief Operations Officer
As the CEO of Accedian, Dion's mission has been to drive the evolution of Accedian into a performance analytics company that is delivering more value for customers as they transform their digital operations and migrate to the cloud and 5G. He brings with him extensive industry experience and insight that supports the scaling of Accedian's market leadership position, as well as the success of Accedian in new pioneering territory.
His previous experience includes serving as VP of global sales at Viavi, as CEO of two private companies, and as a board member or advisor for multiple public and private companies in the technology, software, and medical industries.
Dion previously spent 14 years at Nortel Networks in a variety of marketing, technical sales and support, and business development roles including leadership positions in the company's wireless and ATM/IP businesses.
He holds an MBA in international business from the University of Miami, and a B.A. in business administration from Southern Illinois University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Director at Bridge Growth Partners
Eric Klein is a Director at Bridge Growth Partners. Prior to joining BGP in 2014, Mr. Klein was an Associate at Vestar Capital Partners from 2010-2012. Previously, he worked as an Associate at Eos Partners.
He began his career as an Analyst in J.P. Morgan's Diversified Industries investment banking group. Mr. Klein graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania earning a dual B.S. from The Wharton School and B.A. from The College of Arts and Sciences, and holds an M.B.A from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Job Titles:
- in 2007 As VP Operations
- VP Global Sales Operations
Francois Marineau joined Accedian in 2007 as VP Operations and added Engineering responsibilities in 2011. In this key role, François oversees Accedian's Strategic planning development as well as the direction and control of product development activities, supply chain, manufacturing and test engineering, supply and capacity planning logistics, supplier management and quality assurance. He brings more than 18 years of operational experience within the telecom and contract-manufacturing fields to his position. Prior to joining Accedian, he led the operations team at EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering in, a start-up company that included Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Service Centre, Information Technology, Software Verification and Quality Assurance. Over the course of his tenure at EXFO, Francois also held the position of Director of Contract Manufacturing where he identified, qualified and managed outsourced manufacturers in Asia-Pacific. Other rolls during his time at EXFO included involvement in due diligence and the merger and acquisition of several companies.
Previously, François was a member of the management team at SCI Canada (now Sanmina-SCI), a Tier-1 Electronic Contract Manufacturer, where he held positions as Test Engineering Supervisor and Director of Engineering. François also held various engineering and operations roles at SR Telecom and Nortel.
Previously, François was a member of the management team at SCI Canada (now Sanmina-SCI), a Tier-1 Electronic Contract Manufacturer, where he held positions as Test Engineering Supervisor and Director of Engineering. François also held various engineering and operations roles at SR Telecom and Nortel.
François holds a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnique de Montreal and a Master's Degree in Engineering Management from the University of Sherbrooke.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Business Leader
George Cooney is a recognized business leader, entrepreneur, startup advisor and investor in the mobile marketing, communications and internet technology industries with more than 30 years of experience helping build highly successful companies. Throughout his career, George has established a record for entrepreneurial initiative realizing growth opportunities through strategic vision and hands-on business building experience. He has served as a board member, advisor and investor to several early stage companies with a strong focus on mobility and internet services. From 2004 to 2011 George was a venture partner with Summerhill Venture I Fund and its predecessor BCE Capital Fund.
From 2002-2004 George co-founded a venture backed company focused on building a first generation mobile platform for the adoption of mobile applications in fortune 2000 enterprises. Previously, he held senior management positions at Nortel Networks spanning a 20+ year career with multi-disciplinary roles in business strategy, operations, finance, product marketing, channel management and new business development. George served as a Senior Vice President responsible for Nortel's Corporate Development and Ventures group from 1997 to 2001, where he oversaw Nortel's direct investments and acquisition strategies with emerging technology companies and strategic partnerships with venture capital funds. In a prior role George led Nortel's strategic international development activities and was based in Europe during a period of rapid global expansion that supported the realization of Nortel's international revenue growth from $300 million to $5 billion. George began his career at Telenet (acquired by GTE), pioneering in the first commercial packet switching networks founded by the leaders of the DARPA ARPANET initiative.
Gerhard is responsible for the leadership of Accedian's EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region.
Prior to joining Accedian, Gerhard held senior sales leadership roles with Spirent where he grew and developed the EMEA market. Previous to Spirent, Gerhard expanded his breadth of management, sales, and customer relationship expertise through roles of increasing responsibility and leadership at NETSCOUT, Fluke Networks, Empirix, Viavi Solutions, and Nokia.
With more than two decades of experience in delivering testing and monitoring, performance management, and customer experience-centric solutions, he is uniquely qualified to lead Accedian's efforts in the region, bringing a deep understanding of the EMEA market and organizational structure required to develop an ecosystem for success for both Accedian and their customers to thrive.
Jacques Lemoine is responsible of overseeing all legal matters of Accedian. He brings over 20 years of experience in technology companies, and has a solid background in law department management, commercial law, intellectual property, and corporate and M&A matters.
Prior to joining Accedian, Jacques held positions as Associate General Counsel at AppDirect Inc., a cloud service marketplace and management platform provider; General Counsel at Radialpoint, a provider of technology and services to telcos, ISVs and OEMs; General Counsel at OZ Communications, Inc., an early provider of mobile messaging solutions; and various legal positions at Nokia and Nortel Networks. He started his career as a lawyer at Robic, an intellectual property boutique firm in Montreal.
He holds a bachelor's in law from University of Sherbrooke, a master's in international law from University of Notre Dame, and a master's in intellectual property law from Franklin Pierce Law Center. Jacques Lemoine joined the Quebec Bar in 1995.
As the VP of Marketing, Kaela is responsible for developing and implementing Accedian's marketing strategy across the enterprise and communications service provider sectors globally, in alignment with both short- and long-term business goals. To this role she brings a diverse set of career experience, spanning marketing, business development, and project and program management, with a focus on sales channel and technology alliance programs.
Prior to joining Accedian, Kaela held leadership and management positions at a variety of technology and telecommunications companies, such as Netrounds and Procera Networks. While at Netrounds, Kaela was instrumental in developing the ecosystem and technology partner program that lead to joint solution and market messaging, and she represented Netrounds at various international speaking engagements and conferences. Kaela has also assisted with the Light Reading Women in Comms initiative as an advisor, as well as held a key role on the ETSI Open Source MANO Marketing Task Force.
Kaela holds a Master's Degree in Business Management in addition to a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of British Columbia.
Martin brings to Accedian extensive operational and financial experience with technology companies as an entrepreneur, in venture capital and in corporate finance. He leads the company's global finance activities, including financial planning and analysis, financial accounting and reporting, treasury and tax. He began working with Accedian Networks when the Company was still in its early stages and had less than 10 employees. Prior to joining Accedian in a full-time capacity as its CFO, he was a co-founder and Vice President Finance of a venture-backed company in the satellite telecommunications industry and a financial executive at iPerceptions, a venture-backed company servicing Fortune 500 clients in the software/web analytics industry.
Previously Martin held positions as a senior associate at Telesystem Capital (now Propulsion Ventures), an early-stage venture capital fund focused on IT and telecommunications, and as manager of Corporate Development for a publicly-traded multimedia Company. Martin also provided consulting services to Garage Technology Ventures Canada, an early stage venture capital fund, as its part-time Chief Financial Officer. He began his career at Ernst & Young in the audit and corporate finance groups. Martin is a Chartered Accountant and has been a member of the Order of CPAs of Quebec since 1996.
Martin holds a Bachelor's degree from Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) and an MBA from McGill University in Montreal.
Mr. John W. Diercksen is the newest Accedian board member. With over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications and technology industry, currently John W. Diercksen serves as a Senior Advisor at Liontree Investment Advisors, as well as, serves on the boards of Intelsat, Banco Popular and Cyxtera.
Mr. Diercksen spent 10 years at Verizon as the Executive Vice President - Strategy, Development and Planning, where he was responsible with many aspects of the company's business development, corporate strategy, joint ventures, mergers and strategic planning companywide. Preceding to that role, he was the Senior Vice President - Investor Relations for Verizon.
Prior to that, Mr. Diercksen was the Group President - Directory for Bell Atlantic responsible for the corporation's $2.4 billion print and online dorectories business in the United States.
In his earlier days, he joined NYNEX as Vice President - Finance and Administration for Business Information Systems, where he led all accounting, treasury and human resources functions. He then was named Vice President - Finance and Treasurer for NYNEX's Telecommunications Group, taking charge of all financial functions. Finally, Mr. Diercksen was named Chief Financial Officer of Bell Atlantic's Directory Group.
Mr. Diercksen earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Iona College, an MBA from Pace University and has completed postgraduate work in financial management.
Job Titles:
- Executive Chairman
- Founder
Patrick Ostiguy founded Accedian in 2004 and serves as Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors. With more than twenty-five years in the telecom industry, Mr. Ostiguy has filed several patent applications and has published dozens of industry conference proceedings and technology articles.
Prior to founding Accedian, Mr. Ostiguy was co-founder of Avantas Networks and launched the industry's first portable Ethernet and SONET field-services test-set. Avantas was acquired for US$93M by EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering and Mr. Ostiguy continued his role in product management and participated in several M&A activities at the executive level. Prior to Avantas, Mr. Ostiguy was part of the initial Positron Fiber Systems (PFS) team that commercialized the industry's first Ethernet over SONET Multi-Service Provisioning Platform (MSPP). PFS was acquired by Reltec in 1997 for $200M, and subsequently by Marconi.
Mr. Ostiguy is the recipient of the 2011 Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year award in Quebec in the technology solutions category for recognition of his exceptional leadership in driving growth, development and innovation in the industry.
Peter draws on his more than 20 years of leadership experience in the technology sector, with success building and scaling software businesses in roles ranging from founder and start-up CEO to C-Level Executive across multi-billion dollar portfolios at Cognos, IBM & CA Technologies.
Today, Peter is active in advisory and board roles with businesses looking to accelerate growth and scale through direct and acquired innovation and brings particular focus to the opportunities in advanced analytics, cloud transformation and big data.
At CA Technologies, Peter was directly responsible for more than 5000 people across the 5 business units that drive the company's growth in IT Management, DevOps, Cloud, Performance Management and Security for the Enterprise market.
As a C-Level Executive, Peter also led growth initiatives through M&A, Industry Solutions, and the establishment of the CA Technologies Innovation Center; driving mobile-first software products and the transition to SaaS offerings and business models, and the acquisition and integration of companies such as ITKO, Nimsoft and Layer7.
At IBM, Peter was Vice President of Business Analytics and Applications and a key driver in building the Business Analytics division within the IBM Software Group, including the acquisition and integration of SPSS, Clarity, OpenPages and Cognos.
Peter also served on the executive team for Cognos Inc., a global leader of Business Analytics and Performance Management software, where he led Strategy, Product Management and R&D over the companies 10 year growth phase to $1B in revenue and the subsequent sale of Cognos to IBM for $5B in 2008.
Peter joined Cognos in 1998 upon its acquisition of Relational Matters PLC, a data analytics company where he was co-founder and CEO. Peter has also held positions in management consulting and in the financial services industry.
Peter is currently an advisor to Bridge Growth Partners in New York and serves on the Board of Directors for Accedian and Neurotech. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering with 1st Class Honors from Brighton University in England.
Job Titles:
- VP Global Strategy & Solutions
Job Titles:
- VP Global Enterprise & Channel Sales
Steve Pusey has more than 35 years of international business experience across several technology and service provider markets. He currently also serves on the board of directors for Centrica and FireEye.
Previously, at Vodafone, he was a board member six years, represented the company on the GSMA board, and served as group CTO, covering worldwide technical operations and group procurement; he was responsible for defining and leading the UK-based operator group's global technology strategy and operations for networks, IT and product development. He also previously was a member of the Verizon Wireless board.
Prior to joining Vodafone, Pusey held various positions at Nortel Networks, most recently as Executive Vice President and President for Nortel in EMEA.
He holds communications and microelectronics degrees from Uxbridge Technical College and Action Technical College, and attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University.
Steve Mills joined IBM in 1973 after graduating from New York's Union College with a Bachelor's of Science degree. His early career at IBM was in sales working with clients in the telecommunications and financial markets industries. He has held managerial and executive roles since 1982
Steve's role in transforming IBM's software business began in 1989 when he became Assistant Group Executive in IBM's Programming Systems Group. In 1992/93 he took over leadership of IBM's Silicon Valley Software Lab where he had responsibility for the development of data base, transaction processing and application development products.
In 1993 he was named General Manager of the Software Solutions Division. His responsibilities included all development, marketing and sales for IBM's middleware products. He led IBM to market leadership in middleware with the development of key product brands such as Websphere. His efforts moved IBM from predominantly mainframe based software business to a business that now produces more revenue from Linux, Unix and Windows than from IBM's traditional mainframe based franchise.
In 2000 he was named Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Software Group. In that role he was responsible for the development, marketing and sales of all software products. He led a strategy to significantly broaden IBM's software portfolio through both internal development and acquisitions. His acquisition strategy resulted in the purchase of more than 150 software companies. He developed a unique set of integration practices that has allowed IBM to realize significant value from acquired companies. His efforts resulted in the doubling of the size of IBM's software business. Under his leadership software became the largest contributing segment to IBM's profit. Steve drove the strategies to expand IBM's participation in big data analytics, cloud computing, cybersecurity, mobile device enablement and internet of things initiatives.
Job Titles:
- CTO and VP of Engineering
Job Titles:
- VP Product Line Management
Job Titles:
- Lead Director of the Board
- Senior Principal and Chief Administrative Officer of Bridge Growth Partners
Tom Manley is a Senior Principal and Chief Administrative Officer of Bridge Growth Partners and serves on the executive committee with the three Co-Founders. He has more than three decades of experience within the financial and technology sectors at both private and public companies. He most recently served as CFO of Avaya, a provider of business communications and collaboration systems. He was previously CFO and Senior Vice President of Administration at Cognos, a business intelligence and performance management software company acquired by IBM in 2008. During his time with Cognos, Manley twice was nominated for Canada's "CFO of the Year" award.
Before that, he served in management positions at Nortel Networks and General Motors of Canada. He currently serves on the board of directors of JDA Software and the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. Mr. Manley previously served on the boards of Deltek, Red Prairie, DragonWave and Elastic Networks. He graduated from Carleton University with a bachelor of engineering with distinction, and holds an M.B.A degree from Queen's University.