Kristina Messdaghi
Kristina Messdaghi is the principal of Fire Up Consulting, LLC. Her career has focused on high-level corporate growth and expansion strategies within the high tech and clean tech markets for almost 20 years. She was managing director for global marketing at the Cleantech Group, parent company of Cleantech Network, Cleantech Accelerator and Cleantech Indices with offices in China, India, Europe and the U.S. Messdaghi has successfully built marketing and business development organizations from the ground up, while launching companies and product lines resulting in first-to-market advantage. As a result of her focus, she has widespread experience with venture capital funding, launching startups, turnarounds and IPOs. At Fire Up Consulting, Messdaghi has led expansion and turnaround projects for several clients, including Global Exchange, Greentech Media, UNICEF, SAQQARA, SRI and the government of Belize. Messdaghi has held executive management roles at Commerce One (pre/post IPO), FYI Inc. (pre/post IPO), Mercado Software, Ripfire (now BEA), ZGenie (co-founder) and QMS. She has an MBA from the University of Liverpool, with an emphasis in leadership, and authored her dissertation on biofuels and how they can support developing countries' GDPs. Her education credentials include the University of California at Berkeley's Senior Marketing Management Program and a BA from Webster College Vienna, Austria. Messdaghi has lived in Europe, the Middle East and India and speaks four languages.
Chris Patelis
Chris Patelis is a seasoned publishing professional in start-up, medium, and large publishing companies with more than 25 years at such media companies as CBS Magazines, Ziff-Davis, Meckermedia, and The Industry Standard. He specializes in creating and launching magazines and running fast growing and profitable media companies. He has played a key role in such well-known magazines as Women's Day, Road and Track, Window Sources, Internet World, Web Week, and The Industry Standard. Recently, he was President of The Industry Standard, a magazine covering the Internet that became one of the most successful publications ever in its class. He is a proven leader in developing additional revenue streams, including profits via trade shows, conferences, seminars, and newsletters. He serves as the NetClearly President, focusing on day-to-day operations and building the publishing infrastructure. Mr. Patelis has been a member of the NetClearly/Plutoz advisory team since 2003.
Duncan Card
Duncan Card, widely regarded as one of Canada's leading information technology, Internet and e-business lawyers, has made a name for himself around the world. He is included in Woodward/White's 2008 edition of The Best Lawyers in Canada in the specialty of information technology law, and is ranked in the 2009 Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business in information technology. Card has been cited as one of the top Internet lawyers in the world in the independent International Who's Who of Internet and E-Commerce Lawyers, a British publication, and appears in the 2008 and 2009 Canadian Who's Who. He is rated in the highest-ranking category of "Leading" for IT transactions and as "Highly Recommended" for outsourcing transactions in the 2009 British publication, PLC Which lawyer?, published by Practical Law Company; is cited as a leading information technology lawyer in the 2009 LawDay's North America's Leading Lawyers; and has been cited as one of the world's leading technology lawyers in both the information technology and the media categories in Euromoney's "Guide to the World's Leading Technology, Media & Telecommunications Lawyers." The year 2009 marks Card's 12th listing in the Top 500 Lawyers in Canada as ranked by Thomson Carswell's Lexpert Magazine and American Lawyer Media, for both the IT/computer and technology categories. He is also included in Lexpert's "2008 Guide to the Top 100 Canada-U.S. Cross-Border Lawyers." Card has served as a director of several multinational corporations, including Warner Communications companies in Canada, GlobeNet Communications, Monroe Systems for Business Limited, Canadian National Institute for the Blind (Ontario) and Financial CAD Corporation. Card is currently a director of Hitachi Data Systems Inc. and Capital G Limited, one of Bermuda's most prestigious financial services enterprises. He has been a member of the NetClearly/Plutoz advisory team since 2004.
John Ricci
John Ricci is president and founder of the Bay Area Startup Network and US Angel Investors. He is also COO of a web startup currently in development mode. He brings more than 20 years of experience in operations management, marketing and sales. He has been an advisor to many startup companies, including HTC-Corp, PureSense, Boma Systems, Danforth A/S and Zortal. Before founding US Angel Investors, Ricci was CEO of SupplyMasters, an ASP software startup, co-founder of JMC Telecom, a prepaid telephone card startup, and COO of Trader Classified Media (North America), a classified media roll-up since sold to Yellow Pages Group. Ricci was also vice-president of marketing and sales (mid-market systems) and director of business development for Zenith Data Systems (Bull) Europe, where he started in PC and server product marketing before leading the company's commercial and government accounts. Ricci also worked at GESCO, a subsidiary of GE, where he was vice-president of marketing and business development and helped the company restructure its U.S. operations, and at Boston Consulting Group. He holds a master's in engineering from Ecole des Mines de Paris and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was an Arthur Sachs Fellow. Ricci has been an advisor to NetClearly since 2003.
Dany Assaf
Dany Assaf, a senior partner in a leading Canadian law firm's antitrust practice, is recognized as a global leader in his field. He has experience in a wide variety of industries and advises domestic and international clients on all aspects of antitrust law, including merger transactions, criminal cartels and monopolization cases. Assaf is a recognized competition and antitrust law practitioner in the Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers and in Euromoney's "Guide to the World's Leading Competition and Antitrust Lawyers." He has also been named one of the world's "Top 40 Competition Lawyers Under 40" by Global Competition Review, as well as one of Canada's "Top 40 Lawyers Under 40" by Lexpert Magazine. Assaf is a former adjunct professor of Competition Law at the University of Western Ontario and former chairman of the National Competition Section's Economics and Law Committee of the Canadian Bar Association. He is co-author of the book, Competition & Antitrust Law: Canada & the United States (3rd edition), published by Lexis-Nexis Butterworths. Assaf has been a member of the NetClearly/Plutoz advisory team since 2004.
Arman Pahlavan
Arman Pahlavan is co-chairman of an SSD private equity and technology practice and is a resident of the Palo Alto office. He advises public and private technology companies and venture funds on various aspects of their business transactions across industry sectors, including software and communications, life sciences and renewable energy. His areas of specialization include mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, intellectual property transactions and private equity fund formation matters. Pahlavan has represented companies and venture funds in transactions valued at more than $1 billion US. He is a frequent contributor to venture capital and technology industry associations on various topics involving business transactions. Pahlavan has served as a member of the board of directors of The Enterprise Network of Silicon Valley and as a founding member of the International BioMed Society (IBMS).
Gordon Rios
Gordon Rios is a proven leader in search and search-related technologies. Over the past 10 years, he has focused his efforts on devising machine learning systems for web search, document classification and text mining. At Inktomi, he developed the scoring engine for a user click-based ranking application that was deployed at HotBot and Snap; was a major contributor to the Directory Engine product, which classified millions of web documents into more than10,000 categories; and was a founding member of Inktomi's Web Search Relevance Group. Rios also served on the Yahoo! International Relevance team, where he worked on all aspects of search engine relevance and developed production code running in all major international markets. Most recently, Rios served as CTO for Zvents, where he led the development of local search technology delivered as SaaS to a network including more than 300 partners such as cityguides.msn.com, events.sfgate.com and AOL's when.com.
Larry Bani
Larry Bani is vice-president of sales at Telekenex, a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), and is responsible for leading the company's expanding sales efforts and business development of enhanced customer solutions. He has more than 20 years of sales and management experience. Before joining Telekenex, Bani was the regional sales director for emerging markets at AT&T and increased the region's sales to $65 million in the first year. Bani was also manager for strategic initiatives and developed and oversaw the rollout of multiple projects for AT&T's western region sales teams. Bani holds a master's degree in management of technology from Golden Gate University.
Arash H. Rad, J.D.
Arash Rad has more than 21 years of diverse experience and background in technology, executive management, law and strategic sourcing. Currently senior director of strategic sourcing for Kaiser Permanente, Rad has held various executive management positions at CSAA, Visfinity, Cal State University East Bay, Logitech, Intuit and Software Publishing Corporation. Rad is also an active adjunct professor of Criminal Law for Cal State University East Bay. He has previously held teaching positions in Business Law, Technology Management, Information Systems and Ethics for Keller Graduate School of Management MBA program. A certified negotiator/mediator, Rad received a Juris Doctor degree from Lincoln University School of Law and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Cal State University East Bay. As a member of the advisory board for Net Clearly/Plutoz, Rad is responsible for providing strategic direction and advice to the leadership team and the founder.
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