WiQuest Communications, Inc. Management Team

Steve Perna is Chief Executive Officer for WiQuest Communications. He joins the team from PMC-Sierra, where he held positions of vice president of Marketing and, most recently, vice president and general manager of their Microprocessor and Service Provider Processor Divisions. During his 12 years at PMC-Sierra, Perna specialized in revenue growth and was instrumental in transitioning the company from a start-up status to achieving the #1 market position for several product lines while achieving high operating profits and high gross margin. Prior to joining PMC-Sierra, Perna spent 15 years at Texas Instruments where he held numerous marketing, management, engineering, wafer fab, operations, quality control and research roles for TI’s #1 worldwide Digital Logic semiconductor business. Perna received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1980. Subsequently he received his Master of Science Degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas. In addition he received his Master of Business Administration in Marketing and Master of Science in Corporate Finance degrees from the University of Dallas.

Tim Kinnear is the Chief Financial Officer at WiQuest Communications. He joined WiQuest in October 2006 from InnerWireless, Inc. where he also held the CFO position. While at InnerWireless he raised $43 million from venture capital firms and a strategic partner to fund the company’s growth. Previously, he served as vice president of finance for Cyrix Corp., a fabless semiconductor company, where he was instrumental in the company’s initial public offering and raised more than $200 million in public and private debt financings. As CEO of Intrusion Inc., a publicly-held network security company, Mr. Kinnear provided the vision and leadership to create a network security company whose revenues grew to $23 million in three years. Mr. Kinnear began his career as an auditor with Ernst & Young where he provided services for numerous technology companies. He has an accounting degree from Texas Tech University.

Greg Christison is Chief Technology Officer for WiQuest Communications. In this position, he is responsible for all facets of technology research and product development. He joins the team from Texas Instruments' Broadband Communications Group, where as engineering director he was responsible for leading their communications processor platform that is used in the TI DSL, VoIP, cable modem and wireless LAN devices. Mr. Christison's experience ranges from architecting SoC and application-specific chip products to simulation, design tooling, ASIC engineering, IP development and integration, software development, product test and silicon release to production. Mr. Christison also played a key role in the integration of engineering teams and technology from multiple start-ups into TI, including Amati, Libit, Telogy, Alantro, and Radia. Prior to joining TI, Mr. Christison worked for the U.S. Air Force designing comprehensive communications networks using leading-edge technologies. Mr. Christison earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University and a bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering from Oklahoma Christian University. He holds two U.S. patents and has one pending.

Refael Bar is the Senior VP of Hardware & Software Engineering at WiQuest Communications. He has an extensive career in R&D in the computer peripheral and wireless/telecommunication industries. Most recently, he was in charge of the development of MAS (Multi-antenna Signal processing) and other smart antenna products for the WiMAX and WCDMA markets at ArrayComm. Previously, at Freescale Semicondustors, Bar was in charge of a 400+ person global software engineering team where he transformed the organization’s software engineering process to support the fast-paced engineering environment. At Kyocera Wireless, he led a 480+ development team where his team was responsible for developing wireless cell phone software and applications using CDMA technology. Bar has also managed engineering teams at Graviton Inc., Tandberg Data, Exabyte and Iomega. He started his career in the Israeli Air Force where he spent 9 years where he was part of the development team for a computer-controlled communication system. Bar received his Electrical Engineering degree while in Tel Aviv, Israel and has 9 patents that are issued or pending.

Todd Brown is Vice President of Sales for WiQuest Communications. He has a distinguished career in the semiconductor and electronics systems business, including wireless and RF technology. As product manager for piezoelectric components at Murata Electronics, he led their marketing and product engineering efforts. Todd moved on to AMP Corporation, where he grew territory sales over 1600% in just a few years. After serving at RF Monolithics as a successful business unit manager for their low power wireless products, Todd joined Alpha Industries, where he was sales director for Europe, including strategic accounts. Following the Conexant / Alpha merger to form Skyworks, he was largely responsible for integrating the sales organization along with building out their global distribution network. Most recently, Todd was instrumental in leading the sales and customer design-in process, along with driving significant revenue growth at SyChip. Mr. Brown holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering Technology from Southern Polytechnic University, and has attended the MIT/Sloan School of Business Executive Program.

Hari Chandran is VP of Manufacturing Operations at WiQuest Communications. In this position, Mr. Chandran is responsible for all manufacturing activities, including foundry operations, assembly and test activities. Prior to joining WiQuest Communications, Hari served as Product and Test Manger in the Broadband Communications group at Texas Instruments where he was responsible for taking multiple WLAN and other Broadband products to high volume production. He was very instrumental in definition, development, implementation and release to production of very low-cost solutions for complex mixed signal SoC through innovative DFT techniques. Mr. Chandran’s versatility and breadth of knowledge in semiconductors was very well recognized within Texas Instruments and he led several technical activities across TI that has helped multiple product groups. He has a Master’s degree from Texas A&M and patents in the area of test and design for test that are pending or issued. Mr. Chandran is the author of multiple publications.

Kevin Macauley is VP of VLSI Development at WiQuest Communications. Kevin joined WiQuest in 2004 from Texas Instruments broadband communications group. Kevin was part of the Texas Instruments $300M acquisition of Alantro Communications in 2000. While at Texas Instruments Kevin was the ASIC lead for all of the wireless LAN chipsets. Kevin’s prior experience included leading ASIC design teams for over five years in Ericsson’s TDMA cell phone division and over five years at IBM. At IBM Kevin worked on DSP ASIC design and Sigma-Delta modulators. Kevin received a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1989.