Henry D. Barratt, Jr.

Bill Joll

Donovan Dillion

Tom Soroka

Steve Rogers

Steve Ward

Jeffrey Mayhook, JD

Gerry Preville

Chris Mathis

Norbert Snobeck

Albert Diehl

Ashok Agrawala

Daniel Hoeppner, PhD

Sivaram Arabandi, MD

Eric H. Williams, MD

Nancy Levy, PhD

Kaushal Gundavda

Henry D. Barratt, Jr . is Founder and Managing Director of Blue Water Capital. Prior to the founding of Blue Water Capital, Mr. Barratt was from October 1994 an investment banker specializing in strategic financings and sales of technology companies. From 1990 to 1994, Mr. Barratt was a Partner with CEO Venture Fund, a Pittsburgh-based broad spectrum venture capital firm with $45 million under management. From 1972 to 1990, Mr. Barratt was employed in the banking industry, and from 1987 to 1990 was a Group Vice President of Central Fidelity Bank, a $9 billion financial institution where he managed a $50 million loan portfolio and served on the bank's senior loan committee. He has broad experience in the venture capital and private sector financing of advanced technology companies and has served on the boards of companies in the software, industrial automation, healthcare and distribution industries. Mr. Barratt attended The GeorgeWashington University and Stonier Graduate School of Banking. Mr. Barratt is a director of Access Point, Cigital and Number 6 Software.

Mr.Barratt is a Managing Director for Blue Water Strategic Fund I, Blue Water Venture Fund II, and Blue Water Venture Fund III.

Donovan Dillon is President of Ad Giants, LLC - a Next Generation Marketing Services company specializing in software-based services and creative solutions that improve sales and marketing effectiveness. Donovan oversees and directs the day-to-day operation of the company, including strategic marketing, customer operations, development and sales. Donovan has over 20 years of marketing and technical experience, including architecture and technology planning, product development, lifecycle management, pricing and product economics, and strategic regulatory support. Previously, Donovan served as head of Marketing for Broadwing Communications where he was responsible for all marketing, product management and pricing functions. Prior to Broadwing, Donovan held senior marketing and technical positions with Level 3 Communications, Allegiance Telecom, and ATT (SBC Communications / Southern New England Telephone) where he served as Vice President Product Marketing, Vice President Strategic Marketing, Vice President Wholesale Marketing and Director Network Architecture, respectively. Donovan earned a Graduate Marketing Certificate from Southern Methodist University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Bridgeport.

Tom Soroka is the VP of Engineering and Technology at USTelecom and the cofounder and former CTO of RecordMyCalls.com. Tom has over 25 years of experience in network engineering, technical leadership, new company start-up implementation, and advanced technology product launch. Tom specializes in taking ideas from a napkin to the network. Mr. Soroka currently serves on several industry working groups related to Cybersecurity, IP Transition, Numbering and Critical Infrastructure protection.

Mr. Soroka has held engineering and technical leadership positions with MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the National Security Agency, GTE Government Systems, MFS Global Network Services, MCI/Worldcom, Broadband Office, and Masergy Communications. Mr. Soroka has engineered and deployed satellite communications, IP/ATM, telephony and VoIP networks all over the world, throughout his career. As cofounder and CTO of RecordMyCalls.com, he implemented a SIP/VoIP/Asterisk based call recording solution that served thousands of customers throughout North America. He then moved this entire platform over to a new AWS/Google cloud infrastructure that will make RecordMyCalls a global service offering. Mr. Soroka holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the SUNY Institute of Technology, has completed graduate studies in Technical Management at Johns Hopkins University, and has several patents pending regarding call security.

Steve Rogers is a partner with Redstones LLC a management consulting practice focused on improving the business results of their clients through comprehensive strategic planning and rigorous implementation and follow through.  Clients range from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies.

In several instances he has worked with start-ups in a key executive role to assist in raising capital from venture funds, angel investors and local government grants bodies.  He is currently COO and board member at CertusNet and CTO at Genovation Cars.

Prior to Redstones Steve spent 25 years at Nortel in various capacities beginning with system engineering and progressing through marketing, product management and finally as divisional general manger.  He was the GM of Nortel’s metro optical division and grew it from a $40M business to a $200M business.  Later he was GM of Nortel’s wireline access division that had revenues of $1.3B.

Steve graduated from Manchester University in the UK with a BSc in Physics and Electronics.

Sandeep Thakrar is the founder of Skada Capital. Mr. Thakrar has over eighteen years of business experience. He has a BS and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business in Finance and Management. Mr. Thakrar was a Senior Manager at American Express, in the Small Business Financial Services Group, before becoming a Principal with Katalyst, a regional Venture Capital firm. Mr. Thakrar has worked at several entrepreneurial and larger size firms over his career.

Steve Ward is President and CEO of ShieldTech Systems LLC a product development and manufacturing company focused on high speed wireless solutions for corporate and Government users. He has nearly 30 years of telecommunications experience via commercial industry and military service.

His corporate experience has sent him around the world as an Executive and General Manger with Nortel and Hughes Systems including “in country” assignments in Singapore, Germany and Brazil. Steve has run divisions of multiple international Joint Ventures include Nortel-DASA in Germany, Hughes-Olivetti Telecommunications in Europe and Hughes – Telebrás (Brazil).

Prior to ShieldTech Systems, Steve was EVP of Telaxis and SVP of DSC/Alcatel leading their global sales and marketing efforts. He is a former Army Ranger and helicopter pilot. Steve holds a BS in Engineering from the United States Military Academy, West Point , NY and an MBA from Boston University.

Jeffrey Mayhook has over 17 years experience working with U.S. and Canadian communications and technology companies, including senior-level positions with publicly-traded GST Telecommunications and tech start-up PreCash. At GST, in particular, Mr. Mayhook had direct responsibility for the company's regulatory and transactional matters, including policy development, regulatory compliance, contract negotiations, and litigation under the Telecom Act of 1996. As a lawyer and business consultant, Mr. Mayhook's law practice currently focuses on developing deal structures and funding models for local governments, public-private partnerships, private developers, and rural electric utilities interested in the deployment of "last mile" fiber, wireless technology, and "smart grid" broadband networks. His deal flow and industry relationships extend to the design, engineering, equipping, construction, financing, and operation of IP-enabled networks. Mr. Mayhook's recent clients and teaming arrangements have included a broad range of diverse companies and entities, including 180 Connect, PacketFront, Axia NetMedia, Franklin PUD, and the Califormia cities of Palo Alto, Ontario, and Shafter.

A graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law (J.D. 1981), Mr. Mayhook is admitted to practice in the states of Washington (2000) and Alaska (1982), and a member of the Federal Communications Bar Association (1998) and Energy Bar Association (2008). He holds an M. A. in English from the State University of New York at New Paltz (1975), and a B.A. in Business Administration and English from the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse (1972).

Gerry Preville has over 20 years experience with large public companies, technology startups and consulting firms in the U.S. and Canada.  He is Managing Director of the Laurentian Consulting Group, a firm specializing in interim CFO/Controller services and merger and acquisition support.  His consulting projects include post-merger integration engagements at NASDAQ and AES Corporation, and financial management at Sunrise Senior Living, XM Radio and the Culligan Corporation.  Mr. Preville had the rare experience of growing a $200 million business as Assistant Business Unit Manager of Newbridge Networks’ Local Area Network division.  He was also the CFO of two software startups, E-Certify Corporation and Intersect Software.  Prior to that, he served for ten years in the U.S. and Canada with Molson Breweries. 

He is founder and President of the Canadian Business Network of Washington, a networking group for Canadian-American business professionals.  Mr. Preville earned an MBA in finance from the University of Toronto and holds a CPA license from the state of Virginia.

Chris Mathis has dedicated the last 14 years of his engineering career to fostering the global commercialization of technology from Atlantic Canada.

His entrepreneurial “teeth-cutting” came from founding Mathis Instruments Ltd. to commercialize his wife Nancy’s Ph.D. research at the University of New Brunswick (UNB). Non-destructive thermal testing instrumentation was developed for lab testing and in-line/at-line/on-line testing with sales in over 40 countries to industries ranging from plastics to pharmaceutical manufacturers. The resulting products and company have been awarded numerous distinctions including Profits Magazines’ Top 50, BDC’s Young Entrepreneurs of the Year (NB, 1997) and the R&D 100 Award (1999).  This technology was later recognized with a Manning Innovation Award, the highest innovation distinction in Canada.

The entrepreneurial experience, combined with a mechanical engineering degree and UNB’s Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (TME) program, provided Chris with a broad spectrum of education and first hand experience in product development, marketing, fund raising, and product commercialization.

Chris is currently working with UNB as their Manager of Knowledge Transfer.

Albert Diehl has over thirty years of business development, commercial real estate and technology integration experience in both the private and public sector. Mr. Diehl most recently served as Executive Vice President of Strategic Accounts at Telkonet, Inc., the market leader in power line communications (PLC). Prior to joining Telkonet, Al served as Executive Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Product Development at Noment Networks and Regional Operating Officer and National Sales Director at both InterQuest Communications and Darwin Networks. Al has also served as Senior Vice President at the American Real Estate Exchange (AMREX) and Senior Vice President at Oxford Development Corporation. His public service positions included Chief of Staff in the Office of Public and Indian Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as well as General Manager of the New Community Development Corporation at HUD.

Al holds an undergraduate degree in Sociology from the University of Tennessee and graduate degrees in Urban Planning and Business Administration from the University of Tennessee and the University of Northern Colorado, respectively.

Ashok K. Agrawala is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland where he has been on the faculty since 1971. During the last four decades he has made numerous contributions to the field of computer science,  has published over 200 papers, and has authored 7 books. Recently he has developed unique location determination technologies which have been patented by the University. His work on context aware applications is also pushing the state of the art at present. He also serves as the Director of the MIND (Maryland Information and Network Dynamics) Lab at the University of Maryland which was established in 2001 for the explicit purpose of working closely with the industry. The MIND Lab has collaborated with a number of small, medium and large companies and has been instrumental in 5 startup companies in Maryland. Recently he established the MAXWell Lab which has been named as the WiMAX Forum Applications Lab, the only one in the western hemisphere. This lab is dedicated to developing and evaluating next generation applications for wide area broadband wireless technologies such as WiMAX.

Prof. Agrawala received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1970 and has supervised the Ph.D. dissertations of over 40 students. He is a Fellow of IEEE and AAAS.

Daniel Hoeppner, PhD brings over 20 years of experience in genetic research to IntAlliance. He is currently an Investigator at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development on the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus. His current research areas include psychiatric genetics, assay development for drug discovery and disease modeling with patient-derived stem cells. Dan manages a multi-party project aimed at genetic risk factor identification through integrating basic research in brain development, human genetics and next-generation sequencing through a major pharmaceutical partnership.

Dr. Hoeppner holds a BS in Biology (Honors) from Indiana University, a PhD in Genetics from SUNY StonyBrook/Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He did post-doctoral training at NIH in stem cell biology where he was the chair of the fellows committee, managed the job fair and earned two NIH service awards.

Sivaram Arabandi, MD is a clinical informatician and founder of ONTOPRO LLC with over 14 years of multidisciplinary clinical and information technology experience. He is trained as a General Surgeon, holds a Masters degree in Computer Science and has worked at prestigious institutes such as NIH (National Institute of Health) and the Cleveland Clinic. He has a strong background and expertise in clinical modeling and terminology, data integration, interoperability and emerging healthcare technologies with leadership experience in academic institutions as well as industry. He provides consultancy services at a strategic and advisory level in Healthcare informatics to help improve products and workflows, adopt terminology standards, establish standards in data integration/interoperability for achieving Meaningful Use (MU), and helping organizations with effective use of semantic technologies in healthcare.

Most recently, as Director for Smart Content Strategy at Elsevier, Sivaram headed Clinical Terminology services overseeing the development of EMMeT or ‘Elsevier Merged Medical Taxonomy’ and its application across multiple products. Prior to this, Sivaram has worked on projects ranging from clinical content development within EHR systems to enterprise reporting frameworks. As a member of the SemanticDB project at Cleveland Clinic, he worked on the domain ontology model for Cardiothoracic Surgery, and its integration into a platform for data acquisition, reporting and knowledge discovery. He was a co-investigator and lead for PhysioMIMI project at Case Western Reserve University, a multi-institutional NCRR funded project to integrate distributed data resources for information retrieval and analysis using semantic technologies. Here he developed an application ontology for sleep medicine called the Sleep Domain Ontology (SDO). Sivaram worked in the area of Adverse Event detection using knowledge intensive methodologies as a visiting scientist at the National Library of Medicine. He collaborates with other researchers on the development of open clinical ontology models in the areas of general medicine (OGMS), infectious diseases (IDO), vital signs (VSO) and Newborn Screening (ONSTR).

Sivaram has been involved in an advisory role with Emory University's New Born Screening and Translational Research project (ONSTR) and Abzooba, Inc.

Eric H. Williams, M.D. is a Plastic Surgeon with specialty training and interest in peripheral nerve disorders. He is a Board Certified in General Surgery and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, as well as completed additional fellowship training in Peripheral Nerve Surgery. He is based in Baltimore, Maryland and is a full partner in the Dellon Instistute for Peripheral Nerve Surgery. He is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Williams attended college at Swarthmore College outside of Philadelphia, completed medical school at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, then completed five years of General Surgery training at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville before doing two years of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at University of Alabama in Birmingham. Finally, he completed his training with a one-year fellowship with Lee Dellon MD PhD in Peripheral Nerve surgery.

Currently, Dr. Williams’ main interests include surgery of the peripheral nervous system in patients with chronic pain or nerve dysfunction, which includes areas such as diabetic peripheral neuropathy, migraine headaches, occipital neuralgia, drop foot, upper and lower extremity nerve compression syndromes, groin pain after hernia surgery, joint pain after joint replacement, and other related topics. His current research interests in this area include the use of MR Neurography to evaluate nerve injuries, compression of the Tibial nerve in the calf, minimally invasive surgery for groin pain, and intercostal neuralgia. He also continues to practice reconstructive surgery and has an interest in large abdominal wall hernias chronic wounds. He is married and has 3 children.

Nancy J. Levy, Ph.D., is the Managing Partner and founder of BioHealth Management LLC, an international biomedical advisory firm specializing in value creation at the pivotal intersection between science, technology and business. She has been involved in partnering pharmaceuticals in areas such as cancer and inflammation, devices in areas such as biomarkers and infectious diseases, and in obtaining investment for many clients over her career. Dr. Levy has raised funds for her clients from venture capitalists, angels, corporate partners and grants. Dr. Levy has managed successful pre-IND and IND applications and is the US agent for her clients. She has completed successful Orphan Drug applications with FDA and EMEA in areas such as liver cancer and scleroderma. Dr. Levy served for four years as President and CEO of Immunetics, a medical devices company located in Cambridge, MA where she raised three rounds of financing, wrote multiple grants and managed the processes for the first FDA products. She has extensive international experience and has managed multiple projects with international trade groups on economic development missions.

Dr. Levy is on the board of Acceleration as well as a member of Newton-Wellesley Hospital Board of overseers.  Other honors include: featured entrepreneur in the Wall Street Journal, Closing the Gender Gap, and first place in Business Plan contest, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She has been invited to speak at numerous international conferences including a recent conference in Barcelona entitled IP, Licensing and Value Creation. Nancy has been on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, where she also did her fellowship. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Kaushal Gundavda is President of Business Management Services Group, a practice management service organization serving medical, dental, mental health, and allied health practices. Kaushal has a strong educational background in business and health administration along with 15 years of management and consulting experience with a variety of healthcare organizations. His academic credentials include a Bachelors degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Management and Finance, a Master of Business Administration, a Master of Health Administration, and certifications in medical billing and healthcare customer service.

Mr. Gundavda has served in various operations and strategic positions as Administrator, Chief operating Officer, and Director of free standing medical centers, as well as region-wide multi-specialty groups. His many consulting projects have included new company start-ups, restructuring, reorganizing, and re-engineering departments and entire organizations. He has lead new market, service, and SBU development, financial turnaround, strategic planning, and facility planning projects, as well as served on the Advisory Board and Board of Directors of medical and mental health associations.