Gary Meyers has been President and CEO of Synplicity since October 2004. During his tenure Synplicity has re-focused on its core FPGA products, improved operating margins from 1% in 2003 to over 10% in 2006, expanded international R&D efforts, and grown market share and customer satisfaction. Mr. Meyers joined Synplicity in January 1998 and served as vice president, worldwide sales since November 1999. In that role, Mr. Meyers was instrumental in increasing sales by more than a factor of ten and expanding the direct sales team throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
Prior to joining Synplicity, Mr. Meyers was the director of marketing for the Communication Products Division of LSI Logic Corporation. Mr. Meyers also spent seven years at LSI Logic in major account and geographic sales management roles. Before LSI Logic, Mr. Meyers worked as an ASIC designer at TRW, Inc.
Mr. Meyers holds a BSEE, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Maryland and an MBA from UCLA and serves on the board of directors of Synplicity and SpiraTech, Ltd.
Mr. Andrew Dauman
Senior Vice President, Worldwide Engineering
With Synplicity, Inc. since 1994
Andrew Dauman joined Synplicity in August 1994 as employee number three and has served as vice president, worldwide engineering since May 2005. In this role, Mr. Dauman oversees the company's global engineering team, including applications engineering, to ensure new and existing products are developed and released on time and with continuous quality improvements. Mr. Dauman also participates in setting the company's strategic direction.
In his previous role as vice president corporate applications engineering, Mr. Dauman's responsibilities included technical support, product verification, product training and technical publications. He also created the quality assurance organization and established the initial corporate product quality methods and standards.
Mr. Dauman has been instrumental in establishing the company's reputation in the EDA industry for delivering rapid, accurate technical support, while delivering some of the most reliable, high-quality software in the industry. This has contributed to Synplicity being considered to provide amongst the highest levels of customer satisfaction in the industry.
Prior to joining Synplicity, Mr. Dauman was a member of the AutoLogic ASIC synthesis team at Mentor Graphics Corporation. Before Mentor Graphics, Mr. Dauman worked as a CPU designer at Prime Computer, Inc. and Raytheon Company.
Mr. Dauman holds a BSEE from Boston University.
Mr. Joe Gianelli
Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances
Joe Gianelli joined Synplicity in April 1998, and has served as Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances since June 2004. Mr. Gianelli is responsible for all strategic alliances, including development and marketing agreements with key silicon and EDA partners. Prior to this appointment he has held positions within Synplicity as Director of Channel Marketing and Director of Strategic Alliances.
Since joining Synplicity Mr. Gianelli has vastly expanded Synplicity's portfolio of strategic alliances and has assisted in our two technology acquisitions. He has increased FPGA OEM revenue by over a factor of 20 and more recently is responsible for architecting key alliances with emerging structure/platform ASIC vendors such as NEC Electronics and LSI Logic. He has built Synplicity's strategic alliance portfolio into a highly respected example of close collaboration between EDA and semiconductor industries.
Prior to joining Synplicity, Mr. Gianelli has held various engineering, sales and marketing positions in the EDA industry over the past 18 years at Daisy Systems, ECAD, Cadence, Meta Software, Epic Design and Synopsys.
Mr. Andy Haines
Senior Vice President of Marketing
Andrew Haines re-joined Synplicity as vice president of marketing in September 2004. His responsibilities include overseeing world-wide marketing activities including the company's efforts in the structured/platform ASIC and DSP markets, as well expansion of Synplicity's leadership role in the FPGA synthesis market. Mr. Haines originally joined Synplicity in 1996 as the company's vice president of marketing and remained in that capacity until 2002, when he departed to pursue interests in the semiconductor intellectual property (IP) industry.
Mr. Haines has more than 27 years experience in marketing high-technology semiconductor and electronic design automation products. Most recently, he served as vice president of business operations at Catalytic, Inc., a DSP Design Automation company. He also served as senior vice president of marketing at ARC International. Before joining Synplicity in 1996, Mr. Haines was president and founder of Page Mill Marketing. Haines also held the position of director of marketing at Actel Corp. and held marketing management positions at VLSI Technology and Intel.
Mr. Haines holds a B.S. in physics from the University of Wisconsin.
Mr. John J. Hanlon
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
With Synplicity, Inc. since 2005
John Hanlon joined Synplicity as senior vice president of finance, and chief financial officer in October 2005. His responsibilities, as leader of the finance team, will include overseeing worldwide finance-related activities including; accounting and external reporting, investor relations, strategic financial planning, as well as spearheading new financial opportunities.
Mr. Hanlon has more than 22 years of public and private sector financial management experience in high technology companies, with emphasis on software, Internet and manufacturing. Most recently, he served as executive vice president and chief financial officer at Accelrys, Inc., formerly Pharmacopeia, Inc. Previously, Mr. Hanlon was senior vice president and chief financial officer at MDL Information Systems for 10 years and also spent 10 years in public accounting at Coopers & Lybrand, LLP.
Mr. Hanlon holds a B.S. from California State University, Hayward, and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Mr. Jim Lovas
Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Jim Lovas joined Synplicity in 1999 and has served as Vice President North American Sales since October 2004. Mr. Lovas is responsible for achieving Synplicity's North America sales objective, continuing the company's successful penetration into the ASIC market, and expanding Synplicity's leading market share position in FPGA synthesis.
Mr. Lovas has more than 20 years of experience in the EDA and semiconductor industries. He joined Synplicity in 1999 as senior account manager, and in 2002 was promoted to director, Northeast area sales, located in Boston, MA. In this role he was instrumental in transforming the Eastern area sales group into a model of efficiency and proper sales execution.
Prior to joining Synplicity, Mr. Lovas was the Eastern area director at Summit Design, and also held senior sales and AE manager positions at Zycad Corporation. Mr. Lovas began his career as an ASIC designer at ITT Avionics.
Mr. Lovas holds a BSEE from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude, and an MSCS from the Steven's Institute of Technology.
Ken McElvain
Co-founder, Chief Technical Officer, Vice President, Director
Ken McElvain is a co-founder of Synplicity, which he started with Alisa Yaffa in 1994. Mr. McElvain is responsible for new product strategy, developing innovative technologies and algorithms, and contributing to key development projects.
Mr. McElvain is the inventor and chief developer of many of the company's successful products and technologies, including the company's flagship product, Synplify, used by thousands of engineers worldwide to design programmable logic. He is also a key architect for Synplicity's other products including ASIC synthesis and physical synthesis, verification and physical implementation products.
Prior to starting Synplicity, Mr. McElvain worked as the principal architect of the AutoLogic ASIC synthesis tool at Mentor Graphics Corporation, which he began developing at Silicon Compilers, Inc. before it was acquired by Mentor Graphics. Before Silicon Compilers, Mr. McElvain worked as a CPU designer at Hewlett-Packard Company. His technical accomplishments over his career include: HDL synthesis, technology mapping and placement, physical synthesis, static timing verification, sequential ATPG, mixed switch and gate level simulation, early cycle-based simulation, extension languages and CPU design. Mr. McElvain holds 7 patents.
In October 2003, EE Times named Mr. McElvain one of 13 people who are influencing the course of development technology and taking it into realms that exceed the bounds set by the inventors of the transistor more than 50 years ago.
Mr. McElvain holds a BA in Mathematics and a BS in Computer Science from Washington State University.
Alisa Yaffa
Co-founder, Chairman of the Board, and Vice President, Intellectual Property
With Synplicity, Inc. since 1994
Alisa Yaffa is a co-founder of Synplicity, which she started with Ken McElvain in 1994. Since 1997 she has served as the company's chairman of the board. Ms. Yaffa is also responsible for advising on issues relating to internal intellectual property matters. From 1994 to 1996 Ms. Yaffa was the CEO of Synplicity, and at various times in its early days was responsible for sales, marketing and finance, holding the positions of vice president, sales, and vice president, marketing, and chief financial officer.
Ms. Yaffa holds the distinction of being the first woman co-founder, CEO, and chairman of the board of an Electronic Design Automation company started in the United States.
Prior to starting Synplicity, Ms. Yaffa worked in various technical and marketing roles at Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Mentor Graphics Corporation, EDA Systems, Inc., Amdahl Corporation and VLSI Technology, Inc.
Ms. Yaffa holds a BA in Mathematics and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
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With Synplicity, Inc. since 1998
With Synplicity, Inc. since 1994
With Synplicity, Inc. since 2005
With Synplicity, Inc. since 1994
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