Advisors

Michael Dobbs - Telecommunications Equipment

Mike Dobbs is a Senior Vice President in Alcatel-Lucent's Fixed Access Division responsible for the North American marketplace. Mike is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Mike is responsible for defining and supporting the North American access market for the total Fixed Access Division offering while also leading the team focused on maintaining Alcatel-Lucent's leadership role in the Next Generation Digital Loop Carrier (NGDLC), Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) platform and the Fiber to the User (FTTU) market sectors.

Mike previously started and led the Alcatel-Lucent global FTTU GPON program from Raleigh and also successfully launched the IPDSLAM product in North America. Today Alcatel-Lucent is the largest supplier of Ethernet based access products in the world. Prior to his current role, Mike held sales positions as well as product line manager and product marketing manager responsibilities.

Mike joined Alcatel-Lucent through the acquisition of DSC in 1998, where he began his six-year career in sales before moving on to assume responsibilities for business development, new product, and customer activities for Litespan multiservice access nodes. Mike began his telecommunications career with Rockwell International, where he held a variety of engineering, systems engineering, product management, and sales roles.

David Perkins - Semiconductors and Corporate Strategy

David recently retired from Freescale Semiconductor (formerly Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector), where he was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Networking and Computing Systems Group from January 2002 until January 2007. In this capacity he was responsible for the design, development, marketing, sales and support of the companies’ high performance microprocessors, digital signal processors, application specific processors, and high power RF devices targeted at various communications applications.

From January 2007 until his retirement in September 2007, David had interim responsibility for leading a newly created, centralized Sales & Marketing organization at Freescale. As one of the most senior executives at Freescale, David was involved in the spinout of the semiconductor operations from Motorola, the subsequent IPO of Freescale and the eventual sale of Freescale to a consortium of private equity firms in December 2006.

Prior to January 2002, David was the Chief Executive Officer of Metrowerks Corporation, a company that built software and hardware development tools for embedded applications, gaming applications, and a variety of mobile communication and entertainment devices. David’s relationship with key Motorola executives was a contributing factor in Motorola’s decision to acquire Metrowerks in September 1999.

Prior to joining Metrowerks in 1995, David was a Partner at Coopers & Lybrand (a predecessor firm to PriceWaterhouseCoopers), where he assisted clients with M&A, financings, IPO’s, capital structures, and business strategy. David has been an angel investor in various technology start-ups based in Texas, California and Canada.

Gus Bottazzi - Sales

Gus Bottazzi has almost two decades of sales, marketing and executive management experience in the telecommunications, software and internet industries. He has held senior positions at Novell, Globix Corporation and WinStar Communications. Most recently Mr. Bottazzi was Chief Executive Officer of Warp Technology Holdings, Inc. where he led the conversion of the legacy business to profitability via global alliances with such technology partners as IBM, Dell and Nortel. He graduated from New York University with a degree in Mathematics and Biochemistry.

Jim Balvanz - Finance

Jim brings over thirty years of financial management experience with both private and public companies, primarily in the communications and contact center industries. He has held several executive level positions, managed virtually all facets of financial operations, and is skilled in the development of fast growing medium sized businesses into larger publicly traded companies. Jim has been involved in multiple acquisition and capital raise projects primarily in the area of business planning and implementation. He received his BA degree in Accounting from the University of Northern Iowa, obtained his CPA certification, and spent several years in public accounting before embarking on his career in private industry.

George Brunt - Intellectual Property

Prior to joining Prosper as Chief Legal Officer, George Brunt was with the top ranked national law firm, Greenburg and Traurig. Prior to that he served as senior vice president and general counsel of Alcatel Americas, DSC Communications Corporation, Citicorp Business Systems and ITT Information Systems. Brunt is a graduate of Brigham Young University and received his juris doctorate from Pepperdine University School of Law.

Les Yoho - Engineering

Les Yoho has over 25 years experience in the field of communications specializing in engineering management. He was Vice President of Engineering for BAXL Inc., where he developed the predecessor to our UltraJack.  Prior to joining BAXL, he was the project manger for the concurrent engineering department at General DataComm Communication, where he was responsible for developing integrated product diagnostics to accommodate the company’s automated manufacturing process.  Mr. Yoho holds an associate degree in electrical engineering from Fairfield University and a bachelor degree in computer science from Western Connecticut State University.