2012 Technology Symposium - Speaker Bios
Allison Cerra
Allison Cerra is Vice President of Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs for Alcatel-Lucent in the Americas Region. In this capacity, Allison oversees marketing strategy and communications and engages with North and South American service providers on go-to-market approaches to drive revenue and/or reduce churn.
Allison has more than 15 years of telecommunications experience in marketing, sales and product management functions across service provider and equipment vendor industries. She recently co-authored The Shift: The Evolving Market, Players and Business Models in a 2.0 World, based on an extensive 18-month primary research study that estimates a $100 billion market opportunity when networks are leveraged as development platforms. In addition to The Shift, Allison has published several whitepapers and articles about emerging end-user broadband trends and market potential for next-generation services. Allison holds two Bachelors degrees from the University of South Florida and Masters of Business Administration and Telecommunications degrees from Southern Methodist University. She serves on the boards of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, Metroplex Technology Business Council and the Telecommunications Industry Association.
Marcus Weldon
Marcus Weldon is Corporate CTO for Alcatel-Lucent and also a member of Bell Laboratories. In this position he is responsible for coordinating the technical strategy across the company and driving technological and architectural innovations into the portfolio.
He holds a B.S in Chemistry and Computer Science and a Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry from Harvard University. He joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1995, winning several scientific and engineering society awards for his work on electronics and optical materials. In 2000, Dr. Weldon started work on fiber-based Broadband Access technologies and, in 2005, became the CTO for Broadband Solutions business group in Lucent Technologies, with responsibility for wireline Access Networks and IPTV. He was subsequently appointed as CTO of the Fixed Access Division and the Wireline Networks Product Division in Alcatel-Lucent following the merger of Alcatel and Lucent in December 2006, with responsibility for xDSL and FTTH, IPTV, Home Networking and IMS.
Dr. Weldon joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1995, and has won several scientific and engineering society awards for his work on the fundamental properties of electronics and optical materials. Since 2000, Dr. Weldon has focused on technological aspects of broadband access networks. He was the lead architect for several different FTTH projects, including novel point-to-point and passive optical network (PON) technologies. He subsequently developed models to quantify the economics of IPTV services deployed over different FTTH architectures.
Dr. Weldon holds a B.S in Chemistry and Computer Science from Kings College (U.K.), and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Harvard University, and is the published author of several papers on the future of access technologies.
Basil Alwan
Basil is President of the Alcatel-Lucent IP Division (IPD) and has overall responsibility for the companys portfolio of IP/MPLS and Multiservice switches and routers, and Network and Service management. In addition, he is responsible for the portfolio strategy for the Networks Group, which is critical as Alcatel-Lucent continues to win massive, multi-billion dollar, multi-year IP network transformation projects.
Formerly, Basil was the founder, President and CEO of Timetra, a start-up focused on service routers for IP/MPLS networks, which was acquired by Alcatel in 2Q 2003 to form the IP Division. Since that point, Alcatel-Lucent has seen significant global success for its IP service routing portfolio. The Company has secured the #2 position in the IP/MPLS Service Provider Edge market, garnered more than 200 customers in 90+ countries and in 2007 had its first $1 billion revenue year for its IP service routing business.
Basil is a recognized industry leader who serves as a member of the boards of directors of multiple Silicon Valley based companies including Kindsight, 2Wire, Omneon Video Networks and WiChorus award-winning and innovative organizations focused on next-generation broadband solutions. He is frequently invited to keynote at industry events, and has twice been selected by influential telecom/cable magazine, Light Reading, as one of the Industrys Top 10 Movers and Shakers for his role in building the IP business at Alcatel.
Prior to TiMetra, Basil held executive positions in Silicon Valley start-ups as well as large companies. Formerly, he was vice president and general manager of Nortel Networks Enterprise Products Division (EPD), a team of 300 developers and staff primarily focused on scalable Layer 3 switched networks. Basil came to Nortel through the Bay Networks acquisition of Rapid City Communications, where he was vice president of product management and marketing. Rapid City's market-leading Layer 3 switch sold under the name Accelar at Bay/Nortel and ramped to more than $1 billion in sales.
He received his Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1984.
Adolfo Hernandez
Adolfo Hernandez is Executive Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent and President of the Software, Services & Solutions Group (S3G). The S3G organization works with global operators to transform their business by creating new revenue generating opportunities in areas ranging from Cloud to mobile commerce and customer experience to digital music. Adolfo is also President of the Strategic Industries Group which works to exploit new market opportunities in government, energy and the transportation industries for our communications solutions and a member of the Alcatel-Lucent Management Committee.
Adolfos career bridges several cultures, technologies and geographies. Naturally multi-lingual and a former resident of Germany, Spain and the UK, his international pedigree also includes extensive exposure to the Middle East, the North American and Asian markets as well as a first-hand experience of emerging markets.
With leadership experience gained with both large multinationals and start-up companies, he has addressed a wide scope of industries such as communications, public sector, utilities, transportation and financial services, Leveraging a unique understanding of the computing, communications and media worlds, Adolfo has a passion for the deployment of new business models to improve companies productivity.
Adolfo joined Alcatel-Lucent in November 2008 as President of Europe, Middle East and Africa. In this role, he helped the regions major service providers embrace the transition to IP and to 4G/LTE while achieving a leading position for Alcatel-Lucent in IMS. He also forged strategic partnerships across the region strengthening the companys market presence in emerging markets.
Before joining Alcatel-Lucent, Adolfo served as Senior Vice President of Sun Microsystems' Global Services Practice where he was responsible for all aspects of Sun Microsystems services business (Professional Services, Managed and Support Services, Educational Services and Financial/Leasing Services). Prior to this, he served for four years as President of Sun Microsystems Iberia, responsible for sales and business operations in Spain and Portugal.
Adolfo also spent 10 years with IBM in London and Munich where he held a variety of sales and leadership positions in the areas of eBusiness and Open Systems. He started his sales career at ICR in Spain and also co-founded a software company in the mobility solutions software sector based in London.
Adolfo holds a degree in Computer Sciences from the University of Granada, a master's degree in Marketing and a Master of Business Administration in Strategic Management from IDE in Madrid. He has also completed several post-graduate programs at institutions such as the London Business School.
In recent years, Adolfo has served on Advisory Board of Universities and as an Honorary Professor. Besides this, he has served on the board of foundations in the areas of Open Source and Applied Innovation.
Adolfo is married and has two young daughters. A consummate sailor, he plans one day to circumnavigate the globe when time will make itself available.
Philippe Keryer
Philippe Keryer is Executive Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent and President of the Networks operating segment. Philippe is a member of the Alcatel-Lucent Management Committee.
A true pioneer of digital mobile, Philippe has been at the forefront of the wireless revolution for the last 20 years. Rapidly moving upward within Alcatel-Lucent*, Philippe has consistently influenced the mobile industry, proposing daring solutions to its successive challenges. Under his management, Alcatel-Lucent achieved major breakthroughs including the first commercial deployment of LTE, the launch of the next-generation wireless architecture lightRadio, or Small Cell solutions.
In his current Networks position, Philippe is at the core of the Groups strategic repositioning, realizing the convergence of IP, Wireless and Broadband technologies, in line with the High Leverage Network (HLN) approach. Passionate about innovation, he encouraged the Networks teams and Bell Labs, the Groups research arm, to operate in greater intimacy so that ground-breaking technologies such as lightRadio or 100G transmission with coherent detection could go faster to market. He also manages Alcatel-Lucents industry-leading submarine cable business.
His genuine care for customers helps him build long-term partnerships with top players such as AT&T, Verizon, China Mobile, Orange or Deutsche Telekom. Drawing from his previous leadership of the Evolium joint-venture with Japans Fujitsu or his current position on the Board of Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell in China, Philippe leverages a broad experience of worldwide cultures.
Philippe is a board member of Suplec, one of Frances foremost computer and electronic engineering schools.
He holds an engineering degree from Suplec and a masters degree from the EDHEC business school.
* Philippe Keryer was appointed President of Networks in 2009. Prior to this role, he was President of the Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Access Division, responsible for the GSM, UMTS and WiMAX radio access businesses between 2006 and 2008. Before Alcatel-Lucent, he held several key positions at Alcatel including President of the Mobile Radio Division (2005) and President of Evolium, a joint-venture with Fujitsu (2005). In addition, Philippe Keryer occupied various management positions at Alcatel in tendering, product management, marketing, and strategy. Philippe joined Alcatel in 1990.
Laura Merling
Laura Merling, SVP Applications Enablement Platform and Strategy, currently leads strategy and execution for Alcatel-Lucent's companywide push to transform the network as a platform for service providers, enterprises and developers to deliver connected applications.
Laura has spent 20 years in high tech product management, marketing and business development. She was most recently VP of Business Development at Mashery, one of the earliest entrants in the Cloud and API Management infrastructure industry. In her role as Executive Director at SDForum, the leading non-profit in the United States driving innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging technologies; her organization assisted thousands of entrepreneurs in defining business plans and raising over $100 million in venture funding. She has also lead product teams for the Sybase Enterprise App Server, Powerbuilder Development Tools, and the Intershop E-Commerce Platform. Before joining the high tech community, Merling was involved in business transformation projects at Ford Motor Company and Pepsi-Cola.
Robert Vrij
Robert Vrij is Executive Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent and President of the Americas region. Robert is a member of the Alcatel-Lucent Management Committee.
In this role, he oversees the company's sales and operations in North America, Central America, and Latin America.
Most recently Robert Vrij was president and CEO of Openwave Systems, a leading provider of software applications and infrastructure.
Prior to that, he was the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing Solutions with Genband Inc., a provider of IP solutions to service providers. He also held senior sales positions with Nextiraone (now Blackbox) a reseller of converged telephony products for the enterprise market.
Previously, Robert Vrij held leadership positions with Lucent Technologies including responsibility for the companys wireline business in the Europe and Middle East Region. At AT&T he held a number of sales, marketing and management positions with AT&Ts global and regional joint ventures including as Director of Worldwide Voice and Data Services and channel management operations.
Robert Vrij received his Bachelor of Business Administration (Marketing) degree from Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas and a Masters of Business Administration from St. Thomas University in Houston, Texas. He has served on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors for CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association) and as a board member of CTM (Institute for Communication Technology Management).
Derrick Frost
Derrick Frost is the Senior Vice President of Global IP Video Solutions for Alcatel-Lucent.
Previously Derrick was the Founder & CEO of Invision.TV, an online video and IPTV services provider and Senior Vice president of Operations and Engineering at Time Warner Cable where he focused on building and operating the technology platform for Road Runner internet and Digital Phone services. nationwide.
Markus Hofmann
Dr. Markus Hofmann is the Head of Bell Labs Research, the research organization of Alcatel-Lucent. As Head of Bell Labs Research, Dr. Hofmann is leading the global research team in creating new growth opportunities by inventing technologies with disruptive impact.
This includes the overall research portfolio from project inception through transfer.
Dr. Hofmann is known for his pioneering work on reliable multicasting over the Internet and for defining and shaping fundamental principles of content networking. He has published over 60 journal and conference papers and given invited talks as well as courses all over the world. He has been granted six U.S. patents, with more than thirty patent applications pending.
Dr. Hofmann has been very active in several professional organizations, and the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc), in particular. He has served as Chair of the Internet Technical Committee (ITC), a joint committee of the Internet Society and the IEEE Communications Society. He has also served as the Chair of the Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) Working Group in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and is also serving on the Editorial Board of the Computer Communications Journal and the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.
He received his Ph.D. with honors in Computer Engineering from University of Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1998 and joined Bell Labs Research the same year. For the spring 2005, spring 2006, and spring 2007 semesters, Dr. Hofmann also accepted a position as adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York, USA, teaching a graduate course on Content Networking.
Dr. Hofmann has been awarded several prestigious awards. His Ph.D. thesis won the 1998 GI/KuVS Doctoral Dissertation Award for the best Ph.D. thesis in Germany in the area of Distributed Systems and Telecommunications, and the 1998 FZI Doctoral Dissertation Award for best Ph.D. thesis in Computer Science at University of Karlsruhe.
For more information, see http://www.mhof.com/.
Ben Verwaayen
Ben Verwaayen is CEO of Alcatel-Lucent.
Previously, Ben Verwaayen was appointed to the Board of Directors of BT on January 14, 2002 and became Chief Executive on February 1, 2002. He left BT Group on June 1, 2008 as Chairman of the Boards Operating Committee.
Before joining BT Group, he was at Lucent Technologies starting September 1997, holding various positions. He left Lucent as Vice Chairman of the Management Board. Other positions that Ben Verwaayen held at Lucent were Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Vice-President, International.
Prior to joining Lucent, Ben Verwaayen worked for KPN in the Netherlands for nine years as President and Managing Director of its subsidiary PTT Telecom. From 1975 to 1988, he worked at ITT in Europe.
He was appointed an Independent, Non-Executive Director of UPS in March 2005.
He has been made an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau and an Honorary Knight of the British Empire (KBE). He has also received the Chevalier de la Lgion d 'Honneur medal.
Ben Verwaayen is a Dutch national and graduated with a Master's degree in law and international politics from the State University of Utrecht, Holland.
Wim Sweldens
Wim is President of Alcatel-Lucents Wireless Division and has responsibility for the company's Radio Access Product lines, spanning 2G, 3G and 4G, including the award winning lightRadio product portfolio.
Prior to this appointment, Wim was Vice President of Network Technology and Alcatel-Lucent Ventures within Bell Labs. In his role as VP of Network Technology, Wim led a cross company team which took the companys Applications Enablement strategy from paper to practice. This strategy allows service providers to open and leverage their networks for the development of new services and applications.
As founder and leader of Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, a strategic, new business incubator and investment division inside of Bell Labs, Wim managed the lifecycle, from concept to commercialization, for 8 ventures, ranging from enterprise & consumer applications to groundbreaking mobile innovations for operators, to technology platforms. Under his leadership, the group garnered numerous kudos in the industry, including 13 awards for innovation, achievement, and leadership including the CDMA Industry Achievement Award and two CTIA Emerging Technology awards. The Ventures Group has defined new corporate venturing best practices that redefine how an agile venture is managed and operated within a corporation. Wim and his team brought to market the innovative 9900 Wireless Network Guardian. A groundbreaking product, it brings real-time visibility into the effects of data traffic on the mobile network, a critical need for todays operators.
Prior to Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, Wim served as Vice President of Computing Sciences Research at Bell Labs as well as led Bell Labs China.
An innovator at heart, Wim developed several image compression algorithms including the one used in the jpeg 2000 standard. He authored and co-authored numerous technical papers and was a member of Technology Review's inaugural class of Young Innovators, the 1999 TR100. Global Telecoms Business selected Wim for its "Power 100 of 2009 list for his customer focus, attention to excellence, and accelerating ideas to market. He is a fellow of the IEEE and serves on the board of Kindsight.
Wim received his PhD in Computer Science from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
Michael Peeters
Michael Peeters graduated as an electrotechnical engineer with majors in Applied Physics and Photonics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel (VUB), Belgium in 1995. He finished his PhD, summa cum laude, on surface-emitting lasers in 2003. Next to research activities, he was also active in teaching and the development of new methods for physics courses for engineering students at the VUB.
Subsequently, he stayed at the VUB working as postdoc lead on an industrial project involving the design of a high-power semiconductor printhead. During that time, he discovered a novel emission mode of surface-emitting laser which signalled the start of research on the spatial coherence properties of semiconductor lasers. These activities are still ongoing.
Looking for a new challenge, he joined Alcatel-Lucent in the fall of 2006, to lead a newly formed team to take on longer term research on digital subscriber lines. He is currently directing the research activities on both next-generation access nodes as well as copper physical layer evolution within the Fixed Access domain of Bell Labs. He has participated in the bootcamp as member of the TouchaTag team, and presented the winning Immersion@Distance proposal on telepresence for the Bell Labs Grand Challenge.
He has been an author or co-author on 25 SCI-rated publications, over 60 publications at international peer-reviewed conferences and more than 15 patents. He is a member of IEEE and the Alcatel-Lucent Technical Academy, and has acted as a reviewer for IEEE and OSA journals.
Michael Peeters, PhD
CTO Alcatel-Lucent Wireline
Kevin Macaluso
As Vice President and General Manager of the Service Router Product Group within the IP Division of Alcatel-Lucent, Kevin Macaluso is responsible for managing the companys IP/MPLS 77x0 service router, 7450 ethernet service switch, and 7250 service access switch product lines.
Mr. Macaluso is also a leader in developing Alcatels comprehensive IP strategy.
Prior to joining Alcatel-Lucent, Mr. Macaluso served as Director of Marketing, then later as Vice President of Product Management and Marketing at TiMetra Inc. Previously, he served as a hardware engineer at Lockheed Martin and as Director of Marketing for Cisco Systems.
Kevin Macaluso holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University and a masters degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
Sam Bucci
Sam Bucci is currently Vice-President, Portfolio Management for Terrestrial Optics Unit of Alcatel-Lucent.
Prior to joining Alcatel-Lucent, Sam spent over 21 years at Nortel, working in Optical, Enterprise, Professional Services, Video transmission networking, and Radio Transmission, groups. He has held leadership positions in R&D, Supply Chain, System Engineering, Product Line management, and Business Development.
Over the course of his career, Sam has developed expertise in Optical and Data Transmission solutions for both service providers and enterprise customers.
David Stevenson
Mr. Stevenson has led the Motive Product Division since the acquisition of Motive, Inc. by Alcatel-Lucent in October 2008. The combined assets of Alcatel-Lucent and Motive have created the leading player in BroadBand Service and Device Management for fixed networks. Motive demonstrated its next generation of Mobile Broadband Management solutions at Mobile Work Congress in February 2010 creating excitement from customers and analysts around our compelling value proposition.
Previously, Mr. Stevenson was responsible for the Home Networking Product Group in the Alcatel-Lucent Fixed Access Division which include ONT/Modem/Gateways business and the Element Management Systems, Premium Applications worldwide. Prior to that, Mr. Stevenson led the AMS Product Group responsible for Alcatels Access Network Management system supporting over 45 million lines of DSL and DLC deployed in North America. During 2004 and 2005, Mr. Stevenson played a key role as leader of the Architecture team responsible for the end to end network design for SBCs (AT&T) Project Lightspeed rollout of IPTV to more than 18 million households. He was also responsible for Alcatel Litespan DLC Engineering group.
In previous roles, Mr. Stevenson was responsible for Alcatels Network Applications Division in Australia which built and delivered Cross Domain Management and Intelligent Network applications. In addition to being responsible for Alcatel's global Network Facing Management Systems product lines, he has also led development centers involved with content generation and distribution, as well as developed SDH Transport, Access Network, and Enterprise products.
Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald is the Vice President and General Manager of the Network and Service Management (NSM) Product Unit. His group is responsible for both the IP and Wireless Network Management portfolios.
In his previous role, Andrew was GM of NSM for the IP division. In this role Andrews group was responsible for the IP and ATM portfolio of Network management products as well as the companys policy management program. During this time Andrew managed to build a growing and profitable business while working through the transition from an ATM based to an IP based business.
Prior to that Andrew was Director of R&D within NSM. In this function he was responsible for delivering the first commercial releases of the 5620 SAM, a product that came to Alcatel-Lucent as part of the TiMetra acquisition. Andrew built a highly capable R&D team with an excellent record of product delivery. Andrew joined Alcatel through the acquisition of Newbridge Networks.
Andrew was educated at the University of Waterloo where he received a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering.
Dor Skuler
Dor Skuler is Vice President of Cloud Enablement at Alcatel-Lucent where he is responsible for creation of the companys cloud products and solutions to the service provider market and of the expansion of the companys ecosystem in the space.
Prior to this role Dor was Vice President in Alcatel-Lucent Strategy and Corporate Development organization where he was responsible for Corporate Development and innovation activities.
Previous roles included General Manager of Mobile Security in Alcatel-Lucents Enterprise Business Group, a line of business originating from Alcatel-Lucent Ventures.
Prior to joining Alcatel-Lucent, Dor served as Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Safend, an endpoint security company. Dor also founded and served as President of Zing Interactive Media, a startup company in the field of mobile interactive media.
Dor Skuler holds a Masters of Science in Marketing and an MBA in International Business, and was named in 2009 and 2012 to Global Telecom Business 40 under 40 list of most exciting, dynamic and inspiring young executives in the telecoms industry.
