Board of Directors

Thomas J. Gill
Chairman and CEO
Tom brings over twenty eight years of experience in operations, finance, and executive leadership to the Certes Networks team. Tom formerly served as Chief Executive Officer and President of FORE Systems, Inc., a pioneering company in ATM switching, after having served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer within the company. During his tenure, FORE Systems grew from a small start-up with 40 employees and revenues of $5 million to a company with more than 2,000 employees and annual sales of $632 million. Tom was instrumental in taking FORE systems public, and eventually sold the company to a British conglomerate for $4.5 billion.

Tom has been involved with over 15 M&A transactions and was a Managing Partner of G4 Partners, LLC, an early stage private equity fund. Tom also serves on a number of public and private boards in the Software as a Service (SaaS), storage and data networking industries. He holds a B.Sc. in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

Martin Neath
General Partner, Adams Capital Management
Martin, who helped build Tivoli Systems, Inc., now part of IBM, into a multi-billion dollar software and service operation, joined Adams Capital Management in August 2001 as a General Partner focusing on enterprise software. After working at Texas Instruments in the 1980's, Martin joined Tivoli in 1990 as an application engineer and later became VP of Development. Tivoli went public in 1995 and was acquired by IBM a year later, where Martin subsequently served for three years as Executive Vice President of the Tivoli Systems business unit. In this role, he had responsibility for much of the company's day-to-day operations, including five business units, engineering, corporate marketing, customer service, training and education, office of the Chief Technology Officer, and North American sales. In 1998, he was named a member of the IBM Senior Management Group (SMG), a team of the top 300 executives from around the world charged with the overall responsibility for IBM's strategy and business execution. After retiring from IBM in 1999, Martin was a personal investor and helped build several young emerging growth technology companies in the Austin area, including NetBotz, Waveset, and Works, Inc.

In addition to his role as a member of the Board of Directors at Certes Networks, Martin is also a member of the Board at Landslide Technologies, Inc., LibreDigital, Inc., NetBotz, ProspX, Inc., and Uplogix, Inc. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Tufts University.

Michael T. Kane
Founder and Managing Director, Kestrel Asset Management
Michael is the founder and managing director of Kestrel Asset Management, a Philadelphia-area single family office which invests directly into promising technology and business companies throughout the East Coast. Previously, Michael served as Vice-President of Finance for Kane Is Able, Inc., a third-generation family-owned logistics company based in Scranton, PA. His responsibilities included strategic planning, financial management, and corporate governance.Prior to joining the family business full time, Michael ran an internet start-up company in Boston from 1995-1997 and has twelve years experience of teaching college courses in philosophy and history.

Michael is a member of PathNorth, a national CEO group, the Business Leaders Network, a Philadelphia CEO group, and the Institute for Private Investors, where he is a member of the Advisory Faculty. He currently serves on the board of PharmMD, a Nashville health care company and has previously been the vice-president of a Pennsylvania land trust. He is a member of the Investment Committee for Yet2 Ventures, a secondary venture capital fund, and for the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeast PA. Michael holds an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston College.

John Gerdelman
John has a broad and successful career as an executive and board member in the networking industry. From 1986 until 1999, John held various positions with MCI Communications Corporation, including President of the Network and Information Technology Division, and has served as CEO of Long Lines Limited, a regional telecommunications company. John also co-founded and served as Chairman of Intelliden (acquired by IBM), a software solutions company for carriers. From April 2002 to December 2003, he was the Chief Executive Officer for Metromedia Fiber Networks (now AboveNet), and also chaired Looking Glass Networks (acquired by Level (3)).

John received his B.S. degree in chemistry from the College of William and Mary, where he now serves on the Board of Visitors. John also currently serves as a Chairman of the board for Overture Networks and as Director of Brocade Communications, Sycamore Networks, Long Lines Limited and US Inspect.

Rob Adams
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, NextStage Capital
Rob brings 20 years of venture capital, operational, and financial experience to NextStage.Prior to co-founding NextStage, Rob was a vice president and officer of Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE: SFE), a publicly traded venture capital firm. There, he was instrumental in the development of numerous technology companies, from early stage through public entity.

As a part of this role, he sourced, structured, and negotiated greater than $100 million in investments for Safeguard's portfolio and led $380 million in mergers, acquisitions and exits. Rob was responsible for designing and executing Safeguard's investment strategy for the communications software and services industry segment, including technology-specific investment platforms in voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) and wireless middleware applications. Rob led Safeguard portfolio companies through the strategic planning, product development, and commercialization processes; recruitment of various CxO management positions; and development of strategic alliances, mergers, and acquisitions. Rob was also a member of Safeguard's investment committee. There he held profit and loss responsibility for a business unit providing financial and compliance services to media companies and media artists, growing revenues by broadening the firm's product offerings.

Rob has served on numerous boards of directors, including many NextStage portfolio companies, is a licensed CPA, and has a Masters of Business Administration with distinction from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Skidmore College.