Executive Team

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.

Gary Brunner
CFO and Sr. Vice President of Operations

Gary brings over 20 years of finance, operations and management experience to the team at Certes Networks. Prior to joining Certes Networks, Gary served as the Sr. Vice President of Finance and Operations at Netronome Systems, a developer and supplier of network flow processors and acceleration cards in network and communication devices. Previously, he served as the Vice President of Finance at Precise Technology Inc (acquired by Rexam Inc. in 2005) that was a consumer and medical packaging supplier.

Gary also served as Partner and CFO at G4 Partners, an early stage private equity fund, from 2000 to 2002. He held the positions of Vice President, Treasurer and Corporate Controller during his tenure at FORE Systems Inc., a developer and manufacture of high-speed networking equipment that grew from a small start-up to a company with annual sales of $632 million. Gary held various finance positions at technology companies in both the Pittsburgh and Washington DC areas previous to joining FORE Systems.

Gary holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Robert Morris University.

Jim Doherty
CMO and Sr. Vice President of Marketing

Jim brings to Certes Networks 17 years of engineering and marketing experience across a broad range of networking and communication technologies. Focusing on message simplification and marketing execution, Jim leads the Certes Networks marketing strategy, direction and personnel.

Prior to joining Certes Networks, Jim held leadership positions with Symbol Technologies, Cisco Systems and Ericsson Mobile Phones. His marketing experience includes leading vertical marketing and technology solution teams. He has lead marketing campaigns on several technologies including Security, IP Telephony, Routing and Switching.

Jim is the co-author of the "Networking Simplified" series of books from Cisco Press, which includes the titles Cisco Networking Simplified, Home Networking Simplified, and several other titles. Jim is a former Marine Corps Sergeant. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from N.C. State University and an MBA from Duke University.

Kevin Nigh
CTO and Sr. Vice President of Engineering

Kevin brings many years of management experience in Engineering, Support and Manufacturing to Certes Networks. Prior to joining Certes Networks, Kevin co-founded Wexford Capital Partners, a real estate development and investment company. Kevin also served as Vice-President of Operations for Spinnaker Networks, a NAS start-up that was subsequently acquired by Network Appliance. Before this, he was a partner at G4 Partners where he provided strategic, tactical and operational advice to early-stage technology companies. In addition, Kevin was CIO of Marconi, PLC where he was responsible for their worldwide IT infrastructure.

Kevin also held significant positions at FORE Systems, prior to it's acquisition by Marconi in 1999. As Senior Vice-President for Research and Development there, he was responsible for all engineering work, spanning 6 engineering sites in 4 different countries and a budget in excess of $100M. Kevin also grew FORE's Customer Support Operations from its inception to well over 300 employees and was responsible worldwide for all technical support, training, professional services and systems engineering.

At Certes Networks, Kevin is responsible for all engineering and development activities.

Don McAlister
Chief Architect

Don has 29 years of experience engineering computationally intensive and large scale systems in hardware and software. He developed an authenticated policy and key distribution system combining robust management, dynamic tunneling, and an intuitive user interface for securing global network traffic, utilizing unique approaches to distribution and segmentation of network security to simplify policy definition and enforcement across complex boundaries.

Don has optimized implementation of various security standards including IKE, IPsec and SSL in both embedded software and as part of an ASIC development team, worked with 3-D modeling and high speed processing of cardiac ultrasound technology, researched microwave and RF sensor technology for use in construction and ground penetrating radar, and designed high-speed digital systems for FFT/IFFT conversion in missile seeker simulators.

Don received his MSEE (Computer Design and Electromagnetic Engineering) and his BSEE from Georgia Institute of Technology, is named as inventor on 5 patents and 12 patent applications, is currently a member of IEEE and has served as a Captain in the US Army Reserve.

Sam Sarnicke
Senior Vice President of Business Development and Americas Sales

Sam is responsible for developing and managing strategic relationships, key business initiatives, OEM partnerships and emerging technology alliances. As Vice President of Business Development, Sam brings to Certes Networks more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry. Prior to joining Certes, Sam was the Vice President of Business Development for Cheetah Technologies. He has also held leadership roles at WaveCam Media, Leap Wireless, Marconi, AT&T, Bell Atlantic and Nortel Networks.

Sam holds a B.S. in Marketing from Duquesne University, and a MPM from Carnegie Mellon University.

Albert Benhamou
Vice President of Sales, EMEA

Albert has more than 25 years experience in the high-tech and networking industry. He has held various leadership roles in sales, business development, marketing and management while building field organizations throughout Europe, Middle East, Africa and India.

Albert’s experience includes key sales leadership positions with Arista Networks, Aruba Networks, Loudcloud, FORE Systems and Cisco.

Michael Lyu
Vice President of Sales, APAC

Michael has over 20 years of successful sales, marketing, technical consulting and product development experience in the technology sector. He has held various sales leadership roles, focused on the Asia Pacific and Japan market, with companies such as Imperva, Arbor Networks. In these roles, Michael was instrumental in establishing channel and key service provider relationships.

In his early career, Michael held several key positions in Cisco Systems, including Product Marketing Manager, Major Opportunity Manager, Consulting Engineer in the CTO office, and senior technical staff in the IOS Engineering group.