Tom Katis, CEO. Tom was a founder of Triple Canopy, a security company with over 3,000 employees. He remains Co-Chairman and the largest shareholder. He is a decorated combat veteran of the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets). During his military service, Tom earned the Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman’s badge. After 9/11, Tom put his business career on hold to re-enlist in the Army. He returned to active duty with a Special Forces team and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003. Tom was an 18E and received extensive training on all significant military communications systems. Tom has held Vice President positions at Netcentives and Citigroup. He is a graduate of Yale University with a BA in Ethics, Politics and Economics.
Matt Ranney, Vice President of Technology. Matt founded Ranney Consulting Services, providing creative network architecture solutions and operations services for large web applications, backbone networks, and Internet Telephony deployments. His expertise extends deep into network protocols and systems, enabling him to design and deploy complex, high-performance networks under challenging constraints. Matt has delivered projects for a number of different companies including NEC, HP, Nortel, Level 3, ChevronTexaco, NBC, Homestore, and Triple Canopy. Matt received a BSCS from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI.
Jim Panttaja, VP R&D. Jim was previously Executive Vice President, Engineering and CTO at Sapias where he was responsible for overseeing all aspects of engineering and systems operations. Prior to Sapias, Jim was Vice President of Engineering at Netcentives and was a primary designer of the company’s acclaimed high-performance Internet transactional architecture. Previously, Jim co-founded Panttaja Consulting Group, Inc., a 40-person advanced technology consultancy, where he served as CTO for 10 years before the company was acquired by Netcentives. Earlier in his career, Jim held engineering management positions at IBM and Tandem Computers. Jim has served on national and international standards committees.
Mary Panttaja, Vice President of Product Management. Mary was a founding partner and CEO of Panttaja Consulting Group Inc. (PCGi), a 40-person advanced technology consultancy, which was acquired by Netcentives. At Netcentives, she was Vice President of Program Management establishing business and operational processes for the start-up phase of the Custom Loyalty product lines, which grew to be a major source of the company’s revenue.
Dan Stiefel, Snr Product Manager. Dan is an entrepreneurial Product Marketing & Management ace, specializing in end user experiences. He has previously worked on multi-channel sales and service platforms for Silicon Valley Internet software firms Epiphany and Selectica.
