Dr Uday Phadke, Chairman
Uday has long and successful experience of strategy development for companies small and large in the digital market place, of entrepreneurship and of mentoring early-stage companies. He was previously Director of IT & Telecoms for PA Consulting and a founder of Generics Group.
Over the last decade, Uday has focused on creating and executing custom-built strategies for leading music, newspaper and TV groups, retailers, computer, telecommunications and consumer electronics companies and financial services players. Amongst others, he has worked with AT&T, BBC, Bear Stearns, BT, Burda, Cable & Wireless, Canon, Disney, EMAP, Getty Images, Hearst, Intel, Kodak, Microsoft, NatWest, Saatchi & Saatchi, Reed-Elsevier, Trinity-Mirror and Viacom. He has also been involved in the nurturing of several start-ups, including Orchestream and PlanetRecruit.
Uday has an MA in Engineering from Trinity College Cambridge and a PhD in aero-thermodynamics from the University of Sussex.
Prof John Baits
John is Chief Technical Officer of DN Capital Ltd. He has over 30 years experience in senior technology roles in IT and Telecommunications. John was world wide CTO for Cable & Wireless, Managing Director of IT and Research for Telstra (Australia) plus previously 23 years at IBM where he held executive development positions in the UK, USA, Japan and France.
He holds a PhD in Engineering from Leicester University. He is also a visiting professor at Southampton University and is a Fellow of the IEE.
George Shanks, CEO
George has over 25 years’ experience building successful companies.
Prior to joining dezineforce, George was CEO of Jacobs Rimell, a UK-based software company serving the communications sector. Arriving in 2003 with the company in serious decline, George led its recovery and growth, culminating in a successful sale to Amdocs in April 2008.
Originally a chartered civil engineer, George entered the IT sector in 1981 with ICL followed by a decade at Oracle UK where as Regional Director, he created and led the communications business unit to establish database dominance in the sector for Oracle. In 1998 he co-founded Rubus, an Internet consultancy, and helped the company grow from initial start-up to over 300 people in just over two years before taking up the position of Vice President, EMEA at Inktomi Corporation.
George holds an honours degree in civil engineering from the University of Bristol.
Prof Simon Cox, Chief Scientist
Simon is a Professor of Computational Methods and director of the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing at the University of Southampton, working with Microsoft on its future tools, technologies and platforms in the high performance computing arena. He has collaborations with BAE Systems, Microsoft, Rolls-Royce, and Airbus. He has published over 120 papers and is a regular conference speaker. He has been awarded Microsoft ‘Most Valuable Professional’ status as a Windows Server System Infrastructure Architect annually since 2003. He holds a Ph.D. in Electronics and Computer Science from the University of Southampton.
Dr Steve Garnett
Steve has been a member of the executive management of three software start-ups that have each become some of the most successful software companies in history.
In 2004 he joined Marc Benioff to head Europe operations and be part of the executive team at salesforce.com. It now has a market capitalization of $7bn and has been lauded as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, named No. 7 on The WIRED 40, and selected as a Top Ten Disrupter by Forbes. Previously he spent eight years at Siebel Systems as Vice President of Europe and a member of the founders circle, during which time it grew to become the world’s 5th largest software company with 8,000 employees and a $60bn peak market capitalization. He began at Oracle Corporation, becoming the youngest member of the European management team as it grew to become the world’s 2nd largest software company.
He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Manchester, and a number of professional affiliations and board positions.
Adrian Kunzle
Adrian is a Managing Director and Global Head of Architecture for JPMorgan Chase's Investment Bank. He is responsible for setting architectural strategy for the Investment Bank and providing architectural governance in the business, application and technical domains. A key area of focus is identifying, developing and operating shared application services, including its grid-based analytics computing service and its Identity and Access Management system. Adrian is also a technical advisor to the Technology Banking team.
Prior to joining JPMorgan Chase in 2002, he worked as Chief Architect for Walker Digital and Bank One/First USA's Consumer Lending Division, and earlier as a software engineer for JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.
He holds a degree in Control, Instrumentation and Systems Engineering from the City University, London.
Ed Stacey
Ed has worked in early stage venture capital since co-founding Venture Technologies, a £35 million high-technology fund between 1996-2001 achieving excellent returns. Notable investments included Autonomy Corporation plc, WhereonEarth, Trustbase (sold to Sun MicroSystems) and Durlacher plc. Ed started his career with Henkel and Scientific Generics.
Ed has an MBA and a BSc in Physics.
Mike Waters
Mike has 30 years of experience with fast growing electronics businesses. He has worked in various general and commercial management positions with Mullard Ltd, Royal Philips BV, Delta Electronics Inc, and with his own company. Having left the UK in 1993 to move to Asia, he now lives in The Netherlands. Mike serves on the board of CamFPD Ltd. Mike also supports a number of companies with consultancy services, including The Brewery Design Company and Inpro Licensing.
He holds a materials science degree and is a chartered engineer.