Management Team

CASEY PITTOCK

President and CEO

Casey Pittock is a recognized leader in the Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS) market. Before joining Wellcore, Casey was founder and president of TelCARE Systems, one of the industry’s fastest-growing PERS providers. He was also an executive with Lifeline Systems, the leading provider of PERS in North America, with over 750,000 subscribers. Lifeline Systems acquired TelCARE Systems in 1999, and Lifeline was subsequently acquired by Royal Philips Electronics in 2006.

Casey has advised numerous start-ups and early stage companies serving seniors. From 2004 to 2006, Casey was a member of the President’s Council of the Assisted Living Federation of America. He graduated from Stanford University.

JEETENDRA JANGLE

Founder, Vice President of Engineering

Jeetendra Jangle has over 20 years of entrepreneurial, management, consulting and product development experience in the networking, pattern recognition, telecom and healthcare industries, as well as a long history of creating revenue-generating products. Prior to founding Wellcore, he was an early member of the core engineering team at Veraz Networks. As vice president of engineering services at Veraz, Jeetendra managed a 100-person worldwide team.

Prior to Veraz, Jeetendra was a principal architect at Sun Microsystems, where he developed various networking and management applications. At Sun Labs, his team developed Sun’s Gigabit Ethernet switch. Prior to Sun, Jeetendra founded a software consulting firm, Jeetendra Jangle & Associates, which provided high-tech software/hardware consulting. Jeetendra holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Science from Pune University.

PETE JANSSEN

Executive Vice President, Marketing & Sales

Pete Janssen has over 35 years of experience in retail and technology companies, including serving as the senior sales and marketing executive for Sears, Wyse Technology, Nexgen Microsystems, Acer America and Egghead Software. Driving results in the area of sales strategy and channel development are among Pete’s core competencies.

As a founding partner of The Sightline Group, a technology based consulting company that specializes in helping early stage consumer companies develop and implement their go-to-market plans; Pete typically serves as vice president of sales and marketing through product launch. In this capacity Pete has helped launch iRobot, HDMI, Eye-Fi, and Presto among others.

VAN KRUEGER

Vice President of Operations

Van Krueger has more than 17 years of senior management, manufacturing, supply-chain logistics, order-to-cash and customer care experience. He has spent his career focused on building, distributing and supporting global consumer electronics products that exceed customer expectations.

Van started his career building and running support organizations for companies such as E-mu Systems, a division of Creative Technologies, and ReplayTV, a recent acquisition of DirecTV. For the past several years, Van has focused on building scalable operations solutions for emerging market startup companies like Roku, the world’s first high-definition media player, Presto Services, a provider of computerless email for seniors, and Eye-Fi, a creator of wireless photo storage cards. Van holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from San Jose State University.

 

Board of Directors

CECILIA CLAUDIO

Vice President and General Manager, Hewlett Packard Co.

Cecilia Claudio serves as Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Solutions group of Hewlett-Packard, leading a multi-billion dollar business unit. Prior to HP, Cecilia served as Senior VP and CIO of SanDisk Corporation, a flash memory data storage company. Earlier, she was the CIO at several large companies including Mercury Interactive, Align Technology, Farmer’s Insurance Group, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Anthem (later Wellpoint). Additionally, in 2004 Cecilia was named an Executive in Residence at Clearstone Venture Partners, a venture capital firm and continues to serve in an advisory capacity for Clearstone.

Cecilia presently serves on three other corporate boards of prominent companies: Sybase (public), DiVitas (private), and NewScale (private), and previously was on the board of directors at Farmers Group, Inc. She has also served on CIO Advisory boards for Cisco, IBM, Siebel, Syndera and Tablus.

Cecilia was recognized by Computerworld as one of the Premier 100 IT executives worldwide in 2001, and has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Women in Computing in the US by McGraw Hill.

H. DuBOSE MONTGOMERY

Founder & Managing Director, Menlo Ventures

DuBose was a founder of Menlo Ventures in 1976, and has been an active director in many of the Firm’s portfolio companies over the past 32 years. At Menlo, DuBose focuses on investments in leading companies in the information technology sector. Some of his current investments and board seats include: Entone, Firetide, freightquote.com, Golden Gateway Financial, Wellcore™, NComputing, OnRequest Images, and SellPoint. His prior investments include: Asyst Technologies (ASYT); EndoVascular Technologies, acquired by Guidant Corp. (GDT); Frame Technology Corporation, acquired by Adobe Systems (ADBE); Gilead Sciences (GILD); Infoseek Corporation, acquired by the Walt Disney Co. (DIG); LSI Logic Corporation (LSI); Micro Therapeutics (MTIX); Network Equipment Technologies(NWK); Valid Logic Systems, acquired by Cadence Design Systems (CDN) and VNUS Medical Technologies (VNUS).

DuBose is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S. in Electrical Engineering, M.S. in Electrical Engineering, B.S. in Management Science) and the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration (M.B.A.). He previously served as a trustee of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on the M.I.T. visiting committees for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and for Sponsored Research.

About Menlo Ventures: Menlo Ventures provides long-term capital and management support to early-stage and emerging-growth companies. Menlo is one of Silicon Valley’s oldest venture capital partnerships, and has organized and managed ten venture funds since their inception in 1976. With over $4 billion under management since inception, and a team with over two hundred years of collective experience in technology, marketing, sales and general management, they have the resources to support the most ambitious of projects.

 

Advisory Board

Vijay Nadkarni
Mary Furlong
Richard Janssen
Arogyaswami Paulraj
Hartmut Esslinger
Mark DeNino
Sandeep Sherlekar
Rajeev Krishnamoorthy
Francisco Lopez

 

VIJAY NADKARNI

Wellcore Founder

Vijay Nadkarni’s 20-year career in the wireless, networking and biomedical sectors shows a consistent track record of conceiving and delivering first-on-the-market products—from concept to industry success. It was Vijay’s vision to develop a new generation of products for seniors that would give them a new level of safety and overall wellness monitoring. It was with that vision that Vijay founded Wellcore.

Before founding Wellcore, Vijay co-founded Veraz Networks (formerly ipVerse, Inc.) that generated over $100 million in revenues in 2006, leading to an IPO. Prior to founding Veraz, Vijay initiated and built the VoIP program at 3Com leading to a major customer win from AT&T. He also held multiple roles in management and engineering at Motorola’s Cellular Infrastructure Group. In the early 1990s, Vijay started a pattern recognition company, Perceptronix, which developed signature recognition and OCR products. He started his career in biomedical sciences at Abbott Laboratories/Fuller Research Corp.

Vijay currently holds eight issued patents, and has another eight patents in progress. He holds a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology–Bombay, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University, where he was a Walter Murphy Fellow, and an M.B.A. from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

 

MARY FURLONG, EdD

Founder, President & CEO, Mary Furlong & Associates

Mary Furlong is a leading authority on the baby boom generation. She has guided the 45+ market strategies of leading organizations for more than 20 years. Her list of clients and investors includes IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merrill Lynch, Viacom (CBS), Advance Publications, Proctor & Gamble, Pfizer, Microsoft, regional Bell operating companies and AARP. Mary founded MFA in 2003 to promote an awareness of the real needs of this growing market. In addition, Mary is the Dean’s Executive Professor of Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. Earlier, Mary founded the nonprofit organizations SeniorNet in 1986 and ThirdAge Media in 1996. During Mary’s tenure, SeniorNet served more than 500,000 adults age 50 and older, and ThirdAge Media reached more than 2 million members.

In 2001, Fortune named Mary one of its “Top 25 Women Entrepreneurs,” and Time honored her in 1999 as one of its “Digital 50.” She also served as a White House Commissioner during the Clinton administration, and has conducted hearings for the U.S. Senate. Mary has appeared on CBS, PBS, NPR and NBC’s Today show to discuss trends in aging and technology, and her expertise has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Business Week, Fortune, People and Fast Company, among other publications. Mary is a member of the American Society on Aging’s Business Forum on Aging, the Leadership Council of the National Council on Aging and the AARP Women in Leadership group. Mary has also authored two popular books, including “Turning Silver into Gold: How to Profit in the New Boomer Marketplace.”

 

RICHARD R JANSSEN

President, Janssen & Associates

Richard Janssen served as Fox Audience Network’s (FAN’s) Senior Vice President of Monetization Technology from March 2007 to June 2009 under terms of News Corporation acquisition of Strategic Data Corp. Prior to that Mr. Janssen served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Data Corp from September 2000. Prior to joining Strategic Data Corp., Mr. Janssen co-founded and took public two high technology companies. Immediately prior to joining Strategic Data Corp., he was President of Janssen & Associates, a private investment and strategic planning company. He co-founded Move Inc. (formerly HomeStore Inc.), a leader in online real estate, where he served as its President and Chief Operating Officer. Previously, he co-founded and was CEO of EBIX Inc. (formerly Delphi Information Systems, Inc.), an insurance software and services company. Before EBIX he worked as a CPA for Deloitte for 6 years. He graduated from UCLA with a major in math and computer science and a minor in economics. Mr. Janssen also serves on the Board of Trustees for Emerson College in Boston, MA.

 

PROFESSOR DR. HARTMUT ESSLINGER

Founder frog design
Board Member & Chief Executive for Design and Innovation, Telefunken AG

Professor Hartmut Esslinger is the founder of the renowned “frog design” which together with his partner and wife Patricia Roller he built into the world’s most prominent and successful strategic design agency, and the prime pioneer for digital products and software user interfaces. Hartmut was the first strategist and designer to bring human-driven and high-touch design to the world of complex hardware and software technology. His vision has defined frog, and he has helped to develop globally-defining design strategies for companies such as Apple, Louis Vuitton, Lufthansa, Olympus, SAP, Samsung, Sony, and WEGA. Business Week – which featured Hartmut on its cover in 1990 – called him the most influential American industrial designer since the 1930s and the “First Superstar of High-Tech Design.”
Hartmut also engages in educating and mentoring young designers: he is a founding professor of the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung (College for Design) in Karlsruhe, Germany and since 2006 has worked as a professor of convergent industrial design at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. He received an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from the Parsons School of Design, New York, as well as various lifetime achievement awards around the world. Since 2008, Hartmut has served on the Executive Board of Telefunken AG in Berlin, Germany as Chief Executive for Design and Innovation.

 

AROGYASWAMI PAULRAJ, PhD

Founder, CTO of Beceem Communications,
Professor of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Professor Arogyaswami Paulraj, Stanford University, is a pioneer of MIMO wireless technology, a breakthrough that enables dramatically improved wireless performance. MIMO is now incorporated into all new wireless standards including WiFi, WIMAX and 3.5 / 4G.
In 1999, Paulraj founded Iospan Wireless Inc – which pioneered MIMO-OFDMA fixed wireless technology. Iospan was acquired in by Intel Corporation in 2003. In 2004, Paulraj co-founded Beceem Communications Inc to develop chips sets for WIMAX 802.16e standard. The company has emerged as a leading supplier of Mobile WIMAX chipsets. He has been widely acknowledged as the father of WIMAX technology.
Prof. Paulraj is the author of over 350 research papers, two text books and holds 37 US patents. He serves on a dozen boards as editor, advisor or director, and on university / government councils in US, Europe and India. Paulraj is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Assoc. member of Third World Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

 

MARK J. DeNINO

Managing Director, TL Ventures

Mark is Managing Director at TL Ventures. He has had a diverse and distinguished career in venture capital, beginning in 1981. Mark’s investment interests are varied and run the gamut from software to business services to communications and energy. He has extensive experience in working closely with portfolio companies, driving for results and setting a high bar for achievement with TL’s support. Some of Mark’s notable investments include Traffic.com, Integrated Systems, PacWest, Kashya, Metrocast, Telespectrum, Stratalight and Coastal Security. He graduated with a BS degree from Boston College and an MBA degree from Harvard.

 

SANDEEP SHERLEKAR, MD

Founder, Advanced Pain Management Services

Dr. Sherlekar is the founder and principal of Advanced Pain Management Services, one of the premier pain management practices in the Washington D.C. Area, serving Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. Dr. Sherlekar was trained in India at Delhi University and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). He came to the United States and did a residency in Anesthesiology at Hahnemann University Hospital. He is fellowship trained in Pain Management from Harvard Medical School and has a special interest in treating pain of the spine.

In the past, Dr. Sherlekar founded Capital Area Pain Management, a chain of clinics which grew to become the leading provider of pain management services in the Washington DC region. In addition, Dr. Sherlekar was the chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology of Civista Medical Center and Hospital.

Acknowledged as one of the leading authorities in pain management in the world, Dr. Sherlekar is a highly sought after speaker at conferences and seminars. He also maintains strong affiliations with the medical departments of Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Medical School, with frequent involvement in their programs.

 

RAJEEV KRISHNAMOORTHY, PhD

CTO, Scintera

Rajeev Krishnamoorthy is an entrepreneur and executive whose focus has been on innovating and commercializing new technologies in emerging and rapidly growing markets. Most recently he was founder and CEO of TZero Technologies (acquired by NDS Surgical Imaging), a fabless semiconductor company providing high-performance Ultra Wideband chipsets and digital video solutions. Prior to founding TZero, Rajeev was VP, Technology at Iospan Wireless (now part of Intel) responsible for developing the first commercial MIMO fixed-wireless systems. He began his career at Bell Labs conducting research in communications and data networking, and in the wireless LAN division of AT&T/Lucent in the Netherlands where he played a key role in the development of the earliest 802.11 and 11(b) (WiFi) products which enabled the first widely deployed wireless LAN networks.

Rajeev is closely involved with the venture and academic worlds – he has been an EIR and consultant at Globespan Capital Partners and Tallwood Venture Capital, an advisor and board member of several venture-backed startups, and a Consulting Professor at Stanford University. Rajeev earned his PhD from Cornell and his BS from Caltech.

 

FRANCISCO LOPEZ

Founder & CEO, Safenet Security Systems

Francisco Javier Lopez-Calderon is the founder and CEO of Safenet Security Systems, a prominent trend-setting low voltage products company in the Washington Metropolitan Area. His company specializes in cutting edge technologies that facilitate comfort, safety and security in large homes and medium sized businesses. Francisco was born in Mexico City. He has travelled extensively through central and south America and is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Francisco has an undergraduate degree in architecture from Lawrence institute of Technology, and over 25 years of experience with design solutions and service. Francisco’s career has been characterized by visionary ability related to new technology implementation, and excellence in deploying cost effective solutions in very exclusive target markets. Currently he is in the process of opening a branch office in Costa Rica’s northern Pacific coast.