The Management Team
Fortiva's on-demand email archiving service integrates messaging policy, archiving, supervision, advanced search and discovery capabilities in a solution designed to keep data secure, compliant, and fully searchable. The Fortiva solution allows customers to outsource their email archiving needs without risking data privacy, making it easy for businesses to meet legal discovery, compliance, and email storage management challenges.
Eric Goodwin
Chief Executive Officer & Chairman
As CEO of Fortiva, Eric's focus is to establish market leadership in the managed email archiving market by offering a leading edge on-demand service that provides the best value to an organization's IT requirements and legal obligations. Eric was most recently President and Chief Executive Officer of Klocwork Inc., a leading provider of static analysis software, where he took the company to the next level through a venture funding round and initiated two years of rapid growth.
Prior to that, he was CEO of FloNetwork Inc. until the firm was sold to DoubleClick in 2001. During that period, FloNetwork grew from a 25 person company to over 200, and was the acknowledged leader in email relationship management. Previously, he was a founder and CEO of Fulcrum Technologies, taking the company to over $60 million in revenue before the firm became part of Hummingbird Communications. Eric has received the Canadian Advanced Technology Association's award for Private Sector Leadership and has been named one of Canada's Top-10 Technology CEOs by Canadian Business. Eric earned his Bachelor of Commerce from Carleton University.
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Paul Chen
Founder and President, Fortiva Managed Services
Paul is currently President of Fortiva Managed Services, responsible for data center operations, software development and overall quality of service for the Fortiva solution. Previously, Paul founded FloNetwork Inc., serving as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer. In that role, he guided the firm to prominence as a leading email marketing service provider. After raising over $30M from high-profile venture capital firms such as McLean Watson Capital, Ventures West and the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan, Paul was instrumental in ultimately selling the business in 2001 to DoubleClick (NASDAQ: DCLK) for $80M.
Since that time, he has served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at McLean Watson Capital. Prior to launching FloNetwork, Paul held senior development positions with IBM, Honeywell Inc. and Bell-Northern Research Inc., the research and development subsidiary of Nortel. Paul earned his Bachelor of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto.
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Wilson Lee
Chief Financial Officer
As Chief Financial Officer of Fortiva, Wilson brings extensive financial, operating and capital markets experience having raised over $72 million in venture capital investments for a number of high technology companies. Prior to joining Fortiva, Wilson was the CFO at BorderWare Technologies, a provider of messaging security solutions and CFO at Activplant, a provider of business intelligence software for manufacturers. Wilson has also served as an entrepreneur in residence at Ventures West, one of Canada's largest privately owned venture capital companies with $700 million in assets under management.
Prior to Ventures West, Wilson was CFO and one of the early management team members of FloNetwork. Wilson began his career with Arthur Andersen and spent seven years with the firm providing assurance and business advisory services for clients in high technology and other industries. Wilson holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto and is a Chartered Accountant.
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Alan Armstrong
VP Business Development
As the VP of Business Development, Alan is responsible for building and extending Fortiva’s Alliance Network and ensuring that Fortiva’s relationships with channel partners are mutually profitable and effective. With over fifteen years experience in enterprise software, Alan has led teams to build new products from scratch, as well as managed existing product lines through explosive revenue growth. Before joining Fortiva, Alan directed strategy and product management for Wily Technology (now part of CA), through a critical transition from a startup to its acquisition by CA for $375MM in 2006.
Prior to Wily Technology, Alan led product management at Sitraka (now part of Quest Software), an early innovator in IT performance management that became an industry standard during his tenure. Prior to Sitraka, Alan held various engineering and management positions at Sybase. Alan graduated with Dean's Honors from Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo.
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Rick Dales
VP Product Management
Rick brings to Fortiva over 15 years of experience and a strong background with proven experience in product management and development. As VP of Product Management for Fortiva, Rick is responsible for identifying market requirements and developing product strategy. Previously, Rick was the Director of Product Management and Marketing at PlateSpin, a startup focused on utility computing tools. Rick also held senior product management and business development positions at DoubleClick, FloNetwork and Symantec.
Over the years, Rick has also worked with dozens of smaller high-tech companies, consulting on the development of business strategies to propel long-term growth. Rick received his Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Wilfrid Laurier University.
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Praising Gaw
VP Marketing
As VP Marketing, Praising is responsible for overseeing the strategic planning and tactical execution of all marketing communication programs at Fortiva, including establishing and maintaining brand, messaging platforms and public relations activities. Praising has been with Fortiva since its inception, bringing with her over fourteen years of business-to-business marketing, product management and service delivery experience in high-technology service-based start-up companies.
Before joining Fortiva, Praising helped to take Q9 Networks (TSX: Q), the leading provider of managed Internet infrastructure services, from startup through to a successful IPO. While at Q9 Networks, Praising defined and executed on the product and product marketing plan, including market positioning, product pricing, profitability analysis for recurring-revenue services, and lead generation marketing activities. Prior to Q9 Networks, Praising held various positions at FloNetwork, including Director of Operations responsible for setting up and managing the service delivery and client services organization for the email marketing service provider. Praising graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration majoring in Marketing from the Schulich School of Business.
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Jeremy Hope
VP Operations
As the VP of Operations, Jeremy is responsible for managing the service center, network operations and data center infrastructure for Fortiva's on-demand email archiving service. Jeremy brings to Fortiva over 20 years of experience and a diverse IT Operational background. Most recently, he served as Vice President, Network Operations at JumpTV (AIM, TSX: JTV), the world's leading subscription-based broadcaster of ethnic television over the Internet. At Jump, Jeremy was responsible for overseeing the 7 x 24 global IT Networks, Operations and Infrastructure. Before joining JumpTV, Jeremy was the Director of Technology Operations for an arm of the Ontario Government where he managed one of the largest infrastructures in Ontario including a wide area network of over 9000 sites.
Jeremy’s previous experience includes two years as Senior Director of IT Operations with DoubleClick Email Canada, supporting their Global Email ASP, and seven years in the financial services industry, in the role of Director of Technology Operations at ING Canada. He also spent eight years in IT within the manufacturing industry with a subsidiary of George Weston Limited.
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Craig Rennick
VP Sales
As VP of Sales, Craig is responsible for all sales and business development efforts at Fortiva. Craig joins the company from Bell ExpressVu, where he served as Head of Programming and Pay Per View, and Bell GlobeMedia Interactive, where he was Vice President of Business Development.
Prior to that, Craig served as Vice President of Sales with FloNetwork Inc. and helped grow the company from a twelve-person start-up to a 200-person strong global leader in email relationship management. During his tenure, the company acquired over 250 clients through sales offices in New York, Chicago, Toronto and Pleasanton, California, the majority of which were Fortune 500 companies. Craig received his Bachelor of Arts concentrating on Business from the University of Western Ontario.
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Chris Tebo
Chief Technology Officer
Chris has been actively engaged in software product development for the past fifteen years with a focus on developing highly-scalable outsourced solutions for enterprises. As Chief Technology Officer and architect of Fortiva's managed email archiving solution, Chris was instrumental in developing Fortiva's unique DoubleBlind Encryption™ technology, which stores all data in encrypted form so unauthorized users cannot access the content of archived data. Chris also architected Fortiva's grid-storage and distributed search architecture that ensures real-time search and retrieval, regardless of the size of the archive.
Prior to Fortiva, Chris was the lead architect at FloNetwork, a leading email marketing service provider whose technology formed the basis of DoubleClick's Dartmail platform after its acquisition in 2001. During this time, Chris developed the email marketing ASP infrastructure that serviced over 300 clients and achieved production volumes of 1 billion emails sent per month and daily user transactions of 5 million per day. Chris earned his Bachelors of Science and Arts in Computer Science, Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of Toronto.
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Board of Directors.
Eric Goodwin
Chief Executive Officer & Chairman
As CEO of Fortiva, Eric's focus is to establish market leadership in the managed email archiving market by offering a leading edge on-demand service that provides the best value to an organization's IT requirements and legal obligations. Eric was most recently President and Chief Executive Officer of Klocwork Inc., a leading provider of static analysis software, where he took the company to the next level through a venture funding round and initiated two years of rapid growth.
Prior to that, he was CEO of FloNetwork Inc. until the firm was sold to DoubleClick in 2001. During that period, FloNetwork grew from a 25 person company to over 200, and was the acknowledged leader in email relationship management. Previously, he was a founder and CEO of Fulcrum Technologies, taking the company to over $60 million in revenue before the firm became part of Hummingbird Communications. Eric has received the Canadian Advanced Technology Association's award for Private Sector Leadership and has been named one of Canada's Top-10 Technology CEOs by Canadian Business. Eric earned his Bachelor of Commerce from Carleton University.
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Ted Anderson
Ted Anderson, President of Ventures West, is responsible for the overall leadership and management of the firm. He is also involved with the firm's investment activities, with a focus on IT, telecommunications and semiconductors. Ted is a veteran of the Canadian venture capital industry with over twenty years experience in private equity investment.
Ted began his career in venture financing in 1982 with Royal Bank Venture Capital and moved to BG Acorn Capital Fund in 1985. Ted currently serves as a Director of AudienceView Software, Fortiva Inc., Fresco Microchip, Intelligent Photonic Controls Corp., and Sibercore Technologies Incorporated. He is a past President and a former director of the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association, as well as an instructor in the MBA program at the Schulich School of Business at York University. Ted holds a B.A. (Honours) in economics from the University of Toronto and an MBA from York University.
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Paul Bieganski
Paul Bieganski is a Managing Director and the Chief Technology Officer of Cargill Ventures. Paul is a serial entrepreneur, investor and inventor with twenty years of technology and business experience in software, Internet, embedded computers, medical devices and bioinformatics. Most recently, Paul was the CTO at Net Perceptions.
Prior to Net Perceptions, he was the Vice-President of R&D at Signum Systems Corporation in Los Angeles, was Co-Founder of TeleMedical Inc. and Vice-President of R&D at Advanced Medical Systems Corporation. Paul also served as a National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota Center for Molecular Bioinformatics. Paul serves on the Boards of Compellent Technologies, Teranode, Paradigm Diagnostics, iCentera and Fortiva Inc. and oversees Cargill Ventures' investment in NimbleGen Systems. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Minnesota.
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Paul Chen
Founder and President, Fortiva Managed Services
Paul is currently President of Fortiva Managed Services, responsible for data center operations, software development and overall quality of service for the Fortiva solution. Previously, Paul founded FloNetwork Inc., serving as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer. In that role, he guided the firm to prominence as a leading email marketing service provider. After raising over $30M from high-profile venture capital firms such as McLean Watson Capital, Ventures West and the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan, Paul was instrumental in ultimately selling the business in 2001 to DoubleClick (NASDAQ: DCLK) for $80M.
Since that time, he has served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at McLean Watson Capital. Prior to launching FloNetwork, Paul held senior development positions with IBM, Honeywell Inc. and Bell-Northern Research Inc., the research and development subsidiary of Nortel. Paul earned his Bachelor of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto.
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Lou Cole
Prior to serving on our board, Lou was President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Legato Systems, a global leader in enterprise storage management software. He was instrumental in building Legato's business and reputation, having joined a year after launch and serving for over twelve years.
Earlier in his career, Lou was Executive Vice President of Novell in charge of all the company's operating divisions. Currently, he serves on the Boards of a number of high technology and storage companies. Lou received his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Education from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.
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John Eckert
John Eckert, Managing Partner at McLean Watson Capital, has extensive experience in corporate finance, having served as a VP and Director in Corporate Finance and Capital Markets of Wood Gundy Inc. and CIBC Wood Gundy in Canada. He also served as Managing Director of CIBC Wood Gundy (Australia).
John is currently a participant on the Toronto Region Research Alliance Steering Council. He speaks regularly at investment and entrepreneurial forums in Canada and abroad. John serves on the Board of the Canadian Venture Capital Association, having previously held the positions of President (2000-2002), Chairman (2002-2003) and Director (2003-2005). He also serves on the Boards of several private and public companies, including Kyberpass, SkyWave Mobile Communications, SiteBrand.com, Fortiva and Activplant. John holds a BA and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario.
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