Management
Mr. DeFeo is a serial President/CEO with more than 30 years of leadership experience in strategic planning, marketing and sales, customer care, six-sigma, manufacturing, and product/business development. Mr. DeFeo's experience touches nearly every facet of telecommunications and medical device industries including start-ups, managing hyper-growth, restructurings, global partnerships, turnarounds, mergers, and acquisitions. He has extensive experience in complex capital financings, having raised more than $1.7 billion in private/venture/public markets. Under his leadership, USWest NewVector's cellular business grew from start-up to profitability, with over one million subscribers, $1+ billion in revenues, and covering over 60 domestic markets with 3000+ employees.
He has managed negotiations and formed alliances with some of the most recognized global corporate partners, including MCI, Sony, Hyundai, Harris, Fluor Daniels, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel, Ericsson, and Lucent. Mr. DeFeo has been recognized for his keen management style and leadership skills on multiple occasions, including three USWest Chairman Awards.
Mr. Stachowiak is an accomplished senior executive with more than 25 years experience in finance and management. He has participated in the development of five companies, three of which he took public, raising more than $500 million that resulted in market valuations exceeding $4 billion. His experience covers a broad array of sophisticated financing transactions including IPOs, secondary offerings, global partnerships, debt, valuations, and NASDAQ and SEC issues.
Through his leadership, Mr. Stachowiak establishes and implements best operating practices within all key departments prior to taking a company public; the results are evidenced by overall financial performance and customer satisfaction. As a successful manager, Mr. Stachowiak has been responsible for instituting organizational processes and controls in a hyper-growth environment. He has led senior management teams in determining business strategy, operating tactics, key business metrics, and assigning ownership throughout high tech organizations. He is well versed in turnaround strategy, having reengineered a company's mature international business segment in only two years, to increase revenues by $100 million and net income by over $20 million.
Mr. Estess is a lawyer and business advisor who has had a successful career representing U.S. and international Fortune 100 companies, medium sized businesses and smaller/start up entrepreneurs as well as individuals, public sector enterprises and governmental entities in the legislative, regulatory and public policy process. He is responsible for developing strategic business relationships with members of congress, career and appointed and cabinet-level executives and respective staffs, and government agencies to support business development and public sector advocacy initiatives. Prior to joining CoCo, Mark served as Senior Legislative Advisor with the Washington, DC law firm of Steptoe & Johnson LLC and before that was with United States Senator Steve Symms where he focused on tax, trade and defense procurement issues related to Senator Symm’s membership on the Senate Finance and Armed Services Committees. Mark earned his BA in Economics from the University of Utah and his JD from University of Idaho. He also studied at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
As a professional software developer, Mr. Eller began his career in embedded operating system development. His passion for networking and security ignited when he conceived and founded that company's TCP/IP product line. After a brief stint performing enterprise security audits, he returned to software development as the principal architect for ClickToSecure. Since 2004, he has managed development of secure and quality-assured offline mobile networking.
As the public face of the Ghetto Hackers, he was central to DEFCON's Capture the Flag contest for the better part of a decade. During that time, he improved security contest scoring techniques, invented self-decoding human-readable stack exploits, produced fully automated web intrusion, and contributed to a patented pattern language for describing network attack processes. His most famous creation is the Caezar's Challenge party held each year during DEFCON.
Mr. Eller's credits include the keynote address for the first Shmoo Con; speaking at DEFCON, BlackHat, and TTI/Vanguard; writing for DevX Security Zone and various Syngress titles; panels for Meet the Enemy and USENIX; appearances on CNN, ABC, CBC, and TechTV; and as the subject of a Business 2.0 article.
For three years Mr. Meyer has worked closely with all of CoCo's major customers and has led CoCo's interaction with the United States Coast Guard. The Customer Satisfaction team is responsible for pre-sales engineering and proposal development, post-sale system installation, training, and customer support. Prior to working at CoCo, Mr. Meyer filled a variety of marketing, technology, and business roles at Microsoft, Netscape, Macromedia, Campus Pipeline (now Sunguard Higher Education), and paid his dot com dues at Hardware.com. Prior to his business career, he served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. Mr. Meyer earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering from MIT.
Ms. Grant is responsible for all legal and corporate governance affairs at CoCo. Prior to joining CoCo she was a corporate attorney at the law firms Lane Powell and Dorsey & Whitney, and advised companies in the areas of finance, mergers and acquisitions, international, tax, emerging technology, and general commercial matters. She recently served as a consultant for several Seattle-based biotechnology companies. Ms. Grant received a B.A. in Business from the University of Washington, a Juris Doctor from Georgia State University, and a Masters in Law from Georgetown University.
Mr. Wilson is Managing Director of Swiftsure Capital LLC, a private equity firm based in Seattle, which he founded in 2004. Prior to 2004, Mr. Wilson was Managing Partner of Venture Management Associates and Transcontinental Capital Partners, private investment banking firms. He previously served as a founder, member of the Board of Directors and senior executive of several technology companies. He is currently a Director of AdMission Corporation and Yapta, Inc. Mr. Wilson earned his MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and his JD and BA from University of Washington.
Mr. Felton is a Director Emeritus of McKinsey & Company. Prior to retiring in 2005, he managed the firm’s Seattle office and led the firm’s Korean practice. Mr. Felton has served companies in a number of industries, most notably energy, industrial, consumer, and financial services, and worked with boards of companies in North and South America, Asia and to a lesser extent in Europe and the Middle East. He started McKinsey’s Board Governance practice in the early 1990’s and currently leads the firm’s governance activities globally. Mr. Felton writes and speaks frequently on the topic of corporate leadership and board governance. Mr. Felton attended Washington State University and the Harvard Business School.