Rick Tinsley joined Silver Peak Systems in 2004 as president and chief executive officer. In 1998, he co-founded Turnstone Systems, served as president and CEO for six years leading the company through a highly successful IPO. In 1997, Tinsley was an “Entrepreneur in Residence” with the venture capital firms Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital. From 1993 to 1997, Tinsley held various positions at Newbridge Networks, most recently as vice president and general manager with global operating responsibility for LAN Products. Prior to joining Newbridge, Tinsley was responsible for ATM products at TranSwitch Corporation and served as business development manager at Texas Instruments where he managed the startup of the TI486 program. Tinsley earned his Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Dallas and a bachelor of science in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Mr. Hughes founded Silver Peak in 2004, and is responsible for the company's technical direction and product vision. He previously held senior architect positions with Cisco Systems, Stratacom, Blueleaf, and Nortel. Dr. Hughes has a PhD in packet network optimization and he has been awarded more than 25 patents for networking related inventions.
Most recently held a director position in the finance organization at Atheros Communications, and previously served as the Chief Financial Officer of Turnstone Systems. Mr. Yeaman previously held positions at Atmosphere Networks (acquired by Ditech Communications), Whitetree Networks (acquired by Ascend Communications), and KPMG.
Mr. Lambert has over 20 years experience leading sales teams, forging corporate partnerships and managing customer support organizations. Prior to joining Silver Peak, he was the vice president of field operations for NeoPath Networks, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in April of 2007. Before NeoPath, Mr. Lambert held executive sales positions at Candera, Z-force, and Solid Data Systems. Mr. Lambert is a requested speaker and has presented at numerous storage conferences around the globe. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at Solid Data Systems. r. Helfer develops and manages strategic partnerships for Silver Peak. He has over twenty years experience selling networking, computing, and storage equipment. Most recently, he was VP of sales and business development at Siliquent, a fabless semiconductor and software company (acquired by Broadcom). Previous experience includes management roles at StrataCom and Cisco Systems.
Jeff Aaron serves as Silver Peak Systems' vice president of marketing, where he is responsible for the global promotion of the company's Wide Area Network (WAN) acceleration products. He has more than 14 years of networking and telecommunications industry experience. Prior to joining Silver Peak, Aaron led the strategic direction for product marketing for a variety of leading technology companies, including Cisco, Airespace, Turnstone Systems, and Newbridge Networks (now Alcatel). Aaron began his career as a senior consultant at Ernst and Young where he counseled and provided direction to Fortune 100 companies with LAN/WAN design and disaster recovery planning. Aaron is a regular speaker at industry conferences and has written articles and opinion columns in a variety of industry publications, including Network World, Computerworld, TechTarget, Optimize, and Telephony magazine. Aaron earned his bachelor of arts in Computer Science and Economics from Duke University.
Mr. Ennis has over 14 years experience building enterprise and service-provider networking equipment. Most recently, he served as Senior Director of Systems Engineering and Chief Technologist at CIENA. Prior to CIENA, Damon was in senior management and technical roles at FORE Systems.
Most recently was a co-founder and the VP of Engineering at The Fanfare Group, where he built the engineering team and led product development from inception to early revenue. Prior to Fanfare Carl was the VP of Engineering at Turnstone systems. Before that Carl held various management positions at Newbridge Networks and Nortel Networks.
Mr. Purser has twenty years experience in the high tech industry. Most recently, he served as acting vice president of supply chain and logistics at Linksys, a division of Cisco. Prior to his 11 year tenure at Cisco, Mr. Purser spent several years at a variety of early stage high tech companies and investment banking institutions.