Our Fearless Leaders
Board of Directors
Jim Ewel, CEO and Chairman, GoAhead Software
Enrique Godreau, Managing Director, Voyager Capital
Michael Avon, Principal , Columbia Capital
John Hansen, CEO, Stillwater Connection LLC
Board Observers
William L. Heston, Cedar Grove Investments
John Mascarenas, Intel Corporation
Company Counsel
Craig Sherman, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Executive Management
Team
Jim Ewel, CEO and Chairman
Jim Ewel was named CEO of GoAhead Software in April 2003. He previously spent 12 years at Microsoft in a variety of executive positions. Most recently, Jim served as marketing vice president for Windows Servers. He has also held executive marketing positions in Microsoft’s SQL Server, BackOffice and NT Server groups. In 1998, Jim was responsible for the worldwide launch of SQL Server 7.0 at Comdex, where it won the Best of Show award. He co-led the Windows 2000 launch and also drove the acquisition of NetIQ’s operations management product to strengthen Microsoft’s ability to compete in the enterprise market. Jim has also worked at Information Builders and Control Data. He has a B.A. in English from Furman University in South Carolina and has done graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania.
Asif Naseem, President and COO, GoAhead Software
Dr. Asif Naseem is president and chief operating officer of GoAhead Software, Inc. in Seattle, WA. He is also the president of the Service Availability Forum. He has more than 20 years of experience in the computer and communications industry. Asif is a veteran speaker having presented at national and international events such as ITU Telecom Geneva, GSM World Congress, CTIA, and numerous other events. He has also presented papers at conferences organized by ACM, IEEE, and others, and is a frequent author of papers published in several technical journals and magazines. He has an MS in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computer Engineering from Michigan State University.
David Bishop, Director of Finance and Administration
Dave Bishop joined GoAhead in October 1999 as controller. He is responsible for all aspects of GoAhead's finance and accounting functions and serves as the company's corporate secretary. Dave has more than 24 years of business experience. Prior to GoAhead, he served for eight years as the Controller and CFO for CellPro, Inc., a publicly traded technology company in the Seattle area. He also served as controller for MicroProbe Corporation, a biotechnology corporation. Dave began his career in the public accounting industry with KPMG. He has a B.A. of Business Administration from the University of Texas, at Austin and is a CPA.
Michael Nitso, Director of World Wide Sales.
Michael Nitso brings to GoAhead more than 23 years of experience in the sale of enterprise and wireless solutions. Most recently, Michael was a senior sales executive at SafeHarbor Technology Corporation, a leading provider of customer interaction and business intelligence services. In this role, he was instrumental in refocusing SafeHarbor’s solution sales efforts, secured strategic relationships with Global 1000 companies and increased the firm’s revenues. Prior to that, Nitso served as senior sales executive and director of channel sales at NewWorld Commerce, a leading provider of automated marketing and campaign management solutions. During his tenure, he was recognized as the top sales representative and was instrumental in facilitating the acquisition of NewWorld Commerce by Connectus Direct. From 1984-2001, Michael held various sales management and executive positions at AvantGo, AT&T Wireless and Apple Computer. He has a bachelor’s degree from Roger Williams College.
Holger Herbert, Director of Product Management
Holger Herbert brings to GoAhead more than 15 years of product management and marketing experience spanning software and hardware products and services. Holger was most recently Director of Product Marketing for Insightful Corporation, where helped refocus the company on building enterprise class predictive analytics solutions focused on life sciences and financial verticals. Prior to his role at Insightful, Holger held a senior product management role at Siebel/Oracle where he helped architect and build Siebel CRM product infrastructure, including high availability. Holger was instrumental in Siebel’s hosted single tenant CRM platform efforts, SaaS strategy and SMB/mid-market product strategy, in addition to developing Siebel’s TCO strategy. Holger has worked extensively with embedded software hardware platforms for Compaq (HP) and IBM as well as in areas of Industrial automation. Holger has spoken at technical conferences around the world including Microsoft Road shows and Siebel World. He holds a Master’s degree from the University of Virginia in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with a Manufacturing Engineering Certificate and a Bachelor’s in Mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech.
