About Us: Directors
Mr. Anthony T. Maher - Chairman of the Board
Anthony T. Maher sits on the board of six companies, three of which are privately held and three that are publicly traded. These companies include BroadLight as well as Xtellus, Vervue, Adva, Alvarion, and Wavecom. Mr. Maher is also a contributor to Israel Seed's investment activities. Previously, Mr. Maher was a member of the managing board for Siemens Information and Communication Networks Group from October 1997 until February 2002. He was also the founder and chairman of Mustang Ventures, which performed corporate venture capital investing for the wireless and wireline business at Siemens.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Maher held senior management positions at Siemens and was responsible for EWSD software development, architecture, processor and integration design both in Munich and Boca Raton. Before joining Siemens, he was a member of Bell Telephone Laboratories at Naperville, Illinois, contributing to hardware and software design as well as system engineering on 4ESS. Mr. Maher graduated Cum Laude with a Masters in Electrical Engineering and Physics from the University of Illinois in 1969.
Raanan Gewirtzman - CE0
Raanan brings more than 20 years of management experience in semiconductor and software development and operations. Under his leadership, BroadLight delivered the industry’s first E2E GPON solution establishing BroadLight as a clear market leader.
Prior to being CEO, Raanan was BroadLight’s COO where he managed the BroadLight’s strategic suppliers and successfully ramped up the production lines of its silicon and transceivers products for high volume. Prior to BroadLight, Raanan held key management positions with Virata Corporation and IBM Research and Development.
Raanan holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a BSc in Computer Engineering from Technion Institute of Technology.
Neil Cohen - General Partner
Neil Cohen is a general partner of Israel Seed Partners, a leading Israeli venture capital firm which he co-founded in 1994. Since founding Israel Seed Neil has led or co-led investments in Compugen (NASDAQ: CGEN), Denx (ASE: DNX), Topspin Medical, Mobile Access Networks and Cyota Inc.
Previously Neil was vice president of sales and marketing at Biodar, a specialty chemicals and drug delivery company now a division of Makhteshim-Agan (TASE: MAIN), and before that was part of the bioscience advisory group at NM Rothschild and Sons in London and Princeton.
Neil was also one of Israel's leading English-language economic journalists, appearing frequently in print and broadcast media both in Israel and internationally.
Neil currently serves on the Board of Directors of Cyota, MobileAccess Networks and Topspin Medical. Neil holds an MA with first class honors from Oxford University.
Elie Barr - President & CEO of Expand Networks
Before joining Expand, Mr. Barr was President and Chief Operating Officer of Paradigm Geotechnology, a transnational software company supplying software to the Oil and Gas industry. Prior to Paradigm, Mr. Barr was CEO and Senior Managing Partner of Mofet, a publicly traded Venture Capital fund in Israel, where he held numerous board seats in companies he invested. Before Mofet, Mr. Barr held several positions in marketing, sales and business development in the telecommunications industry. Elie has had a distinguished military career as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and received his Bachelor degree in Economics, Philosophy, and Political Science from Bar-llan University and a graduated from INSEAD Management Program.
Arad Naveh - General Partner
Arad is a general partner at Benchmark Capital. A U.S. and Israeli citizen, Arad has extensive operating and venture capital experience in both Silicon Valley and Israel. Arad's Investment interests include Enterprise S/W, Digital Media, Networking and Internet Infrastructure. Prior to joining Benchmark, Arad was a director of business development at Cisco, where he was responsible for investment and M&A activity in Israel. Before Cisco, Arad was the founder and CEO of Class Data, which was acquired by Cisco in May 1998.
In the ten years prior to joining Class Data, Arad held executive positions in U.S. corporations. He also served as a staff engineer in the Electronics Research Lab of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Arad holds a BSc Cum Laude in Electronics and Computer Engineering from the Ben Gurion University in Israel.
Ofer Timor - General Partner
Ofer, a general partner at Delta Ventures, has significant experience managing companies, building sales and marketing organizations, developing management teams and streamlining the operations of growing organizations. As President of CST (now known as Jacada and listed on NASDAQ), a leading software company in the legacy to web enabling market, Mr. Timor helped develop a startup into a multi-national company with 140 employees and more than $10 million in annual revenues. Previously, Mr. Timor managed one of Europe leading computer hardware companies, a subsidiary of Packard Bell, for five years. Prior to that, he managed Amira (Israel) Ltd., the pioneer investment house responsible for establishing Teledata and Interpharm. Mr. Timor holds a BA Degree in economics from Haifa University.
Paul Weinstein - General Partner
Paul Weinstein is a founding General Partner with Azure Capital Partners where he specializes in communications infrastructure technologies. His current board memberships include BroadLight, Parama Networks and World Wide Packets. Other investments include Calix Networks, Crimson Microsystems, Greenwich Technology Partners and Sylantro.
Prior to Azure, Paul was a Managing Director and communications equipment analyst covering the Data Communications and Network Equipment sectors with several major investment banks in Boston, New York and San Francisco. For four consecutive years (1995-1999), Paul was a top ranked analyst in the Institutional Investor and Greenwich Associates surveys. Paul began his investment career as an analyst covering the storage sector.
Paul has provided strategic and investment advice on numerous communications equipment and data networking companies. Notable firms include; 3Com, Bay Networks, Broadcom, Cabletron, Cacheflow, Cisco, Conner, Efficient Networks, EMC, Fore Systems, Juniper, Newbridge Networks, Nortel Networks, Seagate, Synoptics, WellFleet and Xylan.
Paul received his B.S. degree in Finance from Babson College, where he graduated with highest honors. He is certified as a member of Chartered Financial Analysts.