About Us: Management
Raanan Gewirtzman - CEO
Raanan has 25 years of semiconductor and technology management experience. Raanan serves as BroadLight CEO and member of the board since 2007. Under his leadership, BroadLight delivered the industry’s first E2E GPON solution establishing BroadLight as a market leader world-wide. Raanan joined BroadLight at 2003 and prior to his current position he served as BroadLight’s COO where he was in charge of BroadLight development and production and managed the company’s strategic suppliers. Raanan successfully ramped up the product lines of BroadLight silicon and transceivers into mass production.
Prior to BroadLight, Raanan held a Vice President role at Virata Corporation (became GlobespanVirata) where he was instrumental in building R&D arm and developed a new range of communication processors of a high-volume product lines. Raanan served for 14 years in IBM Research and Development where he was engaged in inventing new technologies for semiconductor design verification and semiconductor product and IP development management.
Raanan holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a BSc in Computer Engineering from Technion Institute of Technology.
Dror Heldenberg - CFO
Dror comes with three years of experience as a CPA with the accounting firm Brightman-Almagor, and 6 more years as a Director of Finance at several hi-tech companies. Mr. Heldenberg's experience includes among others: raising funds from Israeli and foreign investors, establishing financial departments in the USA and budget management. Dror earned an MBA from Tel Aviv University.
Didi Ivancovsky - Founder, VP Marketing
Didi worked for 18 years at Telrad (a subsidiary of Nortel) as R&D manager. His varied communications background includes joint projects with Nortel as well as HW and SW Telephony projects. In 1998, Mr. Ivancovsky joined the Access Division of Telrad and served as Head of the Embedded Software department focusing mainly on Broadband Access involving Sonet/SDH, ATM, DSL and Telephony. This division was subsequently spun off, and became a new company - BeConnected. Didi holds an MSc from the Hebrew University.
Eli Weitz - CTO
Eli brings nearly 20 years of experience of managing VLSI design and development in worldwide leading communication semiconductors companies. Before joining BroadLight, Eli was the director of VLSI of Infineon (Savan) in Israel, managing the development of semiconductor for VDSL, Ethernet switch and UWB. Before that, he was the director of VLSI for Globespan/Virata in Israel. Most of his experience was in Motorola semiconductor (Currently Freescale) where he was responsible for the development of the family of the worldwide most successful communication IC - the PowerQuicc, Eli holds a Bsc (Cum Laude) and Msc degrees in computer engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.
Igor Elkanovich - VP VLSI
Igor brings 22 years of experience in the development of hardware and semiconductor products. Prior to BroadLight, Igor led development of VDSL chips at Infineon (Savan) and Gigabit Ethernet PHY chips at Mysticom. The majority of Igor's experience was with Motorola Semiconductors (Freescale) where he was responsible for the development of audio/video chips for set-top box applications and was part of the cell processor design team. Prior to Motorola, Igor led development of DSP-based equipment for brain research at Hebrew University and maritime navigation systems for the Navy. Igor holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from Baku University, USSR.
Doron Tal - VP Business Development and Product Managment
Doron brings over 14 years of experience with telecommunications equipment and networking semiconductors. He brings strategic leadership in product marketing and business development with specific expertise in developing and launching new technologies and products. Prior to BroadLight, Doron was with Axerra Networks, RAD Data Communications and Digital Semiconductor (currently Intel). Doron holds a BSc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.
Gal Sitton - VP Systems
Gal brings 14 years of varied experience in the development of hardware, software, DSPs and semiconductor products. Prior to BroadLight, Gal led development of VDSL software and integration at Infineon (Savan) and was part of chip development in Virata and Intel Haifa. In his earlier background Gal served as an officer in the Technical Unit of the Intelligence Corps of the Israeli Defense Forces, heading communication systems development mostly related to digital processing. Gal holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from Tel-Aviv University and a B.Sc. from the Technion. Gal is an active participant in the FSAN committee and he is the editor of the GPON Implementers Guide.
Abbie Kwan - Regional Sales VP, APAC
Abbie joined Broadlight in June 2010 as regional sales VP for APAC. He brings more than 20 years of experience of sales, marketing and engineering in the semiconductor industry. Prior to joining BroadLight, he was responsible for sales in China and South East Asia for Atheros. Before that, he spent five years with Freescale heading networking sales team in Asia Pacific and global telecom accounts in China. Abbie also held sales position in IDT China for China and multiple sales, marketing and engineering positions in Motorola Semiconductor. Abbie earned Bachelor of Electrical of Engineering from Dalhousie University in Canada.
Israel Ferber - Regional Sales VP
Israel joined BroadLight in 2001 and has over 20 years of experience in variety of high-technology Sales and Marketing positions. Prior to assuming his current position he was responsible for sales into the EMEA region in Jigami Corporation. Before that Israel spent over 12 year with ECI telecom on several sales position both in the Israel Head Quarters and at ECI Telecom UK, responsible for sales to tier one carriers and operators in Europe. Israel holds an MBA degree from Middlesex University London UK
Wade Giles - Regional Sales VP, Americas
Wade brings 15+ years of progressive semiconductor sales experience. He has an extensive leadership and sales management background with expertise in providing technical and commercial solutions to telecommunication OEM’s and system integrators. Prior to BroadLight, Wade was with Infineon Technologies and Teccor Electronics. Wade holds a BS in Physics from San Diego State University.