About the author
I was born in Suffolk County in the U.K., in 1970. I’m dual-national – British and American. I did a lot of traveling with my parents when I was younger, and have lived in Colorado, Washington, and Southern California. When I’m not traveling on business (which seems rare these days), I split my time between homes in Ottawa, Canada (where Nortel’s R&D headquarters is) and in New Hampshire, where I spent time when I was growing up. My degree, in fact, in electrical engineering, is from the University of New Hampshire.
I’ve been in the communication industry my entire career. I started at Cabletron Systems, doing a variety of jobs, made my way up through the ranks and eventually became the CTO. When Cabletron split into four companies, I stayed with the holding company and then later joined Enterasys, the enterprise arm of Cabletron. I was there throughout the history of Enterasys, until we took the company private a few years ago. Most recently, I was the CTO for networking technologies at Broadcom Corporation, the largest fabless semiconductor company in the communication industry.
A lot of people ask me why I decided to leave Broadcom to join Nortel. A couple of reasons. One, is that at heart I am a systems guy, and Nortel is a systems company. I love the idea of building products and solutions, so Nortel was a very good fit for me in terms of what Nortel does, who its customers are, and what its value proposition is. The other reason is Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski and his power of persuasion.
And as Mike Z promised, at Nortel I have found great people, great technologies, great capabilities, great opportunities, and great challenges. Despite some of the challenges, however – or, maybe because of them – there’s not a doubt in my mind that I made the right decision to join Nortel. I’m happy to be here and to be working to help lead Nortel into the future. This is an incredible company, with enviable assets, on the threshold of significant opportunities.
In terms of hobbies, I like martial arts (I used to teach karate – Shotokan – and have a black belt in that area). I also like hockey, and played defense for 18 years and left wing for one. And, I love to travel. I’ve been to most countries in the world and, with a trip in 2004 to the Antarctica (that’s me in the picture above with the penguins), I’m officially a "7 continent" member) 
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