Deepak Kamlani
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Deepak Kamlani founded Global Inventures as Interprise Ventures after the company he worked for, Centex Telemanagement, Inc. was acquired by MFS Communications in 1994. At Centex, he was responsible for marketing and during his tenure Centex's revenue grew from $40M to $216M. His experience is exclusively in the technology sector and includes P & L management, and marketing, product development, and management, strategic programs and business development for leading US, European, and Japanese companies.

Deepak began his career with Standard Telephones and Cables, Ltd., then a division of ITT Corporation in the U.K. (and later ICL and Northern Telecom), where he worked with senior management to develop new corporate strategies following telecom market liberalization. He then moved to GTE Corporation in the U.S., where he supported a corporate development team involved in the acquisition of Sprint Communications, managed direct sales operations for the large PBX and private network division, and helped develop and introduce the F9600 Broadband PBX for the U.S. market for Fujitsu GTE Business Systems (FGBS). Following this, Deepak was responsible for marketing for Toshiba America's Telecommunications Systems Division. He was Vice President of Marketing and Sales for Votrax, Inc., a supplier of integrated CTI equipment, and led business development, technology transfer, and strategic ventures for NTT America, Inc before moving to Centex.

Deepak graduated with an Honors degree in Physical Chemistry from University College, University of London, in 1979, and a M.S. in Management from The Imperial College, also in the University of London, in 1981. He serves on the advisory board of start-ups, provides advisory services to venture capital firms, and is a frequent speaker at technology seminars and shows around the world.

John Montgomery
Chief Operating Officer

John Montgomery joined Global Inventures as Chief Operating Officer, with responsibility for optimizing all elements of the business to be most effective in service to our clients. He works closely with each of our leadership team to assure our clients needs are anticipated, plans accurately communicated and effectively implemented.

Before joining Global Inventures, John was CFO of SynchroNet Marine Inc., a Norwegian financed global data based trading infrastructure for worldwide repositioning of cargo containers, with responsibility to their Board to establish disciplined financial and planning processes and to develop and manage the complete accounting and finance function and team. Prior to that he was CFO/COO for APTAS (now Local Matters, Inc.), an application services provider to online directories and portals, where he directed all domestic and international financial and accounting, human resources, and legal operations.

Before APTAS John was CFO and VP for PrimeOne TeleTV, where he managed budgets, forecasts and financial five-year plans, performed integration with strategic business plans and monitored operational, marketing and sales metrics against plans. He also participated in the negotiations leading to a sale of this business to WorldCom. John began his career with Pacific Bell, and served in various capacities in Strategic Planning, Business Development and IT before becoming Executive Director - Business Planning, Financial Management for Pacific Bell Video Services, which was taken private in 1997 as PrimeOne TeleTV.

John received his MBA in Finance and his BA in International Business and Asian Studies from Brigham Young University. He received his JD from John F. Kennedy School of Law, specializing in multi-media law.

Bill Chase
Vice President, Executive Director

As Vice President for Global Inventures, Bill works with several technology communities, and provides a wide variety of strategic responsibilities leveraging his more than 20 years of experience in financial services and technology. Bill regularly consults at the highest levels of consortia leadership. He offers leadership and expertise on strategic planning, program and project management, financial oversight, sales and membership recruitment, product certification, interoperability programs, and board of director operations.

Prior to joining Global Inventures, Bill was involved in a variety of start-up organizations and established enterprises. Bill was President and Chief Operating Officer of BANK UP Business Recovery Services, providing business continuation services to financial institutions. Bill was responsible for account relationship management as well as facilities and vendor administration. He was also responsible for oversight of partner relations and for implementing technology solutions enabling new products.

Bill managed technology offerings for Bank of San Francisco and was a consultant with a variety of financial institutions. Bill also spent time at Information Technology Incorporated (ITI) installing and supporting turnkey enterprise software and hardware solutions for financial institutions including commercial banks, savings banks and credit unions. ITI is now wholly-owned by Fiserv, Inc.

Bill holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and a MBA in finance from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

Kerry Christensen
Vice President of Business Development,
Executive Director

Kerry Christensen is a management and sales professional with over 25 years of cross-industry experience. Before joining Global Inventures as Vice President of Business Development he served as Vice President of Sales for Convesagent, Inc., now a division of Microsoft, where he was responsible for not only sales but licensing and partner programs which resulted in the company’s acquisition. Prior to that he was Director of Channel Development for Liberate Technologies where he managed the company’s licensing in the Asia/Pacific and Latin America regions. Prior experience includes Tandem Computers, GE Information Services and Premenos Corporation. He has actively participated in various standards organizations such as ANSI, EDIFACT, ITU, AIAG and ATA. He has authored articles on standards adoption and issues for trade publications and has been a featured speaker at conferences. Kerry holds a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in International Relations.

Steve Crumb
Vice President, Executive Director

Steve joins GI after serving as the Executive Director and VP of Operations of the Open Grid Forum (formerly the Global Grid Forum) for five years. Steve provided strategic and tactical leadership including facilitation of Board, Advisory and Management Steering Committees. He managed Alliance revenue generation including a membership program, grants and sponsorships. Steve has spent over 20 years in various high technology companies often applying leading-edge technologies to their businesses. As a Senior Systems Engineer at Convergys Corporation, he provided leadership to systems engineering and development teams exploring component-based development techniques. While at Motorola he worked in the Corporate networking lab, serving as a test engineer for internetworking equipment and architecting many of Motorola’s first internetworks. At the National Center for Supercomputing Applications he installed and managed industrial and academic networks and was involved in the Internet Engineering Task Force. Steve holds a degree in Computer Science from Western Kentucky University.

Jim Polizotto
Vice President, Executive Director

Jim has extensive experience in networking, video streaming and standards based systems technology.

From 1994 until November 2000, Jim held several engineering director level positions for CLI and VTEL. His primary focus was to ensure the timely release and interoperability of videoconferencing products. In January 2000 Jim was appointed Director of Operations of Onscreen24, a wholly owned subsidiary of VTEL, created to focus on Internet based software development.

Prior to 1994, Jim helped create a multimedia development laboratory for IBM in the heart of Silicon Valley, and he was responsible for delivering many successful products to the marketplace. Among his more significant multimedia accomplishments at IBM, Jim's organization developed an Internet based multimedia video streaming server in 1993 that was voted Best New Product at Spring COMDEX 1993 by Byte Magazine. Prior to that he was responsible for introducing several OSI products to the marketplace. Jim has been a strong advocate of international standards throughout his career. He served on the IMTC Board of Directors from 1995 to 2000 and has a BS from the University of Rochester in New York.

Paul Ritchie
Vice President, Executive Director

Paul has over 20 years of experience in Telecommunications and Business Management with emphasis in Marketing, Product Development and Financial Analysis. Prior to joining Global Inventures, Paul worked for SBC Communications on CTI projects and Interactive Voice Response systems for large, blue chip clients. From 1984 to 1995 he was Director of Marketing for Centex Telemanagement, through their initial IPO and rapid growth until their acquisition by MFS Communications. Prior to that, he worked for MCI.

Paul holds both BS and MBA degrees from UCLA and enjoys continuing his education with courses from the UC Berkeley program for telecommunications certification.