The team is experienced in enterprise and system security software, and collectively holds more than 10 patents in enterprise and security software. All of team members have worked together for many years in the past.

Ann C. Ting, Ph. D.
Founder, Chief Strategy Officer and Chairperson of the Board

Ann is a proven entrepreneur, having served as president and chief operating officer of Confer Software, a company she co-founded in 1994 as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Mayfield Fund. Ann took Confer through its successful merger with Quovadx (NASDAQ:QVDX) Inc., and stayed as the CTO and Executive VP of R&D. Before founding Confer Software, she held various senior management positions at Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, and GE. Ann holds her Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University.

Gary Hermansen
President and Chief Executive Officer

Gary has over 20 years of business and entrepreneurial experience including engineering, sales/marketing and executive management experience. Gary's experience spans the markets telecommunications, email security and semiconductor industries. Most recently Gary served for 5+ years as the CEO and President of Global IP Solutions, the leader in the embedded VoIP technology. Global IP Solutions is a publicly traded company on a European exchange. Gary was also the CEO of Brightmail, an innovator in the SaaS email services market that was acquired by Symantec. Prior to that Gary served as President and GM of Glenayre Consumer Products and held senior positions at Wireless Access, Cypress Semiconductor and Intel. Gary holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering.

Ben T. Chang, Ph. D.
Chief Architect and Co-founder

Ben is the former system and security architect with Confer & Quovadx; research engineer at Informix research lab. Ben got his Ph.D. on scholarship from University of Southern California in Computer Science studying security and DBMS, and was a Chinese Navy lieutenant for two years after he got his B.S. from National Chiao Tung University.

Les Wright
Chief Financial Officer

Les has 30 years of financial experience in Silicon Valley high tech companies. This includes over 15 years of experience as CFO/COO in successful public and private companies from start-ups to over $400 million in revenue. Les has helped companies successfully navigate the IPO process, follow-on secondary public offerings, and various types of private equity and borrowing arrangements, which have raised over $250 million in capital. In addition, Les has helped lead over 12 M&A transactions totaling over $1 billion. Les' executive level experience includes Infoseek Corporation, The ASK Group, Verplex Systems, Fractal Design and Pharsight Corporation. Les holds a B.S. in Business Administration (Accounting) from San Jose State University, (1990 Outstanding Business Alumni Award), and is a Certified Public Accountant (California).

Rebecca Franke
Vice President of Product Management

Rebecca brings to Fortressware more than 20 years experience in the product management and marketing of enterprise software. As a consultant and senior manager, Rebecca has established several product management groups, including at VA Software where she was the Director of Product Management. Her background includes heading a new products group at Xerox Corp. which developed one of the first Internet enabled enterprise products for the commercial market. Rebecca received her MA from the University of California, Berkeley.