Management

David King

David joined AirTight Networks as Chairman and CEO in 2004 and led the company through three successful rounds of funding with top tier Silicon Valley venture capital firms.  Under his management, AirTight became the global leader in wireless security and compliance solutions with over 1,000 major enterprise customers globally and top ranking in all four of Gartner's wireless security market assessments (2006, 2008, 2009, 2010).  He has driven AirTight's efforts to forge close strategic technology and go-to-market partnerships with a significant number of leading security and networking companies, including HP, Juniper, McAfee, Verizon, Qualys, Rapid7, Enterasys, Meru, Trapeze and Aerohive. 

Prior to AirTight, David was the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Proxim, the pioneering leader in wireless local area networking.  David joined Proxim in December 1992 as Vice President of Marketing, became President and CEO in July 1993 and took the company public on NASDAQ in December 1993, making Proxim the world's first publicly traded WLAN company. He grew Proxim from $4 million to over $100 million in annual revenues.

Before Proxim, David was Vice President of Marketing and Customer Services at Vitalink Communications, a pioneer in wide area data networking, and served in various executive capacities from 1990 to 1992. From 1985 to 1990, he was a senior manager in McKinsey's San Francisco office, where he played a leadership role in the firm's high technology and health care practices. 

David holds an A.B. in Economics, as well as J.D. and M.B.A. degrees, all from Harvard University.

Kiran Deshpande

Kiran brings 24 years of management and technology experience in the software industry. At AirTight he oversees sales and operations for the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions. Kiran was formerly the Managing Director and CEO of Mahindra British Telecom (MBT). Kiran grew the company from US $7m in five years achieving over 60% CAGR on revenue and 110% CAGR on net profit. The company became one of the top software services companies from India.

Prior to MBT, Kiran was Senior Vice President of Software Services at IMR (later acquired by CGI). At IMR, Kiran conceptualized and successfully implemented software engineering research programs resulting in substantial growth of company leading to IPO at NASDAQ. Kiran spent 14 years at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in various executive, sales and engineering positions.

Kiran has a BSEE from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India and MSEE from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. He is a senior member of IEEE.

Pravin Bhagwat

Pravin is a wireless networking pioneer and an accomplished researcher. He brings 20+ years of leading edge research and development experience in wireless, security and networking and leads product innovation, technical strategy and technical marketing at AirTight Networks.

Prior to founding AirTight Networks, Pravin spent 1.5 years as a visiting faculty member at Computer Science department, IIT Kanpur. He received 2005 Global Indus Technovator Award for successfully engineering the world’s first, very large scale outdoor WLAN network connecting two cities in North India.

Pravin started his research career at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center and AT&T Research where he was a lead member of MobileIP, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth research teams. Pravin has research papers (with 1000+ citations) and 16 patents to his credit.

For the past three years, Pravin has also been active in several community level green initiatives and social entrepreneurship projects. Pravin has a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur, India and an MS/PhD in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park, USA.

Jack Torgow

Jack has been in the data communications and networking industry for more than 20 plus years. At AirTight Networks, Jack is Vice President, Worldwide Sales. He is responsible for developing and marketing Enterprise Wireless LAN Security solutions using AirTight WIPS and Wi-Fi access products. His duties include wireless network design reviews with customers globally.

Prior to AirTight Networks, Jack spent a total of ten years between Cisco Systems as a Manager of Channel Operations and Lucent Technologies, where he was the Vice President of the Data Networking interfacing with some of the most complex end user customer's designs.

Anthony Paladino

Anthony is technical customer liaison and is responsible for oversight and planning of all large AirTight product installations.  He has over 15 years experience in technical sales management, operations management, and product strategy. For the last 9 years he has concentrated his efforts in high tech startups, working with cutting edge wireless security applications and contributing to the development of wireless intrusion prevention systems.

Before joining the AirTight team in 2005, Anthony spent 3 years with AirDefense Inc.(acquired by Motorola) playing a key role in creating a technical sales process highlighting both an emerging technology and a new information security vertical. Prior to AirDefense, Anthony held product development and technical sales roles at AT&T, PageNet Wireless, and Cervalis LLC.

He holds a BS in Corporate Communications from Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Hemant Chaskar

Hemant Chaskar is Vice President for Technology and Innovation at AirTight. He oversees R&D, product strategy, and intellectual property. He also performs roles in technical marketing, business development, and various customer facing activities. Hemant has more than 13 years of experience in the networking, wireless, and security industry, and holds several patents in these technology areas.

Prior to AirTight, Hemant has held positions at Nokia Research and Lucent Technologies.

He holds Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Gopinath KN

Gopinath KN (Gopi) has more than 15 years of experience in systems, networks and security. He is one of the founding employees at AirTight Networks and has spent the last decade creating cutting-edge WLAN access and security solutions. As the Vice President of Engineering, he is in charge of the overall technical development and engineering delivery of the flagship secure Wi-Fi access product line. He has successfully led the delivery of more than a dozen technology intensive and (at times) parallel product releases to the market. The product releases have won several industry accolades & had a significant impact on the company’s top line. Gopi is also responsible for OEM delivery, people management & process innovation in the engineering organization.

In addition to overseeing the engineering activities, he is actively involved in conceiving forward-looking projects to create compelling market differentiators. Gopi has several patents and technical publications to his credit. He is also a speaker, instructor and an author. Gopi speaks at popular international conferences such as RSA, Interop, CSI & other IEEE/ACM events.

In the past, he has been a member of Bell Labs research, Murray Hill, NJ, USA and holds a Master of Technology degree (MTech., Computer Science & Engineering) from IIT Kanpur, India.

Jatin Parekh

Jatin is responsible for product development and production at AirTight. With over 20 years of industry experience, he joined AirTight in its formative stages in 2002. Prior to AirTight, Jatin was Vice President of Product Management with CoreObjects, Inc. (recently acquired by Symphony, inc.) helping startups move their business forward with well-defined and clearly focused products.

Before CoreObjects, he spent 3 years with CGI (formerly IMR); where he launched and developed its Euro conversion practice in addition to managing new technology projects; and 5 years with Oracle Financial Services Software Limited (formerly i-Flex Solutions and Citicorp Information Technology Industries Limited) where he helped nurture and bring to market their early products as the company grew from a small group of employees to several hundred in strength.

Jatin holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics) from University of Mumbai.

Kaustubh Phanse

Kaustubh joined AirTight as the Principal Wireless Architect in 2007 before growing into the role of Chief Evangelist. He brings over 10 years of R&D experience in the fields of computer networks, wireless communication and mobile computing. With his unique mix of skills and ability to effectively engage different audiences with ease, Kaustubh contributes to various aspects of AirTight's business - from customer engagement, technical and product marketing, branding and visual communication to product management, UI/UX design and wireless technology R&D.

Kaustubh is frequently invited to speak at industry conferences such as RSA, Mobile Connect, Interop, InfoSecurity Summit and CSI, to conduct technical training, and to give guest lectures at technology and business schools. He has published several research papers in international scientific conferences and journals and written contributed articles.

Prior to joining AirTight, Kaustubh was Assistant Professor at Lulea University of Technology and Research Fellow at Uppsala University, both in Sweden. He has a M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech, USA.

Tom Conklin

Tom has over 20 years experience in the IT field, with specific expertise in government solutions. For the last nine years Tom has focused on the Information Assurance arena with specific emphasis on WiFi security. Coming from the manufacturing world, Tom has been providing WiFi security solutions which meet various government regulations including DoD 8100.2, AR25-2, and DISA's wireless STIG.     

He brings vast experience working with both DoD and civilian agencies helping them to protect both wired and wireless networks from wireless threats, ranging from authentication and encryption to wireless intrusion prevention.

Steve Choi

Steve brings 15 years of application, network and wireless security experience to AirTight. Prior to joining AirTight, Steve was Director of Business Development at Kwise, the leading provider of WIPS products and services in South Korea,  where he was instrumental in growing its WIPS marketshare using AirTight’s SpectraGuard to 70%, making it the unrivalled market leader in South Korea. 

Previously, Steve was the co-founder of Netcruz in South Korea and served as Chief Technology Officer, an application and network performance management solution provider. At Innet,  the leading Cisco Network Integrator,  he built a successful product development team to deliver the first Web based network management system (WNMS) solutions. Before Innet, Steve served as the lead product specialist at Compuware which provides solutions to optimize end-to-end application performance.  He holds a BS in electrical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. 

Johan van der Welle

Johan brings over ten years of experience in high tech sales and channel marketing with a focus on network security in EMEA. Before joining AirTight Johan was Regional Sales Director at BlueCat Networks, a global provider of network management solutions that address the IP Address Management market. Prior to BlueCat, he was Area Director Northern Europe & Southern Africa with TippingPoint, a global provider of network security solutions. He was responsible for opening markets in the Benelux, Nordics, Baltics and Southern Africa regions. He grew that business from virtually nothing to well above $10 Million within three years. Before that Johan held various senior sales and channel positions including Territory Manager for the Netherlands at McAfee International B.V.

Della Lowe

Della is a two time Emmy Award winning broadcast news journalist who spent many years at ABC News in New York. At AirTight, Della leads the marketing team and is responsible for marketing programs, internal and external corporate communications and public relations. Previous to joining AirTight in March of 2007, Della was Director of Corporate Communications at Qualys, the leading provider of on demand IT security risk and compliance management solutions – delivered as a service. Before Qualys, Della spent 6 years at Keynote Systems as the Senior Manager for Public Relations and played a key role in creating visibility in the press for Keynote and developing its Keynote Performance Awards Program and Customer Reference Program.

Della sits on the marketing committee of Entrepreneurs Foundation, which is dedicated to helping companies to meaningfully engage in their communities through strategic corporate citizenship and corporate social responsibility programs. She also was a key member of Keynote’s Community Involvement Committee and ran Keynote’s mentor program at The Electronics Arts Academy at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, CA.

Mike Baglietto

Mike is responsible for product marketing at AirTight and oversees the inside sales team and lead generation. He is a veteran of the Silicon Valley high tech industry with 20 years of experience in product marketing, sales and technical account management. Prior to joining AirTight, Mike held the position of senior product marketing manager for data protection services at eVault. Before eVault, Mike held senior product marketing positions at Quest Software, Keynote Systems, SBE, Inc., NetManage and Software Publishing Corporation.

Mike holds a BA in International Relations from the University of California, Davis.

Deepak Gupta

Deepak leads the AirTight team of software design experts that ensures that the AirTight products are robust, scalable, and meet customer expectations. Deepak has a unique mix of hands-on, in-the-trenches software development experience and a long academic research experience in Computer Science. He holds BTech and PhD degrees in Computer Science, both from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur.

Prior to joining AirTight, he was an Associate Professor in the Computer Science & Engineering Department at his alma mater where he researched and taught topics in Operating Systems and Computer Security for close to a decade. He has published several articles in international journals and conferences in these areas of expertise.