The Blade.org Board of Directors
 

The Blade.org Board of Directors is comprised of senior executives drawn from the ranks of Governing Board member companies.
 
 

	Douglas Balog, IBM, Vice President Mr. Douglas Balog, Vice President, IBM BladeCenter Business Line Executive, Systems and Technology Group, is responsible for the overall IBM BladeCenter business and strategy. Mr. Balog also serves as Chairperson of the industry BladeServer solution community - Blade.org. Previously, Mr. Balog was Vice President, IBM BladeCenter Development, Systems and Technology Group. In that role, he was responsible for the technical direction and development of IBM's BladeCenter products and overall xSeries software. Until mid-2004, Mr. Balog served as Vice President of IBM TotalStorage Open Software Development in the Systems and Technology Group, and was responsible for leading the development of open system storage software products and autonomic storage management infrastructure. At that time he was also the Senior Site Executive of the IBM San Jose, California facility. Mr. Balog graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a B.S. in Computer Science in 1983.
	Jason Waxman, Intel, General Manager Jason Waxman is the General Manager in Intel's Server Platforms Group responsible for High Density Servers. His role includes a focus on blade servers, internet datacenters and technology for future dense data center architecture. He has previously served as the director for Intel's Xeon™ processor and chipset product lines and the related platform enabling and customer relationships. Jason has spent the last 9 years of his Intel career in Enterprise computing focused on server products and technologies involved in the introduction of over 12 new platforms. Previous Intel managerial roles have included enterprise performance, platform marketing and end user marketing. Prior to Intel, Jason worked in strategic planning for industrial components company and as a management consultant. He holds Bachelor and Masters Degrees in engineering and a Masters of Business Administration from Cornell University.
	Daniel Cohen, Brocade, Business Development Executive Daniel has been with Brocade Communications for over 7 years and is responsible for Brocade's business development activities across the various lines of business within IBM. Since Brocade's entry into the BladeCenter ecosystem with the first generation SAN Switch Module, Daniel has been an integral part of the business and development teams within Brocade that have delivered best in class I/O module capabilities for BladeCenter customers. He continues to be involved in the day to day working relationship with IBM to deliver industry leading solutions to BladeCenter customers. In addition to his current role, Daniel has worked in Brocade's solutions marketing group which is tasked with communicating to customers the value of Brocade SAN solutions. Prior to moving to Brocade, Daniel's work experience included positions in organizations focusing on server solutions, storage solutions and IT services. He had responsibility for business development within Hitachi Data Systems OEM sales organization, was a founding partner at a systems integrator focusing on server and storage solutions and worked for SunGard focusing on open systems business continuity solutions. Daniel graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration.
	Vikram Karvat, NetXen, Senior Marketing Director Vikram has 15 years of experience in marketing and sales, in the systems and semiconductor segments. Vikram's career spans the PC, server and networking industries. Prior to joining NetXen, Vikram was director of marketing at Broadcom, where he was responsible for strategic planning and product marketing for server chipsets. While at Broadcom, he successfully launched the storage product line of chips used by top tier enterprise storage vendors. Before that, Vikram spent six years at National Semiconductor marketing processors, server chipsets and networking products. He holds an MBA degree from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario and a BSEE from the University of Alberta, both with honors.
	Adam Mendoza, NetApp, Senior Manager for Virtualization and Grid Infrastructures Mr. Mendoza has over 20 years experience in the Information Technology industry. He is currently a Senior Manager for the Virtualization and Grid Infrastructures (VGI) business unit within NetApp. One of his principal responsibilities is the development of the virtualization solution strategy and portfolio for the VGI organization that utilize blade server architectures and provide reference architectures that customers can leverage and adopt. He is also responsible for the development of strategic alliances with leading technology companies that jointly focus on the business, technology and operational considerations for next generation data center environments.
	Shilesh Naik, Blade Network Technologies, Vice President of Sales Shailesh Naik has more than 25 years of senior sales, marketing and channel experience in the technology sector. He established and led the sales function for Nortel's Blade Server Switch Business Unit. Under his sales leadership, BSSBU garnered the top market share position in a highly competitive market. Prior to joining Nortel, Shailesh held senior executive positions at Qwest as Vice President of Business Development and General Manager of Qwest's Storage Utility business. Previously, he spent 16 years at HP in executive sales and marketing roles including General Manager of storage sales for North America. Shailesh has extensive global experience, having worked in the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and the U.S. He has an MBA from Lancaster University and a bachelor's degree in Economics from Kingston Polytechnic University, United Kingdom.
	Ken Pierrehumbert, APCC, Global OEM Account Manager Ken Pierrehumbert serves as Global OEM Account Manager at American Power Conversion Corp. acting as manager of the OEM relationship between IBM and APC on a global basis. In this role, Ken is actively working to develop high-performance, energy efficient APC power and cooling solutions to support and complement deployments of IBM blade centers. APC has been an OEM supplier to IBM for over 13 years. Current OEM products include rack-mount UPS units to power the Blade Center and Blade Center H sold under the IBM System x brand. Ken has 27 years of business development experience in the power and IT field with industry leaders including General Electric and Matsushita Electric Corporation.