Jon Hopper
Chief Executive Officer
Jon Hopper became President and Chief Executive Officer of Xtera in February 2004.
Prior to Xtera, Jon spent 15 years as the Chief Executive of several capital equipment companies. Those companies include Dynamotion Corp. (merged with ESI, NASDAQ ESIO) and IRSI (merged with Photon Dynamics, NASDAQ PHTN). Jon has also held senior management positions at Photon Dynamics and ESI. Jon has a very successful track record taking emerging companies with innovative products and building them into profitable global commercial enterprises capable of supporting multi-national customers.
Dr. Jon Bayless
Chairman, Xtera Communications
Dr. Jon Bayless has been associated with Sevin Rosen Funds since 1981, where he focused on developing business opportunities in the fields of telecommunications infrastructure and services created by the technology transition to photonics. He typically acted as the lead investor and often invested at the incubation stage. Jon's investments at Sevin Rosen included more than 30 telecommunications infrastructure companies, including Ciena, Lightspeed, and Monterey Networks.
Cliff Higgerson, ComVentures
Cliff Higgerson's 25 years of active involvement in the communications field include research, consulting, planning, investment banking, and venture capital. Prior to forming ComVentures, Mr. Higgerson was a General Partner of Vanguard Venture Partners where he is still involved and responsible for several portfolio companies in the communications area.
Mr. Higgerson co-founded ComVentures in 1987 and was a partner at Hambrecht & Quist Venture Partners from 1985 to 1987. From 1984 to 1985 he was a special limited partner with L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin and was Director of its Communications Group. Earlier, Mr. Higgerson worked at Hambrecht & Quist for nine years, including serving as Managing Partner and Director of Research.
After receiving his M.B.A., Mr. Higgerson joined FMC Corporation as a Planning Analyst. He also served as a project engineer in both manufacturing and engineering at Allis-Chalmers.
Cliff has a B.S. from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, Mr. Higgerson co-authored the book "Your Future in a Changing World," which involved the forecasting of technical developments and their effects on career opportunities.
Hayden Harris
Mr. Harris is a career-long entrepreneur. After running emerging technology companies, he founded a management consulting practice in 1977. His firm engaged in turn-around and new-venture management for several companies. In 1987 this company, Enterprise Management, Inc., became the General Partner of Enterprise Development Fund, L.P., and its successor funds.
Mr. Harris has served as Chairman of two public companies, McLaren Performance Technologies, Inc.(automotive performance services) and Endogen, Inc. (biotech reagents), both of which he helped to sell to larger entities; and was majority-owner, CEO and Chairman of Software Services Corp. until its sale. He is a founder and Director of TherOx, Inc, a supplier of medical devices to accelerate recovery from heart surgery. He is a founder and Director of Xtera Communications, Inc., and holds three issued patents in the field of fiber optics. He was appointed by the Governor to the Executive Committee of the Michigan Economic Development Committee. Mr. Harris earned a B.S. in Geology and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California.
Paulette Altmaier
Paulette Altmaier has extensive experience in the high-tech industry, from networking infrastructure to consumer devices. She is presently Vice President, Global SMB Solutions, at Dell. Prior to that, she was a consultant to leading venture capital firms and late-stage venture-backed companies.
Until Jan 2007, she held the position of Executive Vice President at Juniper Networks, reporting directly to the CEO, and led the creation of Juniper’s enterprise switching business and product portfolio.
Altmaier joined Juniper Networks in 2005 from Cisco Systems where, for her nine year tenure, she held the position of Vice President and General Manager. In this role she was responsible for a $1+ billion business and led the creation of many market-leading platforms including the fastest-ramping new product line in Cisco history.
Her extensive business and technology experience spans the consumer, Enterprise, SP, Datacenter and SME markets and includes internet software, VoIP/IP Telephony, wireless, security, network infrastructure, and consumer handheld devices.
Altmaier earned a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering/Electronics with Distinction from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and an MS in Computer Science from Syracuse University. She holds three patents in software and communications systems.
Tingye Li
Tingye Li is a Division Manager in the Communications Infrastructure Research Laboratory of AT&T Labs at Red Bank, New Jersey. He joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1957 after receiving his Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
He has worked in the areas of microwave antennas and propagation, lasers and optical communications, and has published more than 100 journal papers, patents, books and book chapters. Since the late 1960s, he led various groups that pioneered and advanced lightwave technologies and systems, which are currently deployed in telecommunications networks worldwide.
He is a Fellow of OSA, IEEE, AAAS, and PSC, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Academy Sinica (Taiwan) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Among the many awards he has received are: the IEEE 1975 W. R. G. Baker Prize, the IEEE 1979 David Sarnoff Award, the 1979 Achievement Award from the Chinese Inst. of Eng./USA, the 1981 Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University, the 1983 Achievement Award Chinese-American Academic and Professional Association, the OSA/IEEE 1995 John Tyndall Award, the OSA 1997 Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus Quinn Endowment, and the 1997 AT&T Science and Technology Medal.
He was named an honorary professor at many universities in China and was granted an honorary doctorate in engineering by National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. He has been active in various professional societies, and was President of the Optical Society of America in 1995.
Clinton Bybee
Clinton Bybee is a co-founder and Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners. Mr. Bybee concentrates primarily on advanced materials, electronics, semiconductors, photonics, and infrastructure businesses.
Mr. Bybee has helped organize and finance numerous companies including MicroOptical Devices (acquired by EMCORE), Cambrios Technologies, Aveso, Innovalight, Intelligent Reasoning Systems (acquired by Photon Dynamics), Semprius, Nanosys, and Xtera Communications.
He is a board member of Impinj, Innovalight, Cambrios Technologies, Xtera Communications, Nitronex and Aveso. Mr. Bybee is an organizing member of the Texas Venture Capital Association and currently serves as its first President.
Previously, Mr. Bybee worked with ARCH Development Corporation. He also managed a venture investment fund for the State of Illinois and was a production engineer with Amoco Corporation. Mr. Bybee holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in Engineering from Texas A&M University.
John McLaren
John McLaren is Chairman of the Barchester Group. He began his career as a diplomat, both in the Foreign Office in London and in the British Embassy in Tokyo. He then worked in investment banking, where he was a director of Barings, and in venture capital, where he was a General Partner with Hambrecht and Quist Venture Partners in San Francisco. During his subsequent time successively as a Director of Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barchester, he has advised a wide range of companies on major merger and acquisition transactions, including DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Nissan, BBA and Siemens.
In 1997, he published his first novel, 'Press Send', which was followed by 'Seventh Sense' (1998), 'Black Cabs' (1999), and 'Running Rings' (2001). His latest novel, 'Blind Eye', was published in March 2004. The novels have been published in many languages, including Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. He is the founder and Chairman of Masterprize www.masterprize.com, the world's leading competition for symphonic composition, in which the partners are EMI, Classic FM, The London Symphony Orchestra, Gramophone Magazine, and National Public Radio of the U.S. He is a non-executive director of Macallan Distillers Limited, Morrison Bowmore Distillers Limited, and Xtera Communications Inc., and serves on the London Symphony Orchestra Advisory Board.
John is a director of Barchester Group Limited.
Kevin Martin
Kevin Martin is one of today's leading experts in telecommunications and technology policy with over 15 years experience as a lawyer and central policymaker in the field. Martin served as Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from March 2005 to January 2009 during a critical time when the industry was undergoing unprecedented change as a result of rapid growth and innovation. Under Martin, the FCC created a regulatory environment that led to exponential growth in technological innovation, wireless infrastructure, and coverage for Americans.
Under Martin’s leadership, the FCC conducted the two most successful and profitable auctions of spectrum in U.S. history, raising nearly $20 billion in 2008 alone.
During Chairman Martin’s tenure, the FCC removed legacy regulations that had discouraged infrastructure investment and slowed deployment, leading to increased broadband investment and competition. The number of broadband lines available in the United States more than doubled to over 100 million.
Martin also championed innovative technologies, like using blank television channels or so called “white spaces” to improve wireless connectivity and inspire new Internet-based products and services for consumers.
At Chairman Martin’s initiative, the FCC dedicated more than $400 million to the construction of broadband networks for state-wide and regional healthcare networks reaching over 6,000 healthcare facilities.
Chairman Martin guided the FCC through one of the most massive projects the agency has faced, that of preparing consumers for the nationwide transition from analog to digital broadcasting. Martin effectively enforced the FCC’s rules, issuing over $150 million in fines for violations, the most ever under any Chairman.
While at the FCC, Martin represented the United States in dozens of bilateral negotiations and addressed numerous international conferences as a global leader on telecommunications and technology policy.
Prior to joining the FCC as a Commissioner in 2001, Martin served at the White House as a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and on the staff of the National Economic Council. In that capacity, he focused primarily on commerce and technology policy issues. He also served as the official U.S. government representative to the G-8’s Digital Opportunity Task Force, a government, non-profit, and private sector task force created to identify ways to use technology to increase opportunities for developing countries.
Martin previously served as the Deputy General Counsel on the 2000 Bush for President Campaign and a counsel to a Commissioner at the FCC. Before serving in government, Martin worked for several years in private practice at the Washington, DC, law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding.
Martin graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was student body president, with honors and distinction. He also holds a Masters in Public Policy from Duke University and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Federal Communications Bar Association.