Leadership

Executive Team
Board of Directors

Gary Messiana, CEO
	Gary Messiana, Chief Executive Officer, joined Nominum in July 2011. Gary brings an extensive track record of leadership and success in software and hosted service solutions as well as a customer-centric philosophy, operational excellence and a wealth of management experience to the company. Starting in 2008, Gary was an entrepreneur-in-residence with Bessemer Venture Partners. At Bessemer, Gary focused on the software and infrastructure-as-a-service sectors. Prior to Bessemer, Gary served as CEO of Netli, a content-and-application delivery network provider serving both the network operator and enterprise markets. Netli was sold to Akamai in 2007. Gary was also CEO at Diligent Software Systems, a strategic sourcing company that was sold to B2E Markets. Gary holds a BA degree from Binghamton University where he graduated with honors and serves on Nominum's board of directors.

Paul Mockapetris, Chairman, Chief Scientist
	Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of the Domain Name System (DNS), is Chief Scientist and Chairman of the Board at Nominum, Inc. Paul created DNS in the 1980s at USC’s Information Sciences Institute, where he was later the Director of ISI’s High Performance Computing and Communications Division. After the formal creation of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 1986, DNS became one of the original Internet Standards. Paul has been associated with the IETF since its creation, chaired several DNS and non-DNS working groups, and was Chair of the IETF from 1994 to 1996. Paul was program manager for networking at ARPA in the early 1990s, supervising efforts such as gigabit and optical networking. Paul has held leadership roles at several Silicon Valley networking startups, including @Home, Software.com (now OpenWave), Fiberlane (now Cisco), and Siara (now Ericcson). Paul has dual B.S. degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.

Bob Verheecke, CFO
	Bob Verheecke, Chief Financial Officer, has over 30 years of experience building high-tech companies from start up through IPO. His experience includes all aspects of international operations having built a worldwide finance team at Business Objects and at a Singapore-based B2B eCommerce company. He has managed all areas in finance including accounting, cash management, tax, planning & analysis, credit & collections, payables, and receivables. Bob's special talent lies in building sophisticated business planning and decision support models that are used to assist executives in the key decision-making process within the areas of product line profitability, gross margins and pricing. Bob's accomplishments include being a key executive in the restructuring and turnaround of Blue Coat Systems; he was responsible for organizing and coordinating the initial public offering of Business Objects; as a member of the senior management team at NetFrame he helped take the company from their startup phase to profitability and a successful public equity offering; he led the management team at Netli through a decision process resulting in selling the company to Akamai.

Pete Wisowaty, Executive VP of Worldwide Sales and Solutions
	Pete Wisowaty is Nominum’s Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales & Solutions responsible for expanding Nominum’s leadership in the Service Provider, Federal and Enterprise markets. Pete brings over 30 years of sales, sales management, and business development experience and has demonstrated a proven track record. Prior to Nominum, Pete was Vice President of Strategic Sales and Business Development for Grand Central Communications a cloud based application company serving global Service Providers, Enterprise and Government business. He has also held senior level sales and sales management positions at several early stage companies in network infrastructure, software applications and wireless technologies including WhereNet (Zebra), Pluris, ZeitNet (Cabletron), and Kalpana (Cisco). Pete holds a BS degree in Business Administration from San Diego State University.

Sunny McRae, VP of Engineering
	Sunny McRae, VP of Engineering, has over 28 years of experience in product management, architecture, engineering, development and delivery of commercially successful large scale and mission critical software solutions. Most recently, as Managing Director and Senior VP at JPMorgan Chase, Sunny had overall executive responsibility for global operations of the JPMorgan Order-to-Pay business line. He co-founded Xign in 2000 (acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2007), serving as its VP of Engineering/CTO responsible for the design and deployment of the leading global settlement network for delivering automated billing and payments. Before Xign, Sunny co-founded Edify taking the company public in 1996 where he served as Head of Engineering leading design and development of the company’s self-service platform. Prior to Edify, Sunny has held various engineering leadership positions at ROLM Corporation, Metaphor Computer Systems, and IBM. Sunny received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He is a holder of nine US patents and author of numerous technical papers.

Srini Avirneni, VP of Products & Technology
	Srini Avirneni, VP of Products & Technology, is responsible for Nominum's Product Strategy and Service definition. He is also responsible for creating and executing Advocacy programs around Nominum's customers. In a previous role he was the designer of Nominum's Cloud offerings. Prior to Nominum, he held technical lead roles at Comcast, Lucent and INS; responsible for architecting, deploying, migrating and supporting DNS, DHCP and IPv6 device provisioning services supporting High Speed Internet, VoIP and Video. Srini holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science. He is a holder of multiple US patents.

Brian McElroy, VP of Business Development
	Brian McElroy is Vice President of Business Development at Nominum. He is responsible for leading business development and strategic partnerships. Brian joined Nominum in 2007, with more than 15 years of business development, sales, and marketing experience. Prior to joining Nominum, Brian led the business development team at Check Point Software Technologies, where he was responsible for OEM, distribution, and strategic partnerships. Prior to Check Point, Brian spent over 8 years at Trend Micro in various roles, including director of business development, sales, and product management. Throughout his career Brian has created and managed strategic marketing initiatives to expand market presence and grow businesses. Brian holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from University of California at Berkeley.

Ed Brown, VP, Legal Affairs
	Ed Brown is Vice President of Legal Affairs. He's responsible for worldwide legal matters including intellectual property, licensing, litigation and compliance. He also works closely with sales and business development to manage commercial transactions in new markets. Before Nominum, Ed served as Director of U.S. Legal Affairs at Trend Micro with responsibility for global OEM agreements, mergers and acquisitions, and managing all United States legal matters. He also worked closely with corporate development selecting and integrating acquisitions. Earlier, Ed was General Counsel for Electron Economy, an e-commerce company. Before joining the technology industry, Ed started his legal career protecting the environment by implementing land conservation easements in Colorado. He holds a Master of Environmental Law and Policy, magna cum laude and a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Vermont Law School and a B.A. degree in Economics from the University of Connecticut.