Management

LitePoint's managers are veterans of the semiconductor and wireless industry with a history of successfully creating new products and building new businesses.

Executive Management

Dr. Benny Madsen, Chairman and CEO, has spent his entire career in the wireless industry. Dr. Madsen began the first 15 years of his career as a system architect with Dancall Radio in Denmark and later, before co-founding LitePoint, served as the Technical Director for National Semiconductor's wireless IC products group. Among Dr. Madsen's many accomplishments, he was the lead engineer on the team that designed the first GSM mobile phone. Dr. Madsen received PhD and MSEE degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Aalborg in Denmark and holds nine patents in various areas of wireless system design.

Spiros Bouas, COO and co-founder, comes with a long track record of building new and profitable businesses. Mr. Bouas understands the innovative process well and has taken numerous products from concept to customer delivery in various technology markets and for various organizations, including LitePoint and Silicon Graphics Inc. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and has direct and extensive experience in Sales, Operations and Finance. He is a graduate of the University of Rochester and Phillips Exeter Academy and is a US Patent holder in the area of 3G wireless systems.

Dr. Christian Olgaard, CTO and co-founder, has extensive design experience using CMOS and BiCMOS technologies for RF ICs and mixed-mode systems. Prior to co-founding LitePoint, Dr. Olgaard was the system radio architect at National Semiconductor for the implementation of various wireless systems, including tri-band GSM, IS-95, and DECT. Dr. Olgaard received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark, where he pioneered the use of sub-micron CMOS for RF circuits. Dr. Olgaard holds six patents related to wireless systems and circuits and has applied for nine more wireless system patents.

Daniel K Atler, CFO, has over 20 years of financial experience and is responsible for LitePoint's financial, legal, information technology, and human resource organizations.  Prior to joining LitePoint, Mr. Atler was the CFO of Amlogic, Inc., where he was instrumental in establishing their international tax structure. Before Amlogic, he held the executive positions of CFO, corporate development officer and interim CEO, at  Ikanos Communications and was instrumental in the company’s initial public offering, secondary offering, as well as several acquisitions. He joined Ikanos from Silicon Image, Inc., where he assisted the company with an initial public offering, several acquisitions, establishing its licensing business, and forming HDMI and DVI standards groups. At Silicon Image he held the positions of CFO and executive vice president of strategic business development. Prior to Silicon Image, Mr. Atler served as CFO for Wireless Access, Inc., corporate controller at Global Village, and was a CPA and senior manager at Ernst & Young.   Mr. Atler received a degree in business administration with an emphasis in accounting and information systems from Colorado State University.

Luc Schoups, Senior VP Sales, has over 20 years of experience in the test systems industry. Most recently, Schoups was vice president of Anritsu and general manager of its America’s sales region. He has been involved in executive sales positions at Anritsu for 18 years, beginning with its acquisition of Wiltron Company in 1990; and was sales manager at Wiltron prior to the acquisition. During these years Schoups oversaw the growth of different business units from a start-up level of around $20 million to sustained business levels well in excess of $100 million. He also set up and served as president of Anritsu’s independent Anritsu Company Ltd. (Hong Kong) and Anritsu Company S.A. de C.V. (Mexico). Schoups earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Leuven in Belgium. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the same university, and did post-graduate work in industrial engineering at Stanford University. Schoups also holds an MBA from the AEA/Stanford Executive Institute, a special accelerated MBA program for high-technology executives.

Kevan Smith, VP Business Development, has extensive semiconductor and telecommunications knowledge and experience having created products and developed markets. Lately from Vitesse Semiconductors as their Business Unit Manager, Mr. Smith established their Ethernet products and application group, which introduced 15 products in two years. Prior to that, he had a 15-year career at National Semiconductor as a director of marketing for wireless products where he created strategy plans and partnerships, high-demand products, and innovative applications groups that made it a leader in their space. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Plymouth UK.

Manthos Economou, Senior Director of Quality and Reliability, has held engineering and management positions in Manufacturing, Operations, Quality, Reliability and Environmental/Regulatory compliance at Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Brocade and Palm.  His main area of expertise is process development and continual improvement throughout the product lifecycle with emphasis on product quality and reliability.  Manthos graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Santa Clara University with M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Management.  He is certified by the American Society of Quality as a six sigma black belt, quality manager, quality engineer, quality auditor, and reliability engineer.

Board of Directors

Dr. Benny Madsen, Chairman and CEO, LitePoint Corporation.

Richard L. Sanquini, retired CTO of National Semiconductor, for over 20 years managed business development and intellectual property protection and was the chairman of the board of two China joint ventures.  While there, Sanquini managed key business units including microprocessors and microcontrollers. Before National, he was CEO of Information Storage Devices and the GM and Director of the Memory and Microprocessor Businesses at RCA. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Wisconsin. Sanquini, formerly chairman of PortalPlayer, serves on the boards of LitePoint, Synaptics, and R2Semiconductor, and is the chairman of Pixelworks and SiPort. He also continues to consult with high-tech companies.

Michael Goguen, Partner, Sequoia Capital, focuses on semiconductor and systems investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1996, Michael spent 10 years in various engineering, research, and product management roles at DEC, SynOptics and Centillion, and was a director of Engineering at Bay Networks (NT). Michael was also a Technical Chairman of the ATM Forum. Michael has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Robert Schwartz, Managing Partner, Third Point Ventures, has had decades of experience with electronic components and subsystems used in all aspects of the communications marketplace. As president of technical representation firm, RF Associates North, Rob has been instrumental in establishing long-term relationships with key companies in mobile- and fixed-wireless communications, cellular and satellite communications, GPS, telecom and datacom equipment, optical networking, digital microwave radio, communications test and measurement systems, and semiconductors. Schwartz also serves on the boards of Liga Systems, Sonoa Systems, Enphase Energy, Inapac Technologies, Sequoia Communications, and Technocom Wireless He holds two undergraduate engineering degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.