Highly experienced business and engineering professionals
The SigNav management team is a group of highly experienced business and engineering professionals. All are knowledgeable specialists in their fields dedicated to delivering strong performance, shareholder wealth, leading the market with superior technology, striving continuously for improved productivity, quality and long term relationships with our clients.
Board of Directors:
John Riedl - Executive Chairman
John Riedl has had a long career both in Venture Capital and in start-up and mature technology companies, mostly as CEO for the last 25 years.
In the last 3 years, he has been Executive Chairman of SigNav, an executive director of Kingfoil Containers, an aluminium manufacturing company and a director of CVC, a listed Venture Capital Company. He has also been a director of investee companies on behalf of Deutsche Bank and Allen and Buckeridge. Prior to that, while living in Beijing, he helped found PowerTong Limited, a systems integrator and start-up national Telco in China.
From 1986 until 2001, John was CEO of Techniche Limited, a listed Venture Capital company operating in the telecommunications space and during the same period he was Executive Chairman of Jtec Pty Ltd, a telecommunications equipment and services company which he grew from start-up to over 300 staff. Prior to that John was a Divisional General Manager with AWA, then Australia’s largest locally owned company, and ran 11 operating businesses in IT&T with 1200 staff.
From 1974 to 1977 he was responsible for process control sales and project management with Honeywell Pty Ltd and prior to that he spent 6 years with the Royal Australian Navy and 2 years with the Australian Weapons Research Establishment (now DSTO).
Niall Cairns - Non-Executive Director
BEc, ACA
Niall co-founded Nanyang Ventures in 1993 and assisted in its transformation into Kestrel Capital, an executive owned, private equity manager, in 2006.
Niall has more than 15 years direct private equity experience and an additional seven years of financial and investment experience. He has invested in more than 30 unlisted companies and many more listed developing companies in Australia, New Zealand, US, UK and China.
Currently Niall is on the board of several Kestrel companies, including Australian Helicopters, Avand, SigNav, Sigtec and Tru-Test. He has also led the Kestrel investments, and been the director, of Ambertech, Gulf Conveyors, Prism Group, Ruthinium Group, Gale Pacific, International Foam Technologies and Garner MacLennan Design.
These investments have produced ASX listings for Ambertech and Gale Pacific, the AVCAL award for “Best Expansion Deal of 2003” for Gale Pacific, and a number of further successful exits.
Niall is a member and past President of the Sydney Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO), the world’s premier organisation for the education of young entrepreneurs (www.eonetwork.org).
Marc Woodward - Non-Executive Director
Marc has over a decade of commercial experience with top-tier firms in the venture capital, investment banking, and consulting industries in the US and Australia. Throughout his career, Marc has been involved in early-stage investment transactions and as a Director and Board Observer, he has helped guide numerous start-up and emerging technology companies.
Marc is also an Executive Director of Neo Technology Ventures, joining in 2004. At Neo, Marc led the firm’s investment in RPO and is an observer on the company’s Board of Directors. Prior to Neo, Marc was an Associate Director with the Australasian Media & Communications Fund (AMCF), a $120M venture capital fund in Sydney. While at AMCF, Marc led the firm’s investment in Peregrine Semiconductor Corp. and subsequently served on the company’s Board of Directors.
Previously, Marc was a Senior Associate at Battery Ventures, a US$2B venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, where he helped direct investments in the communications industry.
Dr. Rod Bryant - Chief Technology Officer
Rod Bryant founded SigNav as Sigtec Navigation Pty Ltd in 1994. Previously he worked at Auspace Ltd for 8 years in a variety of Engineering, Management and Business Development roles associated with Satellite Engineering. It was at Auspace in 1987 that Rod conceived the open-loop GPS receiver signal processing scheme that is at the heart of SigNav’s technology.
Before joining Auspace, Rod was engaged in real time ultrasonic imaging research at the University of Adelaide. He was awarded a William Culross Prize for his Ph.D. research on the related topic of Optimal Systems For Echo-Location. Prior to 1991 Rod was engaged in a variety of development activities as a Telecommunications Engineer with Telecom Australia.
With 35 years of experience in the electronics industry as everything from Trainee Technician to CEO, Rod knows that nothing is ever as easy as it seems but nothing is ever impossible!
Key Personnel:
Erik Miller - Chief Finance Officer
A seasoned financial executive with over 20 years experience, Erik has been the senior financial executive in many successful technology companies, having raised significant amounts of private equity and has listed two companies on the NASDAQ. Erik has deep understanding of technology and in addition to his financial responsibilities has often had executive responsibility for IT, Manufacturing and Customer Service throughout his career. Erik is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
Keith Murray - Chief Operating Officer
Keith has over 20 years of experience in the Telecommunications industry.
After graduating with Science and Electrical Engineering degrees from the University of Sydney, Keith’s career has spanned roles in R&D, Systems Engineering, Sales & Marketing and Management in several major companies.
Most recently prior to joining SigNav he was Group General Manager, Converged Services at Commander Communications - a Telco in Australia. While at Commander he was responsible for the development and deployment of the first commercial IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) based carrier network in Australia, and was also responsible for the Sales Revenues for services associated with the carrier network.
In previous roles Keith was the Managing Director of Eyretel (Australia), an e-CRM call and contact centre specialist, VP Marketing for Jtec, an Australian telecommunications company (acquired by LM Ericsson) where he successfully established distribution channels in Europe, USA & Asia-Pac, and Systems Engineering Manager at Datacraft Australia (now Dimension Data).
Brad Anderson - President, North American Operations
Brad has over 16 years of Business Development and Sales experience in the GPS semiconductor industry.
He began his GPS semiconductor career at Stanford Telecom, as Director of Business Development. Later, as Vice President of Business Development at Interstate Electronics, Brad led their entire sales and marketing efforts, including advanced GPS development and partnering.
Recently, Brad successfully managed a Conexant Systems team, as Director of Strategic Sales and Marketing, in the expansion of their GPS, Wireless and Modem business. In this capacity, he was responsible for developing numerous business relationships, including the spin-off of Conexant’s GPS module business to Navman, NZ Ltd., which he later joined as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Prior to joining SigNav, Brad was the Director of Business Development at u-Nav Microelectronics Corporation, a fabless semiconductor company developing GPS chipsets and software for the mobile location based services market.
Brad holds a BSEE degree from CSULB and an MBA from Pepperdine University.
Fred Montano - Marketing Manager
Fred has over twenty two years of experience in technology companies, including Alcatel, Ericsson and Jtec. His expertise spans marketing, management and engineering disciplines. He has spent over fifteen years working in all aspects of marketing, market communications (marcoms), product management and channel management, providing a deep understanding of the sales and marketing machine. Seven years dealing with high volume product provides an appreciation of commodity markets. He boasts a strong senior management background, ranging from operational issues and strategy to fund raising and selling companies.
His involvement in research and development activities culminated in one international and seven Australian patent applications. He holds an Honours degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales, specialising in Electronic Design.
Ezio Belfiglio - Engineering Manager
Ezio comes with vast experience in engineering management having overseen up to 300 staff at a time and presided over literally thousands of man-years of R&D in hardware and software, including custom ASICs. He has also been responsible for the manufacture and support of hundreds of millions of dollars of products internationally.
His background includes General Manager and Engineering Manager at Jtec, a telecommunications company and Engineering Manager at AWA, then Australia’s largest electronics enterprise.
Eamonn Glennon - Principal Engineer - Algorithms
Since 1994, Eamonn has been responsible for the development of firmware and related software for SigNav’s multiNAV range of GPS receivers based on the Zarlink chipset and the Auspace correlator ASIC. Over the last two years he has been heavily involved in the development of algorithms and firmware for AGPS solutions based on the u-Nav chipset.
Eamonn’s GPS-related experience at SigNav and previously at Auspace Limited includes real-time operating system development, development of algorithms and firmware routines for signal processing, carrier smoothing, navigation and dead reckoning, development of serial messaging handlers and user interfaces, the development of optimised floating point processing routines and the development of a unique reverse differential correction software prototype. These activities have encompassed 6 generations of GPS receivers involving 3 different processors and 3 different GPS chipsets.
At Auspace Eamonn was involved in a wide variety of other engineering activities associated with space projects such as the development of the Integrated Electronics Unit for the Along Track Scanning Radiometer for the ESA Polar Orbiting Earth Mission. Until 1991 Eamonn was employed as a Professional Officer at the Combat Data Systems Centre of the Department Of Defence. He holds a Bachelor of Science, a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering with Honours Class 1 and a Master of Engineering Science in Electrical Engineering, all from the University of New South Wales where he is enrolled as a PhD student.
Dr. Trevor Hobbs - Principal Engineer - H/W & S/W Structure
Joining SigNav in February 2001, Trevor has 30 years of experience in the areas of electronics and software engineering. Particular expertise includes digital signal processing in video and audio applications, computer architecture and high-speed digital design, programmable logic and gate array technologies, circuit design miniaturisation to mobile phone densities, desktop and embedded software engineering, and engineering management.
Trevor has held a wide range of professional engineering positions, including Senior Engineer at Coms21 Limited, Senior Lecturer at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA), Professional Engineer at the Australian National University (ANU) Mt Stromlo Observatory, and Research Scientist at the Australian Defence Research Centre (now DSTO) in South Australia.
Trevor was principal designer of the hardware and embedded software aspects of the Australian Design Award winning SmartVision portable smartcard reader. He has operated in a range of consultancy roles, and has numerous publications and several patents in the area of electronics design to his name. He has a PhD in Physics, Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours from Adelaide University and an Associate of Music degree in practice of piano.