MANAGEMENT

Tom Ayers
President and Chief Executive Officer

With more than 30 years of successful leadership in building high technology companies and delivering advanced solutions to customers, Mr. Ayers drives the continued global expansion of Tropos Networks while building its position as the leading provider of multi-purpose, wireless municipal and industrial applications. Tom has a consistent, proven track record of vision, leadership, and success in public sector, enterprise, and global markets.

Mr. Ayers joins Tropos from Blue Coat Systems, where as the vice president of worldwide field operations, he helped lead the company through a significant market transition which resulted in over 3,000 new customers, number-one market share and company profitability. Prior to Blue Coat, he led enterprise and SMB sales organizations for the McAfee Security division of Network Associates. Before that, he improved revenue growth and profitability at Sequent Computer Systems. He also served as vice president of sales for Amdahl’s worldwide professional services and multi-vendor maintenance organizations, growing the business more than fourfold. Additionally, Mr. Ayers has more than 13 years of extensive management experience and training from IBM.

He graduated from The University of Texas at Austin where he received a degree in business administration.

Narasimha Chari
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer

Narasimha Chari was responsible for developing Tropos Networks' core intellectual property, including the design and development of the company's wireless networking and routing protocols. Currently, he focuses on system and product architecture, product planning and participates in the company's advanced development efforts.  Among other honors, Mr. Chari was recognized by MIT Technology Review magazine in 2005 as one of the Top 35 Innovators under the age of 35. Prior to founding Tropos, Mr. Chari was a research scientist at Harvard University where he was recognized as a top lecturer and received the White Prize for excellence in teaching. He has performed research, published papers and disclosed patents in a variety of areas of mathematics, physics and wireless networking.

Mr. Chari holds a BS in Mathematics and Economics from the California Institute of Technology and an AM in Physics from Harvard University.

Donald Scott
Chief Financial Officer

Don Scott is Tropos Networks' Chief Financial Officer. He brings more than 30 years of experience in building company and financial operations and management, most recently consulting with various small to mid-size high-tech enterprise ventures, such as cPacket Networks, Sensitronics, PointAD Network, Mycelia Networks, and ICFX-TV.  He has helped advise and guide many companies through all phases of corporate life, including: start-up, seed round funding, later stage funding, and M&A activity.  Previously Mr. Scott served as the President and CEO of EMU Systems, a wholly owned music and audio subsidiary of Creative Labs.  Prior to that, while at Xerox, he held senior financial and operational management positions.

Mr. Scott has a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Economics and an MBA in Finance from University of Rochester, New York.

Mike Bailey
Vice President of Engineering and Operations

Mike Bailey is responsible for managing the engineering, manufacturing, and customer support organizations for Tropos and brings over 25 years of senior leadership and management experience from high tech companies.  Mr. Bailey’s engineering and product development experience spans a range of technologies including storage systems, networking systems, audio and video systems, data compression, and complex process control systems.  During his career he has held management positions at Eastman Kodak, Corning, Compression Labs, Harmonic, and McData.  Mr. Bailey started his career as an Electronic Warfare Officer in the United States Air Force.

Mr. Bailey holds a BSEE from the University of Cincinnati and an MBA from the University of Northern Colorado.

Allen Carr
Director of World Wide Sales

Allen Carr is Director of World Wide Sales at Tropos Networks. Allen brings over 20 years of proven technology sales, marketing and management expertise to Tropos, leveraging an extensive background in mission-critical networking, mobile computing and communications systems.  Previous he served as the Director of Strategic Sales for Tropos, where he had responsibility for driving revenue streams from key Tropos accounts.  He was also responsible for establishing the company’s direct and indirect sales organization for the eastern region of North America and led efforts to open several new market initiatives.  Prior to Tropos, Mr. Carr was the Director of Strategic Accounts for Aether Systems Mobile Government Division, which he joined through the acquisition of Cerulean Technology, a developer of wireless public safety and government applications.  Prior to Cerulean, he served in a variety of roles in Motorola's Land Mobile Products Sector, primarily marketing wireless voice and data systems to state and local governments, and utilities.   

Mr. Carr holds a BS degree from the University of Tennessee.

Rob Pilgrim
Vice President of Business and Corporate Development

Rob Pilgrim is Vice President of Business and Corporate Development at Tropos Networks.  He is responsible for investigating and driving strategic relationships with various technology, application, and infrastructure companies to grow the wireless mesh market ecosystem.  Working with over 100 industry leading companies since joining Tropos in 2005, he has helped architect business and technology solutions to create new ways of delivering wireless data and applications to customers.  Prior to joining Tropos, Mr. Pilgrim was Director of Product Marketing and Business Development at Covad Communications, and spent over 10 years in various business and technical roles for companies in the wireless and optical communications space.  Rob started his career as a marketing engineer for Georgia Power Company, an operating unit of the Southern Company.

Mr. Pilgrim holds a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech.

Andrew Balaschak
Director of Product Management

Andrew Balaschak’s role is focused on the definition and delivery of Tropos’ solutions for Smart Grids and Smart Cities. He brings to this position more than 25 years of marketing, sales, service and engineering experience in Smart Grid, energy, instrumentation and telecommunications. Prior to Tropos, Mr. Balaschak held management positions at Trilliant, RAE Systems, Cisco Systems, P-Com and Siemens. He is a specialist in communications networks for Smart Grid, AMI and distribution automation applications.

Mr. Balaschak holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from New York Institute of Technology and an MBA from Columbia University.

Denise Barton
Director of Marketing

Denise Barton is the Marketing Director for Tropos Networks and brings over 20 years of experience in successfully leading the marketing organizations of networking and information security companies.  Prior to Tropos, Ms. Barton was the Marketing Director for Nevis Networks, where she drove the successful launch of the company into the newly created NAC market.  Ms. Barton spent over 7 years as an independent marketing consultant, primarily working with networking-related startups to develop their marketing and product strategies; past clients include Netscreen (acquired by Juniper Networks), P-cube (acquired by Cisco), Securify (acquired by Secure Computing) and Packet Design.  Prior to consulting, Ms. Barton held senior product marketing and business strategy positions with Cisco, SynOptics/Bay Networks, and 3Com Corporation.

Ms. Barton holds a BS degree in business administration from the University of the Pacific.

Cyrus Behroozi
Chief Scientist

Cyrus Behroozi is Tropos Networks' Chief Scientist. After joining in 2000, he developed the company's first wireless mesh hardware. More recently he has focused on network performance, developing advanced distributed algorithms for route selection, power and bit rate control, airtime coordination, and channel selection. Mr. Behroozi draws upon his background in experimental physics for insight into electromagnetic propagation and complex systems. At Harvard University, he was part of the research team that slowed light to 38 miles per hour in a Bose-Einstein condensate and subsequently stopped it outright. He co-authored two articles in Nature on this work.

Mr. Behroozi holds a BS in Physics from the California Institute of Technology and an AM in Applied Physics from Harvard University.