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Corporate » Board of Directors

Sean Mitchell, CEO

Sean has spent over 20 years working in the semiconductor industry in various technical, business, marketing and general management positions. Sean spent 5 years working for Silicon & Software Systems in Dublin as an integrated circuit designengineer, before moving on to Parthus Technologies where he spent the next 10 years. While in Parthus, Sean was the General Manager of the Applications Processing Division and was part of the Management Team of Parthus through their successful IPO in May of 2000. In 2004, Sean was awarded a Masters Degree in Management Practice from the Irish Management Institute and TCD. Sean worked for Silansys Technologies in Dublin fromJune of 2004, managing the company’s new multimedia software business until the company was purchased by Frontier Silicon where Sean was the Director of Product Marketing until November of 2006 when he joined Movidius. Sean received his degree in Electronic Engineering from Trinity College Dublin in 1989 and a Masters degree in Electronic Engineering, also from TCD in 1990.

Paul Costigan, COO

Paul Costigan, Chief Operating Officer, has 21 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. Prior to joining Movidius Paul was COO of Chipidea in Lisbon, prior to that he was co-founder and CEO of Massana, a Dublin and Santa Clara based fabless semiconductor company developing and marketing chips for the Gigabit Ethernet market. Massana was acquiredby Agere Systems Inc in 2003. In his earlier career, Paul held engineering positions with AT&T/Philips (Netherlands), Alcatel (Belgium) and Digital Equipment Corporation (US). Paul holds a BE from University College, Dublin and an MSEE from Northeastern University, Boston. Paul brings experience in Asia-Pacific market entry, building start-up teams, delivering successful silicon, executing deals and completing cross-border M&A.

Roger Maggs, Partner, Celtic House

Roger Maggs founded Celtic House in 1994. Prior to that, Roger enjoyed a 27-year career at Alcan Aluminum Limited, with senior postings around the world, including three Vice Presidencies of the global company. He started as a physicist in a product development lab and ended as VP Mergers, Acquisitions, and Divestments, at the head office in Montréal, Quebec. Roger's interest in venture capital began in the late 1980s with his involvement in Alcan's Corporate Venture arm. Roger earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the University of Wales, and a Master's degree from Warwick Business School. He was made an honoury fellow of his college in 1998.

Over his career, Roger has held directorships on over 30 public and private boards and currently serves as a board member of six Celtic House companies. Through his longstanding board role at publicly-traded LTX-Credence (Nasdaq: LTXC), Roger has built strong ties to the semiconductor industry in the US. He is also Chairman of publicly-traded Sandvine (TSX: SVC, LSE-AIM: SAND), a position he held prior to its AIM IPO in 2006.

Roger oversees the investment activities of Celtic House in both the UK and Ireland. Having mentored over a dozen CEOs in the Celtic House portfolio, he brings exceptional skills in management team development and marketing to the partnership. Roger travels extensively in Europe and the US and has developed a strong business network in both regions.

Brian Antonen, Partner, Celtic House

Brian Antonen joined Celtic House in 2000. He is based in the Toronto office. Originally an electrical engineer, Brian has over 21 years of technical, business operational, and capital markets experience. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. Brian is also a member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario and of the Certified Management Accountants of Ontario.

Brian's investment focus is on Digital Multimedia and Wireless. During his nine years at Celtic House, he has established himself as a domain expert in video and multimedia processing and is viewed by his peers as a leading semiconductor investor in Canada. His knowledge of the sector has unique breadth and depth, from the technicalities of the product to the intricacies of the market. His record of success includes ViXS Systems (a world leader in multimedia processing components) and Camilion Solutions (one of the fastest growing financial software companies in North America). He has held directorships on 13 private boards, and currently serves as a board member of eight Celtic House companies.

Brian travels extensively in Europe and Asia. He has developed a strong business network in these regions that is being applied within the Celtic House portfolio to lower development costs and improve time-to-market. Brian's contacts have assisted in design and manufacturing, sales growth, fundraising, and investment banking.

Jean-Philippe Gendre, Emertec Gestion

Jean-Philippe joined Emertec Gestion in 2004 for the raising of Emertec 2 fund dedicated to seed and early stage on microelectronics related start-ups in Europe. He currently sits on the boards of Edxact SA, CoFluent Design SA, Sonic Emotion AG, Mesa Imaging AG and Caps Entreprise SA. Jean-Philippe began his career in 1989 as a project leader in IT at Gemini for four years. Hethen worked at Motorola Semiconductor as Product Marketing Manager, for three years he led new smart power products launches at European Automotive customers. In 1997, he joined DuPont Photomasks Inc. where he managed for seven years WW sales and business development for one of the top 5 customers.

Rudi Severijns, Partner, Capital-E

Rudi Severijns is partner at Capital-E since May 2007. Capital-E is an early stage venture fund, located in Belgium, focused exclusively on micro- and nano-electronics related start-ups in Europe. Capital-E collaborates European-wide with entrepreneurial teams, academic institutions, national research laboratories and corporate settings to turn bright ideas into great successful companies. Rudi's investment focus is on innovative applications and technology in communications, multimedia, semiconductor processing equipment as well as consumer electronics. He currently serves as a director at the board of Light Blue Optics (Cambridge, UK) and Movidius (Dublin, Ireland). From 2000 till 2007, he was an executive investment manager in the ICT team of GIMV, a premier Belgian venture capital company. He focused on communications infrastructure & software as well as semiconductor opportunities. During his GIMV tenure, Rudi invested amongst others in CoreOptics (Germany/US), Intuwave (UK), Elixent (UK, acquired by Panasonic) and Virtensys (UK) and served as a director on their board. He also was actively involved with various other companies like Psytechnics (UK), Digital Imaging Systems (Germany) and Coware (US). Beside the international VC experience, Rudi brings a wealth of industry and technology expertise as well as business development skills to Capital-E. Before 2000, Rudi worked for more than 11 years at Siemens (ICT division) in R&D, product marketing and business management. He has held management positions in Belgium as well as on a corporate level in Germany, travelling and working throughout Europe, US and Asia. Rudi started his career in 1986 within the Applied Research Labs of Philips in the Netherlands. Rudi holds an engineering degree in electronics & automation, complemented with an MBA..

Tom Shinkwin (Observer)
Enterprise Equity Venture Capital

Tom joined Enterprise Equity Venture Capital in 2005. With three funds under management totaling €85 million, EEVC invests early stage capital in growth oriented Irish companies across a range of sectors including software and hardware, med tech and communications. EEVC will lead early stage investments and participates in larger deals through syndication. Tom works closely with a number of investee companies including Movidius, RedMere, TreeMetrics and Visor. He has twenty years experience covering construction and engineering, banking, property and the ICT sectors. His expertise includes strategic management, corporate finance and M&A, as well as entrepreneurial start-ups. In the past, he has worked with Morgan Stanley and Ulster Bank (RBS Group). Tom holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree, a Masters in Business Administration and is a Fellow of the Institute of Bankers in Ireland.

Gary Johnson, Independent Director

Gary Johnson was previously CEO for PortalPlayer, and has recently been involved as a Director at Air Semiconductor and ITSUN Ltd. Johnson has been a NASDAQ-listed CEO twice across his career. Having overseen the growth and/or flotation of several businesses including S3 and PortalPlayer (floated in November of 2004 and sold to NVIDIA in 2007 for $360M), Johnson has built a reputation for backing and managing successful enterprises. Under his tenure at S3 Inc. he built the highly successful Trio product family bringing for the first time integrated video and graphics playback to the consumer PC market.  At PortalPlayer the Applications Processors (AP) that were developed achieved notable success in many generations of mobile devices including Apple iPODs, SONY and Samsung MP3 players among many others.  This led the way to highly innovative products incorporating High-Definition (HD) Video capability for the then emerging multimedia mobile phone market.