Management

• 
  Ellis Smith
  Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

  Ellis Smith has experience as President and CEO with Orora Design Technologies, TransEDA, Exemplar Logic, and CrossCheck Technology. He has a long history of proven performance in growing a company’s top and bottom-lines in turn-around situations, building experienced management teams, leading mergers and acquisitions, and leading a company through an IPO. Mr. Smith also has strong experience in sales, marketing, and business development in every region of the world.

  In 2003, Mr. Smith joined Orora Design Technologies, Inc., an electronic design software company in Redmond, Washington, as President and CEO to secure funding and initiate sales as the company’s founder and CTO transitioned from a full-time professor to take over the daily operations of the company Mr. Smith joined TransEDA as CEO in 1999. At TransEDA, he built an experienced management team, structured the company for top- and bottom-line growth, and prepared it for an initial public offering. He led the company through its IPO on the London Stock Exchange, two acquisitions, and 18 months of growth after the successful IPO. Before joining TransEDA, Mr. Smith was president and CEO of Exemplar Logic, Inc. There, he tripled revenues and negotiated Exemplar’s successful 1999 buy-out and merger with Mentor Graphics Corporation.

  Before Exemplar, Mr. Smith was president of CrossCheck Technology, Inc., where he restructured and re-capitalized the company and completed its merger with Duet Technologies, Inc.

  Prior to CrossCheck, Mr. Smith spent his career in international business as an international director of EDA sales for CADAM, an IBM Company; as an international sales manager for Versatec, a Xerox Company; and as an international application engineer for Dictaphone Corporation. He began his career as an engineer for 3M Company.

  Mr. Smith has a B.S. from La Salle University, studied physics at the University of Oregon and advanced electronics in the U.S. Navy.

  
  Rick Dissly
  CPA Chief Financial Officer

  Rick Dissly is an experienced financial and business executive with broad, proven expertise in establishing profitable business models and systems in pre-IPO and post-IPO companies. He is also known for his successful work in mergers and acquisitions, and for maximizing value for shareholders in technology companies. Prior to his retirement, Mr. Dissly was Chief Financial Officer and Secretary of the Board of Directors at Photon Dynamics, Inc., a Nasdaq Company. At Photon Dynamics, Dissly managed a staff of 50 responsible for all aspects of manufacturing, finance, operational planning, and MIS, and led two follow-on public offerings.

  Mr. Dissly has held the positions of CFO at Semaphore Communications Corp., a Xerox Company, and at Crosscheck Technology. He was COO and VP of Finance at Award Software, and CFO, VP of Finance, and Director of Megatest Corporation. Before Megatest, Mr. Dissly was an accounting manager at American Microsystems, and started his career as a senior auditor for Price Waterhouse. Mr. Dissly has B.S. from Montana State University and an MBA from the University of Santa Clara.

  
  Jenn Treiber
  Vice President, Operations

  Jennifer Treiber brings almost 20 years of Marketing Operations experience to Blue Pearl Software. During her six years as part of the Blue Pearl Management team, Mrs. Treiber has been responsible for managing and developing the financial structure and Human Resources of Blue Pearl Software. In addition, she has led the development and execution of the marketing programs, positioning Blue Pearl Software as the leader in RTL Analysis and Development.

  Being an integral part of the Sun Microsystem/Storage Tek acquisition, Mrs. Treiber was essential to the development and deployment of the Operational Centers of Excellence to complete the integration of the two companies to achieve the successful $4.1 billion acquisition.

  Mrs. Treiber holds a BS degree from California State University, Fresno.

  
  David E. Wallace
  Chief Scientist

  Dave Wallace has been working in EDA development for over 40 years. He has worked on physical design, timing verification, logic synthesis, physical synthesis, formal verification, layout compaction and migration, hardware linting, and CDC analysis. He is the inventor or co-inventor of six US patents, including Blue Pearl Software’s patent on User Grey Cells. He got his start in EDA working on placement and routing of gate arrays for IBM, and has subsequently worked at Hewlett Packard, Mentor Graphics, Exemplar Logic, Averant, Cadence Design Systems, and Blue Pearl Software. He has also worked in the Search Quality group at Google, and started his own in-home tutoring business where he helped over seventy high school, college, and graduate students with topics in Math, Statistics, Science, and Computer Science.

  In recent years, Dave has been interested in adapting selected ideas from the Extreme Programming and Agile Development communities to improve the quality of EDA software. His 2012 IWLS paper with Scott A. Bloom, “How Can We Build More Reliable EDA Software?” is available for download at the Blue Pearl web site.

  Dave has a Sc.B. degree magna cum laude from Brown University in Math and Computer Science, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. As part of his PhD program, he did an outside minor in Corporate Finance at the Haas School of Business.

  
  Simon Matthews
  Vice President, Engineering

  Simon Matthews has led multiple software development projects relating to EDA design flows. He has experience of ASIC and FPGA design from RTL to GDSII, at IP and semiconductor companies. He has extensive experience in managing multi-site development projects.

  Simon also has extensive experience developing infrastructure to support continuous integration and test flows, including high-performance grid computing, configuration management, web-based dashboards, running cross-platform Windows and Linux environments and test automation (for both GUI and CLI testing).

  Simon has a BSc. degree in Physics with Electronics from the University of Liverpool and is recognized in the UK as a Chartered Engineer.