Management Team
Charlie Cheng
Chief Executive Officer
Charlie Cheng joined Kilopass as CEO in October 2008 with overall responsibility for leading the company and its business growth worldwide. His career spans more than 10 years of experience in the semiconductor IP industry and an additional 15 years in the global technology marketplace. Prior to Kilopass, he served as vice president of marketing and international business at Faraday Technology, where he grew the Taiwan-centric company into an international presence. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of Lexra Inc., an embedded RISC CPU IP company. Charlie began his technology career at General Electric and IBM, and pioneered in the semiconductor IP business as VP of Marketing at Aspec Technology. He also served in various technical and management positions at Iomega, Zycad and Viewlogic. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, with an emphasis on computer architecture and algorithms, from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He also completed the Executive Management Training Program on Leadership at Carnegie Mellon University, in addition to various other executive training programs.
Lee Cleveland
VP of Engineering
Lee Cleveland has 26 years of experience in the semiconductor industry leading cutting edge NVM development and high valued analog integrated circuits design. He joined Kilopass as vice president of engineering in August, 2009. Most recently, Lee was the Senior VP of Engineering at Sipex, now part of Exar. During his tenure at Sipex, he cut the product development cycle by 50% and reduced the average number of design revisions by 70%. Lee released over 150 new products in 5 years with a 2.5x improvement in throughput over the previous 5 year period. Prior to Sipex/Exar, Lee held engineering management positions at AMD and Spansion where he was directly responsible for several generations of platform products, earning 61 patents in algorithms, circuits, processes and testing techniques. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering at University of California, Berkeley.
Harry Luan
CTO
Harry Luan has been with Kilopass since its inception in 2002. He has over 20 years of experience with a strong background in VLSI semiconductor process technology, integration, device engineering, product reliability, and product qualification. He is an expert in CMOS/NVM memory device physics, modeling, optimization, and characterization for technology development, yield enhancement, and failure analysis. Harry served for six years at Kilopass as Director of Technology Development before assuming the role of chief technology officer in May, 2009. Prior to joining Kilopass, Harry Luan held various technical and management positions at AMD, Hynix, Cypress, and Winbond. He made key contributions in research and development of non-volatile memory and logic technologies including EPROM, EEPROM, FLASH, SONOS, R-RAM, and CPLD. Dr. Luan obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.
Mitch Statham
VP of Worldwide Sales
Mitch Statham is VP of worldwide sales at Kilopass. He has over 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry growing sales at major public companies. In addition to public company executive experience and creditability, Mitch brings to Kilopass superb semiconductor and ASIC sales leadership and management skills. Mitch joins Kilopass from Lantronix, a publicly held company and leader in secure communications solutions to connect and control equipment via the Internet. There he served as the VP of Americas sales. Prior to Lantronix, Mitch achieved sales and sales management success in the semiconductor industry at Standard Microsystems Corporation (SMSC), NEC Electronics, Symbios Logic (now part of LSI Logic), and NCR Microelectronics. In particular, as vice president of worldwide sales at SMSC, Mitch grew the company’s revenue from $120M to $378M from 2002 to 2009. Mitch holds an electronics engineering degree from Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia.
Linh Hong
VP of marketing
Linh Hong is VP of marketing at Kilopass responsible for marketing Kilopass’ solutions globally. With 13 years of solid semiconductor industry experience – primarily focused on logic NVM IP, high-speed SERDES IP and broadband communication ASICs – Linh served for three years in various director and management positions in field applications engineering and applications marketing at Kilopass before assuming her current role in April 2009. Prior to joining Kilopass, she was a design consultant and design manager at LSI Logic, where she also served in various design and marketing engineering functions. She began her career as a component engineer at Sun Microsystems. Linh holds a BS degree with honors in physics, and an MSEE degree in electrical engineering, both from University of California, Davis.
Jeff Ball
VP of Corporate Development
Jeff Ball joined Kilopass in May 2009 as VP of corporate development. With over 10 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, he is responsible for evaluating investment opportunities, building the company’s capital base, structuring corporate transactions, and driving the overall development of Kilopass’ strategic growth plan. Most recently, Jeff headed up JPMorgan’s semiconductor investment banking practice. At JPMorgan, Jeff’s clients included some of the largest technology companies in the world, including Intel and Texas Instruments. Prior to JPMorgan, Jeff practiced corporate securities law in Palo Alto. Jeff received his JD and MBA from Santa Clara University. He received his BA in Economics and Theology from Georgetown University.
Tracy Mah
Finance Controller
Tracy Mah is Finance Controller of Kilopass. In this role she oversees and directs all significant aspects of Kilopass’ financial, accounting, treasury, legal and human resource operations. Tracy joined Kilopass in September 2008, bringing with her a breadth of deep experience in providing strong financial management and accountability, for companies in Financial and Accounting Consulting, Semiconductor, Original Equipment Manufacturing, Software As a Service (SaaS), Non Profit Organization and Venture Capital. Prior to joining Kilopass, she was a consultant at Accretive Solutions, working with clients like Adaptive Planning, Provade, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, etc. Prior to that she also served in various finance and accounting positions at Cortina Systems, Exavio Inc., and Wearnes Technology. Tracy holds a BS degree in Accounting from Oklahoma State University.
James T. Lindstrom
Chief Financial Officer
James T. Lindstrom is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Kilopass Technology. His 30-years high-tech corporate finance career began in international finance at Fairchild Semiconductor. Since then he has driven development and financing of many Silicon Valley companies, including: Cadence, C-Cube Microsystems, FormFactor, Trident Microsystems and eSilicon. Jim led the IPOs of ECAD and Trident Microsystems and has extensive understanding of mergers and acquisitions having played an integral role in the formation of Cadence Design Systems from ECAD and SDA Systems and Cadence’s recent acquisition of Silicon Perspective. Jim is currently a member of the board of directors of Semtech Corporation serving on the company’s audit committee and nominating and governance committee. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley he holds an MBA in Finance and Business Economics from the University of Southern California. He lives with his family in Sunol, California.