Michael Laor -
Chairman of the Board,
CEO and Co-Founder
Michael Laor established Compass-EOS in 2006. Prior to that Michael worked for Pitango Venture Capital as a Venture Partner. Michael was also a Director of Engineering and Architecture of Cisco Systems, where he worked for over 11 years. In 1997, he initiated, built and has since that time, managed the Cisco Systems Development Center in Israel, growing it from a one person to an over 500 people operation.
Michael has experience of over 20 years in the computer and data communication industry, and eight patents registered in his name.
Michael has an M.B.A. from San Jose University and a B.Sc.E.E. from Ben-Gurion University, Beersheva, Israel.
Michael Mesh - Ph.D
Chief Science Officer
and Co-founder
Dr. Michael Mesh has extensive expertise in Datacom, Telecom, Fiber Optics and DWDM with over 25 years of experience in the industry. Dr. Mesh is the owner of over 40 patents and co-author of numerous publications and two books. He is co-founder and CSO of Compass-EOS.
Before Compass-EOS, Dr. Mesh was co-founder and CTO of PacketLight Networks. In the five years prior to joining PacketLight, Dr. Mesh held leading positions in different Israeli companies. He led the R&D activity for optical transmission systems including pioneering work on WDM at Tadiran Telecommunications and Seabridge Networks.
In the course of his career, Dr. Mesh led optical development activities at the Tel-Aviv University and academic research institutes in the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Mesh holds a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics. His Ph.D. work was done in the area of Physical and Quantum Electronics.
Aaron Mankovski -
Board member
(Pitango Venture Capital)
Mr. Aaron Mankovski's tenure in venture capital started in 1996. He co-founded Eucalyptus Ventures in 1997, and has served as Managing Director since that time. He joined the Pitango team as a Managing Director with the combination of the Eucalyptus and Pitango management groups in April 2000.
Mr. Mankovski has 16 years of experience in Executive Management (CEO, Sales and Marketing) in the high-technology sector in Israel and abroad. Prior to founding Eucalyptus, he served as Corporate Vice President of Orbotech Ltd.(NASDAQ: ORBK), responsible for worldwide operations, sales and customer support (approximately 500 people on four different continents).
Prior to assuming that position, Mr. Mankovski served as President and CEO of Orbotech Inc., where he also guided the merger of Orbot and Optrotech that led to the establishment of Orbotech. He previously was a sales executive at IBM. He also served as a pilot in the Israeli Air Force.
Mr. Mankovski holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Statistics from Tel Aviv University.
Mr. Mankovski served on the Board of Directors of Chromatis Networks (sold to Lucent for $4.75 billion). He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Optimal Test, Proficiency, PacketLight Networks, Precede Technologies, Kilopass Technology Inc, Negevtech, Civcom and Friend.
Arad Naveh -
Board Member
(Benchmark Capital)
Arad, a U.S. and Israeli citizen, has extensive operating and venture capital experience in both Silicon Valley and Israel. Arad's Investment interests include Enterprise S/W, Digital Media, Networking and Internet Infrastructure. Prior to joining Benchmark, Arad was a director of business development at Cisco, where he was responsible for investment and M&A activity in Israel.
Before Cisco, Arad was the founder and CEO of Class Data, which was acquired by Cisco in May 1998. Arad is based in Benchmark's Tel Aviv office
Jamie A. Goldstein -
Board Member
(Northbridge Venture Partners)
Jamie Goldstein joined North Bridge Venture Partners in 1998. Prior to joining North Bridge, Jamie co-founded PureSpeech, a venture-backed speech recognition software and applications company targeting service providers and enterprise call centers. Jamie served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, driving revenue through OEM relationships with leading PC manufacturers and voice services platform providers. PureSpeech was acquired by Voice Control Systems (NASDAQ: VCSI) and subsequently sold to Scansoft (NASDAQ: SSFT). Before PureSpeech Jamie was an early employee with Symmetrix, a provider of manufacturing execution software that helped old-line manufacturing companies streamline their operations. Symmetrix grew to nearly 200 employees before its acquisition by SAIC. Jamie’s investment interests are diverse – software, storage, wireless, semiconductor and materials companies. He is a graduate of MIT, 1989 and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, 1994. He is actively involved in the MIT Deshpande Center for Innovation, is a Trustee of the MATCH School (a Boston-area Charter school) and serves on the Board of the New England Venture Capital Association.
Brad Wurtz -
Board Member
Brad has served on the board of Compass since 2006. He is currently President and CEO of Power Assure, Inc., a provider of energy efficiency software solutions for Data Centers. Previously, Brad was CEO at Caspian Networks, a supplier of high capacity routers for service providers and large enterprises. Prior to Caspian, Brad spent 10 years with Cisco Systems, where he served as vice president and general manager of the Company's carrier packet voice business. He also served as vice president and general manager of Cisco's multi-service switching business (formerly Stratacom) and before that led the development and launch of Cisco's GSR 12000 service provider router. He has a BA from University of California/Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford University.
Yuval Shahar -
Board Member
Yuval was until recently a GM at Cisco. Prior to Cisco Yuval co-founded P-Cube and served as it's President and CEO, providing both leadership and vision up to its acquisition by Cisco in 2004. Prior to P-Cube, Yuval co-founded Pentacom, a pioneer in Dynamic Packet Transport (DPT) products, as well as previously leading the creation of Infogear, which developed some of the industry's first web appliances (both companies were acquired by Cisco). Additionally, Yuval served as Vice President of Research and Development at VocalTec, where he directed programs resulting in the creation of the first set of VoIP architectures and products (VocalTec went public on NASDAQ). Additionally, Yuval has held senior positions at both National Semiconductor Corporation and Motorola where he worked on data and voice communications products and protocols.