Carlsbad, CA--To strengthen the marketing efforts for its silicon photonics and integrated photonics products, Luxtera has expanded its executive team: Joseph Balardeta is named VP of engineering, previously holding senior technical management positions at AMCC and Broadcom; Chris Bergey is appointed VP of marketing, spending the last five years establishing and managing Broadcom's WLAN combo business into one of Broadcom's largest business lines; and Ron Horan joins Luxtera as VP of sales, most recently acting as senior director of sales and global account manager for Broadcom.
Each new member of the Luxtera team has demonstrated considerable leadership in the semiconductor industry. Balardeta was most recently a founder of Uplay, LLC, which was acquired by Callaway Golf. He also held various engineering management roles at Broadcom and served as the vice president of engineering at AppliedMicro.
Bergey also joins Luxtera from Broadcom, where he was most recently VP of the Mobile and Wireless Group and gained significant experience with starting and managing product lines and marketing organizations through explosive growth. Prior to spending nine years at Broadcom, Bergey worked for Multilink Technology Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices.
Horan was most recently senior director and global account manager for Broadcom. Prior to joining Broadcom, Horan managed the platform engineering team at Advanced Micro Devices. Prior to that, he was a senior design engineer with Compaq Computer's workstation team, where he drove high speed graphics and management solutions and was awarded 16 patents.
"The promise of Silicon Photonics has been discussed at length for many years, however like many technologies, it was the right idea before the industry and markets were ready," said Bergey. "We are now rapidly approaching the inflection point where Silicon Photonics will often be the only viable solution to support the cost, size, density and reliability required by leading manufacturers of switches and servers. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to help lead Luxtera into this market transition."
Luxtera saysis the first company to overcome the complex technical obstacles involved with integrating high performance optics directly with silicon electronics on a mainstream CMOS chip, bringing direct “fiber to the chip” connectivity to market. Luxtera has received funding from leading venture capitalists including August Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Sevin Rosen Funds and Lux Capital.
SOURCE: Luxtera; www.luxtera.com/20120213251/luxtera-strengthens-management-team-with-the-addition-of-three-new-executives.html