Personal Skills and Experience:
- Experienced non executive board member and chairman.
- Experienced in board governance issues, financial reporting and audit.
- Strong investment background.
- Excellent leadershp and consensus building skills.
- Excellent spoken, written, and inerpersonal communication.
- Experienced director/manager with strong analytical skills and technical background.
- Strong board level sales pipeline reporting experience.
- Strong IT/IT Communications background.
- The highest levels of integrity and probity.
Consultancy Services:
Consultancy services, provided through Knous Limited, to the management and boards of a number of Irish and international organisations in areas of :
- Governance
- Accounting and auditing
- Sales and sales management
- Management to board reporting
- Compliance
- Project management
- International coordination
- and much more.
Board Membership
Chairman, non-executive director or board observer of a number of Irish technology-based companies addressing international markets, and has a wide experience of the issues relating to the start-up, funding, management, direction, and growth to profitability of early stage companies.
Served (2007-10) as Vice Chair, and as Chair of the Board Governance Committee, of the Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, www.icann.org), a $65 million revenue Californian not-for profit corporation responsible for the coordination of the technical parameters of the global Internet.
Chairs the Oversight Board of the Irish Centre for High End Computing, ICHEC, www.ichec.ie – the Irish national supercomputing centre.
Venture Capital and Investment
An “Angel” investor, investing in early stage technology companies.
Co-Founder of 4th Level Ventures – a small (€17 million) Irish Venture Capital company whose primary objective is to invest in companies commercialising the business opportunities that arise from university research in Ireland (www.4lv.ie).
Internet Pioneer:
Responsible for the decisions that developed NSFnet (1985/86), the US national research internet that evolved into the Internet, while working for the US Federal Government. Actively involved in the start-up and leadership of research networks in Ireland (HEAnet) and in the Europe (EARN, EBONE). Responsible for the start-up and management of the .ie domain registry while at UCD. Chaired the Board and General Assembly of the Council for European Top level domain Registries (CENTR) from 1999 to early 2001 – www.centr.org – and was actively involved in the start-up phase of ICANN.
IT Direction and Management:
Director of UCD Computing Services from 1977 to 1999, with responsibility for the university IT infrastructure and services, and a staff of over 90.
Qualifications:
Holds a Ph.D. degree for research into sources of high-energy gamma radiation from pulsars (neutron stars) (1972), and a 1st Class honours Physics B.Sc. degree, from UCD (1967).
Other:
An opera and classical music enthusiast, and the chairman of the UCD Choral Scholars Steering Committee.