Advisory Board

GuestCentric has assembled an impressive list of international opinion leaders in the hospitality, Internet and software industries to help the company craft its vision and guide the company through the execution of its plan:

Aref Matin

Vice President Carrier and System Software, Real Networks

Aref Matin is Real Networks’ Vice President of Carrier and System Software. Mr. Matin is responsible for software product development, solution integration services and technical customer support of Real Networks’ systems software solutions for delivery over wireline and wireless networks. Mr. Matin has worked at the executive level for several technology and system integration companies including Juniper Networks, Siemens AG in Munich, AT&T Business & Communications Services, and AT&T Bell Labs. Most recently, Mr. Matin was VP of Engineering and Operations with Millennial Net, which develops wireless sensor networks. Mr. Matin holds a Bachelors and Masters in Electronic Engineering from Northrop University.

Francisco Pereira da Silva

Board Member, European Hotel Managers Association

Francisco Pereira da Silva is a board member at the European Hotel Managers Association (EHMA). Mr. Pereira da Silva has been in executive and ownership positions in the hospitality industry for over 35 years. Mr. Pereira da Silva has had a very diverse experience from managing top-tier international hotels like the Savoy in London, opening a major casino and hotel complex in Madeira (Casino Park Hotel), founding and managing exclusive restaurants with Michelin Guide and Gault et Millau mentions (Casa Velha, Dona Amelia), advising and consulting Prince Karim Aga Khan for hospitality investments, and most recently managing airplane catering as Iberian Vice President for Gate Gourmet. Mr. Pereira da Silva operates Albatroz Beach Club, his exclusive boutique hotel in Madeira. Mr. Pereira da Silva has a Bachelors degree in Hotel Management from Institut Internacional de Glion in Switzerland.

Jim Brennan

Chief Executive Officer, BridgeDoc

Jim was appointed to the position of CEO of BridgeDoc in October 2007. Most recently he was COO of CAPE Technologies, a provider of Revenue, Cost and Margin Assurance solutions for the Telecommunications industry. CAPE was acquired by WeDo Consulting in September 2007. Jim previously held the position of VP Global Commercial at Corvil, a Dublin based software start-up funded by Apax Partners and Ireland based ACT Venture Capital. During his 3 years at Corvil he built a global Sales, Marketing and Support organization that grew to more than 60 professionals. Prior to moving to Ireland in 2003, Jim had spent the previous 15 years focused on the senior management positions in software, optical networks and telecommunication providers. Additionally, Jim is an advisor to a number of entrepreneurial ventures including GuestCentric Systems and is on the Board of Directors of Critical Links Ltd. Jim brings his extensive experience of investment and merchant banking, spanning 25 years, to BridgeDoc. This experience includes multiple acquisitions and JV agreements for private and public firms. Jim holds a BA Economics degree from The College of the Holy Cross.

John Katsaros

Principal, Internet Research Group

John Katsaros is a principal at Silicon Valley-based Internet Research Group (IRG), a leading market research and consulting company focused exclusively on helping innovative companies gain market share. In March 2000, the original company named IRG, which Mr. Katsaros had founded, was acquired by Jupiter Communications. IRG provided strategic consulting for dozens of high tech companies, including IBM, Lotus, Cisco, Oracle, Sun, and Hewlett Packard, as well as some of the Valley’s brightest venture-backed start-ups. Subsequent to working with Jupiter, Mr. Katsaros, along with Peter Christy, started a successor research company, NetsEdge Research Group which they later renamed Internet Research Group after the original IRG partners obtained the rights to use their former brand name. Mr. Katsaros has more than thirty years experience in senior-level sales, marketing, product development, and business planning positions in a variety of environments ranging from Fortune 500 companies to startups. Along with Peter Christy, Mr. Katsaros authored “Getting It Right the First Time” (2005). He is also the author of Selling High Tech (1994), and was a contributing author to Tricks of the Internet Gurus (1993). He is a frequent speaker at conferences and has written many reports on electronic commerce and infrastructure. Industry and national media call Mr. Katsaros for commentary about innovation-related events. He has also appeared as an industry expert on CNBC and CNN.

Peter Christy

Principal, Internet Research Group

Peter Christy is a principal at Internet Research Group. He has been involved with the computer and communications industries since the late 60’s. Educated as an undergraduate at Harvard, and graduate school at Berkeley, Mr. Christy started as a system programmer building operating systems at CSC. Next was an exploration of medical information systems at UCSF, and then a decade at DEC in the heyday period of 1975-1985, starting at Technical Staff to the VP of Software Engineering, and ending in the middle of VLSI systems, including work with DECNet from the very beginning. Mr. Christy was briefly at HP, serving as manager of network architecture, ran engineering for IBM/Rolm PhoneMail operations, and then was founder and VP of Software Engineering for MasPar Computers, building mid-range, highly parallel computers in the late 1980’s. That was followed by business development for Sun’s object oriented Spring operating system, and then running much of Apple’s developer tools efforts, including program responsibilities for Apple’s involvement with IBM and Novell on OpenDoc. Mr. Christy learned the analysis business from Michael Slater, running the small Ziff-Davis operation that Mr. Slater had started around microprocessors, publishing the Microprocessor Report and convening the Microprocessor Forum All this experience is, remarkably, actually brought to bear in the current Internet Research Group activities.

Talmon Marco

Co-Founder and President, iMesh

Before the age of 30, Mr. Marco has brought to market multiple innovative technologies. Starting 1993, Mr. Marco served as CIO for the Israeli Defense Forces Central Command. In 1995, Mr. Marco Co-Founded Nortex Software, a developer of Civil Engineering software.In 1997 he Co-founded Expand Networks, a privately held, venture back, world leader in Application Traffic Management. Mr. Marco served as President at Expand Networks until 2004, at which point the company reached a run-rate of $20M revenue a year. In 1998, Mr. Marco co-founded iMesh, a social networking and music destination serving 10 million unique users, where he currently serves as President. Mr. Marco holds a degree in Computer Science and Management from the Tel-Aviv University.