Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe
Ethernet Inventor, 3Com Founder, Polaris Partner
Advisory Director, MEF

Bob Metcalfe is a high-tech venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, Mass. He graduated from MIT, got his PhD from Harvard. In 1973, Bob invented Ethernet at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and in 1979, he founded 3Com Corp. taking it public in 1984. In 1997 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 2003 he was appointed to serve as Advisory Director to the MEF board. He received the National Medal of Technology in 2005 and is a Life Trustee of MIT. Bob entered the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Computer History Museum Hall of Fellows in 2008.

Nan Chen
President, CENX
MEF President and Board Director

Mr. Nan Chen is known in the telecom/networking industry as the founding President of the MEF, which has been materially shaping the telecom and Internet industry by establishing Carrier Ethernet as the predominant technology and service for businesses, homes, mobile infrastructure, and for next generation Internet.

Under his leadership, MEF, becomes one of the major success stories in the new Internet age, with over 150 members, starting with a surge of Carrier Ethernet standards (20+), combined with the historic Carrier Ethernet definition and eminent certification programs for equipment vendors and service providers worldwide (90+ certified).

Mr. Chen’s profound drive to unite standardization and certification with dynamic, global campaigns and strategic initiatives, helped make Carrier Ethernet one of the fastest growing areas in telecoms ($22b in 2009).

Mr. Chen served as VP of Marketing at Atrica (acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks); VP of Marketing at Strix Systems (acquired by Private Equity); Director of Technology at Bay Networks/SynOptics (acquired by Nortel); Founding Board of Director of 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance.

Mr. Chen has received 30+ industry awards/accolades and 10,000+ citations in worldwide media, and has been named as one of Top 100 Most Influential People in Telecom/Internet Industry. 

In his past life, he was a record holder in pole vault at Beijing University with 2 MS & 1 BS degrees.

Dennis R. Kruse
Chairman of the Board, MEF
Vice President, Network Solutions
Orange Business Services

Dennis Kruse is the head of Business Development for the Network Solutions Business Unit of Orange Business Services. In this role, Dennis is responsible for the marketing strategy, product positioning, pricing and external marketing communications of Orange Business Services' international network services. These services include IPVPN, Ethernet, Small Office Solutions (based on DSL & ISP) and VSAT satellite solutions.

Previously, Dennis was head of the VPN business unit of Equant, up until its merger with France Telecom and re-branding to Orange Business Services. Before joining Equant, he was Vice President and business unit head at Concert, a joint venture of AT&T and BT. Prior to Concert, Dennis spent many years at AT&T in roles of increasing responsibility. He was managing director of AT&T's International Data Services, General Manager of AT&T's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Consumer Marketing organization based in Brussels, Belgium; and Managing Director, AT&T Germany in Frankfurt. Other former positions include National Sales Manager; and Marketing Staff Manager.

Dennis has a Mechanical Engineering Degree from the University of Iowa and completed the Executive Management Program at University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Business.

Lionel Florit
Director, MEF
Senior Manager
Cisco Systems

Lionel Florit started his involvement with the MEF in 2003. In 2008, Lionel became the lead representative for Cisco at the MEF, replacing MEF's co-founder Bob Klessig. Lionel authored or co-authored more than fifty contributions to the Technical Committee, he was the Editor for the E-NNI specification in 2008-2009 and supported the MEF Marketing efforts by writing popular content for the Ethernet Academy Website.

Lionel Florit has been in the networking industry for 20 years, working for Wellfleet, 3Com and for the last 11 years for Cisco in several capacities including designing network solutions for Service Providers and Fortune 500 customers. Lionel is currently a Senior Manager, involved in the product definition phases and working closely with various product teams inside Cisco. Lionel has published several articles and holds 12 patents in the Metro Ethernet arena. He has a M.Sc in Computer Sciences from the University of Sophia Antipolis, France.

Margaret T. Chiosi
Director, MEF
Executive Director of Optics and Ethernet Development
AT&T

Margaret has been in the data communications industry for over 30 years. She is currently with AT&T Labs responsible for the delivery of Ethernet Services and infrastructures as well as Layer 1 Optics for managed, metro, national and global markets. She has led organizations responsible for FR, ATM, and IP architecture and service development.

Margaret’s many contributions to the MEF have been in both the marketing and technical teams. She co-lead the initial service provider ad-hoc group and presented the business and high level technical issues on providing global Ethernet services, brought in AT&T resources to support the marketing service provider track, E-NNI (provided the chair), COS (provided chair), OAM, security (provided co-chair), Frame delay variation (provided chair), MEF 6.1 service definition, and NID technical teams.

Her background in the development of data services and products, brings a strong practical focus to the MEF, its equipment manufacturer and service provider members, in order to fulfill the goal of growing Ethernet services world-wide.

Arie Goldberg
Director and Secretary, MEF
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Omnitron Systems

Arie is the founder and CEO at Omnitron where he is responsible for the company's corporate vision and direction. He has more than 20 years of telecommunication and computing industry experience as a technologist and entrepreneur.

Under his leadership, Omnitron is a successful growing company with a dedicated focus on delivering quality fiber optic products to its telecommunication and enterprise customers. Since its inception, Omnitron has been focused on fiber optic technology for LAN enterprise applications.  In 2001, Arie led the diversification of Omnitron into the Carrier Ethernet market with the development of sophisticated Ethernet access and demarcation technology. 

Prior to Omnitron, Arie held engineering and management positions at Technology Marketing, Western Digital, General Automation and Electronic Memories. He has also architected and directed numerous telecommunication and computing product developments for Alcatel, Myrias Research and Modcomp.

Arie holds BScEE and MScEE degrees from California State University, Long Beach.  He is a frequent speaker at conferences promoting the adoption of fiber-optic and Carrier Ethernet technologies.

Robert Kuse
Director, MEF
Transport Planning & Architecture
Cox Communications

Robert Kuse has 12 years experience in carrier data sales, product management and business development with BellSouth, AT&T and Cox Communications. His current focus is on Metro Ethernet projects for Business Ethernet, wireless backhaul and carrier access services and is a member of the headquarters transport planning and architecture organization within Cox Communications.

Robert has a successful track record developing and delivering wholesale VPN, DSL and Metro Ethernet services and solutions. Robert's experience brings a front line perspective on the challenges service providers have delivering carrier class Carrier Ethernet today. “Examining the MEF's service attributes, these are clearly aligned with both our customer experience and with Cox's plans.”

Robert strongly supports the MEF technical leadership in this and other critical areas such as E-NNI, CoS and service NID. “It also includes important education, messaging and media events that communicate this important work to the customers who ultimately judge the value of our collective efforts and buy Metro Ethernet Services.”
 

Kevin O'Toole
Director, MEF
Vice President, Business Products & Strategy, Comcast

Kevin O'Toole is Vice President of Business Products & Strategy for Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator. In this capacity Kevin is responsible for the introduction and lifecycle management of products serving the needs of small business, enterprise and carrier customers, with increasing strategic emphasis on metro and carrier Ethernet services.

During his five year tenure with the Comcast, Kevin has also served as VP - Business Sales and Sales Operations where he led large account and small business sales teams and led the development of sales training and support programs. Previous to his national roles he led the initial efforts to grow small business revenue by developing scalable, operationally excellent sales and ops teams at the field level.

While at MediaOne, then the nation's 3rd largest cable company, Kevin led the deployment of the company's first digital television services in the United States. He also served as Director of Strategy and Technology Intelligence for US West Advanced Technologies where he supported the company's business units in the identification, research and commercialization of promising new technologies.

Mr. O'Toole holds a BS in Mathematics/Computer Science and a MS in Information Networking, both from Carnegie Mellon University.

Michael Joseph Volgende
Director, MEF
Director Global Ethernet Services
Verizon

Michael Volgende leads the Verizon Marketing team responsible for Verizon's Global Ethernet portfolio encompassing product development, management and marketing to serve small and medium businesses, large business customers, carriers and wireless providers.  Mr. Volgende began his career with Verizon in 1983 and has held a variety of positions in Marketing, Customer Service, Network Planning, Science & Technology and IT.  He has been instrumental in the development and launch of numerous products including IP, Dedicated Internet Access, DSL, Video, Frame Relay and ATM.  Mr. Volgende received a B.S. in Business from State College at Geneseo and MBA in Marketing and International Business from Pace University.

Mike has been involved with Ethernet for the past 5 years, brings a varied background from the positions held within Verizon.  Mike has supported the MEF as Verizon's contact to the Ethernet Exchange Committee, assigned team members to lead working teams, and in the past year supported Tom Roche as Verizon's representative to the MEF Board of Directors.  I believe I can assist the board in leading the priorities set forth by the membership.  It would be my honor to serve in this capacity to the Board on behalf of Verizon.

Ralph Santitoro
Director, MEF
Director,
Carrier Ethernet Market Development
Fujitsu Network Communications

Ralph Santitoro has over 25 years experience in Network Architecture, R&D, Product Management, Solutions Marketing, Business Development and Information Security at Fujitsu, IBM, Nortel, Turin Networks and three technology startups developing innovative products and services for businesses, communications service providers and consumers. 
With Fujitsu, he provides industry thought leadership, messaging and positioning for Connection-Oriented Ethernet solutions for retail and wholesale business Ethernet services and mobile backhaul applications.

A leading contributor in the MEF since its inception in 2001, Ralph authored the MEF's primer on Ethernet services with over 100,000 copies downloaded, authored the MEF's Bandwidth Profiles for Ethernet Services paper and co-authored the MEF's Carrier Ethernet security paper. He has chaired or co-chaired several MEF marketing subcommittees, actively participates in the MEF Technical & Marketing committees and currently co-chairs the Security Working Group. He is an MEF analyst, media, technical & business spokesperson at global conferences and MEF workshops. Ralph was editor of MEF 5 and MEF 6 Technical Specifications and provided significant technical contributions to MEF 1, MEF 5, MEF 6, MEF 10 and MEF 22 specifications.Ralph has provided Carrier Ethernet thought leadership through published articles on Ethernet Services, Ethernet OAM, Carrier Ethernet Security, Mobile Backhaul and Ethernet over copper PDH access networks.  He co-authored the book “Real-time Networking Technologies in a Hyper-connected World” and received a patent for his work defining network service classes that is standardized in IETF RFC 4594.

Craig Easley
Director, MEF
Vice President of Marketing
Accedian Networks



Craig Easley is the Vice President of Marketing at Accedian Networks.  Craig has over 20 years of experience in the information technology and telecommunications industries with such notable companies as Nortel Networks, Bay Networks, Extreme Networks, and Actelis Networks.

Craig has experience designing and launching telecommunications equipment and element management solutions for access, aggregation and core transport networks designed to meet the needs of both enterprise and service provider markets.  This broad range of experience provides him with unique insight into the requirements for successfully building networking equipment that is deployed in a variety of networks and applications. Through his participation with the Metro Ethernet Forum and IEEE 802 standards organizations he is recognized as one of the pioneers of the Carrier Ethernet industry. 

Craig has served 7 terms on the Metro Ethernet Forum’s (MEF) Board of Directors and is currently the Co-Chair of the Marketing Committee and is leading the MEF’s new Professional Certification initiative.  He has also been a long-time participant in the IEEE and has contributed to the development of numerous telecommunications standards including Ethernet in the First Mile.  He earned a Masters of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland where he graduated Summa Cum Laude.

Zhao, Huiling
Advisory Director, MEF
Vice President
China Telecom

Zhao Huiling has over thirty years experience in the telecommunication industry in China. Ms. Zhao specializes in the research on NGN broadband network, and development strategy of communication network. She joined China Telecom in 2000. She is responsible for study network evolution including IP network, service, equipment, protocol, interface and testing in China Telecom. Before joining China Telecom, she was the Vice President of Research Institute of Telecommunication Transmission of MII (RITT).

In 1999, she was the Chairperson of Network Switching Technical of organizing technical program and relevant technical specification of IP-MAN soft switch network and equipment. In 2006, she initiated and presided over research work on standardization for Common IMS convergence network, and set up a joint research group in China. She has won many awards for sci-tech programs at national and ministerial levels.