Mintera Management Team

Mintera is led by a seasoned management team

Our team brings a wealth of experience in advanced optical engineering, successful networks and communications product development, and a track record of building and operating businesses while pleasing customers. The team is well positioned to attract additional talent and grow Mintera from a start-up visionary to an optical industry leader.

Dr. Terry F. Unter

Dr. Terry F. Unter is President and CEO of Mintera Corporation and a member of the company's Board of Directors.

From 1998 to 2002, he was Chief Operating Officer at Corvis Corporation, where he played a key role in transitioning the company from the R&D stage to a successful supplier of long haul optical communications systems, achieving over $150 Million in revenue in the first year of full operations. He was instrumental in growing the company from 100 to 1,500 employees and integrating three acquired companies during a short period of time.

Before joining Corvis, Dr. Unter was Vice President of Global Optoelectronics at AMP Inc., where he managed a $100 Million business. Prior to AMP, from 1991 to 1997, he led the creation of Alcatel's Optronics subsidiary, developing the vision and business plan as well as leading the execution of the plan with a multinational organization headquartered in France. The business grew to over $50 Million of sales during his tenure. In 1996 he was promoted to Corporate Vice President of Alcatel.

During 1988 to 1991, Dr. Unter lived in Shanghai, People¹s Republic of China, where he had the lead role in establishing a joint venture between a number of partners including Alcatel Bell and the Ministry of Electronics, in China. The JV produced complex VLSI components for telecom applications. In 1992 the company was voted one of the top ten joint ventures in China.
From 1980 to 1988 Dr. Unter held various engineering, management and operations positions with Northern Telecom Electronics, Alcatel Mietec and Sprague Electric.

Dr. Unter holds B.Sc. (honors) and Ph.D. degrees in Electronic Engineering from Southampton University in the United Kingdom.

John Anselmi

As Mintera’s Chief Financial Officer, John Anselmi is responsible for the financial and human resources functions. He has 25 years of experience in senior finance roles, primarily in the technology industry.

Most recently, John was a senior consultant for Platinum Equity, a private equity firm. John’s primary focus was transitioning acquired companies into Platinum’s portfolio and where necessary, would assume interim financial executive management positions within the new acquisitions.

Before joining Platinum, John served as Chief Financial Officer of Vanguard Managed Solutions, a provider of enterprise networking equipment and managed network solutions. During his five year tenure, John was a member of Vanguard’s operating committee and was instrumental in the Company realizing a tenfold return on shareholder investment.

Prior to Vanguard, John held numerous senior finance positions, including positions with Motorola and Ernst & Young. He is experienced in high growth businesses and has led the financial aspects of successful divestitures to strategic and financial investors. John is a Certified Public Accountant and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Adminstration and Accounting from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Bryan Hall

Bryan Hall is Mintera's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales with responsibility for sales generation and customer satisfaction.

Most recently, as president of his own firm, Bryan provided value-added sales, business development and marketing consulting services to a number of venture-backed start-ups. Previously, he was with Astral Point (acquired by Alcatel), Quantum Phontonics (merged to form CoVega), Pirelli Telecom Systems (acquired by Cisco), Hitachi and DSC Communications (acquired by Alcatel). At these companies Bryan 's roles spanned Executive Sales Management, Product Management, Marketing, and Strategic Planning.

Bryan holds a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science degree from New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Steve Lombardi

Steve Lombardi is Vice President of Engineering, responsible for the design, development, and delivery of Mintera's 40Gb/s product line. His product design and development expertise reflects over 20 years of key leadership positions in delivering carrier-class and enterprise products for the telecommunication markets.

Steve joins Mintera from Airvana where he led the activities to establish and introduce an advanced product for the emerging Fixed Mobile Convergence market. Prior to this, Steve was Vice President of Engineering at Smartlink Radio Networks where he was responsible for leading all next generation product development efforts to provide interoperability solutions for the public safety and commercial markets.

During 2000-2003, Steve was Vice President of Engineering at PhotonEx, a 40Gb/s long haul transport start-up company. He successfully led the efforts to produce and deliver the industry's first commercially available 40Gb/s core optical transport system.

Prior to PhotonEx, Steve held senior engineering management positions at Nortel Networks, Bay Networks, and Cabletron Systems. At Cabletron Systems, Steve was instrumental in establishing an industry-leading ASIC development team that produced first-pass ASICs for the SmartSwitch9000 product, which won 'Best of Show' at the 1995 Network+Interop event. The product line went on to produce record-breaking revenue for Cabletron and helped grow the company well beyond a $1B business.

Steve started his career as a senior engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation where he designed, developed, and provided worldwide manufacturing and customer support for networking products.

Mr. Lombardi holds BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University.

Piergiovanni Matrona

Piergiovanni Matrona is Mintera’s Vice President of Sales, EMEA. With over 15 years in the Telecommunication industry covering Product Management, Business Development, Marketing and Sales, Piergiovanni most recently led the worldwide sales team of Pirelli Broadband Solutions for both Optical Components and Systems.

In the years spanning from 2002 to late 2005, he was in charge of Marketing and Sales in two start-up companies based in California: Vivato in the field of Metropolitan WiFi Systems and Terawave Communications in the BPON/GPON arena.

In the prior years, Piergiovanni was VP of Brand Management in Nortel Networks for the Ultra-Long Haul Optical Platform, after having spent roughly 10 years with Cisco through the acquisition of Pirelli Optical Systems. With Cisco and Pirelli, his roles spanned from R&D (development of the first analog transponder in the market), to System Engineering (design of the first networks deployed in the USA adopting EDFAs and WDM technologies), to Product Management for Optical Components, Terrestrial and Submarine WDM Systems.

Piergiovanni holds MS and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Palermo in Italy.

Dr. Pavel Mamyshev

Chief Technical Officer and Vice President at Mintera Corporation and a member of the company's founding team. Previously he was a researcher at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies working on high capacity fiber optic transmission systems.

Dr. Mamyshev has more than twenty years of experience in nonlinear fiber optics and high-speed optical data transmission. Before joining Bell Labs in 1993, he was a Leading Research Fellow, Head of Nonlinear Fiber Optics group at General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Mamyshev made a few important discoveries, published more than one hundred scientific papers,
is a co-author of five books and holds a number of patents in the field of high speed optical data transmission. He was a lecturer, an invited speaker
and member of the program committees at numerous scientific conferences.

Dr. Mamyshev received his Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics in 1985 from Moscow Physical Technical Institute. His Ph.D. thesis was devoted to generation of ultra-short (pico- and femto-second) laser pulses and propagation of these pulses in optical fibers.

Dr. Benny Mikkelsen

Vice President, Systems and Technology at Mintera Corporation and a member of the company's founding team. Previously he was with Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies where his research included ultra high speed optical transmission and all-optical regeneration systems.

Dr. Mikkelsen worked for ten years at the Center for Broadband Telecommunication in Denmark, where he led research and development activities in all-optical transmission systems. Over the years he has been involved in seven different European research programs on optical communication.

Dr. Mikkelsen has authored or co-authored approximately two hundred papers published in international journals and at international conferences. He has given several invited presentations at conferences, such as the Optical Fiber Communication Conference, and served as a member of conference program committees.

Dr. Mikkelsen holds M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark.

Steve Penticost

Steve Penticost has over fifteen years experience in the telecommunications industry having held a number of research, engineering, sales, and marketing positions in both small and large organizations.

After graduating Steve spent over three years working on amplifier and transmission research at Nortel, following this he joined Alcatel Submarine Systems where his responsibilities included designing next generation amplifiers and branching units for undersea applications. Steve has written and presented at international conferences, and has a number of patents both applied for and granted.

In 1997 Steve joined Pirelli Optical Systems North America and was responsible for Systems Engineering for the US market, helping grow Pirelli into a successful organization, culminating in the acquisition by Cisco Systems. Following Cisco's acquisition Steve worked on integration and helped define roles within Cisco's Optical Business Unit.

Moving to Ottawa, Canada in 2000, Steve joined Solinet Systems (Ceyba) where his role was as Director Systems Engineering, responsible for all aspects of customer fulfillment, and was one of the team who successfully closed the series B round, the highest single private round in Canada at the time.

Steve joined Mintera at the end of 2003 where his responsibilities include customer interactions and business development.

Steve Penticost holds a B.Sc. (honors) degree in Physics from Newcastle in the United Kingdom.

Niall Robinson

Niall Robinson is Mintera's Vice President of Product Marketing, with responsibilities encompassing market development, product management and marketing communications. For the last sixteen years Niall has been heavily involved in guiding leading edge technologies and solutions into the marketplace.

Most recently at Optovia Corporation, Niall was responsible for strategic product management and market development for Optovia's range of optical amplifier solutions. Optovia deployed the industry's first hut-skipping optical amplifiers, significantly reducing network capital and operational costs. Whilst at Optovia Niall chaired the PICMG ATCA300 subcommittee developing the open standard ATCA300 specification. He continues to be the Chair of the specification subcommittee.

From 1999 to 2002, Niall was Director, Product Planning for Nortel's ultra-long haul product portfolio, joining Nortel through the acquisition of Qtera. This was the industry's first 10GB/s ULH product and was successfully deployed in several national networks.

Prior to Qtera Niall spent five years at MCI (now Verizon) with responsibility for identifying next generation optical technologies covering all aspects of the backbone network. In this role Niall worked with many equipment and technology companies to mature solutions into products ready for deployment.

Niall started his career as a research engineer at STC (also acquired by Nortel) with research focused on terrestrial and submarine amplifier technologies and designs.

Niall holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and a Master's degree in Microwaves and Optoelectronics from University College London.

Bryan Siegal

Vice President, Operations and Customer Satisfaction. As Vice President, Mr. Siegal manages the introduction and commercialization of Mintera's 40Gb/s transport system. A seasoned expert with over 25 years of experience, Mr. Siegal brings a history of professional management expertise in manufacturing, technical operations and new product introduction.

Mr. Siegal joined Mintera from Optovia Corporation, where he served as Vice President of Operations responsible for overseeing the commercialization and field deployment of Optovia's NEBS compliant, optical amplification systems. Prior to Optovia, Mr. Siegal was the Vice President of Manufacturing at PhotonEx, a 40Gb/s long haul transport start-up company. During his tenure, PhotonEx deployed the first commercially available 40Gb/s long haul backbone system. Earlier in his career, Mr. Siegal has held senior management positions at Mack Technologies, Nexabit Networks, CSI Netlink, PictureTel Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., ADAGE Inc., Honeywell and Raytheon, Inc.

Mr. Siegal holds an MS in Engineering Management from Northeastern University and a BS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts.