About

Board

Kojo Appiah, Ph.D.

Interim Chairman of the board

Dr. Appiah has been on TAN’s Board since its founding. Previously, Dr. Appiah served TAN in the dual roles of director of finance and as the membership director.

Kojo currently works as an Engineering Advisor with Analog Devices, in San Jose, CA. Previously, he held technical leadership positions in flash memory and new product development at Spansion, Inc., and prior to Spansion, he was with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA. Dr. Appiah has also been involved in a number of entrepreneurial and investment ventures in several areas.

Dr. Appiah holds a Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering with a Minor in Management of Technology from The Georgia Institute of Technology, and MS and BS degrees in Physics from Emory University and Morehouse College respectively.

Paschal Iwuh

President & Chief Executive Officer

Iwuh is a TAN co-founder and served as TAN’s Director of Public Relations and Communication till April 2006. Iwuh was a co-chair of TAN's inaugural conference, TANCon, held on October 14, 2006. He led the Sponsorship & Affiliation Committee until he became the President and Chief Executive Officer effective January 1, 2008.

Iwuh worked for Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, Lagos as a Petroleum Engineer. He also worked as an engineer with Bayer Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA & Berkeley, CA for five years. He was the Vice President of Crumbs Reliability Engineering, LLC from 2004 to 2005 and still serves on her board. Currently, he works as a Senior Engineering Consultant with JM Hyde Consulting Inc, a biotech consulting company located in South San Francisco, CA.

Iwuh is a PhD Candidate (2008) in Organization & Management (with specialization in Leadership) at Capella University, Minneapolis, MN. He holds a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary; was a visiting scholar to the school of Chemical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia; holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Petroleum Engineering (first in his class) from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and a Business Administration Certificate (with Distinction) from University of California, Berkeley.

Bolaji Olutade, Ph.D.

Director

Bolaji has served on the board since he co-founded the organization. He was previously the President and Chief Executive Officer of TAN and also served as TAN's director of technology.

Dr Olutade has several years of experience at Hewlett-Packard Company in California where he held various technical leadership positions developing network server computers. He also taught computer architecture classes at California State University.

Bolaji received Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (with highest honor), an M.S. in Electrical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. He is currently pursuing an M.B.A. at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

Mohamed Hersi

Director

Mr. Hersi is the founder and President/Chairman of AfGlobe Communications Inc located in Northern Virginia and Co-Founder and COO of AccessPoint Africa with operations in
Zimbabwe , Sierra Leone , Ghana and Nigeria . Previously, Mr. Hersi held senior technical executive positions with MCI/UUNET, OptiGlobe Communications and Qwest Communications.

At OptiGlobe Mr. Hersi oversaw the purchase of various assets in Latin America including the purchase of high capacity data networks and facilities. His team was responsible for global network strategy and planning, the team reviewed all major facility and equipment purchasing and finance agreements with Nortel, Dell, HP, Juniper, Cisco and EMC.

At Qwest Mr. Hersi served as Senior Network Architect responsible for designing and deploying Qwest IP Network. He held various technical senior management positions included Senior Manager of Qwest Data Operations Group. While at Qwest Mr. Hersi was part of senior management team that created Qwest MultiService IP (Q-MSIP) organization. The Q-MSIP quickly grew to become the one of the largest VoIP enabled Dial-Access network in the world. Mr. Hersi team negotiated Qwest Dial-Access agreements with AOL, MSN and
Earth-Link.

Mr. Hersi works with various domestic and international non-profit organizations as advisor and board member.

Mr. Hersi studied computer Science and Math at George Mason University.

Yemi Lalude

Director

Yemi Lalude is a Principal at Granite Global Ventures where he invests in expansion-stage technology companies. He has over twelve years of engineering, business development, product marketing, and investing experience in the information technology industry. Yemi joined Granite Global Ventures from Siebel Systems where he managed, and was instrumental in the start-up of, the customer satisfaction product line. Prior to Siebel, Yemi spent six years at Hewlett-Packard where he held engineering and leadership positions in the manufacturing and R&D functions of the inkjet printer business. He was part of the core group of employees who started and built Hewlett-Packard's Specialty Printing Systems business.

Yemi received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (First Class Honors) from the University of Lagos (Nigeria), an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Graduate School of Business. He represents Granite Global Ventures on the boards of Intelliden, Accruent, and athenahealth. Yemi also invested in Netscaler (acquired by Citrix Systems).

Gordon Williams

Director

As the Chief Finance Officer, Williams plays an integral part in the planning and strategic thinking for the future of the TAN Organization. He also oversees financial reports, financial control and risk management.

Mr. Williams currently works at Cisco Systems in the Central Development Finance Organization where he develops plans for the manufacturing of product for the largest business unit.

Mr. Williams held roles in Cisco’s Worldwide Sales Productivity group where he led project teams to deliver productivity enhancing tools for the Sales force. He also worked for two years as a Finance Manager at the UK offices of Cisco Systems.
Prior to Cisco, Mr. Williams worked at Gartner Group UK as a Financial Analyst and at Slater Maidment where he trained as a Chartered Accountant.

Gordon Williams holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.