Technology >> CEO Interviews >> November 5, 2001
KIM NIEDERMAN is President and CEO of Longboard, Inc. He has more than
20 years of successful leadership experience in the high-tech industry,
having held various senior management positions. Most recently, he was
Vice President of Worldwide Sales for start-up RadioLAN, a developer of
high-speed wireless LANs. Prior to RadioLAN, Mr. Niederman was Vice
President of Sales at FORE Systems, where he was responsible for
doubling the North American operation to a $225 million run rate within
12 months and merging FORE's $800 million acquisition of Alantec. He
spent five years at Cisco Systems where he held numerous sales executive
positions (one of the original sales executives), including Director of
Central Operations and Director of Worldwide Sales. As Managing
Director, he started Cisco's Switching Division that comprised
acquisitions ' Crescendo, Kalpana and Grand Junction ' and was
instrumental in propelling sales from a $14 million to a $400 million
run rate in just 14 months. Earlier in his career, he held sales
management positions at Wang Laboratories (reporting to John Chambers)
and served as CEO of Hallmark Industries. Mr. Niederman is a Board
Member and Technical Advisor to several Silicon Valley startups. He
holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Denver. Profile
DANA HARRISON is Vice President of Marketing at Longboard, Inc. A
veteran of the networking and telecommunication industry, Mr. Harrison
brings to LongBoard over 18 years of experience, serving most recently
at Lucent Technologies. In his role at Lucent, he was the Vice President
of Marketing for Lucent's Carrier Access Business Unit. There he was
responsible for directing the product development, product marketing,
and business development of the company's MAX, TNT and APX families of
universal media gateways. Under Mr. Harrison's leadership, these
products attained the top worldwide market position with over 22 million
ports installed globally. Having joined Lucent via its acquisition of
Ascend Communications, Mr. Harrison was Director of Product Management
for the MAX remote access concentrator product line. Before joining
Ascend, he was Director of the Wireless Business Unit for US
Robotics/3Com. Previously, he had served as President and CEO of AirGo
Communications, a spin-off company of Dayna Communications, where he had
been Vice President of Marketing. His background also includes six years
at Apple Computer as a Product Line Executive of Networking and
Communications products. Profile
Mr. Niederman: LongBoard was founded in January 2000. Its mission was to
develop centrex-type services and features to be
