Technology >> CEO Interviews >> August 7, 2001
THOMAS E. ROWLEY, as co-Founder of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.,
conceived the company's business plan, raised its initial venture
capital funding, and recruited a skilled management team. Now as the
President and CEO, he is guiding Counterpane through deploying its
service offering and establishing the company as the leader in a unique
information security outsourcing market segment. An entrepreneurial
leader with strong marketing and engineering management skills, Mr.
Rowley has been at the helm of several significant starts-ups in Silicon
Valley. In 1996, he founded Veridicom, Inc., a Lucent Bell-Labs spin-off
formed to commercialize a breakthrough silicon fingerprint sensor. In
addition to raising over $11 million from venture capital groups, he
recruited Veridicom's key personnel, and transformed laboratory
prototypes into high-quality production products. Mr. Rowley also
spearheaded an intrapreneuring start-up within National Semiconductor
where he led development of secure cryptographic semiconductor products
for the information security and electronic commerce industries. The
unit established numerous alliances, including Microsoft, Visa, and
RSA/Verisign, and generated over $30 million in orders for commercial
and government applications. Mr. Rowley was also the President of
Centigram Communications, now a public company serving the voice
processing industry. He also served as a senior executive for Voysys
Corporation and Prompt Communications. Before moving to California in
1982, Mr. Rowley was employed on the East Coast by the National Security
Agency, Systems Engineering Laboratories, and Perkins-Elmer Corporation.
Mr. Rowley holds a BEEE from Manhattan College. He has also done
graduate work for a Master's Degree in Computer Science at University of
Maryland. In addition, he holds three patents with the United States
Patent Office. Profile
Mr. Rowley: Counterpane is about two years old. We were formed in August
1999. The company currently has about 100
