Executive Team
Michel Quazza — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
An International Executive, Michel has 20 years of business experience with telecommunications and software companies across the globe. Prior to his CEO role at SurfKitchen, he held executive positions with Phone.com and Openwave in Silicon Valley, as Vice President of Product Management, Vice President of Business Development and General Manager of its Mobile Infrastructure Business Unit.
During his earlier career, Michel held sales, marketing and business development roles across Europe with Octel Communications (acquired by Lucent Technologies), Global One (now Equant ) and France Telecom.
Michel holds an MSc from the French “Grande Ecole” Centrale Paris, with follow-on studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Dave Evans — Chief Technical Officer
Dave Evans joined the company as Senior VP Product Marketing, responsible for evolving the current SurfKitchen products to dominate the emerging DUE software segment. Dave moved from O2 where he was VP of Product Platform and Architecture, responsible for the development of the O2 Active programme and delivery of O2’s core data services platforms such as Games, WAP, Variable Charging, Music and emerging Service Delivery Architecture. Dave was also part of the core data products group driving O2’s strategic objectives of leading in Data.
Prior to O2, Dave was CTO of BTLooksmart delivering comprehensive search/directory solutions and associated advertising solutions to major internet portals such as Altavista, MSN etc., and technical lead within the bid team at Looksmart to create the BTLooksmart Joint Venture with British Telecom. Prior to this Dave held senior IT positions in Encyclopaedia Britannica and Argos.
Richard Oliver – Chief Financial Officer
Richard joined SurfKitchen with 20 years of financial and operational experience gained in executive positions of both Fortune 250 corporations, and the entrepreneurial technology sector. Richard is responsible for the financial and operational functions of the company's operations. Before SurfKitchen, Richard was the CFO and COO of SpiritSoft, a private equity backed business and leader in Java middleware, which was acquired by a Nasdaq listed leader of the middleware market.
Richard previously worked for Xerox and Dana Corporation during a 14 year blue-chip career in equipment and technology finance. He led complex commercial and financial departments at an international level through periods of rapid growth. Richard holds a BA (Hons) in Business Studies from the University of West England and is a Chartered Management Accountant.
Tracy Allard – Vice President Worldwide Sales
Tracy joined SurfKitchen from 724 Solutions in 2006 as Regional Vice President, North America where she established the local office, staff and SurfKitchen’s initial sales in the region. With more than 20 years of international selling experience with Fortune 500 companies, Tracy’s Telco career began at Openwave Systems where she managed the team responsible for the Cingular Wireless relationship. In addition to two years spent at 724 Solutions, Tracy held the role of Director of European Sales at Boingo Wireless.
Prior to working in the Telco sector, Tracy spent 12 years with the Caterpillar group of companies, holding senior positions including Regional Sales Manager for Latin America and International Sales Administration Manager handling all aspects of sales and inventory management and worldwide forwarding logistics.
Mark O’Shea – Vice President Customer Operations
Mark has more than 15 years of international experience spanning different industries. He joined SurfKitchen in 2002, holding senior positions as VP of Product Development and Professional Services. Mark was previously with TeleDanmark Communications Switzerland where he headed an Emerging Technologies team that provided consultancy to Marketing, Operations, and IT & Corporate Strategy.
Prior to Tele Danmark, he worked at diAx Telecommunication, a startup in the newly liberalized telecom market in Switzerland and was responsible for driving the rollout of their residential and SME portal, and their IP-VPN. His early career was in the semi-conductor industry where he held a variety of engineering, business development and operations positions in Dutch government backed projects.
Mark holds an MSc in Systems Engineering & Management from the University of Delft in The Netherlands.
