Industrial Wireless is our world. Apprion is dedicated to providing industrial facilities with the most reliable, and secure wireless networks, devices, applications, and services. Apprion’s ION System is an open, standards-based wireless infrastructure that lets you better manage your operations with reliability, security, and scalability to drive performance and lower operational costs. They have made it their mission to make sure you have an open, reliable, secure wireless infrastructure and that your wireless is always on.
Doug has founded and managed many successful technology ventures over the last 20 years. Most recently, he served as a Board Director and General Manager of Strategos, Inc., an innovation commercialization and strategy development firm serving the Fortune 100, whose clients include IBM, Nokia, Applied Materials, Royal Dutch Shell, Roche and Whirlpool.
Prior to Strategos, Doug was founder and CEO of Pensare, Inc., the provider of the first international, accredited MBA program based on offerings from 4 of the top 10 U.S. business schools.
From 1992-1996, Doug served as Senior Vice President of Engineering for NetManage, Inc., an Internet infrastructure company, where he was responsible for worldwide product development. During his tenure, NetManage launched over a dozen new products and became the fastest growing corporation in the U.S. (1994 and 1995).
Prior to NetManage, Doug served as Vice President at Novell, Inc.
As Apprions Vice President of Marketing, Sarah Prinster is responsible for Apprions corporate and product messaging, positioning, branding, and industry communication as well as internal sales.
Sarah brings 20 years of marketing and product development experience in enterprise software and hardware as well as over 10 years of wireless experience to Apprions team.
Prior to Apprion, Sarah was the Director of Marketing at Savi Technology, a leading provider of RFID solutions for global supply chain visibility.
During her 6 years at Savi, Sarah helped redefine Savis marketing strategy and brand in new commercial markets and launched Savi into the chemical industry.
Prior to Savi, Sarah held various positions in product management and marketing at enterprise software companies such as Brio Technology, NetObjects and GMI Software.
Sarah holds a B.S. in Business Management from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the University of San Francisco.
Prior to joining TPG Growth in 2006, Mr. LaCorte was an Executive Fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies. Previously he was the Executive Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Savi Technology. Mr. LaCorte founded Savi’s Network Services Business and created the Smart and Secure Trade Lanes (SST) initiative.
Prior to Savi, Mr. LaCorte was VerticalNet’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and E-commerce. He was part of the team that took the company public in what was the most successful IPO in 1999. He was also an EIR at Internet Capital Group and prior to that he was President of CADIS.
Mr. LaCorte held various executive positions at AutoDesk and founded and became General Manager of both the GIS and Data Management & Publishing Divisions.
Mr.
Robert Ackerman is the Founder of Allegis Capital and currently sits on the Boards of Apprion, PureWave Networks and DriverSide.
His prior investments include LGC Wireless, IronPort Systems (CSCO), iBeam Broadcasting (NASDAQ), Comparnet (MSFT), StepUp Commerce (INTU) and Classroom Connect (ENL). Mr. Ackerman uses his fifteen plus years of general management, venture capital and strategic mergers and acquisition advisory experience to support the firm’s technology start-up companies.
Prior to Allegis Capital, his operating experience includes the CEO of UniSoft Systems (a world leading UNIX systems house operating in the U.S., Europe and Asia) and the founder and Chairman of InfoGear Technology Corporation (the first internet appliance company; acquired by CISCO in 2000).
Mr. Ackerman has been named as one of the Top 100 technology investors by both Forbes Magazine and AlwaysOn.
Liz Miyagi is Vice President of Finance at Apprion. Liz is responsible for overseeing all financial, human resources, inventory and administrative operations for the company. With over twenty years experience in corporate finance, Liz has spent the last fourteen years building finance and operations in start-up organizations and brings a wealth of experience to Apprion.
Prior to joining Apprion, Liz was Controller for Boomerang.com, an email marketing campaign service provider. At Boomerang.com, Liz was instrumental in streamlining procedures in the companys financial, human resource and sales departments. Previously, Liz has held various finance and controller positions at companies such as IBM and Mockingbird Networks, where she was responsible for the companys accounting, finance, human resources, budgeting, inventory, financial system implementations and helped secure the companys Series E financing.
Warren Smith is Vice President of Products at Apprion. Warren is responsible for Apprions entire ION product family, including hardware engineering, software engineering and product management. With over thirty years experience in technology, Warren brings extensive product development knowledge and engineering expertise to Apprion.
Warren began his networking career at Sun Microsystems, where he was Director of Suns Distributed Computing Group and helped spearhead the development of the CORBA standard.
After his tenure there, Warren was VP of Engineering at a series of successful networking and network security companies, including NetManage (acquired by Micro Focus), SonicWall, Concentric Networks, IP Dynamics, and Mirapoint.
Prior to joining Apprion, Warren was Senior Vice President of Engineering at IronKey, Inc, a global leader in secure managed portable storage, authentication, and trusted virtual computing with secure, FIPS 140-2 flash drives.
Wade Smith leads Apprions world-class services organization to deliver industrial wireless application systems. Wade has over 30 years experience in Process Control and Information Technology with major companies such as Shell, Basell, Oxy, Union Carbide, and Amoco in addition to leading services organizations within these companies. He provided leadership and technical solutions for Shell North America as Service Delivery Manager for the Basell NA sites.
Wade has developed and created network infrastructures for previous companies and has led the Apprion professional services team in many wireless installations. He brings his experience and project methodologies, which have been successful, proven, and repeatable in the industry.
Wade holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Kennedy Western University, and training with the US Navys Naval Tactical Defense System.