Company Managers
Duncan M. Witte
Duncan Witte is Chief Executive Officer of BrightPlanet and a director. He is responsible for the overall direction of the company. Mr. Witte began his career in the energy industry, with 15 years at Atlantic Richfield Company, including management roles in geological and geophysical analysis, digital mapping, and data warehousing.
From there he founded D.M. Witte and Associates, Inc., a consulting company specializing in data warehousing applications in financial services, discrete manufacturing, energy, and other industries. His company also developed and marketed the RUMOR® software package for cost/benefit/risk analysis and modeling of software development projects. He went on to head data warehousing development as a Sr. Vice President at NationsBank (now Bank of America).
More recently, Mr. Witte, as a Principal for both Lante Corporation and CSC Consulting, has led teams of consultants in engagements for website development, eCommerce implementation, and complex systems integration for a variety of clients.
Mr. Witte has published extensively and spoken at numerous conferences, on topics including data warehousing, project management, and cost/benefit/risk analysis of software development projects. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Applied Earth Sciences from Stanford University.
Thomas W. Tiahrt
Thomas Tiahrt is BrightPlanet's Chief Scientist. He researches, develops and has overall responsibility for the Information Retrieval software that comprises BrightPlanet’s indexing subsystem. He designed and wrote the patented text processing software that forms the SQSTR subsystem (Semantic Query, Storage, Transformation, and Reporting).
Tom started his career with CMC Information Systems, where he wrote accounting and database software. Later he managed CMC’s software development staff. Graduate school followed CMC, culminating with a functioning software tool, and the thesis: “A Decision-Support Forecasting Tool for a Temporal Database.”
After graduation, Tom developed Classified Advertising and Image Management software for Mycro-Tek’s “Freedom” newspaper publishing system. Next, he wrote the Failover Image Recovery subsystem for the Siemens Gammasonics’ medical image system. This was followed by the construction of a multi-tier order suspend/release subsystem for Gateway’s order management software. Tom’s last position prior to BrightPlanet’s inception was developing the text processing subsystem for the Mata Hari meta-search tool for VisualMetrics Corporation.
Tom received his B.S.B.A in Accounting and M.A. in Computer Science from The University of South Dakota. He is a member of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the international honor society in the Computing and Information Disciplines, and Omicron Delta Epsilon, the international honor society for Economics, the Association of Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
William J. Bushee
William Bushee is the Director of Development at BrightPlanet. His current role includes overseeing development as well as working to refine BrightPlanet's future development priorities and technology direction. Mr. Bushee works closely with our CEO, Chief Scientist, the Chief Engineer and our strong customer base to coordinate development efforts.
Prior to becoming the Director of Development, Mr. Bushee has worked as a part of the senior development staff for many years at BrightPlanet. Over the years, he has developed the majority of BrightPlanet's Deep Web and harvesting technology, and is the primary author of several BrightPlanet patents.
Before joining the BrightPlanet team, Mr. Bushee worked at VisualMetrics as part of the development staff. The primary development was around various harvesting and crawling tools as well as building a platform independent GUI framework called VIQ. In the early years at VisualMetrics, Mr. Bushee developed Web sites and Web back-end modules to run e-commerce, which help reinforce his Deep Web technology.
Thane Paulsen
Thane Paulsen is VP of BrightPlanet's Sioux Falls Operations Center and a former director. He oversees all aspects of the venture with a focus on market strategy, branding and sales staff recruitment and development. Mr. Paulsen started his career in marketing after graduating with highest honors from South Dakota State University with a major in advertising and journalism and a minor in economics.
Mr. Paulsen joined Paulsen Marketing Communications in 1979, working side-by-side with his father, the firm's founder, until his father’s death in 1987, at which time he became company president. He has proven his ability to build and maintain a strong, growing, profitable business through acquisitions and key staff hires; strong earnings consistently in the top quartile of net profit for marketing agencies across the country; and over 200 national and state awards for excellence and achievement in the last five years.
Jerry Tardif
Jerry Tardif is the VP of Information and Customer Services for BrightPlanet and a former director. Until 1999, Mr. Tardif was president of The WebTools Company, which commercialized Mata Hari®, the predecessor product to LexiBot. Mr. Tardif has started successful companies in software and in electronic products, including co-founding VisualMetrics, and was a computer and telecommunications consultant. He was also a consultant to the Utility Photovoltaic Group identifying cost-effective PV applications and quantifying market sizes.
Previously, Mr. Tardif designed computer-controlled data acquisition systems at Tracor Science Systems for the U.S. Navy 688 and Trident submarine programs. He was also the department director of Computer and Technical Services for an electric utility from 1982 to 1993. He sat on the Board of Directors for the American Public Power Association’s DEED program from 1989 to 1993, evaluating and providing grants nationwide for the research and testing of new technologies for the utility field. In the mid-1980’s Mr. Tardif was chairman of a national task force on computerized mapping for utility systems.
Board of Directors
In addition to Mr. Witte above, the following individuals make up the BrightPlanet Board of Directors:
Steve Pederson
Partner, Sherpa Partners, Minneapolis, MN
Mr. Steve Pederson is Chairman of the BrightPlanet Board of Directors. Mr. Pederson is an experienced operational executive with a broad background in business development. Prior to Sherpa Partners, he served 6 years as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Skyline Displays, Inc. where revenues doubled during his tenure. Mr. Pederson currently sits on the Boards of several portfolio companies. He received his undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College and his Masters degree from the University of Illinois. A frequent lecturer, speaker, and writer, he has used his experience to bring systems and processes to early-stage technology companies.
See http://www.sherpapartners.com/.
Kyle Brown
President, Discovery Drilling, Anchorage AK
Mr. Brown founded Discovery Drilling in 1986, and now enjoys a stellar reputation within the engineering, energy and A/E community in Alaska, Northwest Canada and the Pacific Northwest. The company has major lines of business in geotechnical, environmental monitoring and environmental site remediation systems.
James H. Hunt
Jim Hunt is currently a managing partner of both the MITA Group, a public affairs and business strategy consultancy based in Washington, DC, and The Nucleus Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Giuliani Partners of New York, NY.
Mr. Hunt’s previous positions have included that of president, Cap Gemini Technologies, LLC ( a wholly owned subsidiary of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young), founder, president, and CEO of EYT (formerly Ernst & Young Technologies), managing director for system integration at Price Waterhouse, and 11 years in the U.S. Government. He sits on numerous Boards of Directors of entrepreneurial high-tech companies, including Information Security Corp., iMove, and Carnegie Speech. Mr. Hunt also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Georgetown University MBA program. He retains a wide network of professional relationships with senior U.S. Government executives.
Mr. Hunt is a significant individual investor in BrightPlanet, and is providing guidance in developing further contacts within the intelligence community, as well as assistance in building our DC-area sales presence.
John M. Poindexter
Dr. John M. Poindexter, now a private consultant, most recently served as Director of the Information Awareness Office (IAO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). IAO developed and demonstrated information technologies and systems to counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption, national security warning and national security decision-making. In addition he initiated research on privacy protection. As Director, Dr. Poindexter established the new office, managed the technical and financial aspects of the Office’s ongoing projects and worked to identify revolutionary new projects within the Office’s mission. He now serves on the Board of Directors of Saffron Technology, an innovative computer software company which produces associative memory applications.
Prior to coming to DARPA, Dr. Poindexter served as Senior Vice President for SYNTEK Technologies, a small, high-technology firm, where he worked with DARPA on Project Genoa. He also served on the Board of Directors for Saffron Technology, Inc. and Digital Commerce Corp. In 1990, he co-founded TP Systems, Inc and then served as the firm’s chief designer and programmer until 1996. From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Poindexter was a consultant with Elkins Group, where he was Chairman of the Maritime Advisory Committee and a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to that, he served as Senior Scientist with Presearch, Inc.
Dr. Poindexter served as National Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor for President Reagan from 1983 to 1986, and as Military Assistant in the White House prior to that. He provided recommendations to the President on national security, foreign policy and defense policy issues. He was also responsible for improving command and management systems to support the President in national security crisis management, culminating in the creation of a new high-technology crisis management center
Dr. Poindexter served 29 years active duty in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of Vice Admiral. While in the U.S. Navy, he specialized in training, new tactics and battle management procedures, and pioneering uses of shipboard computers. He holds doctoral and master’s degrees in physics from the California Institute of Technology (1961, 1964). He received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy (1958).
Bill Shelander
Managing Director, Pac-Link Management, Sunnyvale, CA
Bill Shelander is Managing Director of Pac-Link Management a leading venture capital firm in Taiwan affiliated with the Yulon Group. Previously he was Co-President of JAFCO America Ventures Inc., the U.S. affiliate of Nomura Securities. The JAFCO funds invested $82,000,000 in thirty-seven U.S.-based high technology companies. Over a ten-year period, the U.S. portfolio net IRR exceeded 60% generating returns of $598,000,000. Mr. Shelander has a B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering with a minor in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology; an M.S. in Engineering from the West Virginia College of Graduate Studies (recently merged into Marshall University); and an M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University.
Perry Strombeck
Owner, Horse Creek Management Company, Rapid City, SD
Mr. Strombeck is a Retired Managing Partner of the New York Life Insurance Company. Currently Mr. Strombeck owns and operates Horse Creek Management Company. This company deals with farm land and Holiday Inn Expresses. After graduation from Yankton College, Mr. Strombeck served in the military. Upon discharge, Mr. Strombeck taught school for a short time before joining the New York Life.
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