The RateIntegration senior management team has extensive experience in the Telecommunications, Media, and Entertainment industries, including executive positions with many leading companies in North America, Asia and Europe. Profiles of key members of the executive team appear below.

Thomas Thekkethala, CEO & President
Mr. Thekkethala has over twenty years of experience in financing and leading enterprise software companies. He is a founding investor and board member at RateIntegration where he oversees the company’s strategy and global operations. Prior to RateIntegration, he co-founded, SRG and CCSS, where he developed the software product vision and market strategy and led the companies to their successfully acquisitions. During his career, he has led teams that have developed and deployed enterprise software for leading telecom carriers and service providers around the world. Mr. Thekkethala was also a founding board member at Ibrix (acquired by HP) and Fidelia (acquired by Network General / NetScout). Mr. Thekkethala holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Information Management from Washington University, St. Louis.

John Orlando, EVP Worldwide Marketing and Business Development
Mr Orlando is responsible for market and service strategy, corporate marketing, and partner development. John currently serves as a Special Advisor for the global trade organization MEF (Mobile Entertainment Forum) and was previously Chair and Vice Chairman of MEF Americas. A recognized figure in the mobile communications industry, John’s career has spanned the breadth of the mobile industry -- from technology platforms to mobile entertainment services, mobile marketing and advertising. John has worked with more than 30 mobile operators worldwide, capturing significant market share in the mobile media, entertainment, and content space. Prior to RateIntegration, John held the roles of President of 2ergo Americas, a mobile marketing solutions provider, CMO of LiveWire Mobile, a mobile personalization and music company, and CMO of NMS Communications, a mobile enabling technology supplier. John was named to Mobile Entertainment Magazine‘s Top 50 Mobile Executives in 2008.

Donald Stone, PhD, Chief Technology Officer
Dr Donald Stone is the chief architect of RateIntegration and has led development since company inception. Dr Stone has over 18 years of experience in the design and implementation of large-scale and mission-critical software systems. His background includes real time systems, e-commerce systems, transaction processing systems and networking systems. Prior to joining RateIntegration, Dr Stone spent five years at IBM, most recently as the lead architect of the IBM WebSphere Payment Manager. Dr Stone holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina.

Dallas Wrege, PhD., Vice President of Engineering
Dr Dallas Wrege is a world-class system developer specializing in high-performance, large-scale, real-time software systems. Prior to joining RateIntegration in 2000, Dr Wrege spent several years at IBM where he was most recently the chief programmer and development lead for two releases of the WebSphere Payment Manager. His research area is multimedia networking, and his implementation expertise lies in e-commerce, transaction-processing and real-time systems. Dr Wrege has a BA in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia.

Bert Dempsey, PhD., Vice President of Product Development
Dr Bert J. Dempsey has over 15 years experience as a researcher and consultant on multimedia networking and Internet technologies. His professional career began as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where, from 1995-1999, he published 35 research articles and provided graduate-level instruction on IP networking and distributed systems. While remaining an Adjunct Associate Professor with the UNC Computer Science department, Dr Dempsey moved into communications consulting and, since early 2000, he has led the technical pre-sales and business development function at RateIntegration. Dr Dempsey has a BA in English from Davidson College as well as an M.S. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia.

Lars Cavi, VP EMEA
Lars Cavi has over twenty years of experience in the telecom industry having lived and worked in Scandinavia, UK, Germany, Hong Kong and USA. Lars served as Vice President and Managing Director for EMEA with Zeugma Systems, Procera Networks and Turin Networks and has previously held senior sales, business development, PLM and project management positions at Flexion, Advanced Fibre Communications (now Tellabs), New World Telephone - Hong Kong, Marconi (i.e. now Ericsson) and Siemens AG in Germany. Lars has had extensive sales management experience overseeing diverse sales teams and driving large sales into large Tier 1, 2 and 3 accounts directly and through channel partners and large OEMs in EMEA. Lars holds a Master’s degree in engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and a Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Copenhagen.

Charles Ashley, VP Asia
Charles has over 17-years of senior management experience in building telecom and technology business relationships with extensive experience in mobile data services, marketing, security and broadband telecommunications. Prior to joining RII, Charles worked as a VP at Chuan Wei Telecom in Hong Kong where he developed the market strategy for next-generation converged wireless network services incorporating content, education, search, media, entertainment (music, video, games), transactions and location-based services. Charles has previously worked at Manbujia (a venture focused on broadband wireless IP Roaming), Avesair (an RTP based company focusing upon mobile media and mobile marketing software tools for mobile operators and media groups) and Accipiter (an RTP Internet marketing technology venture which was acquired by CMGi/Engage Technologies and later by aQuantive / Microsoft). Charles received his BA from the University of California Santa Barbara

Gus Laredo, VP Americas
Gus is a seasoned sales executive and entrepreneur with diverse experience in new and emerging market environments and cross-cultural practices in Asia and Latin America. Before joining RII, Gus was a partner and Vice President at TSL, a company that took new products and services into the Latin America and other international markets. He provided strategic advisory services in product management and business development for emerging technology companies in the mobile, SaaS and enterprise markets. Prior to TSL Gus co-founded, Five9 Inc, a venture backed SaaS provider of customer interaction management solutions and served as Vice President of strategy, sales, business development and network operators. He drove International Sales helping lead Five9 to 1,371% revenue growth and a ranking of 137 on the Inc. 500 fastest growing companies in USA. Gus started his career in investment banking and capital markets serving as Sr. Director and Vice President for OffRoad Capital and TD Waterhouse Group. Gus received his Economics degree from the University of San Francisco.