Alex Fielding, President/CEO, Board of Directors

Alex Fielding has spent his career innovating in the areas of advanced research and development of networking and communications products.  He served in: data center infrastructure management as CTO of TVDC,  network engineering management as the West Coast Manager of the Platinum Team at Exodus (supporting the worlds largest data network), engineering management for network drivers at Apple with prior work in Network Server Engineering and QA,  and as an engineer at Cisco, DEC, and Cadence. Alex has co-founded two companies. First  in the GPS space, he co-founded Woz.com, with Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak.  Second,  at Ripcord, Alex drives forward next generation technology with a small but exceptionally talented team that strives to be the best at enabling private conversations across the globe.

Alex serves on the board of directors of: Ripcord, and CAWEW. He is an advisor to Network Physics and the Santa Clara County Sheriffs.

He also is a distinguished individual contributor to ARIN (American Registry of Internet Numbers), and active contributor to the IETF. Alex is currently a volunteer and donor to UNICEF and is on the technical committee for the San Jose Role Model Program. Alex is a prior member of SVASE and MENSA. Alex currently holds one patent on satellite routing and has two applications pending approval.

Kirk Knight, Executive Vice President

Kirk Knight contributes over a quarter century of innovation, marketing, entrepreneurial, strategic and management experience to the financial and business aspects of startup ventures.

He was co-inventor and co-founder of Cobaltcard.com, a patented online and offline stored value payment firm funded by Crosspoint Ventures and Media Technology Ventures, sold to First Data Resources (NYSE) in 2007. Co-founder of iPrevail, Inc. a bootstrapped litigation support firm specializing in high technology patent litigation in the federal courts, sold to FTI Consulting (NYSE) in 2005.

He shares two software patents and has several pending.

For over a decade he was a successful marketing communications consultant for Apple, Sun, Intel, Motorola, Sprint, Signetics and many other startup and established high tech firms in Silicon Valley, frequently working directly with top management. Prior to that he was Marketing Services Manager for Four-Phase Systems/Motorola Computer Group.

Steve Kubes, Vice President of Sales

Steve Kubes is the rare combination of an electrical engineer whose quick understanding of enterprise network customer needs makes him a natural sales person.

While studying for his BSEE at University of Santa Clara Steve worked at AMD in applications on FDDI subsystems and IC devices. At Rockwell Int'l Network Systems Division he worked as a hardware development engineer and quickly moved into product marketing.

As Director of LAN business unit at Level One Communications had a successful IPO and he lead the team to #1 market share for 10/100 PHY and dual speed repeater solutions. Just prior to Intel acquisition of Level One for ~$2 billion, Steve was Director of Strategic Marketing.

Steve's next venture was Altima Communications where he was VP of Sales and Marketing. Within 18 months he developed and lead a sales team to exceed $40 million revenue run rate. In addition to license agreements with NEC, and AMD he helped identify strategic partners and product requirements which lead to the acquisition of Network Peripherals' switching subsidiary and built a complete product portfolio to address the SMB market. Altima caught the eye of Broadcom, which acquired Altima for ~$500 Million.

Previously Steve was at Scintera Networks which develops adaptive signal processing devices whose performance and low power will enable wireless and 10 gigabit applications.

Alan Luckow, Vice President of Marketing

Alan brings a wealth of skills to the Ripcord Networks arsenal : web design expertise, print experience, corporate identity, product branding and UI expertise. He has been a design Consultant to many Bay area companies including: LSI Logic, Mitsumi, NEC, HP, Agilent, A4 Vision, Apple Computer, Rhino Toys, SGI, InfoWorld, Dun & Bradstreet, Canon.

Alan has headed up creative in many Silicon Valley startups including Wheels of Zeus (GPS location devices), Creative Director & Founding employee eyeeco, Inc.(eye hydration devices) ,Creative Director for Kerbango (world's first stand-alone Internet radio, acq. by 3Com in 2000), And Chief Creative Officer and founding employee for Onradio.com (In late 1999, one of the largest networks of radio station websites (500+). Alan's radio experience led him to become a contributing writer to "Internet Age Broadcaster, Broadcasting, Marketing and Business Models on the Net" (ISBN 0-89324-300-0) and "The Targeted Audience, Internet Database Marketing Strategies for Broadcasters" (ISBN 0-89324-322-1).

Alan has received an "Outstanding Graphics Design" Award for his work in print media as well as from International Brand Packaging Awards. Alan received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Northern Illinois University, with a major in Visual Communication & Studio Design.