About: Management Team

Management

Ron Edgerton President and CEO

Ron Edgerton was appointed President and CEO of iWatt in March 2008.  Ron brings a strong finance and operational management background to the company.  He has a large amount of experience in managing start-ups and was previously CEO of SigmaTel.  While under his direction, SigmaTel became a market leader in MP3 and high-end PC audio codecs, went public, and then developed into a diversified mixed signal company. 

Prior to SigmaTel, he participated in several start-ups as an officer and/or consultant.  Previously, he held the positions of General Manager at Kodak Digital Medical, CFO at Cyrix and Telinq Systems, and various marketing and financial roles at Northern Telecom and other companies. 

Ron holds a Bachelors of Business Administration and an MBA in Finance from Western Michigan University. 

Gyan Tiwary Senior VP and GM Integrated Silicon Solutions

Gyan has over 18 years of experience in the Semiconductor and Electronics Industry. Prior to joining iWatt, Gyan was the Founder, President and CEO of Simple Silicon, a leading analog technology licensing firm based in silicon valley. He was responsible for guiding Simple Silicon to become a premier provider of advanced Analog Front End Solutions for the consumer electronics marketplace.

Prior to that, Gyan was a Director of Sales & Marketing at Deutsch Technology, a Silicon Valley startup firm. Previously he has held senior Marketing and Management positions at Synopsys & EPIC; he was one of the earliest employees at EPIC Design, a firm where he contributed to its growth from a small startup, through its IPO and eventual buyout by Synopsys. He was also a Unit Design Manager on the Pentium II (P6) design team at Intel Corporation & a key microprocessor designer of Intel's i960 family of RISC processors.

Gyan has authored many industry publications and holds two US patents in the field of semiconductor IC design. He holds a MSEE degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

Paul Chu VP Sales

 

Paul brings to iWatt over 30 years of semiconductor sales, marketing, and engineering experience. Prior to joining iWatt in April 2009, Paul was VP of Asia Pacific Sales and Operations at Cypress Semiconductor.  In Asia for the past 15 years, Paul held various general management, business development and sales positions at Freescale, LSI Logic and C-Cube Microsystems. At C-Cube, Paul pioneered digital video technology for the VCD/SVCD/DVD markets in China.  Paul also held various engineering and marketing positions in the USA, working for Integrated Information Technology, Advanced Micro Devices, and Fairchild Semiconductor. At AMD, Paul was responsible for the development of the Am29K, the industry first 32-bit RISC based CMOS embedded microcontroller. Paul holds both a Bachelor and Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Dr. Xuecheng Jin Ph.D VP IC Engineering

Before joining iWatt in 2006, Dr. Xuecheng Jin served as the Chief Technology Officer at Simple Silicon Inc., where his leadership and technical contribution was instrumental in establishing the company as a premier world-class provider of advanced analog and mixed signal integrated circuit technology for Video Analog Front Ends and RF Transceivers. Prior to starting at Simple Silicon Inc, he served as an Analog Design Manager at BitBlitz Communications Inc (acquired by Intersil in 2004) leading Gigahertz SerDes designs using CMOS technology. Earlier he served in various analog design, consulting, and management positions at Integrated Telecom Express Inc (NASDAQ IPO in 2000), Sensant Corporation (acquired by Siemens in 2005), Texas Instruments Inc, and Beijing Taixing Data Engineering Corporation.

Dr. Jin received BS degree from Tsinghua University, China, and MSc & Ph.D degrees from Stanford University, all in electrical engineering. He is widely recognized as a technology expert with more than 40 publications in the international journals and conferences. He is also the author or co-author of 4 international conference best student paper awards and 7 commercially licensed inventions.

James McCanna CFO and VP

James McCanna joined iWatt in June of 2008, bringing with him a unique blend of financial expertise and business knowledge acquired from over 23 years in technology markets. His extensive global financial and operational experience is garnered from a well-rounded background in all levels of business operations. James joined iWatt from Tranax Technologies Inc., where he was a Vice President and the Chief Financial Officer overseeing their worldwide finance, accounting, legal, IT, and facility operations.

Prior to that, James held the position of Vice President of Finance and Worldwide Operations, as well as Chief Financial Officer for 3Dconnexion, a Logitech company. James’ previous positions also included Chief Financial Officer with Silicon Motion and Innergy Power Corporation, as well as Director, Finance and Corporate Controller for Quantum Corporation.

James holds a Bachelor of Science in Commerce and Finance from Santa Clara University and a Master of Business Administration with honors from Santa Clara University. He is also a member of Beta Gamma Sigma National Honor Society in Business and Commerce.

Zahid Rahim VP and General Manager AC/DC Business Unit

Zahid Rahim joined iWatt in 2008 with over 20 years of experience in semiconductor IC design, applications engineering, marketing and business management. Prior to joining iWatt, Zahid was the General Manager of the Power Management division at Integration Associates.

Zahid also worked as Director of Business Management at Maxim Integrated products for over 7 years. At Maxim, he started with the Non Portable Power group from it’s formative stage. He was instrumental in creating new highly successful product lines; PoE, Hot Swap, Isolated Power and High Power / High Voltage DC-DC.  Zahid’s previous experience includes Director of Marketing for the Power Management business unit at Impala Linear ( acquired by Fairchild ). He also spent nine years in applications engineering and marketing roles at National Semiconductor. Zahid started his career as an IC design engineer at Philips Semiconductor. Zahid holds an MSEE degree from Columbia University and a BA in Physics and Mathematics from Wartburg College, Iowa.

Sal Sestito VP Business Development and OEM Sales

Sal joined iWatt in October 2008 with 25 years of experience in Finance (he is a former Controller), Sales, Marketing and Business Development. iWatt is Sal’s 7th start-up company and he was instrumental in the success of three previous start-ups that issued IPOs. 

Prior to joining iWatt he was Vice President Worldwide OEM Sales at SigmaTel, the market leader in multimedia SoC for portable devices. He also served as Vice President of Greater China Sales while living in Hong Kong.  Prior to that, Sal was Vice President of Sales at Hughes Network System that provided 3G and VoIP products and solutions. He also held various sales and marketing management positions at Phoenix Technologies, Inacom, Cyrix and Tanberg.

Sal holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Pace University in Finance and Accounting.

 

Alex Sinar VP Operations

Alex Sinar has over 25 years experience in the field of Semiconductor Technology, Integrated Circuit Manufacturing, Product and Test Engineering, Quality and Reliability. Most recently Alex held a position of Vice President of the World-Wide Customer Service at Zoran Corporation. Previously he held positions of VP of Operations at Zoran, Oak Technology and TeraLogic Inc. He has been an early member of the FSA, and first chairman of the FSA Modeling Subcommittee. Alex is a MSEE graduate from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.

 

Jerry Zheng VP Technical Marketing

Jerry first joined iWatt in 2002. He rejoined iWatt in 2005 as the Director of IC system and Technology Development. He is a key contributor in the successful elevation of the company to a leading technology position in the AC/DC market.  He is one of the key system architects of the proprietary iWatt primary feedback technology on which several AC/DC products operate.  He has over 15 years experience in the power industry in both design and manufacturing, including key research and development of controllers implemented in silicon solutions used in AC/DC and DC/DC products.  His wide and diverse experience from applications development as well as design has been instrumental to iWatt’s success in the AC/DC low power industry.

Before coming to iWatt, Jerry worked for Delta Electronics in Thailand, N2Power, and National Semiconductor.  Jerry received the BSEE and MSEE degrees from Tsinghua University in China.  He is regarded as a technology expert in the power conversion field and has several publications and patents.