- News
22 January 2018
POET appoints ex-Cisco veteran Don Listwin to board
© Semiconductor Today Magazine / Juno PublishiPicture: Disco’s DAL7440 KABRA laser saw.
POET Technologies Inc of Toronto, Canada and San Jose, CA, USA —a designer and manufacturer of optoelectronic devices, including light sources, passive waveguides and photonic integrated circuits (PIC) for the sensing and datacom markets — has appointed Don Listwin to its board of directors, including roles on both the Compensation and Audit committees. Concurrently, Todd DeBonis, who served as a director since April 2015, resigned from the board and has transitioned to a non-fee based strategic advisory role.
Listwin has over 30 years of technology investing and management experience, highlighted by a decade at Cisco Systems, where he served as executive vice president. During his tenure at Cisco, he built several multi-billion-dollar lines of business, including its Service Provider line of business that underpins much of today’s global Internet infrastructure. More recently, Listwin served as CEO of both Sana Security and Openwave Systems.
“It is a pleasure to add a senior technology industry veteran of Don’s caliber to POET’s board as the company continues the development and commercialization of its next-generation photonic solutions,” comments POET’s executive chairman David Lazovsky. “Don’s broad experience in networking and telecommunications is extremely relevant and applicable to both our technology and product roadmaps… I’m confident that his deep network of relationships will prove valuable as the company seeks to achieve increased commercial visibility and adoption of its technology,” he adds.
“Integration is the clear path to delivering meaningfully differentiated solutions and economic value in next-generation data communications applications,” believes Listwin. “POET’s unique optical dielectric technology has the potential to revolutionize the photonics market,” he adds.
“We greatly appreciate the valuable perspective and insight that Todd has provided to the company over the last few years, and I personally look forward to working with both Don and Todd in their respective roles going forward,” comments CEO Dr Suresh Venkatesan.
In addition to Listwin founding and holding the role of CEO of the Canary Foundation (a non-profit research organization focused on the early detection of cancer), Listwin currently serves as a director on the boards of AwareX, Calix, D-wave, ischemaView, Robin Systems and Teradici. Previously, he has also served on the boards or been an advisor to companies including JDS Uniphase, PLUMgrid, Redback Networks, E-TEK Dynamics, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).
Listwin received a BSEE from the University of Saskatchewan, where he remains active with student engineering entrepreneurial programs. He is also a consulting professor in the School of Medicine at Stanford University.
The board has approved a grant of 468,750 stock options to Listwin. The options are exercisable for 10 years at a price of CAD$0.22 (US$0.18) - the closing price of the shares on 18 January - and will vest quarterly in arrears over the next four quarters.
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