Stephen John
President
Stephen brings 25 years of executive management and entrepreneurial experience in the telecommunications industry to Cheetah Technologies. In his most recent experience, he founded and led the growth of American Broadband from a start-up to an industry leading broadband service provider. Under his leadership ABI was recognized nationally by Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Pittsburgh Business Times as one of the country’s fastest growing Tech Companies. Stephen has raised tens of millions of dollars in the private market to fund acquisition and growth strategies at various companies throughout his career.

Prior to American Broadband, Mr. John held various senior executive positions in the cable industry where he found success launching new business ventures focused on emerging technologies. Stephen attended Saint Vincent College and holds a BS degree in Economics.

Steven Santamaria
EVP Business Development
Steve has 25 years of management experience in the telecommunications industry and is recognized as an industry leader in the areas of strategic business development and operations. Prior to Cheetah, he was chairperson for the Technical Advisory Board at Vyyo, Inc., as well as senior vice president and general manager for its business services division. He was responsible for the original deployments of Vyyo’s T1 over HFC solutions.

Previously Steve served as a senior executive with Charter Communications, the nation’s third largest MSO. He introduced new strategies that propelled Charter as an industry leader in the delivery of business services. In 2005, Steve was awarded the “Pace-setter Award” by CED Magazine, in celebration of his high achievements at Charter Communications.

Steve enjoyed his longest tenure at TCI and was instrumental in overhauling the MSO’s flagship system in Denver. As general manager of Denver Metro he rebuilt the system’s infrastructure, network, and organization, while also increasing revenue and cash flow. Taking on more responsibility as regional vice president of operations for Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, he was selected to spearhead the deployment of digital cable and high speed data services for the entire company.

Stefan Winkler
Chief Scientist
Stefan Winkler holds an M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Technology in Vienna, Austria, and a Ph.D. degree from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He is currently chief scientist at Cheetah Technologies. He co-founded Genista in 2001, which was later acquired by Symmetricom. He has also held assistant professor positions at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Dr. Winkler has published more than 60 papers and is the author of the book Digital Video Quality. He also serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. He has been an active contributor to the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) since it was founded in 1997 and is currently co-chair of the QoE Metrics Activity Group of the Video Services Forum (VSF).

Praveen Mohandas
Chief Technologist
Praveen Mohandas has more than 18 years experience designing systems and software for routing, switching, signaling, operating systems, multiprocessor communication and synchronization, QoS and high availability.

His interests include video coding, video quality assessment, multimedia systems and statistical modeling of video loss in IP networks. Previously, Praveen was Principal Technologist at Symmetricom where he developed algorithms for measuring voice and video quality. He has several patents awarded and pending.

At Cheetah he is responsible for the design and innovation of QoE products as well as providing the technical vision and direction of Cheetah monitoring solutions.

Earl Hershey
Chief Architect & VP of Engineering
Earl is a hands-on leader with more than 30 years of diverse experience in all phases of cable operations, engineering and network management. From installer to senior executive director of engineering, general manager and vice president of technical operations, Earl has worked with major industry leaders - Comcast, Cox, AT&T, TCI, United Artists and Texas Instruments. He is well known in the cable business for getting the job done in a timely and efficient manner while ensuring employees and operations are safe, trained and ready.

Earl has a track record of successfully developing, launching and operating cable video, high-speed Internet and digital voice products and services in a variety of challenging operational environments. After Katrina, he was called on to lead the rebuilding of the Cox Cable New Orleans system as VP of Field Operations. As Chief Architect and VP of Engineering Earl leads the technology strategy and engineering teams by evaluating new products, procedures, practices and applications to ensure that Cheetah stays ahead of the operational/technical curve and best serves the needs of its customers.

Jim McCall
VP of Operations
Jim brings more than 15 years of experience to Cheetah in strategic business planning, new business development and financial modeling with expertise in product development. As Vice President of Operations, Mr. McCall is responsible for directing company operations, financial and business planning activities as well as human resource functions to meet financial goals. In addition, Jim works with the management team, board of directors and board of advisors to create a strategic long term plan and implement new processes and approaches to achieve it.

Jim was executive director of engineering for Tollgrade Communications, Inc., a publicly traded leader in service assurance test solutions for the global telecommunications and utility industries. Responsibilities included defining and coordinating Tollgrade's strategies and intellectual property development for the cable broadband, and smart grid technology business segments. Previously, Mr. McCall held various design positions for critical Department of Defense and Department of Energy programs within Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Jim holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.