Company

Management Team

Stephan Ouaknine
President and Chief Executive Officer

Stephan Ouaknine is the founder and CEO of Blueslice Networks.  Responsible for strategic planning and execution, he has led Blueslice to consistently meet and exceed its goals including financial performance, profitability, and business and customer growth. Stephan has driven the development of Blueslice's product portfolio, channel partnerships, sales, and overall organizational performance.

Prior to Blueslice, Stephan was a member of the founding team of Emblaze, a leader in mobile multimedia, which went public on the London Stock Exchange.  Following Emblaze, he founded and was CEO of Airslide Systems, a leader in Signaling Gateways, which merged with Cantata and was acquired by Dialogic.

Born in Montreal, Canada, Stephan serves on the Board of Directors of Blueslice and has a Bachelor degree in International Relations from McGill University.

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John Grobstein
Chief Financial Officer

As Chief Financial Officer, John Grobstein brings to Blueslice over 20 years' experience in both telecommunications and banking. In addition to his financial responsibilities, John implements systems and business processes focused on supporting overall growth and profitability.

Prior to joining Blueslice, John was VP - Corporate Strategy at AT&T Corp. where he gained extensive experience in the global carrier market, in regions including the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan. As a senior member of a top-level strategy advisory team he developed business strategy and assessed new opportunities, including early and later-stage equity investments and strategic partnerships. In addition, he advised business units in all segments of AT&T's telecommunications portfolio, across a $US 37B P&L. John was involved in both WiFi and WiMAX projects at AT&T, as well as numerous projects in conjunction with AT&T Labs. Prior to this., John spent twelve years' as a banker with firms including Chase Manhattan and Banque Paribas, and held assignments in Canada, the United States, the UK, and Hong Kong.

John holds a BA from McGill University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University.

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Luc Mayrand
VP, Research & Development

Luc Mayrand is responsible for the research and the development of Blueslice Networks products. In this role, he directs the development team efforts and manages the overall project from specifications to customer trials.

Throughout his 20 year career in telecom, Luc has exhibited a track record of successfully introducing new products to the mobile market and has been responsible for the complete development cycle of TDMA, GSM, and CDMA core network equipment sold in more than 30 countries.

Prior to joining Blueslice, Luc held multiple technical and managerial positions at Ericsson Canada. As part of the founding team of this center in 1986 and a member of the senior management since 1994, Luc was involved in all areas of the development cycle: developing strategies, establishing effective management systems, implementing productivity tools and quality standards, and quickly bringing products from R&D to commercial reality. He spent over 10 years on the TDMA MSC and HLR and established the development unit for the CDMA MSC. Most recently, Luc held the position of Vice President, CDMA Radio Access Network Development.

Luc has led intellectual property development and has filed multiple patents. He received both his Masters (M.Eng.) in Electrical Engineering and Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (B.Eng), Communications from École Polytechnique de Montréal.

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Frederic Bastien
VP, Products

As Vice President, Products, Frederic Bastien is responsible for ensuring that Blueslice's subscriber data management portfolio exceeds the requirements of current and future customers. In such a role, he directly contributes to shaping the technology direction and strategic leadership of the company. His primary responsibilities include product line management, marketing, pre-sales support and solutions architecture, as well being the executive sponsor of customer deployment activities.

Frederic joined Blueslice Networks carrying with him over 12 years of international telecom experience, leading technical projects and teams within both network equipment vendors and network operators. During his last six years at Nortel, including three years in France and two in Texas, Frederic held roles of increasing responsibility spanning wireless business development, product management, and project management. Most recently, he was leading the Product Management team for GSM/UMTS end-to-end systems and was responsible for building the strategy and vision in the areas of Fixed Mobile Convergence, VoIP, MobileTV, and 4G/LTE evolution.

Prior to Nortel, Frederic managed the implementation and deployment of Teleglobe's international VoIP/VoATM points-of-presence, with assignments in Japan, France, and the USA. In 1996, Frederic was also part of the initial network planning team at Microcell Connexions that launched Fido, the first GSM network in Canada and the first Intelligent Network-based GSM Prepaid service, dubbed Fidomatic. Frederic holds a Bachelor degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, with telecom specialization, from École Polytechnique de Montréal.

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Eric Ouaknine
VP, Sales

Eric Ouaknine is Vice President of Sales for Blueslice Networks and is responsible for driving Blueslice’s sales growth and profitability. In this role, Eric delivers a consistent, integrated and responsive customer experience through a unified worldwide sales, services and marketing organization.

Eric joined Blueslice in 2004 and has previously served as Director of Sales for EMEA. Joining Blueslice at an early stage has allowed Eric to play an integral role in building its growing international customer base.

Prior to joining Blueslice, Eric spent 8 years as a Sales Executive at various Software Sales Organizations. In that role, Eric was responsible for defining sales processes and marketing strategy.

A Montreal native, Eric holds a Bachelor degree in Commerce from Concordia University with a specialization in Marketing.

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Leonard Scheepsma
VP, Sales Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Leonard leads sales growth for Blueslice HLR/HSS systems as VP Sales for Europe, Middle East, and Africa. At Blueslice, he continues to grow partnerships and deployments with mobile carriers, VoIP operators, multi-plays, and alternate mobile service providers.

Leonard is a proven leader in the drive towards subscriber data consolidation based on 18 years of telecommunications experience. Prior to Blueslice, Leonard was the Sales Executive in Telecommunications and the HLR/HSS team at Hewlett Packard.  He was responsible for business development and direct sales, and managing account teams and associated organizations. He was the initial driver for the HP Opencall subscriber profile management solutions into the EMEA market four years ago, creating the recognition for HP’s HLR/HSS solutions through deployments in this region.

Previously, he was Business Development Manager of Wireless E-solutions at Ericsson.  There he was responsible for bridging 2G networks with 3G services, as well as positioning and selling Ericsson Intelligent Networking and Core Network infrastructure including HLR and switching. As part of Ericsson Business Innovation AB, Leonard initiated and ran a Business Innovation Cell focused on innovative applications bridging 3G and Bluetooth. For the "New Telecom Operators" division, he conceptually developed and deployed IN services for Telfort (now KPN).
 
Leonard is fluent in Dutch, German, and English.

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