Executive Team
CEO/CTO: David Kashtan
David is CEO and CTO of Validus. As a serial entrepreneur, David founded two companies prior to founding Validus. After working at Stanford Research Institute’s Artificial Intelligence Center, David founded TGV Software which he took public and was later sold to Cisco Systems in 1996. Next, David founded Network Alchemy which was sold to Nokia in 2000. At Validus, as well as handling the strategic direction of the company, he also shepherds the technical direction of the company. David has been granted numerous patents.
CMO: Hillel Kashtan, M.D.
Dr. Kashtan is Chief Medical Officer of Validus. His vision for a safer and easier to use medical information system led to the design of the Validus inTouch product and his clinical insight has shaped many facets of the system. Dr. Kashtan trained as an anesthesiologist at the University of Toronto and completed fellowships at the Virginia Mason Clinic in Seattle and Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He has served on the faculty of Wake Forest University and has numerous medical publications. Dr. Kashtan currently practices anesthesia at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News, Virginia.
CSO/CPO: Craig Watkins
As Chief Security and Privacy Officer, Craig brings 30 years of information security and networking experience to Validus where he oversees the architecture of the Validus product line. Before coming to Validus, Craig headed his own consulting company with major clients such as Nokia, 3Com, Nortel Networks, and Sun Microsystems. Prior to that, Craig designed and developed the networking software that connected all major universities before the Internet. He has been granted numerous patents.
VP of Engineering: Kevin Carosso
Kevin is Vice President of Engineering at Validus. In addition to providing engineering leadership, he is also the primary database architect at Validus. Prior to joining the company, Kevin founded Innosoft International, a provider of electronic mail and directory service software. Innosoft was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2000. Kevin has also worked at Ashton-Tate, Network Research Corporation, and Hughes Aircraft Company. He has been granted a patent.
VP of Sales: Mike Morotti
Mike is the Vice President of Sales for Validus. Prior to joining Validus, while at Medtronic Cardiac Surgery and Medtronic Sofamor Danek, he held positions with progressive sales management responsibility. Prior to that he was an Area Sales Director with Aspect Medical Systems that completed a successful IPO in 2000. Mike was a Captain and Pilot in the US Army.
Medical Team
Mike Laufer, M.D.
Dr. Laufer is on the Validus board of directors and is the founder and past or present director of several companies including VNUS Medical Technologies (Nasdaq:VNUS), SURx (now part of AMS), Broncus Technologies, Asthmatx, NTERO Surgical, NDO Surgical, Cithara Endoscopy, Lytn, and CoRepair. Dr. Laufer is currently a Special Limited Partner and investor at Menlo Ventures and is a Venture Partner with MedVenture Associates. He has twenty years of experience in the practice of medicine and has inventions which are the subject of more than 100 issued or in-process patents.
Howard Schwartz, M.D.
Dr. Schwartz is a Harvard-trained practicing orthopedic surgeon. He became interested in computerized physician order entry and electronic medical records systems due to his frustration, as a user, with the currently-available systems. At Validus, he serves as a member of the medical content team. In that role, he focuses on producing a user-friendly system that will align with the patient care work-flow patterns of practicing healthcare professionals without increasing the time required to provide that care.
Carl Washburn, Pharm.D.
As a practicing Director of Pharmacy, Dr. Washburn shares with Validus a wealth of clinical insight in product development. He brings with him eighteen years of experience in the implementation of computerization of healthcare. Dr. Washburn studied at the University of California, Berkeley and received his degree from the University of California, San Francisco.
Core Team
Steve Baker
Steve has 25+ years of Engineering management experience. He brings to Validus an extensive background in project management and team building developed across diverse development environments. Prior to joining Validus, Steve was the site manager at Nokia – Scotts Valley. In this role, Steve managed 60+ employees who were responsible for all aspects of the development, testing, documentation, marketing and support of an Nokia IP-VPN product line. Steve has also held management positions at Verisign, Tandem Computers and Unisys.
Denise Bellamy
As Director of Quality Assurance at Validus, Denise is responsible for ensuring that Validus products are delivered with a level of quality that exceeds expectations. She has over 20 years experience in the computer hardware and software industry, with the last 10 years focused on building and mentoring QA teams, both domestically and internationally. Prior to Validus, Denise has worked for Seagate Technology, Meridian Data, Quantum, Network Alchemy, Nokia, and SHOP.COM.
Lou Bergandi
Lou brings 30 years of experience to Validus as a cofounder to lead the handheld/cellular devices and embedded programming effort. Prior to Validus, he worked for Nokia through their acquisition of Network Alchemy and for Cisco System through their acquisition of TGV Software. Lou has significant database experience from SAIC, General Atomic, and Aerojet.
Simon Black
Simon has been a highly valued software test engineer in the networking and medical fields for the last 10 years. Combining a love for experimentation born from his academic background in Particle Physics, with the technical skills to understand complex systems, and a strong desire to promote quality in all things. Simon makes sure the great team of developers at Validus can focus on designing amazing software, while he helps insure high quality, and a great user experience, in the finished product.
Thomas Bonura, Ph.D.
Tom is a member of the Content Development and User Experience teams at Validus. Before joining Validus Tom worked at Apple, Inc. on a variety of projects including speech recognition and synthesis, user interface design, agent based software and even factory simulation. His prior work was in bioinformatics and artificial intelligence at Intellicorp. Tom has been granted two patents.
Erik Ebding
Erik comes to Validus from Perotsystems. With over six years of experience in acute care facilities, his healthcare IT background brings a range of clinical and technical knowledge. He provides an expertise for hospital systems operations as well as insightful experience and planning for large healthcare IT system rollouts.
Ken Key
Ken is a senior software engineer specializing in portable, cross-platform software and internetworking protocols. He has worked at SNMP Research; TGV; cisco Systems; Network Alchemy; Nokia Internet Communications; Validus Medical Systems. He has been a cofounder of SNMP Research, Network Alchemy and Validus Medical Systems.
Thomas Kroeger, Ph.D.
Tom directs field operations for Validus at all customer sites. As a cofounder he originally worked as an engineer, developing the database and HL7 interfaces. A healthcare IT specialist with a PhD in Computer Engineering he has over 20 years experience in IT. A combat veteran of the US Navy Tom understands the value of leadership, planning and dependable execution. Tom also serves as an adjunct faculty member in Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz. He has been granted numerous patents.
Anson Lee
Anson has been working in the Software Industry for over 20 years. Prior to Joining Validus, Anson had successfully launched his start-up and later held various engineering and management positions at Borland, Novell, Oracle, Network-Alchemy and Nokia. Anson has extensive experiences in Embedded Programming, UI Design, Data Mining and Processing, Security Policy Management and Distributed/Redundant Systems.
Eliot Rubinov
Eliot spearheads development of inTouch MD’s speech recognition capabilities and is the lead for clinical content development. As a cofounder of Validus, Eliot brought with him extensive experience in telecommunications R&D with a focus on speech application design. He has held engineering and management positions at Bell-Northern Research, Nortel Networks, Nuance Communications, and AOL’s AOLbyPhone.
Meinhard Ullrich
Meinhard has worked in the high tech arena for 20 years in both technical and business-oriented roles. Prior to joining Validus, he worked as Product Manager at Nuance Communications where he evaluated market developments and business opportunities. Prior to that he led Business Development for a new business unit within Philips Electronics. Meinhard’s roots are in core research, having focused on statistical pattern recognition at Philips Laboratories in Germany. He holds five U.S. patents.
Claire Zahnd
As product manager and a senior developer, Claire spans the product design process from planning through design and implementation. With over 10 years of software design and development experience, she brings expertise in bridging the gap between humans and technology. She has held engineering and leadership positions at HP, Nokia, McAfee and Osiris Studios.