Bridgelux's board of directors features a high-caliber team of technology, lighting, financial and operations experts who are helping guide the company in its next phase of growth.
Chief Executive Officer
Mark Swoboda joined Bridgelux as CEO in June 2007 and is the former
executive vice president of Philips Lumileds. He led the sales,
marketing, applications and custom product development teams at
the corporate spin-off and joint venture between Hewlett-Packard/Agilent
and Royal Philips Electronics. The company pioneered the power LED
product class and Luxeon brand to develop high-growth markets and
applications in solid-state lighting including automotive forward
lighting, mobile phone camera flash, LED backlighting, and general
lighting. Prior to joining Philips Lumileds, Swoboda spent 17 years
with the Hewlett-Packard Semiconductor Products Group in various
sales, marketing, and channel management positions. He holds a bachelor’s
degree in electrical engineering from Marquette University.
Chief Technology Officer & Founder
Dr. Heng Liu founded Bridgelux in December 2002 and served as CEO
for the first 2.5 years. He leads the company’s technology
team and sets the direction for its R&D and engineering efforts.
Liu received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 1991,
and developed Emcore’s first GaN MOCVD reactor in 1994. With
that reactor, he pioneered Hewlett-Packard’s GaN blue LED
development and succeeded in creating several generations of products
that contributed to the foundation of what became Lumileds (an Agilent
and Philips joint venture now owned by Philips). Liu later led AXT’s
LED operation as chief technology officer, where his team developed
high-performance and high-reliability green and blue InGaN chips,
utilizing his MOCVD expertise.
General Partner, DCM
As a 20-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, Pete Moran anchors
DCM’s investments into semiconductor and component companies.
Prior to joining DCM, Moran built his career through several facets
of the industry: from semiconductor equipment to semiconductor manufacturing,
through management consulting to components distribution. Moran
has a track record of outstanding results and exemplary leadership
at Arrow Electronics, McKinsey & Co., Hewlett-Packard and KLA
Instruments. Moran served on the board and/or advised the MIT/Stanford
Venture Lab, MIT Semiconductor Program and the TiE Semiconductor
SIG Board. Moran received his bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. He also
earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a ‘Leaders
for Manufacturing Fellow,’ and a master’s degree in
business administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
General Partner, El Dorado Ventures
Scott Irwin joined El Dorado Ventures in 2000. He focuses on software
and infrastructure investments. At El Dorado, he has worked closely
with prior EDV investments, including MediaQ (acquired by nVidia)
and Torrex (acquired by Applied Materials). Prior to El Dorado,
Irwin held software engineering and product management positions
with Accenture. His early career experience was with the communications
systems division of Rockwell International, later acquired by Alcatel.
He received his bachelor’s degree in systems engineering from
the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in business
administration from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where
he was a Venture Fellow and Welsh Scholar. He currently serves on
the boards of not only Bridgelux, but also Convio, Skytide, RipCode,
Tower Cloud, TriActive and WebTrends.
Managing Director, VantagePoint Venture Partners
Marc van den Berg has more than 25 years of industrial experience
serving in executive roles in both technical and business capacities
at small, private and large public companies. He joined VantagePoint
in 2006 from Venrock Partners, and his 10 years of experience in
semiconductor capital equipment and materials at ATMI, Inc., and
Microbar, Inc. significantly benefits VantagePoint’s solar
technology portfolio companies. Previously, he held technical and
operations positions in the Environmental Capital Equipment business
at Purus Inc. Earlier in his career, he spent a decade developing
advanced lasers as platforms for a broad array of industry applications
at XMR Inc. Van den Berg holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical
engineering from Santa Clara University.
Managing Director, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital
Richard MacKellar is a serial entrepreneur who has worked with the Chrysalix team for more than a decade. As an engineer, MacKellar started his career with NEI Parsons, a division of Rolls Royce that designed turbines and generators for power generation. He worked on Drax, the largest coal-fired power station in Europe and Bruce, the largest nuclear station in the world. For the past sixteen years, MacKellar has been running venture-backed startup companies. Most recently, as president and CEO, he successfully sold BrightSide Technologies to Dolby Laboratories for an annualized return for investors of 45-60%. Prior to this, he was president/CEO of NxtPhase, raising $57 million in venture capital and building relationships with GE, Honeywell and Mitsubishi, as well as the three largest Canadian utilities and three of the larger U.S. utilities.
VentureTech Alliance
Jim Diller is a semiconductor industry veteran with 20 years of
senior management experience. Most recently, he managed an investment
fund doing angel investing in start-up companies. Prior to Diller’s
investment management role, he was CEO of Altos Semiconductor, a
start-up company in thermal and system management that was later
sold to Micrel. He has also held various positions at National Semiconductor
including vice president of the System Products Group. Diller holds
a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer
science from UC Berkeley. He serves on the board of directors of
Optichron, Zenasis Technologies and Mach Energy and acts as a board
observer at Axiom Microdevices, Tzero and Aquantia.
