Management Team

Steve Tomlin, CEO and Founder, has been an entrepreneur, senior executive and investor in wireless technology, biotechnology and Internet industries for over 15 years. Since 2001, Steve has been sharing management responsibility and leading the firm's wireless technology investment activities at Avalon Ventures. Prior to that, Steve was a Vice President of America Online, Inc., CEO of PersonaLogic, Inc. (sold to AOL in 1998), established and ran the initial e-commerce business for QVC, Inc., and also worked at The Walt Disney Company. Steve earned his M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and graduated cum laude with a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University.

Duane Maxwell, VP Software Development and Founder, has been a serial entrepreneur and software developer since the mid 80s, founding, among others, Gryphon Software, developing the multiple award winning hit product "Morph." He also developed CD edutainment titles for The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros, IBM, Creative Wonders, Saban, and several other companies. After Gryphon was acquired by CUC/Cendant, Duane moved on to start Launchpad Technologies with idealLab!, which acquired Internet industry pioneer Pointcast and became Entrypoint/Infogate, then acquired by America Online, Inc. Duane also spent some time at Linspire, developing several open source applications. Duane has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.

Andrew "bunnie" Huang, VP Hardware Engineering and Founder, is a nocturnal hacker and the hardware lead; his responsibilities include the architecture, design and production of chumby devices, as well as the strategic planning and ecosystem development of the broader Chumby hardware platform. With a PhD in EE from MIT, he has completed several major projects, ranging from hacking the Xbox (and writing the eponymous book), to designing the world's first fully-integrated photonic-silicon chips running at 10 Gbps with Luxtera, Inc., to building some of the first prototype hardware for silicon nanowire device research with Caltech. bunnie has also participated in the design of 802.11b/Bluetooth transceivers (with Mobilian), graphics chips (with SGI), digital cinema CODECs (with Qualcomm), and autonomous robotic submarines (with MIT ORCA/AUVSI). He is also responsible for the un-design of many security systems, with an appetite for the challenge of digesting silicon-based hardware security. bunnie is also a contributing writer for MAKE magazine and a member of their technical advisory board.

Ken Steele, Principal Software Architect and Founder, is responsible for architecture of the chumby client firmware and maintenance of the Linux kernels and root file systems. With a decade of experience in the computer security industry prior to Chumby, his primary focus revolved around intrusion detection and prevention, vulnerability research and exploit analysis. During his time with Intrusion, Inc., Ken architected and developed a platform independent distributed automation framework, designed to conduct complex and comprehensive analyses of network appliances via multi-gigabit real-world network simulation. At Nokia he researched vulnerabilities and conducted penetration tests against their Linux and FreeBSD based network appliances. At Network Associates, he focused his work on network state engines and signature development for host and network based IDSes. Ken began his professional software career at the prestigious IBM Almaden Research Center where he was given the opportunity to explore and participate in a wide array of technologies.

Steve Adler, VP Business Development and Founder, is a serial entrepreneur with over twenty-two years of high technology/software development industry experience. Before joining Chumby, Steve founded and operated Torrey Pines Group, a professional services firm providing high value, business and technology solutions to a broad array of clients. Previously, as EVP of Business Development for LizardTech Software, Steve was responsible for developing and managing strategic accounts with Fortune 1000 companies, as well as driving the success of the company's Wireless Enterprise Data offering. Before joining LizardTech, Steve was Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and a founding team member of Kablink.com, an Internet imaging site. As CTO of Kablink, Steve was responsible for the architecture, design, and implementation of a massively scaleable, high-transaction rate internet application. Steve received his B.A. cum laude in Biology and an M.S. in Computer Science from University California, San Diego.

Susan Kare, Creative Director, is responsible for on and offscreen graphic design. She created the interface graphics for the original Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows 3.0, and is a recipient of the Chrysler Design Award. Clients of her design practice have included Autodesk, Facebook, Getty Images, Glam Media, Hyperion, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Motorola, Nokia, San Francisco Water & Power, Siebel, Swatch, and Weatherbug. She recently created a line of retail products for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Susan received a B.A. summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, and earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in art from New York University.

Will Headapohl, Chief Operating Officer, is responsible for ecommerce, operations, product management, engineering, and IT. Prior to Chumby, Will was an advisor to Qualcomm's Internet Services Division, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Gateway, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of BuyDirect.com (an Internet startup acquired by Beyond.com), and Executive Vice President of CNET. He holds a Masters and Bachelors in engineering from Stanford University.

Douglas Downs, Chief Financial Officer, possesses over 20 years of senior financial and operational experience in both public and private, venture-funded technology organizations. He has led multiple public offerings, venture financings and also has direct experience financing growth through domestic and international debt placements. Most recently he has provided part-time CFO services to a variety of companies including SIPphone, Inc. a high growth, VOIP organization and Kalon Semiconductor, Inc., a venture-funded company which developed products for wireless, high data rate connectivity. Prior to starting his CFO services business Doug was the CFO and VP of Operations for Extensis, Inc., a venture-backed, graphics software company. Additionally, Doug was the CFO of NASDAQ-listed GTI Corporation, a supplier of networking components and network access equipment to OEMs in the local, wide-area and telecommunications industries. Doug began his career in financial planning and analysis for a Fortune 500 company. He has a B.S. in Accounting from San Diego State University.

Rick Maiero, VP Product Management, has spent over 30 years focused on bringing high technology products and services to market. Rick has served in executive and senior management positions in a broad range of industries including high availability hosted services, embedded systems, mobile applications, analytics, semiconductors, and enterprise software systems. Rick has spent the last ten years developing SAAS systems for security, web analytics and identity management applications. Previously Rick was Director of Development/New Initiatives for ID Analytics, CEO of Boojum Mobile, President/COO of Keylime Software and partner in a management consulting firm.

Ken "KJ" Wallis, VP Operations, is responsible for customer service, supply chain management and ecommerce. Prior to joining Chumby, he was performing consulting services for small businesses in the San Diego area. Additionally, KJ held a variety of positions at Gateway including Director of Business Planning and Director of Web Sales & Marketing. Prior to Gateway, he held a number of Finance positions with Kraft Foods. He earned his MBA from University of Chicago and B.S. from University of Southern Indiana.