Paul is an Irish entrepreneur who founded several companies and has helped to launch a number of renowned developer communities internationally.

After attracting investment from the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Russian and Dubai, Paul is building MetaCert up to become the world’s leading company in cybersecurity for Enterprise Message Services and Mobile Apps.

In 2003 Paul founded a software testing and compliance company called Segala. It was the first software testing company worldwide to join the GSM Association and grew into one of the most respected test houses in the mobile industry.

Paul started his Internet career when he joined AOL as a young startup during the mid 90’s. He started as a technician and soon became the first Technical Accounts Manager and International Beta Coordinator in Europe. He was part of the team that launched technologies such as AIM, X2 56K modem protocol, Internet Radio and Online Games.

Paul spent 12 years in the UK where he was Chair of the British Interactive Media Association for 3 years and Advisor to the British Council on its Digital Pioneer Program with Hong Kong and Advisor to its Creative Entrepreneur Program with India. He gave regular speaking engagements throughout Europe and was a judge at many startup awards. He has spoken about social entrepreneurship at numerous Universities including Hass Business School Berkley, University College Dublin and National University of Ireland in Galway.

In 2009 Paul was an Advisor to mobile operator O2, helping it to become more innovative in product development and product marketing. In this capacity he was the brainchild behind the creation of BlueVia, an initiative that has evolved into a payments & developer platform and is now a joint venture between Telefonica and Telnor. In 2007 Paul advised Vodafone in how to create and go-to-market with its developer community initiative called BetaVine.

Paul was an Advisor to a number of tech startups in the UK and was Advisor to the Board of Angels Den, Europe’s largest Angel Network. He helped the network get its tech investments initiative off the ground.

Paul helped to stimulate the startup ecosystem in the UK by creating some of the most widely attended networking events for entrepreneurs and investors, selling a networking events company before leaving for the Bay Area.

Paul is an investor and Partner in one of Dublin’s most glamorous Michelin Star Indian restaurants called Jaipur in Malahide, Dublin. He is also Co-founder of a low-interest charity, Shanti Life which helps poor entrepreneurs in India get their businesses off the ground with microfinance loans, mentoring and education in basic literacy skills.

Paul has contributed to more than 10 Industry technical standards and specifications and was one of the seven original founders of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. He also co-instigated the creation of the W3C standard for content labeling, formally replacing PICS in 2009. He holds a patent for in-app security which was approved in February 2016.

Paul likes to travel, keep fit, jump out of planes and stroke nurse sharks 100ft deep in the ocean.

Bruno Pedro is an experienced API Technologist with over ten years’ experience working in the industry. Bruno has been developing Open Source and commercial software since 1995. He’s an O’Reilly author and a regular speaker at industry related events. On his spare time, he enjoys exploring the Internet of Things with the Arduino platform.

David has been a valuable member of Metacert since day 1. He represented us on the W3C POWDER group where the technology we now use to describe websites was first proposed / created and became a W3C recommendation. He was heavily involved in the design and testing of the early life proof of concept applications we built to demonstrate / showcase our vision for a safer internet. More recently he has been writing functional specifications for our browser plugins and performing QA on our massive data set.

David has a degree in computer science which has given him a strong foundation in many areas of IT. He started out his career as a developer building simple database applications using C++ before slowly transitioning over to a testing role. Now he performs several roles, testing ,development and design. His experience has allowed him to have a variety of different roles throughout his career.

As a programmer, David is fluent in several development technologies including JAVA, PHP, SQL and MONGO. As a tester he’s performed manual testing, built automated test suites using Web Driver and managed small teams of testers.

When he’s not working David is a mad keen cricketer (both on and off the field) and can regularly be found spending his Saturdays playing on cricket grounds in the UK county of Surrey.

Sheetal advises several socially conscious technology companies so that they can access smart venture capital, corporate partnering, global expansion and PR.

Sheetal is Board member at MetaCert and VP of strategic partnerships. With over 15 years experience working in technology, venture capital and social entrepreneurship she has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs around the world.

In 2009, she decided to apply her skills to help entrepreneurs in Indian slums and villages to build sustainable businesses by providing mentoring, training, microfinance and promotion of health and well-being. She is a spokesperson on the topic, having presented at Cambridge, LSE, Doha Forum, Big Society, House of Lords, TEDx and other prestigious forums. She is UK Deal Maker (by appointment) for the UK Trade and Investment’s Global Entrepreneur Programme and acts as advisor to London School of Economics Careers team focussing on entrepreneurship. Prior to this Sheetal was CEO at Innovative Social Ventures, a consultancy for start-ups to provide social impact through technology. From 2000- 2005 Sheetal was Director of VC Relations at Microsoft where she worked with the Venture Capital community in EMEA and the Silicon Valley to help their portfolio companies leverage the .NET initiative, access smart funding and go to market. Previously she worked with the Edmonton Police force working with children and women to alleviate domestic violence and assist victims with drug abuse.

Sheetal has received several awards: Asian Women of Achievement: Social and Humanitarian (Prince Charles and Cherie Blair) for her efforts on taking technology to developing communities in India and Africa (2005); Management Today Magazine 35 Under 35; Success Magazine No 5 of top most powerful Asian women in the UK (2006), Award for Entrepreneur of the Year by Asian Woman Magazine and No 3 Ones To Watch’ section of the Asian Power 100 list – the most influential and highest achieving Asian women in Britain (2007). Asian Woman Magazine covered a story of Sheetal’s business in the Sept 2007 issue. Sheetal has been invited to Buckingham Palace for “Women in Business” reception hosted by Her Majesty, The Queen in November 2007, Alumni Award of Excellence from the University of Alberta and was most recently nominated for the Microsoft Alumni Integral Awards 2012. Sheetal has a Masters in International Relations (Economics) at the London School of Economics and a BA (Honors) in International Politics at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is a yoga teacher and plays drums and dohl. She is married to entrepreneur Paul Walsh and is a citizen of Britain and Canada.

Vijay Tella was most recently the VP of Mobile Video at Skype, after it acquired Qik, where he was the CEO. Qik was the pioneer and the leader in mobile video communications and video sharing for smart phone users globally.

Prior to Qik, Vijay was the Chief Strategy Officer for Oracle Fusion Middleware where he helped grow the division from $220M to $2.5B in revenue in five years. Vijay was a founder and SVP of Engineering at TIBCO, a leading provider of real-time middleware communications products. During his tenure at TIBCO, the company grew to more than $300M in annual sales and went public via an initial public offering. Prior to TIBCO, Vijay was a VP at Teknekron Software systems, which was acquired by Reuters Plc in 1994.

Vijay is currently an investor or a board member in a half dozen technology start-ups, including a couple, PlayMoolah and Metacert, that are focused on children’s financial literacy and online safety respectively.

Vijay and his wide Hideko Sakamoto, through their family foundation, have been active in children’s education projects, most of them in his native India over the past 10 years. They helped rebuild, renovate or expand several rural schools and two orphanages and supported programs to benefit mentally handicapped children. Locally, Vijay is a trustee of the Family and Children Services, a non-profit that provides counseling, caring and support for children, youth and families in Silicon Valley, particularly those that might not be to able to afford such care otherwise. Vijay also recently joined the board of trustees of the Ballet San Jose as the organization embarks in exciting new directions.

Mr. Tella has an MS in computer science from UCLA, where he received the Outstanding MS Graduate award from the School of Engineering and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Geir Rasmussen was a founder and CEO of the Global Name Registry Ltd (GNR), the operator of the .name top-level domain (gTLD). Geir has a background in computer science and has over 18 years of experience in the Internet sector, including 13 years in the domain name industry.

GNR focused on digital identity services, utilizing the .name gTLD as a core part of providing individuals worldwide with personal and memorable digital identities. GNR offered two core products: a personalized email address with forwarding capabilities (e.g. john@smith.name), and a personalized domain name (e.g. www.johnsmith.name).

Geir was the CTO of the company during its initial phase, and was responsible for building its own Registry system, global DNS resolution infrastructure, as well as a 24/7/365 network operations function. He further managed the integration of the Registrar channel and the different phases of the .name launch in 2002. Later, Geir managed the transition from an in-house infrastructure to an outsourced backend provider in order to optimize the cost base of the company. Global Name Registry Ltd was acquired by VeriSign Inc. in late 2008.

Prior to GNR, Geir was a founder of the personal email provider Nameplanet.com. Nameplanet.com provided email accounts using personal domain names to over 1.5 million users. The company had a portfolio of over 100,000 personal domain names on a number of TLDs, providing consumers with a highly personal domain name using their name as an email address. Nameplanet.com was acquired by Netidentity.com in 2002, and is now part of Tucows following an acquisition in 2006.

Prior to Nameplanet.com, Geir was a founding investor in a web-pad company producing the Free Pad, a Linux based touch-screen, wireless Tablet PC. He was a co-founder of one of the first web content management systems (IMAKER CMS) which launched in 1995. Geir managed sales, project management, development and deployment of a large number of internet projects in the early days of the World Wide Web. These projects included developing and launching 52 online newspapers, online travel agencies, financial institutions and a number of other commercial, government and educational web sites. Geir also co-founded Synaps as a vehicle for the research and development of a laser and image recognition based optical weighing system for industrial use.

Francey Hakes served as the first-ever National Coordinator for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction from January 2010 to March 2012. The United States Attorney General appointed her to the post, which was created by the U.S. Congress in the Protect Our Children Act of 2008, and which was housed in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, DC.

As the first coordinator, Francey was responsible for creating the inaugural U.S. strategy addressing child sexual exploitation entitled, The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, which was submitted to the U.S. Congress in August 2010.

After submitting this first National Strategy to Congress, Francey was charged with its implementation. She lead multiple working groups across federal, state, local and international agencies, and regularly briefed the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, drafted remarks for delivery by the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, and helped prepare the Attorney General for testimony before the U.S. Congress. Francey also testified before the U.S. Congress and the United States Sentencing Commission, and briefed senior officials at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Francey was a prosecutor for more than 15 years, serving first as a state prosecutor then as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. Francey has held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance as part of her work on national security investigations, and was lead counsel on dozens of trials.

She received her bachelor’s degree in Political Science, with a Global Policy Studies Certificate, from the University of Georgia. Francey also holds a Juris Doctor from Ohio Northern University. She now runs her own consulting firm, Francey Hakes Consulting LLC, that provides advice in the field of child protection.

David Ramm brings his perspective as a former engineer that spans the technology, life sciences, and financial services sectors. With more than 18 years in private equity and venture capital financings. As well as being MetaCert’s General Counsel, David represents numerous companies and financial institutions during private equity, venture capital, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions. His technology background suits his relationships with IP-rich businesses such as MetaCert. Chambers UK recognized David as a leading private equity and venture capital lawyer in 2012 and 2013.

David is a Partner at Morgan Lewis.