Our Board of Advisors is derived from a broad spectrum of Silicon Valley corporations.

Tor Allen
President, Rahus Institute
Solar industry and educational applications

Tor is President and Founder of The Rahus Institute, a non-profit, educational organization with a focus on renewable energy. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering, Tor has over 10 years experience in the renewable energy field including: design, research, marketing, program and policy development, and installation work.   Current projects include: The California Solar Center—a web-based source of solar energy information relevant to California; Solar e-Clips—a bi-weekly e-newsletter covering current stories and legislative updates; organizing Solar Forums throughout California; coordinating the California PV Utility Manager working group; and Solar Schoolhouse—a solar for schools program combining the installation of Solar Energy systems with hands-on curriculum.  

Barry Cinnamon
President, Akeena Solar, Inc.
Solar industry and marketing

Barry Cinnamon is the President of Akeena Solar, a San Jose-based solar electric system contractor that provides turnkey design and installation services. Over the past three years Akeena Solar has grown to be one of the largest residential installers in the U.S. Mr. Cinnamon started his career in solar energy in the late 70s as a researcher into new flat plate and concentrating collector designs. During the early 80s he designed and installed active solar, passive solar and ground coupled heat pump systems.  His work in solar energy system computer modeling led him into the software industry, where he founded several successful software publishing companies before returning to the solar industry in 2001. Mr. Cinnamon earned a BS Degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA degree in Marketing from Wharton.

Thomas A. Dinkel
Strategic Sales and Marketing
Tom brings over 15 years of international sales, marketing, business development, strategic planning and sales management experience in high-tech and intelligent business systems to FatSpaniel. He has held senior management positions with industry stalwarts such as Honeywell Inc. (both UK and USA), Johnson Controls and Cupertino Electric, and executive leadership positions with start-ups such as Whisper Communications, ReTex, Vector, and Mirasys. In addition to being a recognized expert in strategic planning and complex sales environments, Tom has been active in the renewable energy and sustainable business markets.

George Koster
Former Director of Business Development, ebay, Inc.
Marketing and business development

George was the former Senior Manager of Business Development for eBay where he built brand and community through marketing and merchandising programs with Warner Bros, History Channel, Universal Studios, National Geographic and others. Mr. Koster created and executed the bidder verification program on high-level auctions with eBay.

Prior to eBay Mr. Koster has provided over the last twelve years, his unique blend of integrated marketing utilizing new and old media, to leverage niche marketplaces to include the USA Network, Paramount Pictures, LucasFilm, Warner Brothers, Fox, Americas Cup, and the Bay Bridge 50th and Golden Gate Anniversary Celebrations, just to name a few.

Chris Siegfried
Chief Financial Officer, BMG Seltec, Inc.
Finance

Chris is the CFO for BMG where he is responsible for all financial, legal and compliance matters.  During his two year tenure at BMG, Chris has emphasized business process improvements that have resulted profitable operations, renegotiated contracts with the company’s largest customers and new capital investment.

Prior to BMG Mr. Siegfried held senior financial and administration positions in growth technology companies such as Omnishift Technologies, Saraide Inc. (acquired by InfoSpace), Netcom On-Line Communications (acquired by Mindspring) and Therma-Wave Inc.

Thomas Varghese
President, CTO & founder, Bharosa, Inc.
Software architecture

He is on the board of several startups in Silicon Valley and also serves as a technical advisor for Jini Services, Agistix Inc., Walking Paperz, Fat Spaniel Technologies Inc., Strategic Alliance World Group, Ebb Services, NTT Communications, i-POC Corporation, TAK Corporation Ltd., Royal Nagoya Corporation and Ritornello Inc.

He is the founding board member of SJTC (Softopia Japan Technical Club) and OSPCJ (Open Source Promotion Consortium of Japan) and is a special advisor to the Japanese government. He is also the Director of International Relations for SIPA.

Betsy Zeller
Director of Software Development
Software development and user interface.

Betsy Zeller, who has seventeen years of experience in the computer industry, started her career as a user interface development engineer at Alias Research in Toronto, Canada. After joining Silicon Graphics in 1989, she led the design and implementation team responsible for delivering several releases of SGI's well received graphical user environment, the Indigo Magic Desktop. In 1999, Betsy took over responsiblity for SGI's flagship IRIX operating system, where she managed a team of 70+ people to deliver successive reliable and stable releases of IRIX every three months. In 2000, she was recruited as VP Engineering for a content-rich internet startup, where her team rapidly delivered a visually rich site targeted at teen girls. Betsy has since held senior management positions at two other startups, where she has been successful in leading teams to deliver their products.

Sheila Cumpston
Director of Human Resources

Sheila Cumpston comes to Fat Spaniel with twenty years of diversified business and Human Resources experience. In the past ten years Sheila has been focused in the Human Resources arena at such companies as SGI, eFinance, IAS, Mobility Networks, Intuit & Yahoo!. Most recently she has started her own Human Resources consulting business bossOme, Inc.