Leadership

Stefan Dahlfort
Chairman of the Board and President
Ericsson, USA

Stefan Dahlfort has been working in the optical communications industry since the mid 1990s. He started at an incumbent telecom operator and founded an optical start-up before joining Ericsson leading fiber to the x research. Stefan is based in Silicon Valley as a Product Development Leader. He holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Optical Networking from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

+25 years experience at marketing, sales, business development and product management positions.

Raza Khan
Director of the Board, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Semtech, Canada

Raza Khan is Semtech’s director of marketing for Wireless Products in Semtech’s Signal Integrity Products Group with over 15 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. In his current role, he oversees the strategy, product line development and market development for integrated circuit (IC) solutions for optical transport needs within the wireless market. Mr. Khan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Western University and a double major Masters of Business Administration in Strategic Marketing and Management of Innovation and Technology (MINT) from McMaster University.

Kenneth Jackson
Director of the Board, Technical Committee Vice-Chair
Sumitomo Electric Device Innovations, USA

Dr. Kenneth Jackson has amassed over 30 years of experience in the field of fiber-optic communications. He has held various research and development positions at IBM, JDSU, and Emcore Corp, where he actively contributed to the advancement of serial and parallel modules as well as active optical cables for high-performance computing (HPC) and data center interconnect applications. Currently serving at Sumitomo Electric Device Innovations, USA, Dr. Jackson focuses on identifying and planning next-generation fiber-optic transceiver and device products.

Ken Cockerham
Director of the Board
Coherent Corp., USA

Ken started his career in Optical Communications in 1988 working for AT&T as a Test Engineer. He has transitioned from technical roles in the manufacturing of optical products to becoming a business leader at Coherent Corporation where he now holds the position of Senior Product Manager responsible for Wavelength Tunable Transceivers. Ken earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University. Currently, Ken resides just outside of Philadelphia, PA on the East Coast of the US.

Justin Abbott
Director of the Board
Lumentum, Canada

Justin Abbott is a Senior Director of Product Line Management at Lumentum, responsible for strategy and road mapping for the company’s Optical Transceivers portfolio. Justin has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunication industry, first starting as an Analog IC Designer, then transitioning into Product Line Management. At Lumentum, responsibilities initially included 100G/400G PAM4 product lines, and is now focused on specialized tunable product lines for telecom, mobile, and distributed access architecture (DAA) applications.

Uwe Schmiade
Technical Committee Chair
Nokia, Germany

Uwe Schmiade has been working in the telecommunications and information technology industry since 1996. He started at Siemens Mobile Networks, has been working as an expatriate for Roke Manor Research and became a Nokia fellow through the Nokia Siemens joint venture in 2007. Uwe is based in Ulm’s Nokia R&D site as a Principal Technical Leader. He holds a Diploma degree in Electrical Engineering – Information Technology from TU Dresden / University of Applied Science Mittweida, Germany.

David Sinicrope
Operations advisor of the Board
Ericson, USA

David Sinicrope has 30+ years of data and telecommunications experience in standardization, product management, architecture, system design, and development in companies including IBM, Ascend Communications, Virata, and Lucent Technologies. In addition to positions in the ITU-T and IETF, over the last 25 years David has served as Vice President, Vice Chairman, Secretary, Work Area Director and Working Group Chair in organizations including the Broadband Forum, the MPLS Forum, ATM Forum, and Frame Relay Forum. He is currently Director of Transport Standards, leading routing, packet and optical transport standards activity for Ericsson’s Business Unit Networks. Mr Sinicrope holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Northeastern University, Boston.