Our Board & Officers

Musa Unmehopa

Musa Unmehopa is Head of Wireless Standards & Regulations at Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), where he is responsible for all wireless lighting control, visible light communication, application protocols, data protection, and cybersecurity standardization and regulatory activities. His professional experience in technology and innovation spans 25+ years and covers mobile communications, the Internet, and lighting.

Prior to joining Signify and Philips in 2013, Musa held positions with Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Alcatel-Lucent. Musa has held senior leadership roles in various standards bodies, trade organizations, and industry consortia. These include the chairman of the Technical Plenary of the Open Mobile Alliance, treasurer of the Zigbee Alliance, and Secretary General of the Zhaga Consortium.  Furthermore, Musa served on the executive boards of the Zigbee Alliance, The Connected Lighting Alliance, the Emerge Alliance, and the Parlay Group. Author of two technology books, Musa has been an invited keynote speaker and panelist at various industry events. His publications include numerous papers in technical journals and conferences, as well as patents. Musa received a BSc. and MSc. degree in Computer Science from Twente University and MBA degree from TIAS Business School in The Netherlands and the University of Bradford School of Management in the UK.

Tobin Richardson

As President & CEO, Tobin leads the Alliance’s mission, with and for its members, to simplify and harmonize the Internet of Things (IoT) through open, global standards and by creating a place where companies can work together to create a more connected, accessible, sustainable, and equitable world.

His career is rooted in driving human-centric change and enabling purposeful collaboration; and, since 2014, Tobin has led the Alliance, which now includes over 450 member companies in 36 countries across the IoT value chain.

Tobin also sits on the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Connected World, as Chair of the WEF’s initiative focused on strengthening collaboration across enterprise, regulators, consumers, and NGOs.

Prior to leading the Alliance, Tobin led large-scale tech transformations and new service/product rollouts across Fortune 500 companies, world-leading technology firms and public sector organizations. He holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis.

Kevin Kraus

Kevin Kraus has been the Director of Technology and Partner Integration for Yale and August Residential Electronic Lock Business since 2018 and is responsible for defining key product technologies and developing partner integration strategies and tools to support seamless lock integration. Prior to becoming the Director of technology and partner integration, Kevin was Director of product development for Yale Residential Locks. Responsible for product strategy, product development, and technology. Prior to joining ASSA ABLOY/Yale in 2009; Kevin spent 11 years as director of product management electronic locks for the Schlage Residential Business. Prior to Schlage Kevin spent 7 years with Honeywell’s Security Group as product manager for Honeywell Residential Security Products. Kevin has extensive experience in the IOT, Residential Security, and Home Automation Business and is regarded as a subject matter expert in residential electronic locks, residential security and home automation systems and residential systems communication technologies. Kevin has majors in both Electrical Engineering and Business Administration. Kevin is also on the Z-Wave Alliance, Zigbee Alliance, and Thread Board of Directors and Treasure of both the Thread Group and Z-Wave Alliance.

Jean-Michel Orsat

Jean-Michel Orsat has over 30 years of experience in the home automation industry, within industry alliances and EU regulatory bodies. He is Director of the Systems & Solutions of Connectivity Department at Somfy, overseeing technology partnerships, connectivity and wireless networking technologies and overall system architectures.

With a strong focus on Interoperability, he has been deeply involved in the development of protocols with other leading home equipment manufacturers. The department he is heading deals with wireless protocols developments, focusing io-homecontrol, Thread, Zigbee and other open standard solutions for the Somfy Group.

He is also a member of the Thread Group Board of Directors and a member of the Executive Board within the Alliance. Jean-Michel Orsat is graduated with an Engineering Degree from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers.

Chris Daniels

Chris Daniels is an Advanced Engineer at The Kroger Company, where he is responsible for Advanced Systems Concepts and the Next Generation IoT efforts. Throughout his 15 years in engineering, he has gained experience leading large development teams on research and development and other innovation efforts. During his time at Kroger, he spearheaded the adoption of numerous software and architecture standards with various innovation efforts such as Temperature Monitoring (over 1 million IoT devices deployed) and Kroger Pickup eCommerce fulfillment. Chris’ business and engineering experience also spans crowdfunding, financial, and aviation industries through leading efforts from startups and non-profits to BigCos. He is an active member of the Cincinnati startup community and has been the co-founder and CTO of multiple startups. Chris has a BS in Computer Science from Northern Kentucky University.

Rob Alexander

Rob has worked on IoT devices, wireless protocols, and embedded devices for more than 13 years. He is a Principal Architect at Silicon Labs working with the embedded software team to integrate wireless stacks into Silicon Labs hardware and software. Since 2013 Rob has served as the Chair of the Zigbee Pro Core Workgroup, which defines the mesh networking layer, application transport layer, and the interactions with the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer. Rob serves on the Alliance Board of Directors and the Thread Board of Directors.

Skip Ashton

Skip is a Distinguished Engineer at Infineon. He has previously been on the Board of Directors for Zigbee and Thread, as well as other IoT consortia. Skip was the Vice President of Software for Silicon Labs helping to build their IoT portfolio and software teams. Skip was responsible for IoT efforts across Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth and proprietary wireless in addition to 32b MCU and the software tools at Silicon Labs. Throughout his career, Skip has held a variety of program and engineering management positions focusing on high quality product development. Skip has worked with companies in home automation, connected lighting, smart energy and the systems required for success of these products. Skip holds a BSME from Georgia Tech and also worked on nuclear power in the US Navy.

Damir Smrkovic

Damir Smrkovic is a System Architect currently working with the technical design of the IKEA Home Smart system and guiding its technology roadmap. Damir holds a degree in Computer Science and Telecommunications Engineering. His previous experience includes working in the IoT, Medtech, and Mobile industries.

Chris DeCenzo

Chris DeCenzo is a Principal Engineer at Amazon where he focuses on Smart Home for the Alexa Devices group. Prior to joining Amazon, Chris spent 9 years as the Chief Architect at Icontrol Technologies, a pioneer in the Connected Home space. Icontrol was split up and sold to Xfinity and Alarm.com in 2016.

Francis Dell’ova

Francis Dell’ova has been working with STMicroelectronics for more than 35 years, holding various positions ranging from chip designer, design center manager, business unit manager and more recently director of IP portfolio and advanced business development within the Microcontroller and Digital Group of ST.

Aside from his contribution in the wireless, RFID and NFC businesses, Francis has also served as a board member for other industry alliances. He has issued several patents in the video processing and RFID domains and presented at various international conferences. Francis is a graduate of Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Brest.

Jeff Drake

Jeff has been working on connectivity, IoT devices, software and infrastructure for more than 15 years. He is the Software Chief Architect at GE Appliances, a Haier Company working to guide the software architecture across GEA and Haier businesses to provide best-in-class software platforms for the next generation of connected appliances. Since 2008 Jeff has worked with many wireless standards and organizations including the Zigbee Alliance, Bluetooth SIG, Allseen Alliance/OCF, Home Connectivity Alliance, and Thread to promote adoption and design of consumer-friendly open connectivity standards in the home.

Andreas Gal

Based in Cupertino, CA, US, Andreas works on HomeKit technology and strategy. Prior to joining Apple, Andreas was Chief Technology Officer at Mozilla where he, among others, launched Firefox OS. After leaving Mozilla Andreas founded the embedded machine learning startup Silk Labs before joining Apple in 2017. Andreas holds a MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Magdeburg and the University of California, Irvine, respectively.

Pär Håkansson

Pär Håkansson joined Nordic Semiconductor in 2015 and is currently Product Director for Nordic’s Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread, Matter, and Wi-Fi solutions. He has been in the low-power wireless industry since 2008, holding research and business/marketing positions. Pär Håkansson holds an M.Sc. EE and a Technical Licentiate degree in communication electronics from Linköping University.

Pekka Hakkarainen

Asad Haque

Asad Haque joined the Alliance as an alternate Board Director in 2016, representing Comcast. His focus was to further enhance security controls in Zigbee protocol used in home automation. That continues to be his focus even today. He believes firmly that security is the enabler, not a hurdle.

Asad Haque has over twenty-five (25) years of progressive responsibilities in Information Security Architecture, specializing in @scale security of IoT and embedded devices and system API’s to protect and preserve user privacy. Designed Blockchain-based decentralized and autonomous authentication and authorization for constrained devices. He possesses extensive hands-on experience as a Chief Application and Network Architect, including experience in systems management, information security, software development, large secure network (TCP/IP) design and deployment, departmental oversight, and management. 

Suyash Jain

Suyash Jain is a Software Development Manager at Texas Instruments where he focuses on Zigbee Stack Development and Software Integration aspects for the SimpleLink product family. Suyash has had roles in both Low Power Wireless Software and Hardware Engineering at TI, he brings his wireless engineering experience and customer/consumer focus to the development of Technologies at the Alliance.

Makarand Joshi

In a global impact role at Schneider Electric, Mak provides strategic IoT leadership across a range of products spanning smart buildings, data centers, smart factories, electrical distribution and more. With functional responsibility for IoT Strategy, Innovation and Standards, he is challenged with the strategic ‘so what’ and ‘now what’ questions resulting from the rapid innovation within emerging technologies. His team directly contributes to Schneider’s preparedness around IoT topics such as Big Data, Digital Twin, AI/ML, Blockchain, Connectivity (Zigbee, LPWAN, 5G), Data Privacy and Security, Edge Analytics, Mixed Reality and more. In addition to Standards organizations such as the Alliance and ETSI, Mak is a frequent speaker at conferences and also represents Schneider on various influence boards such as the World Economic Forum working group on 5G and the European Commission task force on Data Portability.

Over 25+ years, Mak has contributed in a variety of engineering, program and product management, business development, services, entrepreneurial and executive leadership roles. These opportunities have been at startups, corporate, government and non-profits spanning Semiconductors, Software, Energy (Cleantech and Utilities) and IoT sectors. Mak has a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

David Kaufman

David Kaufman is a Director of Business Development for Resideo Technologies Inc. He has over 30 years of experience in automation holding various executive sales and marketing roles. David is known for leading successful strategic initiatives where he has consistently achieved organic business growth totally over $500M. He is currently the primary Resideo representative for any Internet of Things related standard or alliance. He has held key positions in the Wireless Industrial Network Alliance, the HART Communications Foundation, and the Open Connectivity Foundation. He was a charter board member of the Wireless Compliance Institute, the Energy Information Standards Alliance, and the OpenADR Alliance. He has been recognized with numerous awards for his industry contributions including 2 awards from the US National Institute of Technology (NIST). He has a B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University, an MBA from St. Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania, and a Six Sigma Black Belt certification from Honeywell. David also holds multiple US patents. He is a published author on wireless technologies and a recent 4 time All American Triathlete.

Ada Liu

Ada Liu has been working with Wulian for 10 years, holding various positions from overseas business director, IoT business director and recently vice president who’s in charge of marketing and overseas business operations. She also represents Wulian to participate in many other industry standard organizations such as OLA. Ada holds Bachelor’s degree in Communication from Fudan University, China and Master’s degree from City University of Hong Kong.

Sujata Neidig

Sujata Neidig has over 25 years of experience in the semiconductor industry and has served in a variety of roles ranging from product engineering to marketing and business development. Sujata is currently the Director of Product Marketing for NXP’s Kinetis 32-bit ARM(r) Cortex(r)-M and wireless connectivity microcontrollers (MCUs). In addition to being a member of the Alliance board, she is also on the Thread Group board where she has the role of VP of Marketing and the Marketing Committee chair. Sujata earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

John E. Osborne II

John Osborne is Chair Emeritus of the board for the Alliance and Vice Chairman of the Z-Wave Alliance. In these capacities, he helps educate and grow the IoT market globally.

John has extensive experience in new product development, rapid product commercialization, systems innovations, and operations improvement. He has demonstrated the ability to manage and inspire multi-cultural, international-external teams. He is a skilled communicator and presenter and has a sound background in budgeting, resource allocation, and operations efficiency.

Kevin Po

Kevin is a Product Manager for the Smart Home Ecosystem at Google Nest, with 10+ years in the consumer electronics industry. Kevin leads SDK and API development that enable local interactions in the ecosystem, as well as their product integrations in the Google Nest experience. This includes driving connectivity technology strategy, such as Thread and Weave, within Google’s Devices and Services product area. Kevin previously held various technical leadership and software management roles within Nest, having joined the company in 2012 and helped ship multiple generations of Nest products and services.

Patrick Serrato

For 20+ years, Patrick has guided teams in building innovative solutions from whole home automation systems to Zigbee-enabled sensors. As the Head of IoT for Midea America Corp., Patrick provides strategic IoT leadership across all household appliance categories and brands.

Bill Smith

Bill is Latch’s Director of Standards. Before joining Latch, Bill held senior technical and executive positions at PayPal, Sun Microsystems, and several startup companies. He has served as an officer and director at other industry consortia such as FIDO Alliance, Liberty Alliance, and OASIS. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Brown University.

Mark Tekippe

Mark is VP of Product Management at Samsung SmartThings. He has over 15 years of diverse IoT experience spanning both consumer and industrial markets and working across the IoT value chain. He also serves as Samsung’s representative on the Board of Directors for the Thread Group. Previously, Mark held a variety of engineering and product leadership roles with Digi International and Silicon Labs, where he was responsible for an industry-leading portfolio of wireless IoT silicon, modules, software and tools. Mark holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University and has extensive international experience including foreign work assignments and studies at the National University of Singapore and Brunel University London.

Henk Veldhuis

Based in Leuven, Belgium, Henk currently drives the international Smart Home & IoT standardization related activities at Huawei CBG. With the key focus on the ‘overseas’ markets, Henk supports the Huawei Consumer Business Group, for the overseas IoT standardization strategy and consumer product strategy. Henk is Huawei’s executive director in wireless IoT standards bodies like CSA and GIIC.

Smart Home IoT and standardization for consumer markets has been ‘in Henk’s DNA’ since… well… since forever. Prior to his role at Huawei, Henk was leading the global business development for testing and certification services for the Smart Home segment at TÜV Rheinland; as well as TÜV’s standardization manager for Smart Homes in the Zigbee Alliance and ThreadGroup.

Henk began his career as a young electronic engineer at the Philips Consumer division. Throughout the years he moved from international product management & product marketing roles, technology management, to wireless IoT standardization for consumer markets. He served as a standardization manager for IPTV and focused on Copy Protection for video and Digital Rights Management, like Marlin.

During the last years at Philips, he worked at the Lighting division (now Signify) with the main focus on standardization for wireless connectivity, as well as technology evangelist for the consumer lighting market. He serves at the Zigbee Alliance since 2011, and was part of the development of Zigbee Light Link and Zigbee 3.0 specifications, Zigbee interoperability testing, and Zigbee marketing worldwide.

Henk was part the Philips team that created of The Connectivity Lighting Alliance (TCLA) incl. Philips’ board member, and was part of the creation and start of Philips Hue. Henk was also the chair of the board for the international Smart Lighting Conference, yearly held in Europe. In his marketing roles he traveled all over the world to evangelize Zigbee and the of open standards in consumer products like Philips Hue.

Bruno Vulcano

Bruno joined Legrand as an RF engineer in 1997. Since 2016, Bruno is the R&D manager for the Legrand Group RF Skills Center and for the Digital Network devices for the Legrand Digital Infrastructure Business Unit. Previously Bruno spent 11 years as the manager of the Electronic and Software Department of the Legrand Group’s Radio Frequency & Voice, Data and Image Competencies Center and 10 years in the wired and RF telecommunication field in various R&D positions as electronic designer or project leader.

Bruno holds a master’s degree in electronic embedded systems from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France.

James Wang

James Wang is the Business Development Director for LEEDARSON IOT Technology and responsible for supporting leading IOT customers in North America, as well as defining key product roadmaps and integrations with platforms and applications. Prior to that, James spent 8 years at SAP working on wireless connectivity technologies and protocols, 4 years at Siemens on automation and industrial IOT communication protocols, another 8 years with a wireless communication stack startup and 5 years at an Open Protocol Communication (OPC) startup. James has extensive experience in IOT, wireless connectivity, IIOT, automation and enterprise SaaS.  James has an Electrical Engineering degree, an MBA and his PhD.

Don Williams

Don Williams is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at the LG Innovation Center in Santa Clara, California. Don works with the LG Electronics Home Entertainment, Appliances, and Standardization groups on Smart Home products, strategies, and partnerships that cover televisions, smart appliances, and the ThinQ application. His group also manages the broader ongoing LG partnerships with large tech companies for a wide range of current and future LG products.

Don has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara. His career experience includes disk drives, storage networking, data center backup and security, video conferencing, virtual reality, and consumer electronics. Don has lived in Japan twice during his career and worked extensively with international companies and global partnerships.

Alex Yang

Since 2015, Alex has been in charge of business operations, international marketing, and global business expansion, and he is directly responsible for the growth of Tuya U.S Headquarters.

Before Tuya, Alex held several management roles at Alibaba. He was responsible for marketing, channel management, and operations in several corporate strategic business units, including e-commerce cloud, cloud OS, and mobile payments. Alex has more than a decade of experience in international operations and digital marketing for the internet and manufacturing industry.