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Leadership

Abaca's® leaders bring decades of diverse experience and a history of success. Combining business acumen with technical savvy, these executives guide the company to create innovative products and solutions that enable a secure messaging environment for corporations, educational facilities, and other institutions.

Management Team

Steve Kirsch
Founder and Chairman of the Board

Steve is the Founder and Chairman of Abaca. He founded the company in 2005 with a vision to create the perfect email spam filter.

Steve has been involved with the Internet and high-tech companies for more than 27 years. Since the early 80s, he has founded four successful technology companies. Prior to Abaca, he founded Propel Software, the leader in Internet and email acceleration. Prior to that, he founded Infoseek Corporation, which was acquired by Disney in November of 1999. While at Infoseek, Steve was responsible for creating many of the company's award-winning products, including the NetSearch service, Ultraseek Server, Infoseek Express, GO Guides, and GO Auction.

Steve's first start up was Mouse Systems Corporation. Afterward, he founded Frame Technology, which was acquired by Adobe.

Steve is also an active philanthropist and together with his wife Michele, started a $75 million foundation, which donates to a wide variety of charitable causes. In 1999, Steve and Michele were named Outstanding Philanthropists of the Year by the Silicon Valley chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, and recognized by Slate Magazine as the 8th largest charitable givers in America.

Steve holds both B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Read the Steve Kirsch story.

Leo Jolicoeur
Chief Executive Officer

Leo brings to Abaca over 20 years of executive leadership experience in the technology industry and an unrelenting focus on innovation which has brought new technologies to market and contributed to industry evolution in areas such as mobility, SaaS (software as a service), and Internet services.

Before joining Abaca, Leo was Executive Vice President, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at @Road. Under Leo's direction, the company gained acclaim as the leading global provider of mobile resource management (MRM) solutions, a new market category it helped to create. He piloted @Road to two consecutive years of record growth and was instrumental in positioning the company for successful acquisition by Trimble.

Leo previously served as Vice President, Product Marketing and Service Operations at WebEx Communications, where he held executive responsibility for all aspects of service creation and delivery. In this role, Leo led tremendous company and customer expansion driving service revenue growth from $10MM per year to over $150MM per year.

Before joining WebEx, Leo was Vice President of Online Services at Infoseek. While at Infoseek, he led the creation and launch of next generation Internet services at the intersection of content, community and communications leading to the acquisition of Infoseek by Walt Disney Corporation. He also held a variety of executive management and leadership positions across product marketing and business management at Apple Computer and Digital Equipment Corporation.

Leo holds a B.S. degree in computer science and finance from Boston College.

Andrew E. Newton
Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary

Drew has more than 35 years of legal experience in the high technology and Internet fields. Since the late 70s he has created and managed the legal departments at five companies. He was actively involved in taking Infoseek Corporation and Frame Technology Corporation successfully through their IPOs.

Drew co-founded Propel Software and Infoseek with Steve Kirsch. Infoseek was acquired by Disney in November of 1999. Before Infoseek, Drew established the legal group as Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at Frame Technology, which was acquired by Adobe Systems.

He previously held general counsel positions at Digital Research and Amdahl Corporation, and held several legal positions at Honeywell Information Systems prior to joining Amdahl.

Drew holds an A.B. from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Geoffrey Berneck
Vice President of Sales

Prior to joining Abaca, Berneck served as the Director of Direct and Indirect sales at @Road, Inc., a mobile resource management company that was acquired by Trimble, Inc. in 2006. At @Road, Berneck managed the company's sales efforts in bringing global positioning system technologies to the SMB market.

In addition to his sales experience at @Road, Berneck successfully developed sales organizations at two other companies. At HomeGain.com, Berneck led the change from an ecommerce-only strategy to a direct sales model. Similarly, at Hello Direct, he managed the transition from catalog sales to direct sales. HomeGain.com and Hello Direct were acquired by Classified Ventures and GN Netcom, respectively.

David Hansmann
Director of Finance

Prior to joining Abaca, David served as the Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer of Aurora BioFuels, a Berkeley-based biotechnology start-up. David was responsible for building and managing Aurora’s finance, accounting and administrative functions and participated with the company founders in successfully raising a Series A venture financing.

David also served as the Chief Financial Officer of Exergy, Inc., a San Francisco Bay Area alternative energy technology company where he led a recapitalization that included new equity funding, restructuring of existing debt, and improving operating efficiencies ultimately resulting in the company licensing its patented power generation technology to an industry developer.

David’s experience also includes time as a self-employed financial consultant with clients in the semiconductor equipment manufacturing, software, wireless communications, and recreation equipment manufacturing industries.

David holds a M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and an A.B. degree in Mathematics from Dartmouth College.

Bill Kasje
Director of Business Development

Bill comes to Abaca with 20 years of high technology experience, holding key positions in business development and engineering management.

Prior to joining Abaca, Bill was Director of Corporate Development for Mirapoint, where he helped to establish and grow partnerships with leading global and regional OEMs and strategic alliance partners, creating revenue producing relationships and contributing significantly to the company’s overall direction and success. Prior to launching the company’s corporate development efforts, he led the engineering organization responsible for developing the industry’s first email security appliance. Before Mirapoint, Bill held key engineering management positions at Sequent Computer Systems (acquired by IBM) where he was responsible for the clustered systems and file systems groups. Bill started his career as a performance engineer at Hewlett Packard.

Bill holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from California State University, Chico.

Kathy Contreras
Vice President of Marketing

Kathy brings to Abaca over a decade of experience leading global marketing and channel organizations. Kathy has extensive experience in the various disciplines of marketing—corporate, product, field, channel, and international.

Prior to joining Abaca, Kathy was Director of Marketing for Audatex, a Solera company, where she led marketing for the Solera companies in the Americas region and was actively involved in taking Solera successfully through an IPO. Before joining Audatex, Kathy held global marketing leadership and senior channel management positions at Phoenix Technology, Dantz Development Corporation (acquired by EMC), and Sendmail. Kathy began her career at Sun Microsystems where she held various positions in alliance and marketing management.

Kathy holds a B.A. degree in Political Science with emphasis in International Relations from the University of California, Santa Barbara.