Solekai Systems Management Team
Martin Caniff: Founder and President
Martin has over 30 years of experience in leading high performance teams of
talented engineers.
Prior to founding Solekai Systems, Martin was president of Doctor Design Inc., a provider of engineering design services for a variety of industries including consumer electronics. He has also served in senior management and engineering positions at DocuFile Inc., Optigraphics Corp., Megatek Corp., and Boeing.
Martin possesses a keen focus on making his customers successful by assembling extraordinary teams and getting multi-million dollar development projects done on schedule and within budget.
Marco Thompson: Chief Technology Officer
A familiar face in the boardrooms of a number of innovative San Diego concerns, Thompson
will call on over thirty years of engineering services management experience and a vast network of
technology contacts and affiliations to direct the technology focus for the Sorrento Valley engineering
services company.
Thompson has designed and managed his way to entrepreneurial success. In 1984 he founded Doctor Design, an embedded engineering services firm that contracted for such companies as AMD, Intel, Samsung, Mitsubishi, DIRECTV, Philips, Thomson, Sony, and IBM. Thompson would later sell the $50 million firm to Integrated Systems, which merged with Wind River (WIND) in 2000, and then merged with Intel (INTC) in 2009. Thompson stayed with the firm for 25 years before departing in November of 2009.
Although trained only as an engineer, and not a marketer or manager, Thompson credits the exceptional strength of UCSD and the entrepreneurial network of San Diego for the success of his former firm. "We reached 250 people because UCSD taught great basic engineering and thinking skills and because the San Diego community is great at networking and providing mentoring to promising entrepreneurs. Prior to joining Solekai, Thompson co-founded & ran CommNexus San Diego, (formerly San Diego Telecom Council) a non-profit network of communications, government, and defense industry companies. Thompson is also currently a Managing Partner at Express Ventures, an early stage Venture Capital Firm, which has funded eight San Diego companies. In addition, Marco is the founder & Vice Chairman of San Diego Sport Innovators, and is the Vice-Chair of the Board of Connect, San Diego's startup assistance organization.
Thompson earned his BSEE, in Applied Physics & Information Systems in 1979 from the University of California at San Diego. In 2003, Thompson was named the Alumni of the Year by the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering and further honored by being inducted into the Hall of Fame for Engineering, Science and Technology. His interests include heli-skiing, wakesurfing, hockey, and snowboarding.
Tim McConnell: Vice President, Engineering
Tim oversees the engineering department at Solekai, responsible for project execution, engineering process development and improvement, and engineering personnel management. Prior to joining Solekai in 2009, Tim was a program manager at Doctor Design, overseeing a group of 40 to 50 employees and 30 to 40 contract staff in the $10M/year digital video service line. Tim has also managed multi-million dollar robotic development projects at Vision Robotics Corporation, specializing in autonomous, stereo vision based, mobile robots for commerce, agriculture and government. Tim received a bachelor's and a master's degree from MIT and has over 20 years experience in development of embedded systems.
Dan Sweeney: Vice President, Sales
Dan is currently responsible for sales, marketing, and business development
reaching into the Smart Grid, IPTV, consumer electronics, broadcast and
government markets. Previously, Dan was sales and marketing chief at Cauldron
Solutions (sold to Anystream in 2007) and ITV gaming company NTN/Buzztime.
A telecommunications veteran, Dan also held senior level positions at Gemstar-TV
Guide International (sold to Macrovision in 2008), Cooke Cablevision and
Showtime/The Movie Channel, Inc
Madonna Bentz: Vice President, Human Resources
Madonna is a member of the executive team for Solekai Systems with responsibilities for directing Human Resources, Operations and IT. Under her leadership, Solekai has grown its staff of engineers, project managers, operations, sales and administrative personnel to deliver innovative service solutions and accelerate customer success.
Prior to joining Solekai in 2004, Madonna was a founder of Jabra, the market leader in headsets for mobile phones. Madonna was part of the management team that successfully negotiated the sale of Jabra to GN Netcom in 2002.
Madonna received her education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UCSD Extension for Human Resources, and UCSD Rady School of Business. She is a versatile business executive with over 25 years experience managing small technologies companies.
Madonna has served as a Committee Co-Chair for CommNexus HR SIG (Special Interest Group) since 2007. She was previously Chair for the HR Roundtable, AeA San Diego Council, 2002-2004 and AeA HR Roundtable member 1998-2004 (AeA is now TechAmerica). She has been an active member of SHaRE (a Senior HR Executive group based in San Diego) for the past six years.
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