Board of Directors

Mr. Johannes "Hans" van der Velde, Msc Economics
DOB January 3, 1946
Non-Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors since June 9, 2010
Member of the Board since May 16, 2008

Hans van der Velde is a non-executive Director and Deputy Chairman of the Visa Europe Board. Until March 2006 Mr van der Velde was President and CEO of Visa Europe. A position he had held since September 1995. During his time as President and CEO of Visa Europe, the volume of business increased five-fold, passing €1 trillion in card sales volume during 2005. In July 2004, Visa Europe incorporated as a private limited company and became a co-owner of Visa International. Mr van der Velde has also led Visa Europe's development of new debit product V PAY. Ths was designed to meet the needs of domestic debit schemes in continental Europe as they move towards the European Commission's vision of a single European market for payments (SEPA). In his current role, Mr van der Velde works on Visa Europe's external relations, especially in Brussels, and with the Board on strategic matters. He is also a member of the Supervisory Board and member of the Advisory Committee at Giesecke & Devrient. 

Mr. Daniel Harple, BSME/BA
DOB July 23, 1959
Member of the Board since April 16, 2007 - June 27, 2007
Chairman of the Board since June 28, 2007 - June 8, 2010
Member of the Board and Group CEO since June 9, 2010 -

Prior to co-founding GeoSolutions, Mr Harple was Founder, Chairman and CEO of Context Media Inc., an enterprise software firm he founded in 1999. Context Media as acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2005. Previously, Mr Harple's efforts centered on media technologies in a new company, Context Labs, which he co-founded. Prior to this, he pioneered key Internet media and collaboration technlogies as a Senior Vice President at Netscape Communications and as a Founder & CEO of InSoft, which merged with Netscape in 1996.

Mr. Michael Vucekovich, B.S. Business
DOB November 14, 1963
Member of the Board since September 10, 2007

Michael Vucekovich is a Founder and Director of Snowdon Partners, a private equity real estate fund. He has over 18 years of investment experience and was most recently a principal of Octagon Capital Ltd., a distressed private equity investment group headquartered in London. Prior to joining Octagon in 2004, he was a Managing Director of Target Research and Management, an Investment Advisory firm. He previously spent five years as a member of the institutional equities group at Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles. Michael began his investment career at Bateman Eichler and later at Kemper Securities. Michael is a member of the Investment Advisory Committee of Emporia Capital, a Panamanian private equity real estate fund.

Mr. Gary Peter Bellot, FCIB/FSI/TEP/MIOD
DOB April 11, 1964
Member of the Board since September 10, 2007

Gary was the founding partner and Chairman of Horizon Group, a successful diversified financial services company which has offices in Jersey, Switzerland and Cyprus. During his tenure as Executive Chairman the Company experienced significant growth which culminated in the creation of a number of investment funds investing in areas such as Property, Shipping, Media, and mezzanine finance. During this time the company had assets of over a billion dollars and in excess of forty employees. Gary decided to sell his interests in the Group in 2010 to focus on some specific projects and specifically to work in the film and media arena.

Gary’s career in finance spans thirty years having been employed in various roles at Kleinwort Benson, Royal Bank of Canada and Robert Fleming, before he decided to branch out on his own and form Horizon in April 2000. In 1995 he was elected a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practioners and was recognised by the International who’s who in 2004 for his services to the finance industry. He was appointed a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in 2005 and later that year was appointed a fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment. That year he was also elected as a member of the Institute of Directors.

Gary was appointed to the board of directors of GeoSentric Oyj and is chairman of the strategic options committee for the company, which is a developer and provider of solutions, products and technologies for location based services and LBS enabled social networks. The company has offices in Salo, Finland and Amsterdam. The company also operates offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific and is listed on NASDAQ and the OMX Helsinki Ltd.

Married with four children and resident in Jersey, Gary is a member of the Royal Jersey Golf Club and The Royal Channel Islands Yacht Club, although his biggest passions in life are his family, cooking and watching his favourite football team, Tottenham Hotspur where he has been a season ticket holder for many years.

Mr. Andries "Andy"  van Dam, Ph.D.
DOB December 8, 1938
Member of the Board since May 16, 2008

Andy van Dam has been on Brown University' s faculty since 1965, and was one of the Computer Science Department's co-founders and its first Chairman, from 1979 to 1985. He was a Principal Investigator and was the Director from 1996-1998, in the NSF Science and Technology Centre for Graphics and Visualization.  In 1996 he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, in 2000 he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2002 he received the CRA Distinguished Service award and the Brown University Sheridan Teaching award, and in 2004 was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1967, Professor van Dam co-founded ACM SIGGRAPH and from 1985 through 1987 was Chairman of the Computing Research Association. From 1991-2006 he served on the Microsoft Research Technical Advisory Board.

Mr. Winston Guillory, BBA Marketing
DOB April 23, 1956
Member of the Board since May 16, 2008

As NAVTEQ's Senior Vice President of Consumer and Enterprise Sales, Winston Guillory now leads companies in the Americas and EMEA. Previously he was Senior Vice President of North American Sales where he led sales and marketing for all NAVTEQ business units including, In Vehicle, Internet and Wireless, Business, and Government market sectors. Since joining NAVTEQ, Guillory has been instrumental in developing new business models including a tier-one relationship with Hewlett-Packard  and a globally orchestrated approach to sales strategies. His deep industry and product knowledge stems  from over 20 years of sales leadership experience in the technology arena. Prior to joining NAVTEQ, as Senior Vice President for the Intermec Global Sales organization, Guillory lead a 300 person sales team to an increased profit goal of 101% - the first time in four years Intermec North America was over plan and profitable.

The evaluation of independence showed that the Daniel Harple is dependent on the Company and the shareholders and Mike Po is dependent on the Company. The other Board members Gary Bellot, Michael Vucekovich, Andy van Dam, Winston Guillory and Hans van der Velde are independent.  

Managing Director

Mr. Tomi Raita, MBA
DOB August 9, 1964
SVP & Managing Director EMEA since December 31, 2006

More information about Mr Raita

Management Teams:

The management team is responsible for the daily operations and business development of the Company. The management teams is lead by the CEO Dan Harple, who reports to the Board

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