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Board of Directors
Board of Directors

Bahram Nour-Omid, Ph.D
Chairman of the Board
Dr. Nour-Omid was the founding Chairman and CEO of StudioXchange, Inc., (acquired by ifilm in 2000) a provider of production site, labor and equipment procurement services for the entertainment industry, until he joined Shelter. Prior to this, he was Executive VP and a Director of Essentus, Inc., a provider of supply chain software for the apparel industry

From March 1991 through 1996, he was the founding CTO and a Director of Scopus Technology, Inc., a provider of front-office applications software. Scopus went public in 1995 and was sold to Siebel Systems, Inc., in 1998. From 1981 to 1990 Dr. Nour-Omid worked at the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory

Dr. Nour-Omid is currently a Director of Integrated Decision Systems, an industry leader in portfolio management solutions, Senior Partner at Kryptic, a leading provider of next generation connectivity solutions for healthcare, and Isensix, a provider of wireless monitoring systems

Dr. Nour-Omid earned a B.S. from the University of London’s Imperial College, and an M.S. in Structural Engineering, M.A. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Computer Simulation from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Art Bilger
Member, Board of Directors
Aside from his active role as Chairman of the Board for Passenger's Board of Directors, Art is also the Managing Partner of Shelter Capital Partners; a private investment fund focused on innovative technology companies.

Previously, Art was the non-executive Vice Chairman of Akamai Technologies, a provider of global, high performance services for the delivery of Internet content, streaming media, and applications. Prior to its sale to News Corporation in 1997, Art was the President, Chief Operating Officer and a Director of New World Communications Group, a television production and broadcast company. During his career, Art has also served as a founding partner of Apollo Advisors and EVP for Drexel Burnham Lambert.
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Larry Bettino
Member, Board of Directors

Larry A. Bettino has 18 years of private equity and venture capital experience and more than 24 years industry expertise in the technology and communication industries. He has been a private equity investor since 1989, and has been responsible for investing a total of almost $850 million in private and public companies at all stages of development. Mr. Bettino has invested in both control and non-control situations, and in early-stage, expansion, growth, and buyout transactions in several industries, predominantly in the technology and communications sectors.

He joined StarVest Partners in September 2006 to be a partner in StarVest Partners II. He was most recently a partner and Managing Director of Warburg Pincus (2001–2006), where he had worldwide responsibility for the Communications and Technology sector. He was a member of the Executive Management Group, comprised of the heads of all of the Firm's major industry groups and geographic regions. He had management responsibility over the CommTech portfolio, and oversaw the investment of approximately $750 million. Mr. Bettino managed the group's personnel, leading a major reorganization of the group, and was responsible for the formation of Warburg's CIO Advisory Council. He also led investments and was on the Board of Directors for several companies in the portfolio, including most recently LSSi Data Corp., the leading provider of international directory database services; MACH, SA (based in Luxemburg), the global leader of mobile telephony data services; and Telcordia Technologies, the world's largest provider of operational support software to communications carriers and one of the largest technology leveraged buyouts of the past several years.

Before joining Warburg Pincus, Mr. Bettino was a Founding Partner at Baker Capital (1996–2001). The Baker Communications Fund, LP is a $406 million private equity fund formed in 1996 to invest primarily in communications-related businesses. The fund has been fully invested and is in the process of being distributed. Mr. Bettino was involved in all aspects of the firm’s formation, including strategic development, fundraising, and operations. He was also responsible for hiring several of the junior investment staff for the firm. Mr. Bettino left shortly after the formation of Baker Communications Fund II to join Warburg.

Mr. Bettino started his investment career at Dillon Read Private Equity (1989–1996), where he became a partner in 1992 and focused on early and expansion-stage investments in communications and technology.

From 1982 to 1987, Mr. Bettino worked for IBM, initially as a computer chip logic design engineer, and then moved into business line and account management. He received his BS (1982) in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Harvard Business School (1989). Mr. Bettino is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Citizen’s Budget Commission, a nonprofit civic organization committed to influencing constructive change in the finances and services of the New York State and New York City governments. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of CSMG Adventi, the global management consulting firm. He lives in Bronxville, New York, with his wife and three children.


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Dan Beldy
Member, Board of Directors
Dan Beldy is a managing director of Steamboat Ventures.  Dan has spent the last 20 years in technology and finance as an investor, entrepreneur and operator.

Prior to Steamboat, Dan was a co-founder and managing director of Plainview Capital, an innovative family of fundamental value investment funds that leverage a proprietary software platform, Plainview Analytics™.  Before Plainview, Dan was an associate and partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

Focusing on early stage software investments, Dan was involved with several successful, growing companies as an investor / advisor / board member including Employease, acquired by ADP (NASDAQ: ADP), Technorati, Starmine, Method Home and Maxion Technologies.

Early in his career Dan was an officer and an F/A-18 Hornet jet instructor pilot for the U.S. Navy, completing over 275 aircraft carrier landings in tours of duty with the Atlantic Fleet.

Dan received a BS in computer science as a distinguished graduate of the US Naval Academy in 1986, and received an MBA in finance from The Wharton School in 1998.
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Jaynie Studenmund
Member, Board of Directors
Ms. Studenmund joins Passenger as a corporate director, bringing over 30 years of board and operating experience from a diverse set of business environments including start-up, rapid growth, turnaround, and mergers and acquisitions in the internet and financial services industries. She is currently a director for Orbitz Worldwide, eHarmony, two public funds operated by the Western Asset Management Company, and MarketTools. Previously she was on the board of aQuantive, Inc. which was sold to Microsoft.

Studenmund’s operating experience includes serving as the COO for Overture Services, Inc., the pioneer in paid search, which was ultimately sold to Yahoo. During Studenmund’s tenure Overture experienced hyper growth, increasing revenue from $100 million to $1.2 billion and expanding internationally into over a dozen markets while experiencing strong profitability. She was the President and COO of PayMyBills which became the leading online bill management provider. Prior to the Internet, Studenmund had a career in the financial services industry largely at First Interstate of California, now Wells Fargo. She served as the EVP leading all retail banking activities and as Chief Marketing Officer.

Studenmund holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics from Wellesley College.

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