Management Team

Robert Rizika, President and CEO

Robert (Bob) Rizika sets Blackwave’s strategic direction and leads the company’s business development, product management, marketing, and investor relations activities. Bob brings to Blackwave over 20 years of experience leading and building successful technology companies.

Before joining Blackwave, Bob served as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales & Entertainment Strategy, for Macrovision Corporation (NASDAQ:MVSN). While at Macrovision, he managed a $250 million global business, directing the creation and deployment of comprehensive anti-piracy strategies for motion picture studios, music labels, video game publishers, and trade associations. He also managed sales development of Macrovision’s market-leading electronic sell-through platform for video games, extensible to movies, cable television networks, television programming and music.

Earlier in his career, Bob co-founded several technology companies, including VerdiSoft Corporation, QuantumClicks, and Reflective Technologies. At VerdiSoft, a mobile iLife™ technology provider, he was responsible for global sales to mobile operators and ISPs. VerdiSoft was acquired by Yahoo! in 2003. At Reflective Technologies, he served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and was instrumental in growing the company from a small start-up to a multi-national corporation that was acquired in 1999.

Before these successful entrepreneurial ventures, Bob held leadership positions in sales at Teradyne, Inc.

Bob received his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1994 and holds a BSME from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Mike Kilian, Chief Technology Officer

Mike Kilian leads product innovation and technology development as Blackwave’s Chief Technology Officer. Mike’s 23-year career has focused on building progressive technology products and bringing them successfully to new markets.

Prior to joining Blackwave, Mike spent the previous 11 years at EMC, most recently as the Distinguished Engineer in the Cloud Infrastructure and Services Group. From 2001-2008, Mike served as the CTO for EMC’s flagship archiving product, Centera. Mike drove the acquisition of the original intellectual property and created much of Centera’s architecture, efforts eventually resulting in the generation of well over $1BN USD in revenue for EMC and the definition of Content Addressable Storage as a new storage category.

Before his stint at EMC, Mike served in a variety of senior engineering roles, including VP of Engineering at NewCode Technology, Project Lead at Kendall Square Research, and Senior Software Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation.

Mike received a Ph.D in Computer Science from Harvard University in 1992. He holds a BS and an MS in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Bob Scheifler, Chief Architect

Prior to joining Blackwave, Bob served as a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. He was the lead architect for an Advanced Technology Group that developed Project Caroline, a platform-as-a-service cloud computing research offering for the development and deployment of Internet services. He was also one of the principal architects of the Jini service-oriented architecture, and was responsible for the Jini network discovery and security models.

Before joining Sun, he was President of the X Consortium, an industry-wide non-profit organization responsible for development of the X Window System. He created the X Window System while a principal research scientist at MIT, enabling rich graphical interfaces across all Unix systems. Prior to that, he participated in the design and implementation of the CLU and Argus programming languages and systems at MIT. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT.
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Jim Hurley, Vice President of Engineering

Jim Hurley leads and manages Blackwave's innovative engineering team and efforts. Jim brings over 20 years experience in enterprise computing to Blackwave. His background includes adapatable and scalable distributed systems, grid-based architectures, enterprise systems and network management, operating systems, and open source and communities. Before joining Blackwave,he held a variety of management and engineering roles at Sun Microsystems as well as Prime Computer and Data General. Jim holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Buffalo.
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Shinheui Lee, Country Manager, Korea

Shin Lee holds a Business Degree in Management Information Systems from the Honors Program (undergraduate & graduate) at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He worked for KPMG - Peat Marwick in Australia where he provided not only technical service but also value added consulting service. He spent about 10 years in the Data Storage Industry – including 2 years at EMC and 8 years at Hyosung Information Systems, a reseller of Hitachi Data Systems. At Hyosung Shin was responsible for finding new overseas technologies and introducing them to the Korean market. Among others, he introduced Datadomain, 3PAR, and Glasshouse to the Korean market. He has experience in building high-powered teams and organizations geared for success. As CM of Blackwave in Korea, Shin Lee brings invaluable knowledge, insight, and experience to our growing list of customers in Korea.
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Shigeyuki Sato, Country Manager, Japan

Shigeyuki Sato leads Sales, Marketing, and Operations of Blackwave’s Japan Office. Over the last 20 years, Shige has developed a rich knowledge of Japanese telecommunication, cable, broadcast and ISP markets through experience in a variety of senior leadership roles.

Prior to joining Blackwave, he served as Country Manager for Envivio, a leading provider of IP-based MPEG-4 and H.264 video systems and solutions for telcos, enterprises, and broadcasters. Before Envivio, Shige spent 6 years managing Japanese sales and operations as country manager for nCUBE (now part of the Arris technology portfolio). At both nCUBE and Envivio, Shige established local operations and built the professional teams responsible for driving business from zero to tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Shige’s strong background in the Japanese multimedia-delivery market, dedicated professionalism, and history of business development leadership will drive Blackwave’s success in Japan. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing from Washington State University.
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