Executive Team

As Chief Technology Officer and CEO, Charles Taite steers GWAVA's technology vision. He guides GWAVA's research and product development efforts, while overseeing its technical services and support division. His expertise comes from a 15-year career in the networking industry, specializing in secure electronic messaging. He is a Certified Novell Engineer (CNE). As the former CTO for Tobit Software of North America, Mr. Taite was instrumental in helping Tobit establish its technology roadmap for entering the North American market.

As co-founder of GWAVA, Marc St-Arnaud brings many years of business experience to the company with skills in strategic planning and organizational policies. He gained his experience in the software and food industry, working with retailers, marketers, wholesalers and consumers in domestic and international affairs. He has a history of managing growth and profitable companies. Prior to founding GWAVA, Marc St-Arnaud was CEO/CFO of Tobit Software of North America Inc. Mr. St-Arnaud studied Commerce and Economics at Université du Québec à Montréal, Computer Science at Concordia, and Management at McGill.

Perry Owen joined GWAVA in February 2002 as GWAVA's Vice President of Sales. His management experience spans over 20 years in the IT and telecommunication industry. As a member of the executive team, Mr. Owen manages the sales growth for North and South America. He previously worked for Datacom and has a BA from Concordia University in Montreal.

Richard Bliss has been actively involved in the messaging industry since 1989 and is responsible for creating and executing the marketing vision for GWAVA. He has written numerous articles and is a popular speaker at seminars, conferences and conventions on messaging, outsourcing and e-mail security. He has also appeared in numerous magazine interviews as well as appearing on CNN.  Prior to joining GWAVA, Mr. Bliss was the Director of Marketing for Novell GroupWise. He has been the VP of Marketing for companies such as Allegro (mail.com)—a leading U.S. provider of corporate e-mail management solutions-and Sigaba, an email security company.

Herbert Lefering oversees GWAVA sales and channel sales for Europe. He has been with GWAVA since 2002 and has grown the GWAVA channel in Europe to a significant portion of worldwide sales. Before joining GWAVA, Mr. Lefering was Distribution Sales Manager for Tobit Software in Europe.

In addition to being VP of Research and Development, Michael Bell also fulfills the role of Senior Engineer at GWAVA. Michael developed Guinevere, the first anti-virus/anti-spam solution for GroupWise and has been the co-developer for GWAVA. Mr. Bell is a long time Netware Administrator and has been a member of the Novell Sysop Team since May, 1998. He also maintains the Win32 HOWTO for SpamAssassin. (http://www.openhandhome.com/howtosa.html)

Josh Gibbs leads the design and development of the core technology of the GWAVA product line. He began working in network engineering and software development in 1989. He has written applications for the NetWare platform since 1996, including the award winning i-MailDS. Mr. Gibbs holds numerous IT industry certificates including Enterprise Certified Novell Engineer (ECNE), Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified Developer (MCD).