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Arman Khalili
Founder/CEO

Arman co-founded UnitedLayer with Otto Grajeda in 2001 and brings more than 12 years of successful technical innovation and leadership to UnitedLayer.

Before starting UnitedLayer, Arman was Co-Founder/CTO of Musicbank (1999-2001). Musicbank raised over $25M and was considered the savior for the music industry. As co-founder and CTO, Arman was responsible for a $18M budget and a staff of 70, where under his leadership, Musicbank managed to archive the entire North American music catalog and built the first music subscription library with over 80 TB of music, a 12 Gbps IP Network and a 100+ server infrastructure. Prior to Musicbank, he served as President/CEO of NextLayer, Inc., the first secure email ASP, which he founded. Arman also founded and served as VP of Engineering for Sirius Connections, San Francisco's largest independent Internet Service Provider, which was acquired by FirstWorld in March of 1999. During his four year tenure Sirius's network grew from four 14.4K Modems to a statewide backbone consisting of over 30,000 subscribers and a 300+ Mbps IP backbone.

Arman has also worked at Level 3 Communications, AT&T, Apple and NeXT Computers as a senior consultant and software developer.

Arman received his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from San Francisco State University.

Richard Donaldson
COO

Richard joined UnitedLayer in January 2006 through the merger of ASPextra into UnitedLayer. Richard was co-founder and managing partner of ASPextra, a leading managed services provider headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and servicing clients around the globe. As COO, he manages all operational functions at UnitedLayer - from Technical Operations and Product Development, to global sales and service.

Prior to co-founding ASPextra, Richard was a strategic, marketing, & business development consultant for three years. His clients ranged from startups to enterprises all of which had technologies that they were bringing to market. Before building his own successful consulting practice, Richard was a business development executive for two leading venture backed IT services startups, SeniorSurfers, bringing the Internet and its services to Older Adults through a peer tutoring model, and TechPlanet, bringing IT services to the small and mid-sized business market much like Best Buy's Geek Squad.

Richard started his 10-year Silicon Valley career with Montgomery Securities (acquired by Bank of America) as a corporate finance analyst in their private equity and media/communications groups and then moved into economic consulting for a boutique consulting firm, Peterson Consulting (acquired by Navigant Consulting).

Richard received his Bachelor's degree in International Relations from Colgate University with a minor in Economics and has completed graduate level work in finance at University of California, Berkeley. Richard is a frequent speaker on technology, marketing and strategy.

Derek Garnier
Vice President of Sales and Business Development

Derek joined UnitedLayer in January 2008 and is responsible leading the sales and business development teams. Over the past 20 years, Derek has held sales, engineering, and management positions with leading managed services, hosting, telecommunications, and Internet services companies. He has extensive experience with complex Internet infrastructure systems that are able to scale to meet dynamic business requirements.

Prior to joining UnitedLayer, Derek held both sales and management positions at AboveNet Communications. While at AboveNet, Derek was responsible for the managed services sales team, west coast sales engineering, and targeted sales to media, Internet, and enterprise companies. Derek joined AboveNet through the acquisition of managed services startup SiteSmith, where he was sales management on the initial startup team. Before SiteSmith, Derek held sales positions at Global Center, network engineering positions at Internet Systems, Inc, later acquired by Global Center, network engineering positions at MFS Datanet, and field engineering positions at Cabletron.

Pete Sclafani
Director of Marketing and Product Development

Pete joined UnitedLayer in April 2007 and is responsible for management of marketing, public relations and product development opportunities.

Pete has over 10 years of experience in Silicon Valley high-tech and brings a variety of talents and knowledge to this position. As a member of management teams, Pete has actively contributed to organizations in social networking, non-profit, hardware, risk management and technology services. His accomplishments include multiple successful product and program launches, and international media coverage for programs and products under his management.

In addition, he has worked with a variety of other startups in an advisory capacity to provide insight into product strategy, marketing acumen and risk management.

Pete has a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Santa Clara University and a Master's degree in Information Assurance from Norwich University.

Dale Ryon Wilhelm
Director of Technical Operations

Before joining UnitedLayer in 2007, Dale equally split his career between start ups and the banking industry. With over 10 years of experience focusing on System Administration and Management, Dale has been brought on board to help manage and build out the new Managed Service Product architecture for UnitedLayer as well as assume responsibility for the Operations Department.

Prior to joining UnitedLayer, Dale worked for such corporations as Guba Inc, JPMorganChase, Evnine Vaugan Associates, NetSuite, Iris Financial Engineering and Alexa Internet.

Sean Tario
Director of Sales and Business Development

Sean joined UnitedLayer in April 2007 and is responsible for managing sales and business development opportunities.

Sean started his professional career as an entrepreneur while still a student in college, helping to launch AllDorm Inc., a collegiate media and marketing company. He served on the Executive Management Team for five years as the primary employee responsible for managing and growing the retail division of the company from its initial idea phase to a profitable division. Since this experience, he has worked with dozens of start-ups and growing companies in Director roles and as a general advisor and consultant, primarily focused on implementing and developing systems and processes that will ensure scalability and transparency.

Sean works actively to develop meaningful and valuable relationships and partnerships in all areas of his life and participates actively in the Santa Clara University Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship eCouncil. The group serves as an alumni and faculty advisory group with experience and expertise in starting high-tech enterprise-level ventures.

Sean received his Bachelor's degree in Political Science and Economics from Santa Clara University.

Peter Preuss
Director of Systems Architecture

Peter joined UnitedLayer in November 2007 to drive the implementation of new value-added hosting, integration, and support services.

With more than 20 years of experience in software development, systems integration, and Internet Services, Peter brings a wealth of technology expertise to the company ranging from real-time digital signal processing, database and application development, to provisioning Internet hosted HR implementations for global Fortune 100 companies.

Prior to joining UnitedLayer, Peter had oversight on various J2EE applications as IT Director at Convergys and DigitalThink, co-founded Sirius Connections and NextLayer with Arman and Otto, and held several hardware and software engineering positions in Switzerland and his native Germany.

Peter holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Communications from the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel, Germany.

Otto Grajeda
Director of Facilities

Otto co-founded UnitedLayer with Arman in 2001 and is a highly motivated, creative and versatile individual with over 12 years experience in the Computer and Internet Industry as a UNIX systems administrator and customer services leader. Skilled at building effective, productive working relationships with clients and staff, Otto has worked on Solaris and Linux Systems in secure and scalable environments.

Prior to founding UnitedLayer, Otto co-founded NextLayer, Inc. with Arman Khalili, and was responsible for its Data Center, as well as minor software development. In addition, Otto was a key employee of DigitalThink, Inc., responsible for a four-Person Team that managed a 70+ Server Data Center in a 7x24x365 environment; as well as a key employee of Sirius Connections, managing a yearly $1.2M operational budget, helping build its 30-Person Customer Care Center and its 12-Person Network Operations Center (NOC) that supported 30,000+ customers.

Otto received his Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from San Francisco State University.