Ray Carey
CEO
Ray Carey is the Chief Executive Office at NeoNova. For the past 12 years, he has been involved with entrepreneurial technology and service companies including Broadlight, Calix Networks, Cyan Optics, Fonality, SlideRocket, Vapps, and World Wide Packets.
He remains a Venture Partner with Azure Capital, a firm he joined in 2001. While at Azure in 2008, Ray led the investment in NeoNova, served on the Board of Directors and was named CEO in 2010.
Prior to Azure, Ray worked at Credit Suisse First Boston & Robertson Stephens, focused on public and private financings, and mergers and acquisitions for technology companies. He provided strategic advice to several companies, including ADC Telecommunications, Cerent (acquired by Cisco), Efficient Networks, Juniper Networks, Next Level Communications and many others.
Ray represented the United States by swimming in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, and he received his A.B. and M.A. degrees from Stanford University.
Chris Beatson
Vice President, Project Management
Chris Beatson has responsibility for all customer and internal projects as well as engineering and product management.
Chris has been with NeoNova since 2000 and has been helping optimize ISPs for rural telcos ever since. Chris makes sure all customer facing projects and internal software engineering efforts happen as close to plan as possible. Chris has been involved with hundreds of customer migrations and projects across 48 of the 50 states and hopes to add South Dakota, and especially Hawaii to that list soon! Prior to NeoNova, Chris ran Internet and Intranet related applications and projects for a regional government organization. He is an active member of the Project Management Institute and is a certified Project Management Professional.
Chris Benyo
Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Chris Benyo is a glass half-full guy. His keen ability to create and execute some of the most exciting sales and marketing strategies in the telecommunications industry now has him leading this important department at NeoNova.
Chris’ telecom career began at Cable & Wireless, Inc., where he was able to develop innovative B2B-specific marketing and sales programs for the long-distance carrier. As he worked to improve his tennis game, he also continued to develop ideas on new products, innovative sales compensation plans, and valuable training programs for direct and indirect sales. These tactics caught the eye of BellSouth, where he was brought on to lead the company’s new sales channels in the consumer division, eventually overseeing all product marketing efforts for the division.
Fast forward, Chris once again found success at NuVox, where, among his many campaign wins, he was able to launch the first service provider partnership with Google – bringing cloud-based products and services to the company’s 90,000 business customers. He then helped establish 4G wireless carrier HiBeam Internet & Voice, focusing on underserved areas of the Midwest and Southeast.
He is about to move into his 12th zip code since birth (the second in Raleigh; though in truth, there were no zip codes when he was born) and spends free time with his wife and children, neglecting his poor tennis racquets and his overall cardiovascular health.
Chris holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Florida. Go Gators!
Mike DeFrancesco
Chief Financial Officer
Mike DeFrancesco focuses on critical financial analysis and investment strategy. He has over 28 years of experience with a focus on venture capital backed software companies, including several previous roles as Chief Financial Officer.
Mike began his career in Big Four public accounting and he has also held senior level operational and strategy roles with a large publicly owned global company with annual revenues greater than $2 billion. Most recently he worked at Adaptivity, where he helped put key financial management infrastructure in place to support their growth. Prior to Adaptivity, he was Chief Financial Officer of PeopleClick, a venture backed software company focused on delivering human capital management SaaS solutions to large enterprises. In his six years at PeopleClick, Mike played a significant role in helping them achieve annual revenue growth, consistent profitability and positive cash flow.
Mike is a CPA and earned a BS in Accounting from Indiana University and an MBA in Finance from DePaul University.
Jason McGinnis, CISSP
Vice President, Customer Support & Operations
Jason’s remarkable attention to detail and focus helps ensure all NeoNova’s services are provided with the highest level of performance, security, availability, and service excellence every single day. His commitment to his faith and family has helped him build several operational and support teams from the ground up while effectively developing change management process and procedures, performance programs for customer service, and process improvements to reduce security risk and improve operational efficiency at NeoNova and for NeoNova customers. Jason has more than 20 years of experience in operations, with a commitment to quality customer support, efficient IT operations, and effective security management. He also plays a mean dulcimer and loves caving, canoeing, and collecting chess sets. He’s the instigator behind the home-made ice cream contests at NeoNova, but please don’t ask him to tell a joke to get things started…
Prior to NeoNova, he worked for Perimeter E-Security in an operations role preceded by operations roles at IBM, American Express, and Wal-Mart. Jason is an avid word game enthusiast, enjoys skydiving, and every dog he’s ever owned has the middle name “Duane”. Jason holds a BS in Business Management from Nova Southeastern University and a MS in Management Information Systems from Florida International University.