Acme Packet

Keith brings over 20 years of experience in leading the financial operations and merger and acquisition activities of both high-growth startups and established telecommunications companies to his role as vice president of finance and CFO. Keith came to Acme Packet from Spotfire where he served as its CFO and helped raise funding in excess of $30 million. Prior to Spotfire, he served as vice president of finance and administration and CFO for Priority Call Management (PCM) where he helped negotiate the acquisition of the company by the LHS Group. Prior to PCM, Keith served as executive vice president and CFO of Duracraft where he was responsible for planning and executing its IPO and its subsequent acquisition by Honeywell. A Certified Public Accountant, Keith holds a BA degree in Accounting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Patrick brings over 15 years of communications engineering experience to his role as chief technology officer. Prior to founding Acme Packet, Patrick served as the vice president of engineering for Priority Call Management (PCM) from its inception in 1989 through its acquisition by the LHS Group a decade later. At PCM, Patrick developed and supported the company's network telecommunications products and grew the engineering team from two to 75 members. Prior to PCM, he was employed at Boston Technology. Patrick has developed intellectual property portfolios for PCM, LHS PCM, and Acme Packet. He has accumulated 26 patents of which eight have been issued and 18 are pending. Patrick holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Boston University.

Mr. Di Palma joined Acme Packet from Sema Priority Call where he spent six years in systems engineering, sales, and business development. In his most recent position as vice president of international business development, Mr. Di Palma managed all activities of the Worldwide Business Development Directors group. Prior to that, as vice president of Caribbean and South America, he identified and implemented support teams for sales, business development, and operations throughout the region. Mr. Di Palma holds a BA degree in Economics and Political Science from McGill University and an MA degree in Public Policy and Business Administration from Concordia University.

Erin brings 14 years of experience in the fields of Systems Engineering and Customer Support to her position as Vice President of Professional Services. She joined Acme Packet as the Manager of Systems Engineering from SEMA/Priority Call where she spent 6 years in the Systems Engineering organization, ultimately managing the team of Corporate Systems Engineers. Under her supervision over the last seven years, the Acme Packet Professional Services organization has grown from one to over 100 people. As the Vice President of Professional Services, she is responsible for the Systems Engineering, Technical Support, Technical Training and Premium Services groups. Erin holds a BA degree in Marketing from the School of Management at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst.

Seamus Hourihan, who first coined the term “session border control,” has driven industry recognition of the critical importance of the new product category created by Acme Packet. He is a prolific speaker on the conference and tradeshow circuit and is the author of several networking guidebooks and numerous articles. Recently, Seamus was recognized by Internet Telephony magazine as one of the “Top 100 Voices of IP Communications.” Seamus brings over 25 years of experience to Acme Packet in executive management, marketing, product management and business development roles at voice over IP, IP networking, web infrastructure and computer companies. Seamus was vice president of marketing for internetworking leader Wellfleet and, after its merger with Synoptics, Bay Networks (now Nortel) for nearly seven years. During his tenure, annual revenue grew from $10 million to $2 billion and Inc. recognized Wellfleet as “America’s Fastest Growing Company” for two consecutive years. More recently, Seamus was vice president of marketing for Pingtel, widely recognized as a leader in SIP products and technology. He also held management positions at Data General, MASSCOMP and Bright Tiger and has operated his own consulting company. Seamus holds an AB degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Babson College.