Consultants
Claude Achcar
Managing Director
Prior to Actel Consulting, Claude led the Asian operations of Ciena, a leading intelligent optical networking vendor, where he built a self-sustaining organization across Asia from a greenfield start.
Claude has extensive experience managing multi-disciplinary teams across multiple regions and consulted for Venture Capitalists, Private Equity, and various verticals including telecom and financial services where he performed diligence studies on investment and M&A targets. He is an acknowledged ICT industry thought leader frequently invited as speaker, chair, or moderator at leading conferences.
Claude is an electrical engineer by training and holds a B.Eng (1985) and M.S. (1987) Engineering (Communications) from Ecole Polytechnique and an MBA (1992) Strategy & International Marketing from McGill University, in Montreal, Canada.
Shervin Bakhtiari
Principal Consultant
Shervin is a multi-disciplinary ICT professional and evangelist with 15 years of experience in the ICT arena covering emerging technologies for a wide variety of customers and partners,including Telco/Mobile, service providers, and enterprise verticals (such as financials).
Prior to joining Actel, Shervin held senior positions at eMotive Communications, Avaya, Ubiquity Software, Cisco Systems, and Brooks Automation with work experience in North America (Silicon Valley), Europe, and most recently in Asia Pacific where he has a proven track record of launching multi-disciplinary operations across the region. He has advised many clients and investors in the telecom and mobile industries, as well as large enterprises on the strategy for emerging technologies, including evaluation, due diligence, and adoption. Shervin has been involved in VC capital acquisition for multiple companies and he is also involved in innovation/startup incubation and angel investments.
Shervin holds both a Bachelors and Masters of Engineering from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Dr Hartani has over 20 years ICT experience including executive positions at leading Silicon Valley Startups (Wichorus, Anagran, Caspian); Lead positions in various multinationals (Nortel Canada, Hitachi Japan, GE France); and Lead Researcher in prestigious research organizations (CNRS France, NRC Canada, CRL Japan). He is also a founding member of technology startups in Silicon Valley and a technical advisor /consultant to several internet and media ventures in the US, Far East and the Middle East.
His major interests include cloud architectures, cloud assessment, LTE/4G strategies, networking systems design, networking architectures, internet protocols development and artificial intelligence. Dr Hartani is also an active contributor to the IETF, ATMF, ITU-T, OIF, IEEE and the IPv6 Forum and a frequent invited speaker and panelist at various international industry events.
Dr Hartani has been lead design of NGN projects for several large operators such as NTT and KT; and IT architecture for large enterprises such as Aramco and HKEx.
Riad has obtained Doctoral and Post Doctoral degrees at University of Paris (Computer Science with highest honors) and University of California Berkeley, and Executive Business Education at Stanford University.
Stephen Manasseh
Principal Consultant
Stephen has developed strong business, financial and technical skills in the telecoms industry with over 18 years of experience. He has wide experience in sales, business development, consulting and marketing across the ASEAN/Asia-Pacific region. A well-rounded background developed whilst working with MNCs such as Cisco, Tellabs, Nortel and Marconi in various technology fields.
At Cisco, Stephen was responsible for business development activities for Optical Solutions across Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and India. Stephen led the business development initiatives for Tellabs for both Optical (ROADM) and Access (GPON) solutions across Asia Pacific. At Nortel, Stephen provided technical and marketing support for the region. His ability of understanding next generation telecom architectures and providing corresponding business and financial justifications has resulted in new approaches in market penetration.
Stephen obtained his Electrical & Electronics Engineering degree from University of SouthBank, London graduating with BEng (Hons) First Class Honours (1993). He also obtained an MBA (Financial) with Merit from University of Nottingham (2007).
Tarek Mneimneh
Principal Consultant
Tarek has proven knowledge in the IT and telecom sectors including over 20 years of OSS/BSS international consulting experience in major accounts.
His areas of skills encompass strategic and operational planning for telecom operators in the Middle East and Africa in the fields of service and network management based on eTom model standards.
Tarek consulted for over twelve years for Sopra and later for Sofrecom (France Telecom subsidiary). He contributed designs for Orange and other operators in the areas of network planning and production management. He also analyzed the integration of business oriented products and services into a national customer care and billing system. Just prior to joining Actel Consulting, Tarek led customer accounts for Intec Billing (now part of CSG Systems), a leading customer care, mediation, charging, and billing provider, in the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa.
Tarek has a B.Sc. Engineering and Computing degree from Saint Joseph University, Beirut, and a Certificate in Automated Production Management from AFRAMP in Paris.
Tim Purcell
Principal Consultant
Tim has been working with and leading people for much of his career, both in the Army as an officer and then in the commercial world for the past 30 years and across more than 20 countries. The interaction of people utilizing technologies, particularly communications technologies, has been of prime focus. He did this work with Nokia, Siemens-Nixdorf, DMR/Fujitsu and Unisys.
Working across disciplines in consulting roles, for sales and marketing, CRM, telecommunications platforms and systems, billing and customer care, product management and marketing as well as business systems. In recent years he has added to this mix the internet as a platform for effective communications which tightly couples all his previous work.
Tim holds a BA (Mil) 1982 from UNSW, Canberra, Australia. In addition to his military decorations, Tim was invested as Knight 1st Class of the Order of the White Rose of Finland in 2008.
Marcus Stock
Principal Consultant
Marcus has over 20 years of experience in the information technology industry at the international level. He has pioneered ground breaking and high-profile global solutions for the Manufacturing, financial, education and health sectors. He brings fresh ideas that encompass entrepreneurial concepts with proven strategic experience.
Marcus’ experience ranges from winning Cisco’s Global innovation competition, heading up the Broadband rollout for 2,500 schools in Australia though architecting the largest Unified communications solution in the southern hemisphere to being lead architect on financial sector projects in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia. Previous roles include heading up Cisco’s European internal Infrastructure programs.
As a leader of Cisco’s global strategic architecture and technical services (SATS) group, his team delivered several key programs including change management of IT, strategic architecture and design, implementation and operations, and the development of strategic direction and business unit planning and budgeting.
Barrie Williams
Principal Consultant
Barrie Williams has over 35 years of experience in business and business management, primarily in the Information Technology industry, both within Australia and internationally. A ‘hands-on’ practitioner, his career is distinguished with a significant number of achievements.
He has held roles in many sectors within the IT industry including executive management, program and project management, sales and marketing, most with international responsibility. More recently he has undertaken consulting/advisory roles including holding the position as Head of Consulting (Australia/New Zealand) at Intel, and Practice Lead for a major consulting company, BearingPoint, in the area of IT infrastructure and sustainability. Barrie also spent 10 years with Computer Sciences Corporation in Australia in various roles.
Barrie worked and lived in Asia for over 16 years undertaking assignments in various countries including China, India, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam for such organisations as Mincom, QAD and Symix – all leading applications software companies.
His major strength is his breadth of knowledge, not only of the industry in general, but also in developing strategy and applying that strategy in areas for long term value add and benefit for the enterprise.
Barrie has a Bachelor of Economics degree from Latrobe University (Melbourne) and a Masters of Commerce degree from the University of New South Wales (Sydney).
Scott Yoo
Principal Consultant
Scott has over 20 years professional experience in the telecommunications, IT, and semiconductor industries with in- depth knowledge of the total Korean ICT landscape consisting of the various service providers, manufacturers, OEM vendors, and system integrators in the industry.
He is an expert on Korean business practices, telecom regulatory issues and approval standards. Scott developed detailed and valuable insights into the Korean technology environment as well as into the various ICT innovators.
Prior to joining Actel Consulting, Scott held senior positions with several multinational telecom and electronics specialists including Adtran, Tellabs, ECI, Marconi, and Yamaichi. Scott holds a BA degree (1986) from Korea University. He is fluent in English and Korean, and possesses intermediate knowledge of Japanese and Mandarin.