Pleora Technologies, a world leader in solutions for high-performance video connectivity over Ethernet, announced it has strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of John Sao Miguel as Vice-President of Finance, Chris Barrett as Director of R&D, and John Phillips as Senior Product Manager.

"These three individuals bring a breadth and depth of experience to Pleora that is key to continuing to grow our technology and market leadership," said George Chamberlain, President, Pleora Technologies. "They will sharpen our strategic focus on military, medical, and manufacturing applications that require video connectivity beyond traditional camera/PC linkages."

John Sao Miguel brings more than 20 years of corporate finance experience in public and private companies to the role of Vice-President of Finance. His experience as CFO and Chief Operating Officer ranges from corporate treasurer roles (National Sea Products, now High Liner Foods Inc.) to working for international banks in capital markets and treasury operations. He has helped take companies public (VR Interactive Corporation) and secured venture capital investment (Diablo Technologies, PointShot Wireless, Uplift Technologies and Jellet Blotek Limited). Mr. Sao Miguel holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics from Concordia University and a Masters in Business Administration from Saint Mary's University.

Chris Barrett, Director of R&D, will focus on ramping up product development activities and executing on an aggressive technology development program to expand Pleora's capabilities and offerings. Barrett brings to the role 15 years of R&D experience working with companies of all sizes, including start-ups (Gridpoint Systems, which grew from three people to 40 during his tenure), mid-size companies (Ciena), and large global companies (Nortel Networks and Alcatel). For the past 10 years, he has led teams in IP/Ethernet networking on carrier-grade systems. Mr. Barrett also has a number of patents pending in carrier Ethernet and other areas of telecom. He has a Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of New Brunswick.

As Senior Product Manager, John Phillips will focus on delivering Pleora's technical roadmap and on establishing a world-class application engineering and support program. Prior to joining Pleora, he spent 10 years with March Networks in software development, sales, and, most recently, product line management, where he guided development of advanced video solutions for the security market and played a key role in the company becoming a recognized market leader in that vertical. Before that, Mr. Phillips worked with Elcombe Systems and IBM. He holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Ottawa.

"We have experienced strong growth in recent years and these three individuals - with diverse backgrounds and proven track records of execution and customer service - will be instrumental in helping realize our continued plans for growth in 2010 and beyond," said Mr. Chamberlain.