Two local tech companies recently promoted women as finance chiefs.
They join the ranks of only a handful of female top senior technology executives in Orange County.
Santa Ana’s Ingram Micro Inc., the biggest distributor of technology products, software and consumer electronics, promoted Lisa Locklear to be its chief financial officer for North America.
Locklear, 48, is set to head Ingram Micro’s finance team and support its business operations, planning and strategy. She will report to North America President Keith Bradley.
Locklear joined Ingram in 2003 as vice president of finance.
Before that, she held finance positions at Walt Disney Co., Avery Dennison Corp. and PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd.
Newport Beach chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc. promoted Jean Hu to chief financial officer a few weeks ago.
Hu, 45, has held various posts at Conexant in the past decade, including vice president of strategy and business development.
Recently, she’s helped with the company’s turnaround efforts, which have included exiting unprofitable businesses and beefing up others through acquisitions.
Hu is set to replace Karen Roscher, who joined Conexant in 2007 from Freescale Semiconductor Inc.
Hu held positions in finance and corporate development at Conexant’s predecessor, the chip arm of Rockwell International Corp.
$100K Part-Time Job
In other Conexant executive news,it’s not so bad to be Dwight Decker right now.
Decker is slowly detaching from the company he ran for the better part of a decade, but he’s still rakin’ in the dough.
Conexant disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Decker is set to be paid $100,000 next year to “serve as an adviser to the company on a part-time basis,” a position that allows him “to pursue other business interests.”
As an adviser, Decker reports to Mercer.
Decker is on his second stab at retirement after he tried to step back some years ago. He used to run the company when it was a chip arm of Rockwell International and led its spinoff in 1999. After stepping down once, he was brought back in 2005 to fix a botched combination with New Jersey’s GlobespanVirata Inc.
Last year Conexant hired Dan Artusi, a veteran of Motorola Inc.’s chip arm, who stayed for about nine months as chief executive.
He’s said to have been ousted by the board in April after clashes with directors over the pace and scope of a big restructuring effort.
Decker stayed on as chairman during the transition but handed over the post to Mercer this summer.
Chip Patent
Irvine startup Solarflare Communications Inc. landed a patent for one of its 10 gigabit chips that allow higher speed networks to be hooked up to lower-capacity ones.
Solarflare’s chip design uses less power and boosts performance by canceling out interference from other signals sent by cell phones and wireless networks.
It also cuts down the number of circuits, allowing signals to be received and transmitted from just one pair of wires.
“We’re solving problems differently, and our patents go one step further than simply reducing power consumption,” said George Zimmerman, chief technology officer.
Circle Up
Newport Beach-based CircleUp Inc., a startup that makes networking software for e-mail and instant messaging, inked a deal with a sports team Web site run by San Diego-based Active Network Inc.
CircleUp’s software acts like a social service for groups by making e-mail and instant messaging more efficient. It’s useful for sharing information among small groups such as sports teams, coaches and volunteer organizers, according to the company.
CircleUp struck a deal to run its “SmartMessage” advertising network on eteamz.com, a Web site that helps sports leagues and teams set up their own online hubs.
Eteamz.com, which is owned by Active Network, has some 3 million users, the company said.
At www.circleup.com, group leaders and administrators can ask questions to a group of any size and get back a single, organized response.
Private Equity Exec
Santa Ana’s STEC Inc., a maker of flash memory drives for industrial uses, added a private equity executive to its board.
STEC added Matthew L. Witte, founder of Newport Beach-based private equity firm Marwit Capital, as an independent director.
Witte started the job last week and replaces Vahid Manian, a former Broadcom Corp. head of global engineering who was fired last month after an investor tipped off the company to look into his education credentials.
Irvine-based Broadcom found that Manian didn’t receive a bachelor’s or master’s degree from the University of California, Irvine, as he had stated on his resume.
