TIG Key People
 

Yoav Bitter

Yoav Bitter founded TIG Ventures after a successful career in the international investment banking department of Bear, Stearns & Co. The firm's legendary emphasis on cost control and his own experience working with large corporate clients lead Yoav to focus on systematic means of cost containment. After Bear Stearns, Yoav became one of the youngest partners at Hambros, plc, in the private equity division. Yoav insists, "it's the fastest way to the bottom line" and he has been applying his unique blend of minimally-invasive/highest impact efficiencies to major corporations in the Fortune 100 since the late 1990's.
Yoav Bitter was honorably discharged from the Israeli Air Force, and received his MBA with honors from Baruch University in New York.

 

Charles Antwine is a consummate insurance professional. For twenty-three years, Charles has worked in the General, Professional and Directors & Officers Liability sectors. Most recently, Mr. Antwine was Vice President at The Employers Reinsurance Corporation where he was the D& O Global Practice Leader. Despite the seismic shocks hitting the D&O insurance business during the past years of corporate scandals, Charles's portfolios of business ( at ERC, GE Re and Francona) achieved profitable results. Mr. Antwine has a Bachelor's degree from Iona College with a major in Political Science and Economics. He received his MBA from Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College/CUNY, and is an ARM candidate

 

Christopher J. O'Connell

Christopher J. O'Connell - Christopher is the president of Leede Capital Inc., an investment advisory with capabilities in venture capital, private equity, and the capital markets. Prior to Leede, Christopher was a Vice President & Manager at ABN AMRO Bank, where he was responsible for a broad portfolio of its technology infrastructure, as well as project management and acquisition integration across the company. He holds an M.B.A. in Finance and International Business from NYU/Stern, a B.A. from Iona College, and has participated in post-graduate studies in linguistics and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley.



 

Karen Hillman

Karen Hillman is among the first generation of businesspeople to treat organizational behavior and effectiveness as a profession. Karen has been employed by IBM in its Organizational Development Department, and by Asia Pacific Securities, to design and execute a change management program during its transition to a new operating model. Karen also had an important role in the change management process during the merger of Chase Manhattan and JP Morgan. Karen holds a B.A. in Management and Sociology and is a graduate of the Organizational Change Management Program at New School University.



 

Julie Kagan

Julie Kagan has over a decade of experience in building and managing software solutions for supply chain industry. For the past five years she was directly involved in the field of managing and leveraging of the economic and development powers of offshore software development. Julie was the founder of eWayZone, a company providing ASP solutions linking freight forwarders, shippers and carriers during the dot.com years. Prior to that she was a head of a consulting company providing management and IT services for SCM industry. Among her clients were IBM Corporation and The Soros Foundation. She was on editorial boards of a few publications for SCM industry and is an author of a number of articles.
Julie holds M.Sc. degree with honors in Applied Mathematics and Computer Sciences from the former Soviet Union.

 

Jim Menard

Jim Menard - Unlike many technologists, Jim is a self-taught, hands on solutions provider. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics, with a concentration in Computer Science from University of Rochester. He does bring more than twenty years of technology, management and consulting experience to TIG. This has served his clients well: as Chief Technology Officer of Strategic Legal Resources, he redesigned and executed the company's infrastructure and financial systems, widely blamed for bottlenecking the growth of the company. While there, the number of offices doubled. As vice president for Application Engineering at Sotheby's, he helped launch the world's most successful art auction website. Prior to these engagements, Jim was the director of technology at New Media Productions in Atlanta and an associate director at Cambridge Technology Partners in Boston.

 

Laird Popkin

Laird Popkin is the current chairman of the Information and Content Exchange (ICE) Authoring Group, founded by Sun, Microsoft, Adobe and other industry leaders to establish open standards for content syndication. He has been at the forefront of executive and technical decision making with the Internet for more than fifteen years. As CTO of 3Path, Inc. Laird helped establish one of the first digital document delivery services, with Goldman Sachs, BRM and Backweb as investors. In addition, Laird spent two years with Sotheby Holdings as CTO. He also worked for Thinking Machines Corporation, in Cambridge MA, working with massively parallel supercomputers to produce scientific visualizations and multimedia presentations.

 

Patrizia Moggia was a principal at International Technologies ( a George Soros company) where she manages the origination and execution of capital investments among US, Asian and Eastern European comanies. Prior to joining TIG, Patrizia structured private placements in the investment banking department of Goldman Sachs, and was a US government bond trader for Kidder Peabody Inc.