The Option Executive Management Team
Jan Callewaert, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). |
| Prior to founding Option® in 1986, Jan Callewaert gained IT experience with BULL and Telecom experience with Ericsson, where he worked on office automation systems, integrating modems, data networks, fibre optics and videotext. He is a qualified Commercial and Managerial Engineer in Management Informatics and has a Baccalaureat in Philosophy from the University of Leuven. A regular speaker on mobile computing at industry conferences, Jan Callewaert is a recognized figure in the mobile data communication industry. Jan Callewaert also represents Mondo NV, a company incorporated and organized under Belgian law. |
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Jan Smits, Chief Financial Officer (CFO). |
| Jan Smits, a business engineer, started his career at Coopers & Lybrand and Van Ussel Bedrijfsrevisoren. He also held accounting and finance management positions at Pluma and Massive. In 1990 he became CFO of Punch International in Belgium. After 15 years he became CFO and member of the Board of Punch Graphix in London via the IPO of the company on the London Stock Exchange (Aim). As of April 2007 he built and managed the factory of Punch Powertrain in Nanjing, China. As from 2010 he was consulting companies on corporate finance matters. He is a member of the Option Executive Management Team. |
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Patrick Hofkens, Chief Development Officer (CDO). |
| Patrick Hofkens holds a Master’s Degree in Law from the Catholic University of Louvain and a Master’s Degree in Corporate Law from the Catholic Universities of Brussels and Louvain. He was previously Senior Legal Counsel for the Borealis Group, a petrochemical company with interests in Europe, Brazil and the US, and an advocate with Loyens & Loeff, a Benelux-based international law firm. He has returned to Option, having previously served as General Counsel to the Company between April 1998 and December 2002. He is a member of the Option Executive Management Team. |
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Bart Goedseels, Chief Operating Officer (COO). |
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Bart Goedseels holds a Master’s Degree in Law from the Catholic University of Louvain. In 1992 he joined Leisureplanet (UK) in different management positions. He was working for Option between 2001 and 2007 as Vice President Operations and Sales. He returned to the company in 2011 to take up the position of Chief Operating Officer. Previous to his return to Option, he acted as General Manager of Waterleau, a Belgian company active in the environmental industry. He is a member of the Option Executive Management Team. |
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Jerome Nadel, Chief Experience Officer (CXO).
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Jerome is Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Option NV, responsible for bringing innovative user-centric connected devices and services to market. Following a series of sponsored research fellowships while working on a Ph.D. in applied experimental psychology, Jerome began his career at IBM’s Corporate Human Factors Lab. Through his professional career he has had executive positions in user experience and marketing including Manager of the Corporate Human Factors Group at Unisys, Executive Managing Director and CXO at Human Factors International, CMO at SLP InfoWare, VP Marketing at Gemplus, and EVP of User Experience and Marketing at Sagem Wireless (MobiWire). |
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Frédéric Nys, Executive Vice President Engineering & Technology |
| Frédéric Nys holds a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics Engineering from Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve. He started his career as System Engineer for aerospace embedded systems in the International Space Station, working indirectly for the European Space Agency. He then moved to different startup companies working in the embedded world around mesh computing and networking, holding multiple positions like real-time OS engineering manager, Application SW development manager and later Innovation Cell manager. He joined Option in 2002 as project manager of the world first 3G datacard then held multiple customer facing positions always at the convergence of engineering and business development and build a strong network of relationship in the IT and Telecom Industry. |
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