Silicon Labs Management

Tyson Tuttle

President and Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Tuttle joined Silicon Labs in 1997 and helped design the company’s first product, a silicon DAA, that subsequently achieved market share leadership in PC modems and allowed the company to go public in 2000. Mr. Tuttle led the marketing effort behind the company’s first RF transceiver products for mobile handsets. He also spearheaded the development and market penetration strategy of the company’s successful radio and TV tuner ICs, creating the broadcast business that today represents about one third of the company. Mr. Tuttle led the broadcast product lines until 2010 when the R&D team was consolidated under his leadership as chief technology officer. He then took over as chief operating officer in 2011 and was responsible for managing all of the company’s business units and R&D. He became the President and CEO in 2012.Prior to joining Silicon Labs, Mr. Tuttle held senior design engineering positions at Crystal Semiconductor/Cirrus Logic and Broadcom Corporation. Mr. Tuttle holds an M.S. in electrical engineering from UCLA and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He has 61 patents issued or pending in the areas of RF and mixed-signal IC design. Please click here to learn more about our CEO.

Paul Walsh

Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Mr. Walsh joined Silicon Laboratories in January 2004 as Director of Finance, Worldwide Operations, and was appointed Corporate Controller in May 2005. In November 2006, Mr. Walsh was promoted to Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer before becoming CFO in July 2011. Prior to joining Silicon Laboratories, Mr. Walsh was Site Controller with PerkinElmer, a supplier to the health sciences and photonics markets. From 1992 to 2003, Mr. Walsh held various operational, finance and management roles at Teradyne and Analog Devices. Mr. Walsh received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maine, and an M.B.A from Boston University.

Jon Ivester

Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations

Mr. Ivester joined Silicon Laboratories in September 1997 and has been responsible for the company’s operations from inception. From May 1984 to September 1997, Mr. Ivester was with Applied Materials and served as Director of Manufacturing and Director of U.S. Procurement in addition to various engineering management positions. Mr. Ivester was a scientist at Bechtel Corporation, an engineering and construction company, from 1980 to 1982 and at Abcor, Inc., an ultrafiltration company and subsidiary of Koch Industries, from 1978 to 1980. Mr. Ivester holds a B.S. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Kurt Hoff

Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales

Mr. Hoff joined Silicon Laboratories in 2005 and served as the company’s Vice President of European sales and operations where he was instrumental in establishing a presence at key European accounts and in developing a distribution channel for the company’s expanding, broad-based business. In 2007, Mr. Hoff took over responsibility for the worldwide sales team. Prior to joining Silicon Laboratories, Mr. Hoff served as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Cognio, a spectrum management company. Mr. Hoff previously managed sales and operations for C-Port Corporation, a network processor company acquired by Motorola. Additionally, Mr. Hoff held various positions at AMD, including Vice President of Sales, where he managed operations of $500 million servicing large communications multinationals. Mr. Hoff holds a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Dave Bresemann

Senior Vice President of Vertical Products

Mr. Bresemann joined Silicon Labs in 1998 as the Director of Marketing and helped craft the company’s marketing strategy for its first Wireline products. Mr. Bresemann then served as Vice President and General Manager of the Wireline product group from 2002 to 2009. He then became the Vice President and General Manager of the company’s Broadcast products until 2012 when he was appointed as Senior Vice President responsible for all of the company’s vertical products. Prior to Silicon Labs, Mr. Bresemann served as the Director of Marketing for Consumer and Professional Audio Products at Crystal Semiconductor/Cirrus Logic from February 1992 to July 1998. From 1988 to 1992, Mr. Bresemann held various sales positions for Analog Devices, a designer and manufacturer of integrated circuits. Mr. Bresemann holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona.

Mark Downing

Senior Vice President of Broad-based Products

Mr. Downing joined Silicon Laboratories in 2007 as the Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Business Development. After a number of successful acquisitions supporting the company’s broad-based business, Mr. Downing was appointed Senior Vice President of Broad-based products in 2012. Prior to joining the company, he was Chief Executive Officer and Director of Enpirion, a private company offering high efficiency switching dc-dc converters. Before Enpirion, Mr. Downing served as Vice President of Marketing for Micrel and was responsible for defining strategic direction. Mr. Downing also served as Vice President of Marketing at Pericom Semiconductor where he was responsible for each of Pericom's four product lines and launching the company in preparation for an IPO. From 1988 to 1997, Mr. Downing served in various strategic planning, marketing, product line management and applications management roles at National Semiconductor. Mr. Downing holds a B.S. degree in physics from Aston University and an M.B.A. from Open University.

James Stansberry

Vice President and General Manager, Broadcast Products

Mr. Stansberry joined Silicon Laboratories in 2009 as the General Manager of the Broadcast Audio Products. He then became General Manager of the company’s Video products, helping the product line to achieve dominant market share. In 2012, Mr. Stansberry became Vice President and General Manager of both the Audio and Video products. Prior to joining Silicon Labs, he was a General Manager at Sony Electronics and a Vice President of Operations at Luxxon. Mr. Stansberry also spent 16 years at Motorola Semiconductor in various management roles. Mr. Stansberry holds a BSEE from the University of Minnesota, a MSEE from National Technological University in mixed-signal communication ICs and completed coursework toward a PhD in digital communication systems at Arizona State University.

Mike Petrowski

Vice President and General Manager, Timing

Mr. Petrowski joined Silicon Labs in 1999 and was the Product Line Director for the company’s very successful Timing products until 2010 when he became General Manager. Prior to joining Silicon Labs, Mr. Petrowski served as a Product Manager for Cirrus Logic where he was responsible for the strategic direction and marketing of the T1/E1 Line Interface Units and Ethernet PHY products. Mr. Petrowski also spent more than 11 years at Harris Semiconductor where he served in senior engineering, applications and marketing roles for DSP, wireless communications and multimedia audio products. Mr. Petrowski has co-authored numerous technical articles and presented at technical conferences on optical networking, digital signal processing, frequency synthesis and receiver architectures. Mr. Petrowski has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University.

Mike Salas

Vice President and General Manager, MCU

Mr. Salas joined Silicon Labs in early 2008, initially serving as director of business development. He joined the MCU team in 2009, first as director of marketing and later as vice president and general manager where he oversees all aspects of the company’s global MCU business. Previously, Mr. Salas was founder and CEO of Layer N Networks (later renamed Britestream Networks), a private venture capital-backed company started in 2000 that offered semiconductor solutions for the networked security market. From 1994 to 2000, Mr. Salas served as the director of business development at PMC-Sierra where he helped oversee the growth of the company from its early start-up days to a dominant networking semiconductor company with a run rate in excess of $700M. Prior to PMC-Sierra, Mr. Salas held various management and technology positions at Texas Instruments, the most recent of which was program manager for TI’s 1394/FireWire product group. Mr. Salas holds a BSEE degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

Mark Thompson

Vice President and General Manager, Access, Power and Sensors

Mr. Thompson joined Silicon Laboratories in 2000 and served as Director of Marketing for Wireline products before becoming Director of Marketing and then General Manager of the Broadcast Audio products. In 2009, Mr. Thompson became Vice President and General Manager of the company’s Embedded-Mixed Signal products, which included the microcontroller, wireless, and isolation businesses before becoming Vice President and General Manager of the company’s newly formed Access, Power and Sensors group in 2012. Previously, Mr. Thompson held various engineering and marketing positions at BMC Software and Motorola's semiconductor products sector (now Freescale Semiconductor). Mr. Thompson holds a MSEE, an MBA and a bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.

Diwakar Vishakhadatta

Vice President and General Manager, Wireless Embedded Systems

Mr. Vishakhadatta rejoined Silicon Laboratories in 2009 as the Director of Isolation and Power Products, establishing the company’s products as an alternative to optocouplers. He then became the General Manager of the Broadcast Audio products in 2011. The company established a new product group to take advantage of synergies between wireless and other embedded technologies, and in 2012, Mr. Vishakhadatta became the Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless Embedded System products. Mr. Vishakhadatta joined Silicon Labs initially in 1999 and was the Wireless Director of Engineering at Silicon Labs prior to the divestiture of the cellular business to ST- Ericsson (then NXP) in 2007, at which point he became Vice President of Entry Cellular Products for ST-Ericsson. Prior to 1999, Mr. Vishakhadatta was a Design Manager at Cirrus Logic. Mr. Vishakhadatta holds a MSEE from Oregon State University and a BS from the Indian Institute Technology.

Alessandro Piovaccari, PhD

Vice President of Engineering, Vertical Products

Dr. Piovaccari joined Silicon Laboratories in 2003 as senior design engineer for the company’s FM tuner products. He then became the senior design manager and co-architect for the company’s TV tuner products and in 2011 was promoted to Director of Engineering for all video products. In 2012, Dr. Piovaccari became Vice President of Engineering for all of the company’s vertical products. Prior to joining Silicon Labs, Dr. Piovaccari was a principal engineer and then design manager at Cadence Design Systems. He was also a research scientist at Tanner Research working on CMOS image sensors. Dr. Piovaccari received the Laurea and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Bologna, Italy and received a MSEE from Johns Hopkins University. He holds 46 patents related to IC design.

Peter Vancorenland, PhD

Vice President of Engineering, Broad-based Products

Dr. Vancorenland joined Silicon Laboratories in 2002 as a Wireless Design Engineer working on the Aero II cell phone transceivers. Soon after, he joined the Broadcast team, managing the design of several generations of FM tuners. As Director of Engineering, he led the team that developed the world’s first Hybrid Silicon TV Tuner to be used in IDTVs. In 2011 he became responsible for the company’s Wireline and Embedded Mixed-Signal products as Senior Director of Engineering. He was promoted to Vice President of Engineering for Broad-based products in 2012. Dr. Vancorenland received an MS (Summa Cum Laude) and PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium where he was a research assistant prior to joining Silicon Labs. He holds 32 patents related to IC design.

Diane Williams

Vice President, Human Resources

Ms. Williams joined Silicon Labs in February 2006 and is responsible for all human resources programs worldwide. Ms. Williams has over 25 years of high-tech experience in human resources. Prior to joining Silicon Labs, she was Vice President of Human Resources at Serena Software, Tektronix, RadiSys and Sequent Computer Systems. Ms. Williams holds a B.A. in Political Science from SUNY Stony Brook and an M.Ed. in Administration from the University of Houston.

Shannon Pleasant

Vice President, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations

Ms. Pleasant joined Silicon Labs in November 2002 and is responsible for the company’s corporate marketing, brand development and corporate communications. Prior to joining Silicon Labs, she was Director of Corporate Communications for General Bandwidth, a telecom equipment company, where she helped establish the company’s brand identity and secure venture funding. Ms. Pleasant was also previously the Director of Research at In-Stat, a semiconductor market research firm, where she was responsible for forecasting and analyzing Communications IC markets. Ms. Pleasant holds a B.A. in International Relations from Pepperdine University and an MBA from Thunderbird.