About Yardarm Technology

Our Board of Advisors

Paul Hammond

Paul is currently the CEO of VirtualPBX.com a leading Business cloud hosted PBX solution which he helped co-found. With over 30 years of strategic, operational, sales, and marketing management experience, Paul has successfully guided the emergence of such companies as Silicon Vision, Specialix, Siemens/Pyramid and, most notably, BEA Systems. As the Vice President of Business Development and Alliances for their ECI Division, Paul helped BEA achieve $1 billion in annual revenue faster than any other software company in the history of the industry.

Paul sits on the boards of Iamfine.com and Yardarm Technologies. He has previously held advisorary board seats at CastIron Systems an integration appliance company funded by Sequoia Capital and Norwest Ventures (sold to IBM) and Network Shell (IPO under the name Bladelogic and then sold to BMC) His non profit board work includes; CASA, a child advocacy group in Northern California and the West Valley Business School. Paul holds a BABS in International Business and Corporate Decision Making from Kingston University of London, England.

Sean Smith

Sean is a Senior Vice President at Porter Novelli, where he leads the global Corporate Reputation and Crisis Communications practice. With almost 20 years of communications experience, Sean offers clients strategic guidance on a range of public affairs initiatives and corporate reputation issues. From January 2009 to April 2011, Sean was the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In that role he was responsible for managing all aspects of the Department’s brand and reputation. He was the principal advisor to the Secretary on these matters and oversaw a team of nearly 300 communications staff at headquarters and in the field.

Zach Friend

Zach Friend is a policy, public affairs and communications expert who has worked for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, the White House Council of Economic Advisers and in both houses of Congress. In June of 2012, Zach was elected to the Santa Cruz County, California Board of Supervisors. Previously, he was the Press Information Officer and a Crime Analyst for the Santa Cruz Police Department. This included bringing predictive policing to the department, a complex mathematical model that helped predict when and where crime would occur. He has been published extensively on issues related to public management, law enforcement resource allocations and health and economic policy.