Adam A. Boris
29W245 Oak Knoll Road
West Chicago, Illinois 60185
(630) 293-4863 aboris@mail.com
Vice President Engineering / CTO / COO / General Manager
Product & Service Development / Change Agent / Strategic Planning / Startups
Technology Business Development / P&L Operating Discipline / Creative Business Vision
Mr. Boris is an experienced technologist with an economist‟s conscience, possessing a rare blend of
business acumen and technical depth. His career includes broad multi-function general management
achievements in entrepreneurial startups and engineering design and manufacturing leadership in the blue
chip environments of Ameritech, Motorola, and Northrop Corporation.
He possesses a successful track record of technology selection, product development, multi-state
rollout of new services, and launch of innovative consumer electronic products. His strong technical
background includes telecommunications, cellular systems, electronics hardware and software design and
manufacturing, experience with evaluating new technologies, and managing partnerships with start-up
technology concerns, while guiding the organization‟s technical development and research activity.
His management style focuses on recognizing the value in interdisciplinary cooperation to ensure
business success. Communication is central and success is built by developing effective relationships. Not
a micro-manager or a maverick, he enjoys earning success as a leadership team, and believes that the
ability to hire and motivate talented people is vital to the business. He creates an environment where
employees take pride in their work and are valued by management.
Mr. Boris is best suited to a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment, either in a high-growth division
of a large corporation, or a smaller, earlier-stage enterprise, where technology, elegance in design,
customer focus, and quality make a material contribution to success. He is best utilized as a central figure
in strategic marketing decisions concerning product development, deployment timing, and technology
alternatives, using a disciplined, valuation approach to decision-making.
Set apart by his ability to explain complex technology issues cogently to non-technical business
professionals, Mr. Boris has extensive experience with VC, BOD, and product presentations, lobbying
national and European standards bodies, and media and business analyst briefings.
Mr. Boris has the ability to make the correct decisions that have enduring value to the organization and
the business. His experience with „breakthrough‟ business-process redesign and EBITDA cost reduction
enables him to rapidly analyze financials, identifying cost drivers and profit levers. A strong financial
grasp of the business, utilizing creative approaches to cross-functional business modeling and analysis,
contributes to improvements in profitability. He possesses a keen understanding of market behavior
through participation in competitive analyses, product mix and migration decisions, market surveys, and
market trials.
He earned both a BSEE and MSEE from one of the top technology schools in the nation and graduated
from the top-rated Executive Masters Program in the USA, the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of
Management, which required Senior Management sponsorship and corporate participation.
Adam A. Boris Page Two
Career History and Highlights
Executive Vice President, Engineering, SyberSay Communications, San Jose, CA, 2002.
Wired and wireless communication solutions for OEM vertical applications and the consumer market
with unique, patented acoustic and ergonomic technology
Mr. Boris joined this 2-year old startup to execute the CEO's turnaround effort by quickly evaluating
the engineering organization, manufacturing operations, and product development efforts. He identified
operating efficiencies, eliminated unprofitable projects, and reduced the burn rate. This allowed the
remaining team to focus limited resources towards commercialization of marketable products.
He was a key contributor to identifying the marketable intellectual property of the company and
assisted with presentations to obtain additional funding and contract negotiations for sale of assets and
technology, including editing the Private Placement Memorandum and rationalizing the financials.
A key technological and strategic marketing contribution was the creation of a product roadmap for
product development, incorporating the customer requirements from a large and diverse sales pipeline, for
both vertical and consumer communication solutions. Of significance was the initiating of a business case
discipline for all product development efforts, examining NRE and unit costs, negotiating customer terms,
and setting price/volume targets. He worked with renowned Senior Scientists to develop and market the
company‟s IP portfolio in acoustic technology, wireless communications, and noise reduction.
Vice President, Engineering, First International Digital, Schaumburg, Illinois, 2000 to 2001.
Consumer electronics, music, audio compression PC software
In this role for this 2-year-old spin-off of Motorola, Mr. Boris was responsible for all engineering
product development, including industrial design, hardware and firmware designs, and PC software
application development for an innovative, patented MP3 player with advanced recording features, and
lyrics display synchronization.
He quickly adapted to an aggressive start-up environment and became an integral part of the Senior
Leadership Team. Critical to his contribution was his development of an in-depth understanding of the
company‟s technology and the market for audio electronics, Internet music content and licensing, and
interactive media. He worked with the VP of Marketing and Sales to focus the scope of development
efforts and define the product roadmap, and developed product cost and pricing models to drive fact-
based contribution margin analyses, culminating in the company‟s first formal business plan.
Through his efforts, business case discipline and product development focus were brought to the
organization. He immediately stepped in to lead an emergency product-recovery plan to ensure that the
company‟s premier product was ready for introduction at the Consumer Electronics Show. He created an
organization plan to rapidly fill critical competencies in Product Development and build management
accountability throughout the Engineering organization, which quickly coalesced as an effective team to
launch the company‟s first two commercial products, which exceeded 100K in unit sales through major
consumer electronics companies (Radio Shack, CompUSA, Best Buy, etc.) and are still selling today.
Adam A. Boris Page Three
Mr. Boris brought customer focus and a commitment to quality to the company. He instituted a
rotating International travel plan to Asia to facilitate closure on final design and manufacturing issues and
drove the first, true quality test program for its ODM product, which identified a product defect prior to
releasing a large shipment to its major customer (Best Buy).
Ameritech Cellular Services (SBC), 1993 to 2000. Cellular services, paging, wireless data
During his service to Ameritech Cellular, Mr. Boris was promoted through three senior level technical
management positions. His innovative leadership contributed consistently to the technical offerings of the
company and his business savvy impacted profits directly through the creation of innovative, market-
sensitive product design and value based contributions to overhead expense reduction.
General Manager, Technology Planning, Hoffman Estates, Illinois, 1997 to 2000.
As General Manager, Mr. Boris was responsible for Product & Feature Development, Strategic
Business Planning, and the design & rollout of Digital Cellular & PCS Service (CDMA) throughout its 6-
state region, and provided the senior technical guidance on many issues, both internal and external to the
company. He was centrally involved in strategic marketing decisions concerning product development,
deployment timing, product mix and migration, competitive analysis, competitive intelligence, and
market trials.
His leadership in instituting “best practice” and cross-functional work to redesign the 6-state
organization resulted in a savings of over $80M in recurring operating expenses in Engineering. EBIDTA
was improved by 10% in one year.
Mr. Boris‟s strong relationship with the President and his drive to select CDMA technology over the
TDMA equipment already deployed in two major markets, resulted in nearly a billion dollars in savings
over the next 5 years in capital equipment, and established Ameritech Cellular as a quality leader in
digital cellular, bringing the best possible technology to the customer.
His efforts were instrumental in changing the corporate engineering culture to focus the system
measurement criteria on the customer, by improving the credibility of the engineering teams to
management, and creating unity amongst the Business-unit engineering groups. An aggressive approach
to vendor management and negotiations resulted in $30M savings in capital deployment and many
favorable terms in the company‟s sole source vendor agreement ($800M) with Lucent.
Mr. Boris designed the process, later adopted nationwide, which established a single document (and
website), used to coordinate engineering communications and project priority throughout a 6-state
engineering organization. Redesign of the annual Capital Planning ($350 M) and Project Expense
Planning processes assured all organizational costs of each project were identified upfront, and capital
and expense decisions were linked and fully understood among all functional groups and regional
organizations.
Adam A. Boris Page Four
Director, Advanced Cellular Technology, Hoffman Estates, Illinois, 1994 to 1997.
In this role, Mr. Boris formulated a working NPV business model to support the five, regional markets
with digital transition planning, and $200 M capital deployment. He sponsored a CDMA Marketing
focus group to examine customer responses to the features of CDMA technology and assisted Marketing
with customer migration and feature deployment strategies.
In a leadership capacity, he supervised the Network Design for all initial CDMA deployments
throughout the 6-state region and directed CDMA technical trials and customer trials (Test Town) to
assure that new technologies are mature enough for customers. He developed a new engineering
paradigm to focus system measurement criteria on the customer experience, instead of the available
network statistics. The result was one of the most successful product launches in telecommunications
history. About 18 months after launch, its two largest markets were carrying more than 50% of their total
network traffic on CDMA.
Playing a lead role in the AT&T CDMA infrastructure contract negotiations (~$40M) included writing
the network acceptance criteria for the contract, ensuring Ameritech Cellular’s interests are protected, and
AT&T stands behind their advertised system performance and delivery schedules. This execution of this
contract resulted in savings of over $30 million dollars for the Chicago market, in free equipment and
liquidated damages.
Director of RF Planning, 1993 to 1994.
This new position was created for Mr. Boris by the Vice President of Engineering for the improvement
of Call Quality and Engineering Practices throughout its five-state cellular region. It involved the
development of a plan to implement an innovative, uniform set of performance metrics, which directly
related to customer-perceived network quality. These metrics are still in use today and have evolved into
the central point for evaluating and adopting best practices throughout engineering.
Today, Ameritech Cellular is the recognized leader in Cellular performance, winning the J. D. Power
Award for network quality and for overall customer satisfaction in every market tested for 4 consecutive
years.
Director of Network Implementation, 1992 to 1993. MobileVision – a joint venture for a vehicle-
location, two-way voice and data system, which used an innovative technique (hyperbolic multi-
lateration) to locate vehicles with unprecedented accuracy.
Mr. Boris marshaled the resources required to design and implement a 60-cell, two-way radio network
in the Chicago area, under an extremely restrictive schedule, with limited permanent resources, and a
limited, prescribed network budget ($80 million).
Adam A. Boris Page Five
Group Leader, Motorola Inc., Radio Telephone Systems Group, 1989 to 1992.
In this role Mr. Boris led the RF Base-Station Transceiver Design of the (GSM) Digital Cellular
System, for the Pan-European PCS Network (DCS-1800), where he hired & directed a group of
experienced engineers to design a highly-integrated, 1.8 GHz transceiver. He balanced the design goals
of quality, low cost and power consumption, manufacturability, and low-profile packaging to create a
very aggressive design. This successful design was 50% smaller, used less power, and was less expensive
and easier to manufacture.
Northrop Corporation, Defense Systems Division, from 1982 to 1989.
Special Project Manager for a digitally-controlled, VHF receiver subsystem redesign, involving
high-speed, simultaneous-signal processing. He created the subsystem architecture and prototype layout,
supervised assembly, and testing. Senior Engineer / Engineer, he was responsible for optimization of a
tunable notch-filter hybrid, design of a direct-digital synthesizer, development of a digital phase-
processing algorithm, mapping phase angles from multiple antennas to determine the angle of arrival of
an incident signal, and receiver system chain analyses.
Academic Qualification, Community Involvement and Personal Interests
Mr. Boris earned his MBA in 1999 from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management from
Northwestern University. He holds both a Masters and Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical
Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
His professional affiliations include membership in IEEE--the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, the Internet Executives Club, and First Tuesdays, a local Chicago business group focused on
developing technology in the Chicago area.
He is married and enjoys being the father of two young children. Active in his community, he
supports the Autism Society, religious charities, and little league programs. In his leisure time he enjoys
a number of hobbies including running, scuba diving, skiing, volleyball, and golf.