Hypres.com - About Us

Board of Directors

Mr. Franklin Pitcher ("Pitch") Johnson, Chairman of the Board

Mr. Paul S. Brentlinger

Mr. Richard E. Hitt

Mr. Daniel K. Mayers

Mr. Warren P. Williamson, III

Mr. Franklin Pitcher ("Pitch") Johnson, Chairman of the Board, was co-founder in 1962 of Draper and Johnson Investment Company, a venture capital company, and became an independent venture capitalist in 1965 as the founder of Asset Management Company, with which he is still associated. Asset Management Company has made over 100 venture investments during its more than 20 years of operation. These have included Applied Bio Systems, Conductus, Hybritech, Octel, Qume, Red Brick Systems, Remedy, Sierra Semiconductor, Tandem Computers, Teradyne, and Verity. He is a director of Amgen, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, and several private companies. He is also a past director of the National Venture Capital Association, a past president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists, and was a trustee of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District for 12 years. He also taught a class in entrepreneurship at Stanford Business School for 12 years and is still active on the faculty there. He has served as an advisor to several Eastern European countries since 1990 in the area of entrepreneurship and privatization.

Mr. Paul Brentlinger Mr. Paul Brentlinger has been a partner at Morgenthaler Ventures since 1984. During this tenure, he managed such successful investments as Microchip Technology, Dispatch Communications, Magma Copper, Wastequip, and Distribution Management Systems (DMS). He initiated the firm's investment in Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals and served on the Board of Directors of Centennial Security Holdings, DMS, Microchip, Ribozyme, and Wastequip. He is a former Director of Allegheny Technologies, Inc. (where he was chairman of the Technology Committee). He is also a former Director of Teledyne Technologies, Inc. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Zell-Lurie Institute of Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan and a former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Cleveland Institute of Art. Previously, Paul was Senior Vice President-Finance of Harris Corporation, now a $3.5 billion a year supplier of communications equipment and systems.

Mr. Christopher Brody is Chairman of Vantage Venture Partners, a private partnership with investments in a number of companies to which it also serves as an advisor. Mr. Brody was a Partner of Warburg, Pincus from 1972 to 1998, and served as a member of its Operating Committee which manages the private equity and venture capital activities of the firm. During this period, he was involved in all aspects of the firm, including start-up technology companies, large buy-outs and the international expansion of the firm's activities. Over the past 30 years, he has served on boards of many portfolio companies, including particularly active roles as Chairman of ChipSoft (which was merged into Intuit), and a Founding Board member of the Gartner Group. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Intuit, Inc. and several privately-held companies. He was Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association and served on the Board for over 10 years. In 1999, he became the first recipient of the NVCA’s Outstanding Service Award. Mr. Brody is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received a B.A. from Harvard College and MBA from Harvard Business School.

Mr. Richard E. Hitt is CEO and president of HYPRES. Mr. Hitt joined HYPRES in January 2003 as vice president and general manager of government products and systems. Prior to that, he served at Raytheon where he was director of Joint Tactical Radio Systems (JTRS) programs, and director of business development for radios and terminals. During his career, he has held senior leadership positions with EG&G of Boston and Mnemonics, Inc., of Florida. His career in the Air Force included extensive time as a senior program manager in the advanced technology headquarters of the Air Force TENCAP program, where he was involved in bringing new space command, control, and communications technologies to tactical combat units. His commercial experience has focused primarily on bringing new technologies to mainstream command, control, and communications product lines and programs. Mr. Hitt earned an undergraduate degree in economics from Chapman University, California, and a graduate degree in systems engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He is also a graduate of the DoD Senior Program Manager Course, Defense Systems Management College, Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, and the Senior Leadership Course at the University of Chicago, School of Business.

Mr. Daniel K. Mayers is of Counsel, Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, was formerly Senior Partner specializing in corporate and antitrust matters. Other positions include Director of Netscan, Inc., Chairman of the Legal Action Center, and former Chair of the Washington Education Television Association. He is active as a mediator and consultant. He was Executive Assistant to the U.S. Undersecretary of State during 1965-66, and is a past President of the National Symphony Orchestra. Early in his career, he was law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.

Mr. Cai von Rumohr is a Managing Director and senior research analyst at SG Cowen Securities Corporation specializing in the aerospace industry. Mr. von Rumohr has followed the aerospace industry since 1969 and has been named to Institutional Investor's "All-America Research Team" 26 times since its inception in 1972. Mr. von Rumohr was ranked by II as the top analyst in aerospace for nine years and placed first in defense electronics two years. Cai placed third in the Institutional Investor All-America Research team poll for Aerospace/Defense in 1998. He is head of the Aerospace team, which was ranked 7th on a weighted basis in the 2000 Greenwich Equity Research Survey. Mr. von Rumohr is a member and past president of the Aerospace Analysts' Society of New York and has taught the Aerospace Industry portion of the Boston Society of Security Analysts' courses on analysis. He is also a member of the Corporation of the Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He received a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Mr. Warren P. Williamson III is the retired Chairman of the Board of WKBN Broadcasting Corp. and of Sygnet Communications, Inc. of Youngstown, Ohio. Over a more than 40 year period, he worked in various capacities in the family owned radio and television enterprise and was responsible for its entry into the cellular telephone business in 1985. He was active in community affairs in Youngstown including serving as Chairman of the Board of the Mahoning National Bank. He was also active in broadcast industry affairs serving as Chairman of MSTV, an association representing U.S. television station operators. He served as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Advanced Television Test Center which was instrumental in development of the North American technical standards for the broadcasting of high definition television. In the U.S. Air Force research and development command during the 1950’s he served as a project engineer where he was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal for his work in electronic countermeasures. Mr. Williamson earned Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Master of Business Administration degrees from the University of Michigan and is a Registered Professional Engineer.