Management

Petter Ole Jakobsen was co-founder of Peak Broadcast Systems, which merged with RT-SET to form Vizrt in 2000.  He is the key developer of Vizrt’s market leading software.  Prior to Peak, Mr. Jakobsen was senior developer with the news department of Norway's TV 2.

In 1999, Hersly established what is now  the Vizrt Americas organization. Prior to that, he was President and COO of a publicly traded company that developed graphics and similar production tools for the broadcast market. Until 1986, Isaac was VP Engineering of the ABC owned television stations.

Armin Kaltenhauser joined Vizrt mid 2003. Before taking his position as Executive VP SEMEA, he was the manager of the Viz Center Austria. Prior to his engagement with Vizrt, Mr. Kaltenhauser founded a multimedia company in Austria in which he worked as sales and project manager for 7 years.

Christian Huber is founder of Peak Software Technologies, which in 1999 merged with the Pilot Broadcast Systems, to form Peak Broadcast Systems, which in turn merged with RT-SET in 2000 to form Vizrt. Christian Huber is one of the key developers of the Viz Engine. Prior to his current position, Huber was the manager of the Viz Center Austria.

Håvard Myklebust joined Vizrt from TV 2, the largest commercial television station in Norway. At TV 2 he held several key management roles, his last as head of products and research & development for TV 2 Sports, where he was a champion for technological innovation.

Kristian Kim Eikeland re-joined the company as the new Executive VP Online, starting September 1st. Eikeland, a former Vizrt employer, returned after three years away and will work at the company’s online headquarters in Oslo, Norway. Eikeland’s career at Vizrt kicked off as a senior developer back in 1998. Three years later, he moved to London and co-started the company’s UK office. Another three years later, Eikeland moved to Dubai and was instrumental when Vizrt’s office opened up in 2004. He returned to Oslo in 2006 and held various positions in sales management and as Director of operations for Northern Europe, the Middle-East and Africa (NEMEA).

Based in Vizrt’s Headquarters in Bergen, Norway, François Laborie joined Vizrt in February 2006 as Executive VP Marketing and later President for Vizrt EMEA. He has been Vizrt’s Chief Commercial Officer since August 2010. Prior to joining Vizrt, François was managing research projects on collective decision making and human computer interface at the EADS Corporate Research Center, division of Information Technologies.

François received his master’s degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the National Institute of Applied Sciences and his PhD from the Toulouse Computer Science Research Institute.

Michael Namatinia joined Vizrt in mid 2003.  Prior to this, Mr. Namatinia had been working in the TV industry for over a decade as Executive Producer at Reuters TV - East Africa, and later as Chief Production and Operations in Ch-2 News Israel.  Before taking his position as President Vizrt APAC, he was director of sales in Asia.

Fredrik Gunnestad joined Vizrt in 1998. Prior to this, Mr. Gunnestad worked at TV 2 Norway in the news and foreign news department. Fredrik has been working as a developer, support engineer, sales manager and Vice President for Sports before assuming the position as Executive Vice President for the NEMEA region.

Charlotta Nilsson has held senior executive roles (Managing Director and Deputy Managing Director) in the Technology Consultancy Business with organizations such as Optronic Consulting Stockholm and Epsilon HighTech Innovation. She joined Vizrt in 2008.

Peder Drege founded Adactus in 2004 and was the company CEO until Adactus was acquired by Vizrt in July 2010. He has been an active contributor to the MPEG forum and holds a M.Sc in Electrical Engineering, Multimedia Signal Processing. Key expertise and interests areas are online multimedia delivery architectures and business models, streaming media, video compression and network technologies.

Bernt Kåre Johannessen joined the Company in 2003 as a Customer Support Engineer. In 2005 Bernt joined the U.S. office in New York as Vice President Customer Relations, before being promoted Senior Vice President U.S. Operations. Bernt then took on the position of Head of R&D in Bergen Norway in 2009. In January 2012 Bernt returned to Bergen, Norway from the Haas School of Business, University or California Berkeley, as part of his ongoing Master of Technology Management. Bernt also has a Master of Computer Science from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.