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Casey Boggs
LT Public Relations for Oregon Entrepreneurs Network
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Oregon Entrepreneurs Network Announces Finalists for the 17th Annual OEN Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Awards

Winners to be announced on September 22nd at Portland’s Downtown Hilton Hotel

Portland, Ore., July 1,  2010—The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) today announced the finalists for the 2010 OEN Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Awards.  Winners will be announced on September 22 during the 17th annual awards ceremony and will be selected from the finalists in the following four categories:

1. OEN Entrepreneurship Award for Individual Achievement
2. OEN Development Stage Company of the Year
3. OEN Working Capital Stage Company of the Year
4. OEN Growth Stage Company of the Year

The Finalists (From Each Respective Category)

Individual Achievement Category

James Johnson, Tripwire – Portland, OR
http://www.tripwire.com
Jim Johnson has served as Tripwire’s president, CEO and as a director since he joined the company in 2004. Prior to joining Tripwire, Jim spent 27 years at Intel Corporation, where he served as vice president of the Internet Service Operation and director of marketing for the Internet and Communications Group. He also co-founded and served as General Manager of Intel’s PC Enhancement Division, its retail products group. Jim holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

William Kelly, Learning.com – Portland, OR
http://www.learning.com
Bill Kelly is the founder and CEO of Learning.com. Since co-founding the company in 1999, Bill has been recognized as a leading innovator in the Educational Technology industry as well as a leading advocate for education in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. Prior to Learning.com, Bill was the co-founder and executive vice president of Sapient Health Network, which became part of WebMD in 1999. There, he pioneered the development of sustainable online support communities and personalized information delivery. Sapient Health Network was listed as a top Web site by BusinessWeek in 1998. Previous company experience includes Creative Multimedia, Fidelity Capital, and Knight-Ridder, Inc.

Manpreet Khaira, Avnera – Beaverton, OR
http://www.avnera.com

Manpreet Khaira is the chairman, president and CEO of Avnera and has 17 years of experience in the semiconductor industry.

Manpreet co-founded Avnera in early 2004. Prior to Avnera, he was the founding CEO of Mobilian Corporation, which was acquired by Intel Corporation in 2003. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Manpreet held various engineering and management positions at Intel.

He is a recipient of the distinguished President of India Gold Medal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He received his Master’s in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Sohrab Vossoughi, Ziba Design – Portland, OR
http://www.ziba.com
Sohrab Vossoughi is Ziba’s founder, president and chief creative director. During his 25-year tenure, Sohrab has received numerous accolades which include being named one of the five innovation gurus in the US by BusinessWeek, elected as a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum, and has served as an elected advisor to the Hong Kong Productivity Council since 1998. He holds more than 40 patents. Sohrab speaks internationally and regularly contributes to BusinessWeek, AdAge and Rotman’s Business Journal.

Development Category

CGT – Portland, OR
http://www.columbiagreenroof.com

CGT/Columbia Green’s quest is Eco-Technologies that provide sustainable tools, products and services to fundamentally improve the environment. The company’s first product, the Advanced Vegetative Roof System® (“AVRS®”), is a turnkey proprietary eco-roof system that addresses the stormwater and environmental issues created by impervious surfaces.

ShopIgniter – Portland, OR
http://www.shopigniter.com

ShopIgniter is a cloud-based ecommerce platform provider. The company delivers an extensible, ecommerce solution integrating store management, merchandising and product content across physical retail stores, branded websites and the social web. The ShopIgniter platform enables retailers, wholesalers and product brands to merchandise products on social networks and manage all the functionality of their online store through an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.

TrustID – Portland, OR
http://www.trustid.com

TrustID helps financial institutions and other enterprises conducting telephone-based commerce to combat the growing threat of Caller ID Spoofing and ANI Spoofing. The first technology to address social engineering security breaches, TrustID’s patent-pending telephone firewall solution accelerates the authentication process to pre-answer, validating ID with physical information without relying solely on knowledge based authentication and the risky handling of personally identifiable information (PII.)

Working Capital Category

Certified Languages International, LLC – Portland, OR
http://www.certifiedlanguages.com

CLI was established to provide a bridge between diverse cultures and languages. They are a privately held company and serve over 4,000 customers with professional interpretation and translation services via a network of over 2200 articulate and sensitive US-based interpreters. CLI provides services in 176 languages to businesses, government and other public sector clients primarily via telephone interpretation. They also provide document translation, American Sign Language and in-person interpretation services.

ClearAccess – Vancouver, WA
http://www.clearaccess.com

ClearAccess offers service providers new possibilities in broadband deployments including the ability to manage TR-069 compliant gateways and other home or office networking devices. The ClearVision management system reduces operational costs, and provides an applications platform for delivering new revenue generating consumer services over a variety of network types including DSL, Fiber, Cable, and Wireless.

Elemental Technologies - Portland, OR
http://www.elementaltechnologies.com

Elemental Technologies is the leading provider of massively parallel video processing solutions for enterprise video customers. Elemental's enterprise products, including Elemental Server and Elemental Live, use off-the-shelf, programmable graphics processing units (GPUs) for compute-intensive video processing and conversion tasks. The product line is ideal for digital media workflows that require video encoding for Internet and mobile delivery, faster-than-real-time transcoding, or support for adaptive bit rate distribution. Elemental’s innovative solutions deliver unprecedented price/performance advantages to a variety of customers including broadcasters, online video platforms and content delivery networks.

Oh! Shoes – Portland, OR
http://www.ohshoes.com
Oh! Shoes has uniquely combined patented American technology with Italian design to create the first complete collection of women's heels that are proven “healthy” to wear. Oh! Shoes targets the millions of women suffering from the foot and joint damage caused by traditional heels.  The products conform to recommended standards from both the American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Association and the American Podiatric Medical Association, and were developed by medical professionals, mechanical engineers and Italian designers.

Growth Category

Avnera Corporation – Beaverton, OR
http://www.avnera.com

Avnera is a venture-backed fabless analog semiconductor company based in Beaverton, Oregon that has pioneered Analog Systems-on-Chip (ASoC) technology for consumer electronics applications. The company’s ASoC products are designed to accelerate time to market by enabling very high levels of system integration on chip thereby reducing product development time. Avnera’s ASoC solutions allow consumer electronics manufacturers to quickly and easily create wireless “wired-quality” multi-source, multi-listener high fidelity consumer electronic audio products.  Avnera is funded by Altien Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Best Buy, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, JAFCO Ventures, Onkyo Corporation, Panasonic Venture Group, Polycom and Redpoint Ventures

Coffee Bean International – Portland, OR
http://www.coffeebeanintl.com

Founded in 1972, Coffee Bean International is a visionary coffee company in the heart of the Pacific Northwest. As one of North America’s first roasters of specialty coffee, its unwavering commitment to handcrafted quality and sustainable business practices has earned it respect and a place among the coffee industry’s premier roaster/wholesalers. Coffee Bean International serves more than 2,000 active customers, including many independent specialty coffee retailers and prestigious larger, quality-oriented chains. Coffee Bean International operates out of a LEED® Silver certified roasting facility and invests in partnerships, direct trade and certification programs which support improving coffee quality and coffee growers' lives and communities world-wide.

nLIGHT – Vancouver, WA
http://www.nlight.net

nLIGHT is a leading supplier of innovative high-power semiconductor lasers and high-performance specialty optical fibers for industrial, medical, defense and consumer applications. nLIGHT provides customer advantages in performance, reliability and efficiency. Global support is provided through state-of-the-art manufacturing and application centers in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Smarsh – Portland, OR
http://www.smarsh.com

Smarsh® provides hosted solutions for archiving electronic communications, including email, instant messaging and social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Founded in 2001, Smarsh helps over 10,000 organizations manage and enforce flexible, secure and cost-effective compliance and records retention strategies and mitigate risk.

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About OEN
Founded in 1991, the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to providing opportunities for Oregon entrepreneurs and improving the business climate for emerging, growth-oriented companies statewide. The organization has members throughout Oregon and Southwest Washington. For more information about the OEN, visit its website at www.oen.org.