CEO

Tom Klaff brings over fifteen years of high-tech management experience to Surety, most recently as Founder and CEO of Reliacast, Inc., a leading digital media software company. Prior to Reliacast, Mr. Klaff founded College Town, Inc., the first web portal for college admission widely used by students to purchase college-related items and to apply for financial aid. After College Town, Mr. Klaff established a management consulting firm to provide contract marketing and sales services to Internet-centric businesses. In that capacity, he developed strategic marketing and sales plans, managed large projects and helped his clients build an effective sales force.

Mr. Klaff received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brown University and a Masters of Science in Industrial Administration from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University.

Executive Vice President of Engineering

Jim O’Connor has over twenty years of experience managing the development of innovative software products and services. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Engineering at TruSecure Corporation, a global leader in managed security services. Prior to TruSecure, Mr. O’Connor was Vice President of Engineering and Operations at Parabon Computation, where he led the development of the Frontier distributed computing platform. Before that, Mr. O’Connor was Vice President of Software Development at CyberCash, where he managed the development and deployment of several pioneering e-commerce products. As Vice President of Engineering at Infosystems Technology, Inc., Mr. O’Connor led the development of Trusted Rubix, a high-assurance, multi-level secure database server product. He also held engineering and research positions at Software Productivity Consortium and Unisys Defense Systems, respectively.

Mr. O’Connor holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Maryland at College Park, and a Bachelors degree in Financial Management from The Catholic University of America. He has published numerous papers in technical journals and proceedings in the areas of software engineering, database management and computer security. Mr. O’Connor is an active member of IEEE.

Vice President of Marketing

As Vice President of Marketing, Kristine Jacobson oversees Surety’s marketing strategy and operations, including the company’s product and industry marketing efforts, and communications efforts. She is additionally responsible for the ongoing development and promotion of Surety’s branded products, go-to-market strategy and corporate positioning.

Ms. Jacobson has more than 17 years of technology marketing and communications experience with notable corporate leaders such as Perot Systems Innovation Labs (formally Delphi Group), Current Analysis, Digicon Corporation and Concert Technologies.

Ms. Jacobson graduated with honors from Stonehill College, received an international marketing certificate from The London School of Economics and participated in the MBA program at Harvard University.

Vice President of Business Development

Bill Thornton brings more than 27 years of sales, marketing and business development experience to his new role as vice president of business development where he will be responsible for driving new business and managing Surety Partner Program.

Mr. Thornton was most recently with Transaction Network Services (TNS) where he was director of business development. At TNS, Thornton led the development of a $12 million per year product line and led the company’s acquisition efforts, including a strategic acquisition of VoIP peering services provider InfiniRoute Networks, Inc. Prior to TNS, Mr. Thornton was vice president of business development and marketing for Internet infrastructure software company Reliacast, Inc. At Reliacast, he created and led the company’s partner program, signing numerous strategic partners and developing a comprehensive business development strategy. Mr. Thornton has also held high-level business development and marketing positions with Oracle, Amdahl and IBM.

Mr. Thornton received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Connecticut.