Mr. Richards has more than twenty years experience in the semiconductor industry in both engineering and operations roles. Prior to joining Bridge in December 2004, Mr. Richards assisted IBM in their 300mm silicon wafer fab, in East Fishkill, NY. Prior to that, he was Director of Manufacturing for Princeton Lightwave, Inc., a New Jersey-based startup and manufacturer of optical components. Mr. Richards worked for thirteen years at Nortel Networks in Canada. In his last role as Director of Operations for the High Speed Optical Components Division, Mr. Richards successfully led the rapid growth of the assembly and test division that supplied optical and RF components to the wireless and optical systems divisions of Nortel. Mr. Richards directed a large organization of over 1,400 people through a rapid ramp in capacity and successfully delivered many new products to market. Mr. Richards was responsible for delivering product revenues in excess of $500 million and managed the production ramp of two new factories in one year. Prior to that, Mr. Richards worked at Plessey Research Ltd. in the UK as a process development engineer and at Lucas Research in the UK as a materials development engineer. Mr. Richards received a B.S. degree in 1982 in Materials Science from Brunel University in the UK. |