Management Team

Michel Courtoy

Chairman of the Board

Michel Courtoy started his career at Intel in design engineering and software engineering. Moreover, he managed product marketing for layout verification software at Cadence Design Systems. As vice president of marketing for Silicon Perspective, Michel was a key player in its acquisition by Cadence in 2001. Michel served as a vice president M&A at Cadence before becoming the CEO at Certess, leading Certess through sales growth to a successful exit by acquisition. He was CEO of Aselta from 2018 to 2020. As a matter of fact, Michel is on the board of directors of multiple start-up companies. Courtoy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Besides, he has a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from University of California, San Diego; and an MBA from Santa Clara University. He resides in Silicon Valley.

Jamil Mazzawi

Founder, Chief Executive Officer

Jami Mazzawi has over 25 years’ experience in the semiconductor and EDA industries across Silicon Valley, Israel, and Europe. He has held engineering, sales, and managerial positions at Ornet Data Communication, Verisity, Rambus, Sun Microsystems, Jasper Design Automation, and now Optima. With a successful track record developing, promoting, and selling disruptive technologies that include advanced verification solutions and leading automotive development products, Jamil authored seven patents in related fields. Moreover, Jamil is the director and co-founder of the Nazareth Startup Company Forum (NSCF) promoting Arab-owned startup companies in Israel. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the Technion, Israel and an MBA from San Jose University, CA.

Jamil is a Functional Safety Certified Semiconductor Expert (FSCSE by TÜV NORD). Watch his latest interview about Optima-SEC to EDAcafe >> here. 

David Kelf

Board Advisor, Marketing

Dave Kelf advises on all marketing and business development activities for Optima. Dave is well known in the EDA and semiconductor industries, having served as VP marketing for multiple successful small EDA companies including Breker Verification systems, OneSpin, and Novas (Spingsoft). Moreover, Kelf was president and CEO of Sigmatix, Inc., a successful wireless IP provider. In addition, at Cadence Design Systems he was responsible for the Verilog and VHDL verification product lines. As vice president of marketing at Co-Design Automation and then Synopsys, Kelf oversaw the successful introduction and growth of the SystemVerilog language. Kelf also held engineering positions at Plessey and Nortel. Dave holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Computer Systems from Salford University, Manchester UK, and a Master of Science degree in Microelectronics from West London University, plus an MBA from Boston University, USA.

Sesha Sai Kumar C.V.

Director of Application Engineering

Sesha Sai Kumar C.V has more than 25 years of rich VLSI eco-system experience from Concept to Chip. Started his career as a Scientist in India’s Defence RnD, he worked at Synopsys, LSI Logic, ArchPro (acquired by Synopsys). He worked on Applications Engineering in the field of, Functional Safety and Fault Campaign, Low Power VLSI verification, Clock Domain Crossing, Concept to Chip Digital Designs, and VLSI education.  Sesha has co-founded SkandVLSI, introducing a Learn-Practice-teach platform called VGuru Verilog/VHDL with interactive guidance for university undergrads. He holds MTech in Micro Electronics from BITS Pilani, India.

Sesha is a Certified Semiconductor Automotive Functional safety professional (SC-AFSP by SGS-TUV SAAR).

Miguel Koch

VP of Worldwide Sales

Miguel Koch has been in EDA tools sales for over 35 years, covering most geographies of the world. He has held positions in all management positions, including General Management, VP, Regional Director, etc, in companies like Intergraph, Dasix, Silicon Graphics, Aptix and most recently Eve and Synopsys. Consequently, Miguel is now applying the extensive experience in these fields as an independent contractor. He advises and representsg several companies in the current EDA landscape in multiple regions and applications, including the Sales Management at Optima. He has graduated in EE and postgraduated in Business Administration and Systems Engineering, all of them in the University of Buenos Aires.