About Us - Ventiva

To create innovative, compact and silent active cooling solutions that easily integrate into a variety of electronic devices, providing designers of electronic systems with new opportunities to amaze their customers.

Ventiva® is built on a foundation of broad electronics industry experience and a passion for innovation. Being very familiar with increasing thermal management issues and the limitations of conventional cooling technologies led us to challenge the status quo of traditional bulky fans and blowers.

Our leaders are innovators at heart with broad industry knowledge and experience. They foster a dynamic culture of teamwork, innovation and success that supports the continued commercialization, evolution and expansion of Ventiva’s ICE® Technology.

Carl Schlachte, Chairman, President & CEO

Carl, an entrepreneur and experienced technology leader with companies such as Motorola, ARM, Immersion, pSemi and others, joined Ventiva in 2012. He recognized the industry’s reliance on fans for cooling electronics and saw Ventiva’s potential to revolutionize thermal management by replacing fans with a solid-state, silent air mover. At Ventiva he works with major consumer electronic companies to redefine their cooling solutions.

Dr. Himanshu Pokharna, CTO

Himanshu is a thermodynamics expert with decades of industry experience in Fortune 500 companies like Intel and Applied Materials. He has also launched multiple thermal and energy technology startups, including Deeia, and Inficold. Drawn to Ventiva by the opportunity to empower innovation, Himanshu collaborates with the team on heat transfer, thermodynamics, energy efficiency, and cooling technologies for Ventiva’s ICE® applications.

Tim Lester, CFO

Tim, a seasoned financial and operational executive with 30+ years in technology manufacturing, previously served as CEO at Bridgelux, a global provider of LED solutions, and held financial and operational leadership roles at eSilicon, Lumileds Lighting, and Philips Electronics. He joined Ventiva in 2022, inspired by the opportunity to scale innovative technology with a skilled team.

Bruce Elder, VP Legal & General Counsel

Bruce, with over 3 decades of executive, legal, technical and business expertise, has successfully guided public domestic and international technology startups through complex legal and strategic challenges. Drawn to Ventiva’s ground-breaking innovation, he enjoys being part of a talented team of brilliant, fun and utterly focused problem solvers that are reimagining the future of cooling technology.

Reynette Au, CMO, VP and GM of New Markets

Mike Lewis, VP Business Development

Mike, with 25+ years of leadership experience at Flex and Seagate Technology, excels at developing and implementing winning go-to-market strategies. He is known for building strong relationships with customers, partner, suppliers and investors while building brand awareness and accelerating profit and customer value. Mike also enjoys mentoring teams and individuals, empowering them to reach their full potential while delivering exceptional results.

Jeff Nespor, VP of Engineering

Jeff, with over 30 years of engineering management and technical product development experience, specializes in developing and deploying embedded systems software for networking and storage products. He sees Ventiva’s technology as transformative, akin to how solid-state technology revolutionized the storage landscape, and is driven by the team’s ability to move quickly to bring this innovative technology to market.

Gary Oliverio, VP of Research & Development

Gary, a 40-year veteran of the electronics industry, has held leadership roles in business development and engineering at Motorola, Red Hat, and several start-ups. His deep expertise in science and electronic systems inspired his work on corona wind technology, leveraging electrodes to generate ionic wind. At Ventiva, he thrives in the company’s collaborative problem-solving approach.

Barry O’Connell, VP Reliability & Quality

Barry brings 25 years of leadership experience at Fairchild, TDK, Inde Semiconductor, and Rockley Photonics, where he specialized in semiconductor process technology, advanced packaging, and reliability characterization. Known for strategic thinking, he excels in reliability, product quality and operational excellence. At Ventiva, Barry helps solve complex challenges while driving continuous improvements in research, development and manufacturing.

Our Headquarters

We are located in Northern California’s Silicon Valley. Our facility is fully equipped for advanced thermal research, product development, prototyping and testing. This is where our skilled engineers and technicians work with each application to ensure our customers’ thermal management goals are met. Here you’ll also find our experts continually enhancing our technology.

Performance & Reliability Testing

At Ventiva, performance and reliability is paramount. That’s why our facility is equipped to perform a full range of tests on our products. Our testing strategy includes validation of:

Pressure & Flow Generated
Silence
RFI / EMI Immunity
Humidity & Dust Immunity
In-System Lifespan