Company Principals

Lee Ritchey

Founder and president of Speeding Edge, Lee Ritchey is considered to be one of the industry´s premier authorities on high-speed PCB and system design. He conducts on-site private training courses for high technology companies and also teaches courses for UC Berkeley´s extension program as well as industry trade shows and technical conferences. In addition, he provides consulting services to top manufacturers of Internet and server products.

Prior to founding Speeding Edge, Ritchey served as Program Manager for 3Com Corporation in Santa Clara, California where he was responsible for overseeing the signal integrity aspects of hardware design and product packaging for the company´s router, switch, hub and NIC products. Before this, he served as Engineering Manager for Maxtor where he was responsible for the development of high performance disc drives. Previously, he was cofounder and vice president of engineering and marketing of Shared Resources, a design services company specializing in the design of high-end supercomputer, workstations and image products. Earlier in his career, he designed RF and microwave components for the Apollo space program and other space platforms.

Ritchey holds a B.S.E.E. degree from California State University, Sacramento where he graduated as outstanding senior. In 1998, he was profiled by EE Times, as "the high-speed design ratchet man". In 2004, Ritchey began contributing a regular column, "PCB Perspectives," which appears once a month in EE Times.

John Zasio

John Zasio, co-author of "Right the First Time, A Practical Handbook on High Speed PCB and System Design," is an industry-recognized expert in high-speed design and serves as a Technical Advisor to Speeding Edge. He has more than 34 years experience in electrical engineering and his expertise spans a broad range of PCB, ASIC, IC, gate array, standard cell, high-speed circuit and power subsystem designs. In addition to serving as a technical advisor to Speeding Edge, Zasio also serves as a Technology Advisor to Caspian Networks where he has been responsible for developing the hardware architecture for the design of a very high-end fiber optics router. He has prepared the technology definition of all PCBs, backplanes, IC packaging, interconnect cables, the power subsystem as well as the electrical design rules. Previously, he served as a Technology Consultant on a number of high speed design projects and was responsible for IC design and packaging, PCB design rules, high-speed circuit design, EMI, power subsystems and testing for a variety of clients including AMP, Hal Computer Systems, Alpine Microsystems, Packetcom and Tyan Computer Systems. His earlier positions include serving as Chief Technologist for Hal Computer Systems; Executive VP of R&D for Aida Corporation; VP of Technology Development for STC Computer Research; VP of Engineering for Microtechnology Corporation; Manager of Electrical Engineering for Amdahl Corp.; Manager of Electrical Engineering for Mascor Corp. and Manager of Circuit Development for IBM Corporation.

Zasio holds a B.S.E.E. from the University of Cincinnati and pursued graduate studies at Syracuse University. He holds 33 patents and also has several pending in the areas of high- speed circuit design, IC design, software design, verification tools, scan-based test methodology, electron beam pattern generation, semiconductor test equipment and hardware simulation accelerators.

Kella Knack

Kella Knack, editor of "Right the First Time, A Practical Handbook on High Speed PCB and System Design," serves as Vice President of Marketing for Speeding Edge. She has more than 21 years experience in the high-tech market sector. In her current position, she is responsible for establishing, implementing and maintaining all of the marketing procedures for Speeding Edge as well as overseeing day-to-day business activities for the company. She oversaw the redesign of the company´s website; prepared all of the documentation for and implemented the establishment of Speeding Edge as a publishing company; developed all of the company´s marketing materials; and manages the company´s tradeshow activities. Prior to joining Speeding Edge, Knack was the founder and president of KJ Communications, an independent public relations and strategic marketing consulting firm. She worked with a number of clients in coordinating their press activities; prepared press releases and other marketing materials and served as a strategic advisor for a number of highly successful marketing issues and campaigns. Clients ranged from start-up to multimillion dollar high-tech companies in the EDA, networking, semiconductor, embedded systems design and database management sectors. Before this, she held a number of positions as an editor for high tech trade publications including ASIC&EDA; LAN Computing; Communications Systems Week and Printed Circuit Design. Earlier, she served as a CDM Engineer for Martin Marietta where she was responsible for preparing Class I Engineering Change Proposals for military and aerospace projects. She began her career as a technical writer for Morrison-Knudsen company, a worldwide engineering and construction firm.

Knack holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Chapman College.