Saeid Ghafouri

Business — 26 March 2011

Saeid Ghafouri most recently was president & CEO of Empact Software, where he managed the transformation of the company from a web-based electronics exchange business to a profitable enterprise software company. In 1998 he became president and CEO of EDA company interHDL, which was later acquired by Avant!. Prior to that Ghafouri joined Silicon Architects – the first commercial library provider – and was responsible for worldwide sales operations and, following its merger with Synopsys, became Synopsys’ vice president of sales for all library products. He spent eight years with Cadence (ECAD at the time), where he built the field AE organization and later was given responsibility for rebuilding the factory support infrastructure, including corporate AEs, educational services and documentation. Ghafouri began his career as an IC designer for Data General. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering.