Our Team

Our multidisciplinary professionals have decades of experience in business development, software development, IT infrastructure, cybersecurity and product & service design.

Mick Davis - Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder

Mick Davis

Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder
Other experience: CEO, Paranotek; Director, Celsus Advisory Group; Enterprise Architect, Department of Defense; Sr. Advisor, US CYBERCOM; Chief Technologist, ETS Capital Management; Combat Air Crew, US Navy.

Mick attended the University of Cincinnati and subsequently served as a combat flight crewman on active duty with the United States Navy. After his service with distinction, he founded several companies across various sectors, including technology, security, and government research and development contracting.

Mr. Davis' most notable business accomplishment was his involvement in the founding of High-Speed Access Corporation, which contributed to its over two-billion-dollar initial public offering on NASDAQ. A year later, the company was acquired by Charter Communications, owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Mick earned the distinction of being elected by his industry peers from the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) to serve as an Associate Director on the Board of the American Cable Television Association. Since then, Mick has demonstrated his technical ingenuity as a cyber warfare subject matter expert for the Army, Chief Technology Advisor for ETS Capital, Senior Advisor for USCYBERCOM, and CEO of other US-based privacy and security companies.

In addition to his academic achievements in Cognitive Human Behavior from the University of Maine, he maintains an active Top Secret clearance from the US government. Mick continues to advise government agencies on various confidential initiatives as a highly compensated expert (HCE).

Jeff Ballard

Acting Chief Operating Officer
Other experience: HudsonPacific Properties; Honda American Motors; CIO Advisor, ColoradoAccess;  CIO Advisor, SDI Media; Executive Director and Global Head of IT Support Services, Sony Pictures Entertainment.

With over 25 years of corporate leadership and management experience, and a BS in Information Systems, Jeff has a demonstrated ability to deliver multinational organizational, operations and IT initiatives of up to $90M USD in scope.  

Before joining Astra Veda, Jeff was brought in to reorganize and reimagine the IT operations for Hudson Pacific Properties, the $5B US West Coast real estate investment trust and the largest owner of independent movie studios in the US. Prior to Hudson Pacific, Jeff drove corporate-wide, multi million dollar initiatives for companies such as Honda, SDI Media, Colorado Access, United Health (Pacificare Health Systems) and Stewart Title. Jeff joined Sony Pictures as a local IT Manager in 2002, leaving Sony after 12 years as their Executive Director and Global Head of IT Support Operations, leading a team of 76 technical engineers supporting one of the largest entertainment companies in the world.

Jeff Ballard - Acting Chief Operating Officer
Lauri Tunnela - Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder

Lauri Tunnela

Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder
Other experience: CTO, Paranotek; CTO Swantry; Software Engineer, Verkkovaraani; Developer, Klopal; Director of Web Development, FanBlaze

Lauri is an IT professional who holds a BEng in Information Technology and has over 15 years of broad experience from the IT industry. He masters everything from cybersecurity, embedded hardware design and C-programming to HTML5 based web development, mobile app development and UI design. Lauri's mindset and expertise ensures that data security always comes first in Astra's products.

Starting as a Director of Web Development with FanBlaze, Lauri turned his creativity and technical expertise into co-founding Astra ventures Paranotek and Punchzee.

Ron MacDonald

General Manager and Director of Sales
Other experience: VP International Sales, Stone Creek Global; Managing Partner, Tecstar Games; Co-Founder CTO, Pocketjobs; Sr. Security Engineer, Dell/EMC

With over three decades of international leadership experience in business and charitable organizations, Ron formerly worked as VP of International Sales for SCG, and was Co-Founder and CTO/CEO of several tech startups. Fitting in well with the rest of the Astra Veda team, Ron also has experience leading IT security efforts at Fortune 500 companies. Ron is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and currently leads Astra Veda’s sales and marketing initiatives across our various investment vehicles.

Ron MacDonald - General Manager and Director of Sales

Johannes Maliranta

Director of UX and Service Design
Other experience: UX Designer / Digital Service Designer, Nitro Group; UX Designer and Co-Founder, Paranotek; Web Designer, Verkkovaraani; Designer & Co-Founder, Pixed Creative

Johannes designs services and products in which business results and great customer experiences are achieved through human-centered design and continous improvement. He has 13 years of experience in designing digital services and holds a BEng in Information and Communications Technology. As the head of service and experience design, Johannes utilizes design thinking and lean methodologies to envision and build winning products in a capital-efficient way.