Cobalt Digital Fills Key Sales and Technical Roles With Appointment of John Snow and Cristian Garcia
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Cobalt Digital today announced the appointment of John Snow as senior FPGA software engineer manager and Cristian Garcia as western U.S. sales manager. Snow will serve as senior FPGA architect on the Cobalt embedded engineering team. Based in Southern California, Garcia is moving into the sales management role previously held by Jesse Foster, who has been promoted to director of products and business development.
Snow comes to Cobalt from Xilinx, where he served more than 14 years as a video connectivity architect with responsibility for implementing video interfaces including UHD-SDI, SDI, and HDMI into Xilinx FPGAs. Prior to Xilinx, he was director of engineering at Evans & Sutherland, where he was involved in real-time computer graphics for flight simulation. Snow has been an active member of the SMPTE standards community for many years and currently serves as chair of the SMPTE 32NF committee overseeing development of video connectivity standards for the broadcast industry. He is a senior member of the IEEE, holds two U.S. patents, and earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Brigham Young University.
“As Cobalt continues to innovate in the broadcast market, John’s experience working on leading technologies for Xilinx and his contributions to SMPTE standards will play a pivotal role as we expand into new territories. I’m excited to have John join the team,” said Ryan Wallenberg, Cobalt’s director of engineering.
Prior to joining Cobalt, Garcia was the business development manager for EVS Broadcast Technology, where he was responsible for sales and revenue growth for the company’s MEDIA product line in the Americas. In addition, Garcia is the former inside technical sales manager for Evertz Microsystems and has also served in business development, sales and marketing, and product management roles for Astrodesign. He holds a bachelor’s degree in information technology from California State University and a certificate in marketing-brand management from the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Both Cris and John are outstanding professionals who bring impressive backgrounds in broadcasting and video technology to Cobalt. Their presence, together with Jesse’s promotion, will allow us not only to expand our sales capabilities, but also to add greater depth and technical oversight to our product development,” said Bob McAlpine, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Cobalt. “Cris is a 14-year veteran of the broadcast-technology industry with deep experience in sales management and extensive knowledge of broadcasters in the region. And John has tremendous credentials in the realm of FPGAs for broadcast and video applications.”
More information about Cobalt Digital and its products is available at www.cobaltdigital.com
About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning 3G/HD/SD conversion, terminal, throwdown, and multiviewer technology for the broadcast television environment. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative, Cobalt offers a full range of openGear video and audio processing card solutions for applications such as closed-caption compliance monitoring, OB production, master control, HD news production, signal transport, audio loudness, and color correction. Cobalt’s Blue Box Group™ line of interface converter boxes streamlines and simplifies a wide range of 3G/HD/SD conversion and signal transport tasks. The company’s multi-image display processors enable multiviewer capabilities in the most demanding studio and remote broadcasting environments. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. More information is available at www.cobaltdigital.com.