Executive Team

Velocity Electronics' senior management team brings together industry veterans with a deep knowledge of electronic components and professionals from a wide variety of highly successful businesses.

Tim Gray
Chief Executive Officer (March 2001 - Present)

Velocity CEO Tim Gray is an entrepreneur and business leader with experience overseeing all aspects of a company's operations from finance, accounting and legal, to sales, marketing, software development and international expansion. Tim joined Velocity Electronics in 2001 after serving as a Managing Director at idealab, where he was co-head of idealab's New Ventures Group, responsible for evaluating and developing new and existing operating companies.

Prior to joining idealab in 1999, Tim was CEO of WeddingChannel.com, a company he co-founded in 1996. WeddingChannel.com (purchased by publicly traded The Knot, Inc. in 2006) is the world's leading online marketplace for gift registries, whose strategic partners include Federated Department Stores (parent company of Bloomingdale's, Macy's and May Company), Tiffany & Co., Crate and Barrel, Neiman Marcus, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, JCPenney, Restoration Hardware, REI and Gumps, among others. While at WeddingChannel.com, Tim set global strategy, created and oversaw the development of the innovative and patented WeddingChannel.com service, led partnership development efforts and was responsible for securing over $25 million in venture capital from strategic and financial investors such as Federated Department Stores, Goldman Sachs, MacAndrews & Forbes, RRE Investors, MSD Capital and idealab.

Prior to founding WeddingChannel.com, Tim was an attorney with the entrepreneurial-focused Los Angeles law firm of Riordan & McKinzie. As an attorney, Tim worked with a wide range of clients, including venture capital funds, venture backed start-up companies and large multinationals.

Tim holds a B.A. in political science from the University of California at Irvine and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Frank Bruno
Co-founder and President (February 1999 - Present)

Frank Bruno co-founded Velocity Electronics in February 1999 and quickly built the company into one of the leading independent distributors in the world. He brings over 17 years of experience in appraising, buying, selling, handling and storing board level electronic components, peripherals and networking equipment in both the franchise and independent distributor markets.

Frank began his career in the shipping department of one of the largest independent distributors in 1987 at age 18. Frank was promoted to purchasing agent in 1987 and was then promoted within 12 months to corporate purchasing manager. By 1989, Frank was responsible for all inventory purchases for the company's brokerage sales division. In 1990, he was recruited and hired by Marshall Industries, where he was named Southeast Regional Passive Salesperson of the Year.

Frank was recruited back to independent distribution in 1994 to open and manage the Austin, Texas office for the company where he began his career. Frank's responsibilities as co-branch manager included all inventory purchases as well as all operational aspects of the office. He served as primary point of contact for all of the company's vendor verification as well as all product procurement in the spot market worldwide. His outstanding industry knowledge and reputation helped grow sales of the Austin office from zero to the second highest of the company's nine satellite offices in just two years.

Rob Turner
Co-founder and Executive Vice President (February 1999 - Present)

Rob Turner co-founded Velocity Electronics in February 1999 and quickly built the company into one of the leading independent distributors in the world. He brings over twelve years of experience in appraising, buying and selling board level electronic components. Rob began his career at one of the largest independent distributors in the world as a Sales Account Manager and quickly became one of the Top 10 Account Managers (out of over 100) in the organization. In June 1994, Rob was transferred to help launch the company's Austin, Texas branch, where he became the youngest manager in the company's history when he was promoted to Co-Branch Manager (with Frank Bruno) in 1995. Building upon the many industry relationships that both Rob and Frank brought to the Austin office, in two short years they jointly grew the office sales from zero, into the second highest of their company's nine satellite offices. In addition to his managerial responsibilities, Rob also consistently led the company's branch managers in personal sales.

Rob was a Division I college football player while attending the University of California at Berkeley and Eastern Michigan University, where he majored in Interpersonal Communications and minored in International Business.

Hal Juergens
Director of Product Management (April 2002 - Present)

Hal Juergens comes to Velocity Electronics from Honeywell International (formerly Allied-Signal), where he was a liaison and technology manager responsible for program planning and testing on numerous military and commercial programs such as Joint Strike Fighter, F-16 and Boeing's 757 and 767 aircraft. As a Honeywell liaison, Hal served as a single point of contact for all customer requirements including program budgets, schedules, specification for procurement and facility and technical resources. In addition to being promoted as the youngest liaison in Honeywell's $10 billion Aerospace Division for his technical and business acumen, Hal received corporate recognition for overall performance in both 2000 and 2001. The honor distinguished him in the top two percent of all Honeywell employees worldwide. Hal is also a lean manufacturing and enterprise expert and extensively trained in Six Sigma Lean principles, tools and processes.

Prior to joining Honeywell in 1995, Hal was a senior program manager for Wyle Laboratories. While at Wyle, he was responsible for a $30 million component test facility at Edwards Air Force Base in California and completed numerous programs from proposal to final report in Wyle's Norco and El Segundo, California facilities.

Hal holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Irvine.

Jason Jowers
Director of Quality and Operations (February 2001 - Present)

Jason Jowers joined Velocity Electronics in 2001 after serving for eight years in the United States Army as an Armor officer. While in the Army, Jason had the distinct honor of leading soldiers to accomplish demanding organizational tasks. He held a number of diverse and challenging leadership, supervisory and operational positions. Jason's most rewarding assignments while in the Army were commanding two tank companies. In that capacity, he was responsible for the training and welfare of 63 soldiers; coordinating the actions of his soldiers, their tanks and supporting elements to accomplish the missions assigned to his company; and the maintenance of 14 tanks and other associated vehicles and equipment. Jason also served as a tank platoon leader, the executive officer (second in command) of a tank company, an operations officer for a tank battalion and the personnel officer for a tank battalion.

Jason holds a B.S. in management from the United States Military Academy at West Point and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business.

Chuck Boecking
Director of Technology (July 1999 - Present)

Chuck Boecking is responsible for all of Velocity Electronics' technology development and currently heads the next generation development of the proprietary Velocity Market Search (VMS) software, which greatly assists the company and its customers in determining secondary market pricing and product availability and in making procurement decisions.

Chuck joined Velocity Electronics in 1999 after serving as software engineering manager for multi-million-dollar software platforms for National Instruments. His responsibilities included engineering point-of-contact to key enterprise test deployments for Tellabs, Delphi Delco, Raytheon, Nokia and Texas Instruments. Chuck spearheaded the negotiation and implementation of the Microsoft Visual Studio Integrator program, which resulted in a greater integration between the National Instruments test architecture and the Microsoft Windows platform. In a prior role, he served as an applications engineer with a semiconductor test specialization.

Chuck joined National Instruments after graduating cum laude in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University.

Kristofor Kelly
Director of Business Development (May 2003 - Present)

Prior to joining the Velocity team in 2003, Kris Kelly served as global strategic manager for one of the largest independent distributors in the world, where he coordinated global sales initiatives with a number of Fortune 500 companies, including Solectron, AMD and Alcatel. Kris has extensive knowledge and experience in developing and implementing volume purchasing agreements and reciprocal trade agreements throughout the OEM and CEM marketplace.

Prior to his career in independent distribution, Kris was a member of an elite national account management team at AT&T, where he also focused on large corporate accounts. From 1991 to 1995, Kris served as a national account manager for AT&T, developing and marketing integrated telecommunication solutions for companies such as EDS, JCPenney and Frito Lay.

Kris has extensive international experience and has participated in several international business seminars throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia. He holds a BBA in marketing and international business from Baylor University.

Kevin Tolbert
Director of Finance and Accounting (December 2006 - Present)

Kevin brings over 14 years of specialized experience in accounting, finance, corporate development, strategic planning, third-party outsource services and operational productivity initiatives. Most recently, Kevin lead the financial operations of Hospital Housekeeping Systems, the largest singularly-focused Environmental Services outsource company, as Chief Financial Officer. Kevin began his career working in public accounting and later moved into industry with McLane Company, Inc. where he served as Vice President and Controller of McLane/Southern California. After returning to Texas, Kevin also served as Vice President of Finance and Administration for Sulzer Vascutek. Kevin has extensive experience covering a broad range of business functions from accounting, finance and human resources to operations, productivity/cost improvement initiatives and business outsourcing services.

Kevin holds a BBA in Accounting from Texas A&M University.