Meet our leadership team. 

Ken Haven has been CEO of Acorn Product Develop­ment since the company’s founding in 1993. Ken has more than 25 years of product develop­ment experience including technical leadership roles with NeXT Computer, Attain, Inc., and Hewlett-Packard. He holds MS and BS degrees in me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing from Cornell University.

Tim Lau co-founded Acorn with Ken and is Acorn’s CTO. Tim has 25+ years product develop­ment experience in technology product develop­ment, and manu­factur­ing liaison roles for NeXT Computer, Wyse Tech­nology, and Plant­ronics. Tim holds a BS in me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing from Uni­versity of Rochester and an MS in mechan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing from Uni­versity of California, Berkeley.

Benjamin is an experienced multi­disciplinary designer capable in all phases of the design process. As Chief Design Officer and Chief Marketing Officer, he directs the creative staff and develops new business potentials. Benjamin's design has been recognized by IDEA, CES, Good Design, MDEA, and Sparks. Since 2000, Benjamin has been teaching design at Stanford Uni­versity, Academy of Art Uni­versity, San Fran­cisco State Uni­versity, and San Jose State Uni­versity.

Tom leads the en­gin­eer­ing team in our Boston design center. He special­izes in mech­anism design, structural analysis and vibration analysis. With over 10 years of experience in high volume man­ufac­tur­ing design Tom has a deep understanding of inter­section of in­dust­rial auto­mation and design for man­u­fac­tur­abil­ity. He holds a BS in Mech­an­ical En­gin­eer­ing from the University of Rhode Island, a MS in Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing from North­eastern Uni­versity and an MBA from Boston Uni­versity.

Donna Liao is Vice President of Design at Acorn / Elemental8. Being a leader of innovation and creativity, she is specialized in producing beautiful, meaningful, and realizable designs for clients of all sizes. She joined Elemental8 as principal industrial designer in 2008. Prior to Elemental8, Donna was a senior industrial design lead at Mitac and Tatung, where she was responsible for designing a wide variety of high tech consumer, enterprise, and military products.

Jeff Weeks leads the engineering team in our Boston Design Center. With over 11 years’ experience delivering complex products and technologies to market he is adept at all stages of development from product definition to volume production. Jeff is highly experienced managing global teams to deliver high quality products and user experiences. Since graduating with a BS from Northeastern University his experience has spanned consumer products, scientific instrumentation, defense systems and industrial automation.

Minxiang Liu leads the en­gin­eer­ing team in our China Design Center. He has more than 17 years of product design and dev­elop­ment experience and five years of teaching experience at the college level. He holds a MS degree in mech­anical en­gin­eer­ing from Northern Illinois Uni­versity and BS degree in Me­chan­i­cal Engineer­ing from Shanghai Uni­versity of Tech­nology.

Landon leads the business develop­ment efforts in the Western United States, covering Acorn’s design centers in Silicon Valley (Fremont and San Jose). He has 17 years of tech­nology/­product develop­ment and commer­cial­iza­tion experience in large corp­orations and start-­ups, several of which were in Silicon valley. As a previous client of Acorn that over­saw the develop­ment of a life science tool from concept to manufacture, he acts as a strong customer advocate for our clients.

Andrea leads the business development efforts in the Eastern United States, covering Acorn’s design centers in Boston and Atlanta. Her responsibilities include identifying new project opportunities, cultivating partner and client relationships, and executing on marketing initiatives. With 10 years combined experience in client service and business development, Andrea works closely with her engineering teammates to understand the challenges client’s face and provide solutions that best meet their needs. Andrea holds a BS in Sport Management from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Master of Liberal Arts degree in Management from Harvard University Extension School.

As the Opera­tions Manager, Ramnik has been leading HR and Opera­tions for all Acorn US Offices in her 11+ years with the company. She is a member of the ex­ecu­tive team, and works on achieving strategic business objectives in areas of Organiza­tion Design, Suc­ces­sion and Work­force Plann­ing, Talent and Per­form­ance Manage­ment and Bus­iness Process Improve­ments.

She holds a BS in Computer Science and MS in Operations Research.

Brian Lewis leads the engineering team in our Silicon Valley Design Center. He brings over 20 years of experience focused on the healthcare and life science industries. Brian has extensive experience with life science instrumentation and consumables and has taken complex software controlled devices through multiple clinical trials. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University, and has been awarded 15 patents throughout his career. In his free time, you can find Brian working on one of his vintage cars or riding mountain bikes.