Board of Advisors

Georges Penalver
French technology executive Georges Penalver appointed to chair ZAP‘s advisory board.

Mr. Penalver is a 30-plus year management executive with a broad international business experience in telecommunications strategy and marketing. Currently, he is Senior Executive Vice President of France Telecom Orange, strategic marketing and Orange Labs.

ZAP has selected Mr. Penalver to lead an effort in establishing an advisory board to reflect its recent business expansion, backed in part by financier Jacques de Chateauvieux's Paris-based Jaccar Holdings. The mission of ZAP’s Advisory Board will be to bring a wide range of backgrounds and real-world experience to the table and ZAP officials believe Mr. Penalver can lead an effort to build a group that can provide a wealth of resources including networking contacts, best practices and third-party objectivity.

Before joining France Telecom in September 2005, Georges Penalver was Deputy General Manager of SAGEM Communication (SAFRAN group). From 2002 to 2005, he developed SAGEM'S Broadband Communications Business, overseeing the launch of new fixed and mobile product offers, industrial deployment in Tunisia, Asia and Eastern Europe, and the development of sales networks in Europe, China, Southeast Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. Appointed to serve on SAGEM's Management Board in 2001, he notably accompanied the mass development of mobile and Internet services.

Mr. Penalver is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Arts et Metiers in Aix en Provence (gold medal, 1974) and the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Telecommunications in Paris (1980). He is also a Knight of the French Ordre National du Merite.

William A. Shea
William A. Shea, Jr., a veteran Wall Street financier, has joined ZAP’s advisory board.

Mr. Shea has been involved in finance for nearly fifty years. He founded a successful 1960’s hedge fund and is currently working to launch two new hedge funds. He is the son of William A. Shea, for whom New York’s Shea Stadium was named.

Mr. Shea began his career with Burnham & Co. in 1962, which later became Drexel Burnham. He went on to found Exchequer Associates, which he and his partner ran until 1970. After 1970, Mr. Shea became a private investor and financial advisor until formally retiring in 1989. Mr. Shea became familiar with ZAP through family connections in New York and expressed excitement in getting involved in electric transportation.

Shea Stadium was named after Mr. Shea’s father, William A. Shea Sr., (1907–1991), a New York lawyer and avid baseball fan who led the effort to bring the Mets to New York after the Dodgers and Giants moved West. Shea Stadium carried his name until its demolition in 2008. Mr. Shea is a graduate of Georgetown University. He lives in New York State, has two sons and four grandchildren.