AI Career Notes: September 2020 Edition
In this monthly feature we bring you up to date on the latest career developments in the enterprise AI community -- promotions, new hires and accolades:
Victoria Coleman joins the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as its new director. She is the third woman to hold the role and will oversee DARPA's $3.5 billion annual budget. Since 2015, Coleman has served on DARPA's Microsystems Exploratory Board and the Defense Science Board and has served as the chief executive officer at Atlas AI prior to being appointed as DARPA's director.
Coleman is a member of the technology advisory board at Lockheed Martin Corp. and has held executive roles at the former Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics, and SRI International.
Former vice president and manufacturing operations of Boeing, James B. Davis, joins Quantum Computing Inc.'s technical advisory board. At Boeing, he managed the industrial engineering, supply chain, and manufacturing teams, who were responsible for the production of 42 aircraft per month.
"I'm fortunate to join QCI at this very exciting time as it begins the commercial launch of Mukai," said Davis. "Commercial and government investment in quantum computing continues to gain momentum, as industrial manufacturers discover that adopting quantum technologies could help them maintain a competitive edge. Mukai enables companies like Boeing and others to leverage the power of quantum technologies with its best-in-class performance."
Terry Denzer and Gerhard Esterhuizen
Rescale announced the addition of Terry Denzer and Gerhard Esterhuizen as chief revenue officer and vice president of engineering, respectively. Denzer is a 25-year executive with sales leadership experience. He will be responsible for the company's field operations, sales, and partner initiatives.
Esterhuizen will manage Rescale's HPC platform technologies using more than 20 years of engineering experience. Before Rescale, he held the role of senior director of engineering at Segment and was Cloudflare's first engineering manager.
StorCentric appointed Rob Eggers as its chief financial officer. As CFO, he will manage the company's internal and external financial operations. Eggers has a 25-year career in corporate finance, investor relations, manufacturing, and sales, specializing in high-technology and networking companies.
"This is indeed a critical time in the storage industry, as so many emerging trends and market demands are colliding and forcing organizations to reassess data management workflows and data security risks," said Eggers. "I'm extremely proud to be joining StorCentric, an incredible team of passionate and talented individuals, from every corner of the company." He continued, "It is a team that is dedicated not only to developing and delivering the most innovative data management solutions, but one that is likewise committed to providing the right solution for each and every customer's unique IT challenges, business goals and regulatory requirements."
Synopsys, Inc. promoted Sassine Ghazi to chief operating officer from his role as general manager of the company's Design Group. Ghazi joined Synopsys in 1998 and has years of experience in chip design, applications engineering, customer support, sales, and business management. Before Synopsys, he held the role of design engineer at Intel.
"It is a privilege to assume the COO position, working alongside our senior leaders to further evolve and focus the strengths of Synopsys," said Ghazi. "Our strategy has never been more compelling in delivering high-value innovation to enable our customers' ambitious objectives. I am incredibly energized to work with the team as we continue to accelerate technical impact, sharpening operational excellence and deepen customer relationships."
Kamal Hathi joins DocuSign its new chief technology officer. Hathi brings over 25 years of experience to support the expansion of the DocuSign Agreement Cloud. Before DocuSign, he held the role of chief product and technology officer at Trader Interactive.
"DocuSign is one of those rare companies with a platform that has fundamentally transformed how people work together, especially in one of the most critical areas of life and business: their agreements," said Hathi. "I'm thrilled to be joining a world-class team of engineers and technologists who are dedicated to today's challenge of enabling a more automated, efficient and trusted experience for customers across the globe."
Satinder Jandu joins NAG as the executive vice president of its financial services industry division. He will be responsible for driving NAG's partnerships with the users of its financial services and deploying its products. Jandu brings over a 25-year career across the finance and IT industries, including the public sector, telecommunications, defense, and aerospace.
"This is a time of great change in the finance industry with disruption both on the sell side and buy side," Satinder said. "I want to thank Adrian for welcoming me to his executive team, and together with NAG's help, FSI customers exploit the opportunities these changes will bring through exploiting cross regulatory synergies and new product opportunities. Together we will help customers address greater regulatory scrutiny at a more granular level through NAG's algorithmic and cloud expertise."
DataRobot's Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Trust Ted Kwartler was appointed to a new Federal Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building. Kwartler will be responsible for providing strategic guidance related to the ethical use of federal data. The Federal Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building's goals are to fast-track the use of data to support the foundations of democracy, deliver on mission, serve the public, and steward resources while protecting security, privacy, and confidentiality.
"We believe AI is the future but that it needs to be built in a trustworthy and explainable way," said Kwartler. "I'm humbled to bring my expertise and knowledge of Trusted AI to this new advisory committee and look forward to continuing to advocate for reliable, governable AI that can aid in decision making across the government."
Resolve Systems appointed David Moran to its board of directors. Moran has a 30-year career in the software and financial services industries. He's held the role of chief executive officer at ChangingWorlds and Travelport, and has held executive roles at Insight Partners, Morgan Stanley, Prism Solutions, and CoreView.
"Over the last 30 years, I've had the honor of working with many technology disruptors, and Resolve is well positioned to dominate their category with a truly unique combination of IT automation and AIOps," Moran said. "I am excited to help the team achieve this goal and maximize the momentum they've built in the business over the last 12 months."
Nutanix Founder and Chief Executive Officer Dheeraj Pandey will retire after leading the enterprise cloud provider for the past 11 years. Pandey is also Chairman of the company. Before Nutanix, he held the role of vice president of Engineering at Aster Data (now Teradata). He will step down once a new CEO is found.
"Co-founding and leading Nutanix for the last 11 years has been the single most rewarding experience of my professional career. Guided by a vision of making IT infrastructure so simple that it becomes invisible, our team has built Nutanix into a leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hybrid cloud infrastructure solutions," said Pandey. "With our strong fourth quarter financial results, 29 percent growth in year-over-year run-rate annual contract value, a delightful software stack, and our recent launch of Nutanix Clusters on AWS bare metal, Nutanix is well positioned for the future. In addition, the $750 million investment from Bain Capital Private Equity announced today underscores the strength of our business and ensures a strong financial foundation to capitalize on the significant opportunities ahead. I am confident there is no better time for me to make this transition to a new leader who can guide Nutanix through its next decade of growth and success."
Jeannine Sargent was appointed to the Synopsys board of directors. She has held investment advisory roles within industries varying from artificial intelligence to energy and sustainability. Sargent has also served as president of Innovation and New Ventures at Flex.
"I’m excited about the opportunities that Synopsys has in EDA and semiconductor IP, in light of today’s hyperscalers and the dawn of quantum computing, and in the Software Integrity business, as the need for security testing continues to accelerate,” Sargent said. “I’m honored to join such a capable and committed team.”
Tom Shea succeeds Faye Pairman as president and chief executive officer and member of the board of directors at Panasas. Shea was promoted from his current role as chief operating officer. He brings over a 20-year career with engineering leadership in the storage industry.
“I am honored to succeed Faye as CEO and to lead the Panasas team, building on our incredibly strong technology foundation,” said Shea. “We have re-invented ourselves over the past five years, and we are re-defining the price-performance equation in HPC storage with innovative technology that eliminates hidden costs. I look forward to working with our fantastic employees, customers and partners to advance our strategy, drive growth, and deliver value every day for our customers.”
Michael Sheridan and Cynthia Gaylor
DocuSign promoted Michael Sheridan from his role as chief financial officer to president of International. In addition, Cynthia Gaylor joins the company to replace Sheridan as CFO. Sheridan’s new role will expand his existing responsibilities that he took on as general manager of DocuSign's EMEA region. Before DocuSign, he served as CFO at FireEye, Facebook, IGN Entertainment, and SonicWALL.
Gaylor, who also serves as a board member and audit committee chair for the past two years, will be responsible for managing the company’s financial operations. She has a 25-year career in finance and served as CFO at Pivotal Software prior to joining DocuSign.
Ryan Stroub, Christelle Flahaux, Steve Tsuchiyama, and Jay Sivachelvan
FortressIQ announced the addition of four new personnel to its executive team. Ryan Stroub joins FortressIQ as chief financial officer. He has held senior roles at Certent, SharesPost, Thomas Weisel Partners Group, and E-Trade. Christelle Flahaux joins the company as its vice president of marketing. She’s held senior marketing roles at Domo MapR Technologies, Jive Software, Marketo, and Taleo.
Steve Tsuchiyama enters the company assuming the role of VP of worldwide sales and customer success. He’s held senior leadership roles at SignalFX, Sauce Labs, Lucidworks, Nlyte Software, and AccelOps, Inc. Lastly, Jay Sivachelvan will hold the role of VP of business development. He comes from Anapalan and has held the role of director of sales strategy and partnerships at GoodData.
Tachyum Inc. promoted Krishna Thatipelli to senior director of Hardware Design Engineering. Thatipelli has a 20-year career in developing high performance microprocessors and ASICs. He was selected for his contributions to the company’s Prodigy solution.
“I feel very fortunate to have a strong and talented team backing my work as we take on the challenge of bringing the world’s first universal processor to life,” said Thatipelli. “It is indeed a unique opportunity as I have never seen anything like Prodigy in my 20 years working in the industry, even when working at some of the biggest names in processors like Intel, AMD, ARM and SPARC. I’m appreciative of the fact that my value has been seen here at Tachyum and am please to have been recognized in this way with a promotion. I have high confidence that we will complete our remaining asks on schedule to ensure Prodigy comes to market on time.”
David Turek
David Turek joins CATALOG as its chief technology officer. Turek comes from IBM and brings over 25 years of executive experience. At IBM, he held the vice president roles for IBM’s Technical Computing OpenPOWER and Exascale Computing divisions. Turek assisted with the launch of IBM’s Grid Computing unit. He also founded and led IBM’s Linux Cluster division.
“I am thrilled to join the team at Catalog,” Turek said. “While there is justifiable excitement about the innovations pioneered by Catalog to efficiently write data in DNA, we believe this is just the beginning as we vigorously push towards product commercialization. Our intention is to be the marketplace leader for the application of synthetic DNA for both storage and computation.”
Peter Uelen joins Asperitas as its chief commercial officer. Uelen has held leadership positions at IBM, Lucent Technologies, Schneider Electric, and Vertiv. He brings over a 30-year career in IT, telecommunications, and datacenter industries.
“The Asperitas Immersed Computing technology is very innovative,” Uelen said. “It’s not only an enabler for next generations of IT hardware, but it will also strongly contribute to a more sustainable data center industry. We are in a position to continue our leadership in the immersion cooling market, with a strong and focused product portfolio validated by enterprise-level users and strategic partners like Shell to enable carbon-neutral datacenters globally.”
DataRobot appointed Parm Uppal as chief revenue officer. He will help the company continue to grow and will work alongside President and Chief Operating Officer Dan Wright and Chief Go-To-Market Officer Tom Levey to establish the company’s sales program further. Uppal comes from AppDynamics, where he held the role of vice president of sales and is credited with growing the West region by 270%.
“Enterprises know they need to invest in AI to fuel business performance, but often lack the resources to derive value from their AI investments,” said Uppal. “That’s why I am so excited to join DataRobot — it combines a cutting-edge, end-to-end platform with resources that allow businesses to understand and track the value from their investments.”
Intel Corp. promoted Barbara Whye from chief diversity and inclusion officer and vice president of Social Impact and Human Resources to corporate vice president. Whye has been at Intel since 1995 when she joined the company as an engineer.
She is responsible for Intel’s programs that produce a positive impact on society. She led the company’s $300 million Diversity in Technology initiative, which led to Intel being recognized in October 2018 for having full diversity representation across its U.S. workforce.
Todd Younkin has been promoted to the role of president and chief executive officer at Semiconductor Research Corp. Younkin serves as executive director of SRC’s Joint University Microelectronics Program. Before SRC, Younkin served in senior technical positions at Intel Corp.
“I am honored to lead SRC, a one-of-a-kind consortium with incredible potential and exceptionally talented people. Together, we will deliver on SRC’s mission to bring the best minds together to achieve the unimaginable,” said Younkin. “SRC is well-positioned to meet our commitment to SRC members, employees, and stakeholders by paving the way for the semiconductor industry. Our strong values, unique innovation model, and unflinching commitment to our members are core SRC principles that we will maintain as we move forward.”
Zapata Computing Scientific Advisory Board
Zapata Computing established a Scientific Advisory Board to create a stronger community of scientists focusing on quantum computing. The founding members include Andrew Childs, Jens Eisert, Aram Harrow, Arthur Jaffe, Peter Love, Will Oliver, and James Whitfield. For additional information on each member, click here.
"Classical computer science was founded on decades of collaboration between universities, industry and various governmental institutions," said Yudong Cao, CTO and co-founder, Zapata Computing. "This collaboration provided fertile ground for the computer industry to grow and advance. Quantum computing requires the same level of nurturing and support. Our goal for the Scientific Advisory Board is to develop the community connections that will allow this industry to flourish."
To read last month’s edition of Career Notes, click here.
Do you know someone that should be included in next month's list? If so, send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.
