AI Career Notes: April 2021 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:

Pascal Bornet

Aera Technology, a cognitive automation company, appointed Pascal Bornet as its chief data officer. Bornet brings over 20 years of experience, including founding the artificial intelligence and automation practices for McKinsey & Company and EY, where he drove the transformation of global enterprises across industries.

“I am excited to join the Aera Technology team,” said Bornet. “I believe in the combination of AI and Automation technologies to automate the most complex business use cases. This crossroad of domains perfectly describes Aera’s unique position in the market. It is about leveraging data, machine learning and process automation to generate the highest value for companies.”

Tim Cabral

SingleStore, the database of now for cloud-native modern applications, welcomed former chief financial officer Tim Cabral to its board of directors. At Veeva Systems, Cabral played a key role in the company’s expansion efforts. Cabral currently serves as the audit committee chair for Doximity and ServiceTitan.

“SingleStore has delivered amazing results in the past year amid an extremely challenging environment,” said Cabral. “I look forward to being involved with this database innovator and bringing the operational experience I have gained at both private and large public companies to SingleStore as the company positions for greater scale and success.”

Dan Caruso

ColdQuanta, a cold atom quantum technology solution provider, appointed Dan Caruso as its executive chairman and interim chief executive officer. Caruso will be responsible for the direction and growth of the company. Before joining ColdQuanta, Caruso was the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Zayo Group, an internet infrastructure provider.

“ColdQuanta has 90 fantastic employees, most of whom are quantum physicists, scientists and engineers. I am excited to support amazing ColdQuanta colleagues,” said Caruso. “ColdQuanta will contribute to a fundamental transformation from humankind’s classical history to its quantum destiny. The company’s innovation in cold atom quantum technology will play a pivotal role in the most seismic revolution since the launch of the internet.”

Grant Crow, Tacis Gavoyannis, Brian Boyer, and Henk Jansen

Massive Analytic, a precognition AI company, welcomed Dr. Grant Crow, Tacis Gavoyannis, Brian Boyer, and Henk Jansen to its leadership team.  Crow joined as Massive Analytics’ chief operating officer. She comes from HUMN.ai, where she held the role of chief operating officer.

Gavoyannis joined as its chief growth officer, where he will focus on the expansion of Massive Analytics’ customer base. Boyer joined as the company’s senior vice president of commercial operations, bringing over 25 years of experience. Lastly, Jansen joined Massive Analytics as its director of research and innovation, with a mission to develop new leading-edge technologies in autonomous control and quantum computing.

Kelsey DeBriyn

Engineering simulation software vendor Ansys welcomed Kelsey DeBriyn as head of its investor relations and government affairs division. DeBriyn will be responsible for the investment community’s understanding of Ansys’ strategy, competitive differentiation and financial outlook. DeBriyn has 15 years of experience in investment banking, equity research and investor relations, most recently as vice president of investor relations with Raytheon Technologies.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to join Ansys, a company leading the industry in engineering simulation innovation and quality,” DeBriyn said. “I am proud to be a part of this world-class community of talented people.”

Stacey Epstein

Freshworks Inc., the intelligent customer engagement software company, welcomed Stacey Epstein as its chief marketing officer. Epstein brings over 25 years of industry experience, helping startup companies such as SuccessFactors and ServiceMax grow.

“With more than 50,000 customers leveraging our modern and highly intuitive solutions, Freshworks has been quietly disrupting several enterprise SaaS categories,” said Epstein. “With a visionary founding CEO in Girish Mathrubootham, who is obsessed with building software that delights both customers and employees—along with a leadership team full of experienced veterans from Atlassian, Oracle, Veeva, and Zuora— the massive opportunity to help transform entire industries is ours to lose. I can’t wait to tell our story.”

Jim Frankola

Engineering simulation software vendor Ansys appointed Jim Frankola to its board of directors. Frankola brings more than 25 years of experience in corporate governance and finance to Ansys. Frankola currently serves as the chief financial officer of Cloudera, an enterprise data cloud company. He also served as CFO of Yodlee, Inc., a data aggregation and data analytics platform company.

Frankola has held various senior positions in finance and business management at industry-leading companies, including IBM and Avery Dennison Corp., and served on the board of ActivIDentity Corp., a credentials management and authentication company.

Raj Hazra

Micron Technology, Inc., a memory and storage solutions provider, appointed Raj Hazra as its senior vice president and general manager of the company's compute and networking business unit. Hazra, who joined Micron in June 2020, was promoted from his role as the senior vice president of the strategy and communications division.

Hazra brings over 20 years of technology leadership experience to his post. Before joining the company, he served as corporate vice president and general manager of the enterprise and government group at Intel, where he also held multiple technical and business leadership roles.

Jon Heaps

Observe.AI, a contact center artificial intelligence company, appointed Jon Heaps as its vice president of channels. Heaps is an experienced channel leader who previously helped accelerate businesses such as Talkdesk, ShoreTel, and NICE InContact.

“I’m thrilled to be joining Observe.AI to lead the channel efforts here and join such an impressive leadership team and company,” said Heaps. “Observe.AI has proven to be an incredibly innovative organization. Everyone talks about AI, but few companies are really doing it beyond giving lip service to the buzzword. AI is built at the very core of Observe.AI, and I look forward to capitalizing on its current momentum and growing the channel program here.”

John Higgins, Judy Buchholz, and Joaquin Reixa

Customer engagement and operations software vendor Pegasystems has announced several executive changes. John Higgins has joined as its head of global consulting and client success, Judy Buchholz joined as its head of commercial sales for the Americas, and Joaquin Reixa joined as its head of sales for EMEA. Higgins comes to Pegasystems from Salesforce, where he most recently led the international services for Saleforce’s EMEA, APAC and LATAM regions.

Buchholz comes to the company from IBM, where she led a global go-to-market strategy, advancing transformation experience, and driving sales teams, technical pre-sales teams, partner teams and inside sales teams.  Lastly, Reixa comes to Pega from ServiceNow, where he was most recently vice president of sales in Europe.

Paula Hodgins

VMware, Inc., an enterprise software solutions provider, welcomed Paula Hodgins as its senior vice president of worldwide accounts and telco sales. Hodgins, who will be based in Toronto, will be responsible for global sales and operational management across VMware accounts and telecommunications customers.

Hodgins brings more than 20 years of experience in enterprise technology sales, including cloud, artificial intelligence and software-as-a-service solutions. Most recently, she was president of HPE Canada, where she led all customer solution segments.

Carol Houle

IT services and consulting company Atos named Carol Houle as its global head of consulting and marketing for its financial services and insurance division. Houle will be responsible for the marketing, pre-sales engineering, and portfolio for the financial services and insurance industry division.

“I am delighted to be joining Atos to lead marketing and consulting for global financial services and insurance at this pivotal moment for the sector,” Carol said. “Over the past year, we’ve seen an unprecedented acceleration of digital transformation across banking, financial services and insurance as businesses have responded to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Atos already has an extensive footprint in the sector, and I am looking forward to playing a key role in helping our clients seize the opportunities for growth that digital differentiation presents.”

Paul Lewis

Pythian Services Inc., a data, analytics and cloud services company, appointed Paul Lewis as its chief technology officer. As CTO, Lewis will drive Pythian’s technology strategy, helping customers leverage and scale their data and cloud assets to deliver valuable business outcomes throughout their digital transformation journey.

“I’m thrilled to join Pythian’s esteemed leadership team,” said Lewis. “I look forward to championing the company’s relentless focus on data and the cloud to inform and elevate organizations across the globe.”

Todd Levy

Netlist, Inc., a high-performance SSD and modular memory subsystems vendor, appointed Todd Levy as its vice president of sales. Levy brings over 25 years of experience working in the memory and storage market.

Before Levy joined Netlist, he held several positions at SMART Modular Technologies, including senior director of worldwide sales and senior director of strategic accounts. Levy previously worked at Netlist in the early 2000s as a global account manager for Dell.

Randy Littleson

Conga, a commercial operations transformation solutions provider, welcomed Randy Littleson as its chief marketing officer. Littleson brings over 30 years of experience leading marketing for global enterprise software companies. Before he joined Conga, he spent 11 years at Flexera as its senior vice president of marketing.

“I am a firm believer that when you combine a huge market potential, market-leading products, highly satisfied customers and a winning company culture, you have a unique combination that sets you apart from the competition,” said Littleson. “I’m excited to incorporate the Conga Way into all aspects of my work, from entrepreneurial spirit to innovative culture.”

Jeff Moyer

Jeff Moyer joined Luminoso, the company that turns unstructured text data into business-critical insights, as its president and chief executive officer. Before Moyer joined Luminoso, he held the role of senior vice president of private cloud and managed public cloud for Rackspace, a multi-cloud technology services company.

“Businesses are leaving money on the table if they don’t have a fast, accurate way of extracting sentiment and insights from the text data they receive through reviews, surveys, chatbot conversations, call center transcripts and many other sources,” said Moyer. “The Luminoso team has done an extraordinary job of both building text analytics solutions that are truly differentiated in the market, and helping some of the world’s most well-known brands use its applications to turn insights into revenue. As Luminoso enters its second decade, I look forward to leading the company through a period of exponential expansion.”

Thierry Pellegrino

Data center immersion cooling vendor Green Revolution Cooling has welcomed Thierry Pellegrino to its board of directors. Pellegrino, former vice president of workloads and solutions and general manager of high performance computing at Dell EMC, will be responsible for providing strategic direction for Green Revolution Cooling.

SMART Global Holdings, Inc. — parent company of Penguin Computing — also welcomed Pellegrino in March as its senior vice president and president of SGH’s specialty computing business. He will be responsible for delivering application-specific computing products for both on-premises and cloud requirements.

“I see exciting opportunities for synergy and growth within the current SGH Specialty Computing businesses of Penguin Computing, SMART Embedded Computing and SMART Wireless Computing," he said. "By harnessing the power and ingenuity of these three businesses, we have the opportunity to drive innovation and expand into new customer segments.”

Chris Polishuk

Lucidworks, a connected experience cloud platform vendor, appointed former Salesforce executive Chris Polishuk as its chief revenue officer. Polishuk will lead the ongoing transition to the cloud and drive market adoption of Lucidworks CXC.

“Last year, despite an economic downturn, Lucidworks tripled growth in cloud-based annual recurring revenue,” said Polishuk. “I’m looking forward to building off of the foundation the team has created and leading a more connected go-to-market organization. What we’ve learned through CXC is that the best work happens when everything is connected. We have a responsibility to our ecosystem of stakeholders to drive digital transformation for companies across ecommerce, financial services and healthcare. I am honored to be a part of this next step on Lucidworks’ journey.”

Paul Repice

Datadobi, an unstructured data management software vendor, appointed Paul Repice as its vice president of sales for the Americas.  Repice will be responsible for creating and maintaining the company’s sales strategies. He comes from Tintri, where he served as the vice president of sales for the Americas.

“Organizations have been struggling to manage the growth of their unstructured data, both on-premises and in the cloud, and to use it to their advantage,” said Repice. “Datadobi’s stellar reputation attracted me to the company, and it is my privilege to join the team. I look forward to working with the Datadobi team to be able to extend the reach of our best-in-class solutions to enterprises around the world so that teams can do more with their petabytes of data and billions of files.”

Wendy Reynolds-Dobbs

Unisys Corp., an IT services company, welcomed Wendy Reynolds-Dobbs as its vice president and chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer. Reynolds-Dobbs comes from Change Healthcare, where she served as vice president of the company’s talent management and diversity and inclusion division.

"DEI is about more than just diversifying the gender and ethnicity makeup of our teams. It is also about accounting for different experiences and inviting disparate perspectives from teams, countries and regions outside of our own," Reynolds-Dobbs said. "Doing so fuels new ways of accomplishing goals and is increasingly critical to a company's success. I look forward to expanding on the strong DEI foundation that Unisys has built."

Ajay Sabhlok

Rubrik, a cloud data management company, appointed Ajay Sabhlok as its chief information officer and chief data officer. Sabhlok brings more than 10 years of experience in the technology industry and will oversee the IT, data and advanced analytics strategies for Rubrik. Sabhlok, who joined the company in 2018, was promoted from his role as vice president and head of IT enterprise business applications.

“Today, more than at any time in history, leading businesses are hungry to create meaningful business value from their data,” said Sabhlok. “This new role presents the perfect opportunity for Rubrik to continue to deliver on its promise to enable enterprises to maximize value from their data in increasingly complex and fragmented environments across data centers and clouds. I’m thrilled to lead our IT and analytics strategies for Rubrik and unlock new insights and possibilities for our valued customers.”

Yvette Smith and Gail Coury

F5, a multi-cloud application security and delivery company, appointed Yvette Smith and Gail Coury as its senior vice president of F5’s customer success ad business transformation unit and its SVP and chief information security officer, respectively.

Smith, who comes from Microsoft, will be responsible for leading the newly created customer success ad business transformation unit. Coury, who joined F5 in 2018, was promoted from her role serving as VP and general manager of F5 Silverline, the company’s cloud-based security solution for apps and websites.

Ted Tekippe and Mark Schinkel

Integrated payables and receivables platform vendor Scrypt AI appointed Ted Tekippe as its head of payment strategy and operations and Mark Schinkel as its senior vice president of strategy and business development. Tekippe will be responsible for expanding Scrypt's platform for accounts payable and accounts receivable automation into B2B payments.

Schinkel will be responsible for accelerating Scrypt’s product and market scale-out in the financial automation space. He will leverage his experience directing early-stage technology product launches and taking innovative products to market to position Scrypt as the leading integrated payables and receivables platform and build strategic partnerships.

Andrew Vaughan

Verusen, an artificial intelligence solutions provider, appointed Andrew Vaughan as its chief technology officer. Vaughan will be responsible for managing the technology, data science and product teams. He brings over 10 years of software experience as a product and technology leader.

“I am looking forward to helping the Verusen team better serve our growing business and meet the global demand for our offerings and expertise in innovative and transformative digital AI-based supply chains,” said Vaughan. “Verusen’s innovative approach with supply chain, inventory and procurement is an amazing opportunity for me to continue building successful, scalable SaaS technology organizations while exceeding constantly-evolving customer expectations.”

Jeremy Werner

Memory and storage solutions provider Micron Technology, Inc. welcomed Jeremy Werner to the role of corporate vice president and general manager of its storage business unit. Werner brings over 20 years of experience, most recently serving as senior vice president and general manager of the SSD business unit at KIOXIA America Inc.

Werner also held sales and marketing roles at Tidal Systems, LSI, and SandForce. Werner holds 21 patents and earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University. JEDEC, the organization that develops global standards for the microelectronics industry, awarded Werner with a Chairman Award for leading package-on-package industry standardization.

Dan Wright

Enterprise AI platform vendor DataRobot has promoted Dan Wright to the role of chief executive officer. Wright served as DataRobot’s president and chief operating officer since January of 2020. Before DataRobot, he worked at AppDynamics as its COO.

“Over the last year, we expanded on the foundation established by our visionary founder – increasing operational capacity, augmenting our leadership team and helping more customers than ever unlock the power of their data with AI,” said Wright. “As we look to build on this momentum and execute on our ambitious growth plans, I am honored to have the opportunity to lead DataRobot into its next chapter.”

Kirsten Wolberg

Dynatrace, a software intelligence solutions provider, appointed Kirsten Wolberg to its board of directors. Wolberg served in senior leadership roles at DocuSign, Salesforce, PayPal and Charles Schwab. She currently serves as a board director for lender Sallie Mae and the enterprise technology companies CalAmp and DUCO.

“I am thrilled to be joining the Dynatrace board at such an exciting time in the company’s history,” said Wolberg. “Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to be a part of innovative technology and financial services companies that have launched disruptive products and grown rapidly to become market leaders. I look forward to bringing my experience to help guide Dynatrace as it continues to steadily expand its operations and grow global market share.”

Andy Young

Immersion cooling vendor Asperitas promoted Andy Young to the role of chief technology officer. Young most recently served as the company’s director of research and development when he joined the company in November 2020. Before Asperitas, he held roles at Ansys and Iceotope.

“I am thrilled to have this opportunity to lead the engineering team at Asperitas, working at a more strategic level within the company,” Young said. “We are growing from strength to strength through delivering high performance solutions whilst addressing the challenges faced with performance, carbon emissions and water-use reduction. I am proud to head up a team that provides such highly experienced service and support for our customers.”

The SCSI Trade Association 2021 Board of Directors

The SCSI Trade Association, a recognized authority on serial attached SCSI technology used in data storage interconnects, announced its 2021 board of directors. Four officers and two directors-at-large have been elected to serve a one-year term. They will be responsible for developing strategic marketing programs that support the INCITS T10 Technical Committee’s work and are designed to educate the industry on the value of SAS in the marketplace. For the 2021 board of directors list, click here.

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.