Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Tuesday, March 19, 2024

AI Career Notes: January 2022 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:


Rob Beard

Micron Technology, Inc., a memory and storage vendor, welcomed Rob Beard as its senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Beard will be responsible for leading Micron’s global legal, intellectual property, and compliance and ethics functions, comprising a team of lawyers, paralegals and other professionals across Micron’s global footprint.

Prior to this appointment, Beard led teams supporting Micron’s corporate and global operations functions. Before joining Micron, he worked at international law firms Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and Shearman and Sterling LLP, where he led mergers and acquisitions and other strategic transactions in complex, cross-border capital markets. 

Barry Behnken and Chester Kennedy

ColdQuanta, a provider of cold atom quantum technology solutions, appointed Barry Behnken as its executive vice president of engineering. Behnken will be responsible for leading and developing engineering teams across ColdQuanta’s three divisions: Quantum Computing, Quantum Research as a Service, and ColdAtom Technologies. 

In addition, ColdQuanta appointed Chester Kennedy as its president of research and security solutions. Kennedy will focus on driving sustainable growth for the company’s security solutions including sensors, quantum RF, and services that enable new applications of quantum-derived technologies. 

Ariel Braunstein and Dean Kassmann

IonQ, Inc., provider of trapped-ion quantum computing products, appointed Ariel Braunstein as its senior vice president of product management. Braunstein, who co-founded Pure Digital Technology and its former Flip video camcorder products, also previously led Cisco’s consumer product portfolio and Google’s AR and VR product management group.

In addition, IonQ appointed Dean Kassmann as its vice president of research and development. Kassmann comes to IonQ from Blue Origin, where he held the role of senior director of advanced technology. He established and led the team responsible for company-wide applied research in the support of Blue Origin’s launch vehicle engines for in-space product lines.

Sandy Carter

Altair, provider of software and cloud solutions in the areas of simulation, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, appointed Sandy Carter to its board of directors. Carter currently serves as senior vice president and channel chief of Unstoppable Domains, Inc., a software company building domains on blockchains. 

“I am proud to join the Altair board of directors and bring my multidisciplinary experience to help the organization accelerate its global partnership, sales, and marketing efforts,” said Carter. “Altair is making great strides in helping forward-thinking companies accelerate their digital transformation efforts.”

Frank Colich and Mark Fieldhouse 

Rescale, a provider of the cloud high performance computing platform enabling digital R&D and engineering solutions, appointed Frank Colich as its chief financial officer. Colich will lead all aspects of the company’s finance organization, including legal and investor relations. Colich brings more than 20 years of experience in private and public companies in the cloud transformation industry.

In addition, Mark Fieldhouse joined Rescale as its general manager of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Fieldhouse will oversee all aspects of the company’s growth in EMEA. Fieldhouse joined Rescale with more than 25 years of enterprise software leadership experience in sales, marketing, operations and strategy.

Anand Eswaran

Veeam Software, a provider of backup, recovery and data management solutions, appointed Anand Eswaran as its new chief executive officer and a member of the company’s board of directors. Eswaran joins Veeam from RingCentral, where he was president and chief operating officer, overseeing exponential growth and customer expansion. 

“Veeam is a unique company that is growing significantly faster than the market. I am delighted to be joining such a talented team at an exciting time in its journey,” said Eswaran. “Data is exploding and has become one of the most important assets for all organizations. As such, data management, security and protection are pivotal to the way organizations operate today, and failure to have a robust strategy can be catastrophic. Veeam has a unique opportunity to break away as we sit in the middle of the data ecosystem, with the most robust ransomware protection and ability to protect data wherever it may reside.”

Sharan Foga

Instaclustr, which helps organizations deliver applications at scale by operating and supporting their open source data infrastructure, appointed Sharan Foga as its director of community and developer relations. Foga will support and encourage new participation and growth across the open source communities Instaclustr is active in, such as Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, and OpenSearch.

Foga is a current ASF board member and has more than five years of experience leading Apache community development. From 2017 until joining the board this year, Foga served as the vice president of Apache Community Development, where she was the primary liaison between the Apache board of directors and the Apache community development team.

Claudine Hagen

Kitware, Inc., a provider of artificial intelligence and scientific computing software products, appointed Claudine Hagen to its board of directors. Hagen brings to the board more than 20 years of experience in financial reporting, internal controls assessment and complex business transactions. She has been with Kitware for nine years and has served as its chief financial officer since March 2017. 

Hagen led the effort to convert Kitware to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan and was able to bring together the right mix of external experts to guide Kitware smoothly through the process. She also spearheaded the effort to bring in an external firm to guide Kitware in creating a strategic plan for the company.

Jong-Hee Han and Kyehyun Kyung 

Samsung Electronics promoted Jong-Hee Han to vice chairman and chief executive officer. He will be responsible for leading the newly merged SET Division as he continues to head the visual display business. Samsung Electronics named President Kyehyun Kyung chief executive officer and will lead the DS Division.

Han is a leading expert in TV research and development and has played a major role in the company achieving the top position in global TV sales for the 15th consecutive year. He is expected to strengthen the synergies among the different businesses in the SET Division and help drive new businesses and technologies. Kyung, who has been the CEO of Samsung Electro-Mechanics and has previously served as the head of Samsung Electronics’ Flash Product & Technology Team as well as part of the DRAM Design Team.

Sean Heuer 

Resolve Systems, an intelligent IT automation software vendor, appointed Sean Heuer as its vice president of product. Heuer will be responsible for accelerating the adoption of Resolve’s intelligent IT automation solutions for its enterprise and service provider customers worldwide.

“It is an incredible time to join Resolve,” said Heuer. “Digital transformation efforts are accelerating, IT automation is a must, and Resolve’s platform is delivering undeniable results. I’m excited to work with this talented team developing customer-first strategies that will enable meaningful product innovation. Resolve is on an incredible trajectory and I look forward to being part of the solution that creates a meaningful impact for IT organizations everywhere.”

Keith Kressin 

MemryX Inc., a fabless semiconductor company that designs edge AI processing solutions, appointed Keith Kressin as its president and chief executive officer. Kressin will lead MemryX’s evolution from R&D to product manufacturing and customer delivery while scaling the company for success. 

“Over the course of my 20-plus-year career in the semiconductor industry, I've seen the industry transition from general processing cores such as CPUs, to more dedicated cores, such as DSPs, ISPs (Image Signal Processors for cameras), CV engines, sensor hubs, and most recently dedicated AI cores,” Kressin said. “Nearly every processing function is increasingly reliant on AI. AI cores need to be highly scalable, easy to program, flexible and incredibly efficient. This is what MemryX has proven in working silicon and the company intends to be ready with production silicon in 2022. I’m thrilled to join as CEO and be given the opportunity to help MemryX grow and support customers using AI across a broad swath of industries.”

William McGann

Quantum Computing Inc., a quantum computing company, appointed a former member of the board, William J. McGann, as its chief operating and technology officer. McGann will be responsible for the technical and product engineering aspects of the company. He will also lead QCI’s ready-to-run quantum software initiatives as the company enhances its quantum optimization software. 

“It is an honor and a privilege to join the QCI team to support the execution of the business growth strategy,” said McGann. “As a leader, I look forward to establishing an exciting, fast-paced business rhythm that is customer-focused and leading through innovation. We will aspire to be the best in all that we do and endeavor to become the preeminent leader in delivering quantum solutions to the market that advance customer business and application outcomes.”

Phil Holtberg and Lara Kisielewska

Phil Holtberg joined Tabor Communications Inc. [publisher of HPCwire, Datanami and EnterpriseAI] as its account director, focusing primarily on sales for two of its publications (Datanami and EnterpriseAI). Holtberg, a 19-year veteran of NewBay Media, held multiple sales roles at the company, including serving as group publisher of the Pro AV family of publications and advertising representative on all NewBay publications and digital properties. Most recently, he was account manager of Springer Nature, handling accounts across pre-clinical and life sciences categories.

In addition, Lara Kisielewska joined TCI as its first chief marketing officer to both expand TCI’s footprint and oversee expanded client services programs that are now available for companies looking to engage with the audiences of all three TCI publications. Kisielewska has dual backgrounds in publishing and high-tech marketing, and has been part of the open source and HPC communities for more than 20 years. She co-founded Linux Magazine (among others) and has been running Xand Marketing, which solely services the technical computing market, since 2005.

Kenneth Klingenstein

Kenneth Klingenstein was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame for helping lead the expansion of the internet in the western United States and playing an early and important role in the development of the internet’s identity and trust layers. Klingenstein is among 21 inductees from 11 countries being recognized for their contributions to building, optimizing and strengthening the foundational infrastructure of the network for reach, access, security and scale. 

“While this commendation is a personal recognition, it must be noted that most of my professional life has been associated with Internet2,” said Klingenstein. “Much of the body of work being noted by the Internet Society was done within the context of the Internet2 middleware activities. Given the passionate community participation in the work, the Internet Hall of Fame recognition is as much for the organization and community that creates it as it is for me.”

Adam Lurie

Torch.AI, a provider of artificial intelligence-powered ultra-high-speed data processing products, appointed Adam Lurie as its chief strategy officer. Lurie will be responsible for the expansion and reach of Torch.AI's capabilities across customer segments, as well as oversee corporate development activity.

"I'm proud to join an organization known for being a trailblazer in AI and large-scale data enablement," said Lurie. "Torch.AI holds a reputation for putting their clients first, while simultaneously advancing the use of AI to improve mission performance. I'm thrilled to help elevate this reputation and further the organization's mission by leveraging my acquisition and leadership experience in my new role as CSO."

Rick Rosenthal

CLARA Analytics, a provider of artificial intelligence technology in the commercial insurance industry, appointed Rick Rosenthal as its chief financial officer. Rosenthal will be responsible for overseeing the company’s finance and accounting organizations, including its corporate development and investor relations functions.

“I’m thrilled to be joining the team at CLARA Analytics,” said Rosenthal. “This company’s mission is all about creating win-win situations that maximize value for a range of different stakeholders. In the workers’ compensation space, for example, CLARA’s industry-leading AI technology optimizes medical outcomes for injured workers while reducing costs to insurers and easing overburdened case managers,” Rosenthal continued. “When business decisions are backed by solid data and informed by sound analysis, very real benefits can be delivered to stakeholders. CLARA is doing just that.”

Casey Morrison and Aleksandr Oysgelt

Astera Labs, a provider of purpose-built connectivity solutions for intelligent systems, promoted Casey Morrison to chief product officer. Morrison will drive product strategy and bolster the company’s customer engagement programs across all engineering teams with an overarching goal to deliver an exceptional product experience for its customers and partners.

In addition, Astera Labs appointed Aleksandr Oysgelt as its vice president of hardware engineering. Oysgelt will spearhead Astera Labs’ hardware engineering operations to complement its silicon development team for cloud connectivity solutions.

Inder Singh 

IonQ, Inc., provider of trapped-ion quantum computing solutions, appointed Inder M. Singh to its board of directors. Singh is the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Arm, where he leads the global finance organization as well as corporate IT operations, procurement and enterprise security teams.

“It is an incredibly exciting time to join IonQ’s Board, having watched the company grow from a startup to the quantum computing industry leader it is today,” said Singh. “Government, business and society as a whole are quickly recognizing quantum’s ability to solve previously impossible problems, and they are turning to IonQ for counsel and strategic partnership. I could not be more excited to be joining the Board and helping the team potentially shape the next frontiers of technology.”

Ford Tamer 

Groq Inc., an innovator in compute accelerators for artificial intelligence, machine learning and high performance computing, appointed Dr. Ford Tamer to its board of directors. Prior to joining the board of directors at Groq, Tamer served as president and chief executive officer of Inphi for nine years until its recent acquisition by Marvell. 

“I am excited to join Groq as a board member and senior advisor to support Jonathan Ross and the global Groq team, board and investors in growing the company into a successful leader in its field,” said Tamer. “Groq is unique at providing predictable low latency at scale for real-time AI, ML and HPC applications. The team has a deep heritage and proven track record in developing large-scale solutions to address the data center needs of tier-1 customers and partners.”

David Wallace 

Circonus, the full-stack monitoring and analytics platform built for the enterprise, appointed David Wallace as its chief technology officer. Wallace has held several leadership positions, including as chief technology officer of Greenphire, a provider of clinical trial financial solutions (acquired by Thoma Bravo) and as director of information technology at iPipeline, a provider of cloud-based software products for life insurance and financial services industry (acquired by Roper Technologies). 

"I am very pleased to be joining Circonus at this exciting time of the company's growth," said Wallace.  "In joining Circonus, I was impressed with the exceptional leadership team, the power and performance of the technology and the stunning list of well-known enterprise clients and use cases. The vision for the future is very compelling and I look forward to working with the team as we help our clients harness the power of telemetry at scale to deliver exceptional business insights and value."

Naveen Zutshi

Databricks, the data and artificial intelligence company, appointed Naveen Zutshi as its chief information officer. Zutshi will be responsible for leading the global information technology functions at Databricks. He joined Databricks from Palo Alto Networks, where he most recently spent six years as CIO overseeing IT strategy and operations

“Databricks is trailblazing the future of data architecture with its lakehouse platform and I am thrilled to be part of the journey as CIO,” said Zutshi. “I look forward to collaborating with the exceptional team at Databricks to better support our customers and enable rapid scale of our business.”


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.

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