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

AI Career Notes: February 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:


Jerry Conway

Sema4, an AI-driven genomic and clinical data intelligence platform company, appointed Jerry Conway as its senior vice president of market access. Conway brings more than 30 years of experience across Fortune 500 and start-up companies, including Foundation Medicine, Genzyme Genetics, and, most recently, Scipher Medicine where he served as SVP of market access and corporate development.

“I am excited to join Sema4 because it is enabling precision medicine solutions that benefit patients, payers, and the healthcare system,” said Conway. “I am looking forward to working with my new colleagues at Sema4 to further expand market access to our platform and to further drive the company’s mission of transforming healthcare through data-driven insights.”

Bradley Craig

NFINIT, a provider of hybrid cloud solutions, connectivity, and colocation, appointed Bradley Craig as its director of channel sales. Craig joined NFINIT with over 13 years of experience in the technology industry, primarily working with cloud and managed service providers such as Veeam and Insight.

“Great partnerships have been at the core of my career,” said Craig. “NFINIT has an excellent reputation in the industry and has already created strong partnerships that I look forward to fostering and building in the years to come. I encourage any downstream channel partners who are looking for innovative, reliable tech solutions backed by expert, consultative support to reach out to me.”

Kim Crider 

Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Kim Crider joined Deloitte’s government and public services practice to lead the organization’s artificial intelligence innovation for national security efforts and help government agencies adopt and implement effective data analytics and AI solutions. Crider will also foster and promote Deloitte’s Women in AI initiatives and serve as a fellow on Deloitte’s AI Institute for Government, conducting research on how to apply AI to support national security efforts, especially in space. 

Crider serves as a board director for the National Cybersecurity Center, overseeing its Space Information Sharing Analytics Center. She also serves as an advisor to several nonprofit organizations about digital innovation, emerging space system technologies and science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

James Geurts

Torch.AI, the provider of artificial intelligence-powered ultra-high speed data processing solutions, appointed former assistant secretary of the Navy James “Hondo” Geurts to its board of advisors. Geurts also served as the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition from 2017 to 2021.

“Innovation and technology evolution come through working together with a collective purpose as the driving force,” said Geurts. “I’m proud to join the Torch.AI Board of Advisors. Torch.AI is a highly differentiated, mission-focused technology company, filled with former warfighters who remain dedicated to enabling operational outcomes while serving the taxpayer. I’m eager to work with Torch.AI to support company objectives.”

Rene Haas

Arm's board of directors has appointed 35-year semiconductor industry leader Rene Haas as chief executive officer and member of the board of directors, effective immediately. Haas succeeds Simon Segars, who has stepped down as chief executive officer and member of the board of directors after 30 years with the company. In the near-term, Segars will support the leadership transition in an advisory role for Arm.

“Rene is the right leader to accelerate Arm’s growth as the company starts making preparations to re-enter the public markets,” said Masayoshi Son, Representative Director, Corporate Officer, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. “I would like to thank Simon for his leadership, contributions and dedication to Arm over the past 30 years.”

Paula Hansen and Keith Pearce 

Alteryx, Inc. promoted Paula Hansen to the role of president and chief revenue officer. Hansen will be responsible for leading the sales, marketing and customer success and services organizations at Alteryx.

In addition, Alteryx named cloud marketing industry veteran Keith Pearce as its chief marketing officer. Pearce brings more than 20 years of experience driving awareness and demand for enterprise software products having served executive roles at Genesys, Salesforce, and Allianz.

Norman Henderson 

CAST AI, the SaaS company specializing in Kubernetes automation and cost optimization for customers running cloud-native applications, appointed Norman Henderson as its chief revenue officer. Henderson will be responsible for CAST AI’s revenue-generation strategy globally, and his duties include overseeing business development, partner program and direct sales.

“I am directly familiar with the challenge companies face when trying to optimize cloud costs,” said Henderson. “I’ve spent my career in senior executive positions at both startups and top-tier enterprises, so I’ve seen the cost reports from various cloud providers first-hand. It’s incredibly frustrating because there has been no practical way to optimize those costs. Even in the best scenario, optimizing state with manual cost management tools can take months, and there is no way to remain optimized. Today CAST AI’s platform automates this entire process and brings immediate and significant cost savings to our customers, and I’m thrilled to be part of the team as we position ourselves for further growth.”

Wissam Jabre

Western Digital Corp. appointed Wissam Jabre as its executive vice president and chief financial officer. Jabre brings over 20 years of experience in semiconductors and operations, most recently serving as CFO at Dialog Semiconductor. Jabre will be responsible for leading Western Digital's finance organization including finance, accounting, financial reporting, tax, treasury, internal audit and investor relations.

"In a world where exciting new applications and intelligent devices continue to evolve and transform our daily lives, memory technologies and data storage solutions are critical in the underpinning infrastructure that powers all that's possible for people and businesses," said Jabre. "As a company known for its long history of innovation and technological advancements, Western Digital is strongly positioned to capitalize on this enormous growth opportunity. I look forward to working closely with David and the rest of the talented Western Digital team."

Michelle Johnston Holthaus

Intel Corp. tapped its executive vice president, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, to lead the company’s Client Computing Group. Holthaus will be responsible for all aspects of the business, including strategy, financial performance and product development.

“I am thrilled to take on the leadership of Intel’s Client Computing Group, an organization with immense talent and long history of delivering leadership products and platforms that create vibrant, open ecosystems,” Holthaus said. “We have a tremendous opportunity to build on past successes – and even accelerate our pace as we continue to enable our customers and partners to elevate PC experiences.”

Diane Honda and Adam Famularo

Lucidworks, provider of next-generation AI-powered search applications and developer of the connected experience cloud platform, appointed Diane Honda and Adam Famularo to its board of directors. Honda is the chief administrative officer, general counsel, and secretary at Barracuda Networks, a provider for cloud-enabled security solutions. 

Famularo is the chief executive officer of WorkFusion, a provider of robotic process automation and intelligent automation solutions. Previously, he served as CEO at erwin Inc., a software company that helps organizations discover, manage, protect and leverage enterprise data to drive successful digital transformations. 

Meredyth Jensen

DDN, a provider of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud data management solutions, appointed Meredyth Jensen as its chief marketing officer. Prior to DDN, Jensen served as senior vice president of corporate marketing and brand communications at RGP, a global consulting firm.

“I am excited to join DDN at this critical inflection point in the company’s growth trajectory,” said Jensen. “Our customers across commercial, government and academia are grappling with the complexity of how to approach their data management as well as extracting value from it. DDN is perfectly positioned to enable their digital transformation across enterprise workflows, AI and analytics with our award-winning products and solutions.”

Karim Karti

RapidAI, the global leader in neurovascular and vascular imaging driving the next evolution of clinical decision making and patient workflow, appointed former president and chief executive officer of GE Healthcare Imaging, Karim Karti, as the company’s CEO.  Karti comes to RapidAI with more than 25 years of experience in the medical technology industry. 

“I am proud and humbled to join Dr. Albers, Dr. Roland Bammer, and the whole team at RapidAI in their mission to improve the diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening conditions. As trailblazers in the space, RapidAI has helped to shape the way we diagnose and treat neurovascular and vascular disease and made a meaningful impact in the lives of people around the world,” said Karti. “I look forward to bringing my own experience in imaging, artificial intelligence and digital health to help push the boundaries of clinical technology and patient care even further and continue to save lives. RapidAI has pioneered the field with five key randomized clinical trials, all published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that set a new standard for stroke treatment worldwide and showed the superior approach of the RapidAI solution. RapidAI is the undisputed leader with a presence in over 2000 hospitals and 60 countries, a testament to the value of RapidAI for patients, physicians, hospitals and health systems.” 

Beth Keil

Lightmatter, the leader in photonic computing, appointed Beth Keil as its vice president of people. Before joining Lightmatter, Keil was VP of people at Aternity. Prior to Aternity, she spent over 10 years at Veracode leading organizational design, global expansion, and M&A activity.

“Lightmatter’s employees have a passion for the mission that is contagious. This technology has the potential to change the world with a positive impact on the environment,” said Keil, “I am excited to work alongside an amazing team to build a company with a great success story.”

Matthew Mattina

Tenstorrent, a hardware start-up developing next generation computers, announced the addition of Matthew Mattina as VP of Machine Learning. In this role, Mattina will lead Tenstorrent’s efforts to enable industry-leading performance and scalability of modern neural networks and Software 2.0. Prior to joining Tenstorrent, Mattina was Distinguished Engineer and Senior Director of Arm’s Machine Learning Research Lab.

“Matt is one of very few people in the world with deep expertise in all layers of the stack and his addition to the team is a significant step towards achieving our goals and moving AI forward,” said Ljubisa Bajic, Tenstorrent’s CEO.

Philippe Mathieu

Palantir Technologies Inc. appointed Philippe Mathieu as the head of the company’s Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Mathieu will be responsible for driving the expansion of Palantir across the EMEA region. He comes to Palantir from Oracle, where he was executive vice president of EMEA and JAPAC regions. 

“Palantir has become the operating system of choice for Enterprises and the demand is growing exponentially,” Mathieu said. “I am thrilled to join the company that employs the best engineers in the industry and to contribute to the acceleration of our global footprint.”

Jerome Nadel 

BrainChip Holdings Ltd, a provider of ultra-low-power high-performance artificial intelligence technology and the commercial producer of neuromorphic AI chips and IP, appointed Jerome Nadel as its chief marketing officer. Nadel will be responsible for driving corporate and product marketing to support the full commercialization of its Akida neuromorphic computing platforms.

“BrainChip advancements in neuromorphic AI are truly transformative and will be the computational foundation of smart sensing in all edge devices,” said Nadel. “Our ground-breaking IP is commercially ready and relevant, and it’s exciting to see it being adopted and deployed by industry leaders. I’m excited to play a part in accelerating the company’s trajectory.”

Nicholas Nystrom

Peptilogics, a biotech company that designs peptide therapeutics, promoted Nicholas Nystrom to chief technology officer from his role at the company as senior vice president and head of computation and data. As CTO, Nystrom will lead technology strategy, as well as the implementation and advancement of Peptilogics’ computational peptide design platform.

“Technology innovation is essential to enable the rapid design of best-in-class peptide drugs to treat diseases with large unmet medical needs,” said Nystrom. “Our platform demonstrates great promise to accelerate the design of safe, effective peptide therapeutics by intelligently navigating complex chemical and biological spaces. I look forward to continuing to oversee its development and the many doors it may open to the largely untapped diversity of potential peptide therapeutics.”

James Phillips

F5, Inc. appointed James Phillips to its board of directors. Phillips, who is the current president of the digital transformation platform group at Microsoft,  will sit on F5’s nominating and environmental, social and governance committee.

In his current role, Phillips leads Microsoft’s Digital Transformation Platform Group, a product development organization with more than 15,000 global team members. His product portfolio includes Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Azure AI Platform, Azure Data Platform, and the Azure IoT Platform.

Harry Powell

TigerGraph, the provider of a graph analytics platform, appointed Harry Powell as its head of industry solutions to build and lead the industry solutions team, which will focus on key business drivers impacting forward-thinking companies. Before joining TigerGraph, Powell was the director of advanced analytics at Barclays. 

“I’m very excited to join TigerGraph at this pivotal time in its global expansion,” Powell said. “As a long-time user of graph, I have come to recognize the power of TigerGraph as the leading solution for advanced data analytics applications. I believe this technology will play a key role in the development of Industry 4.0 in the manufacturing sector and answering the call for advanced data analytics and machine learning in financial services and other sectors. I look forward to getting to know TigerGraph’s customers, finding out about the challenges they face in their businesses, and helping them use TigerGraph to find solutions, take action and make money.”

Gaurav Rao 

AtScale, the provider of semantic layer solutions for modern business intelligence and data science teams, appointed Gaurav Rao to the newly created position of executive vice president and general manager of machine learning and AI. Most recently, Rao served as vice president of product at Neural Magic, developers of software acceleration for deep learning utilizing sparse model architectures.

“After spending almost 20 years in data, ML and AI, I am excited to be joining a team focused on a truly transformational technology,” said Rao. “The semantic layer is the missing link in creating scalable data strategies that can feed AI/ML models and connect model-generated insights to decision makers. AtScale is at least five years ahead of anyone else looking at this problem. I am thrilled to be coming on board at this important time.”

Aravind Ratnam

Q-CTRL, provider of quantum control engineering solutions to accelerate the development of quantum technology, appointed Aravind Ratnam as its chief strategy officer. Most recently, Ratnam served as head of products for Sense Photonics and vice president of products for AEye Inc. 

“I am honored to join the Q-CTRL team to help grow the company and bring quantum computing closer to reality,” said Ratnam. “Q-CTRL’s technology has endless applications from space to transportation to climate science, and I look forward to being part of the technology’s transformative growth.”

Yong Rui

Dr. Yong Rui, Lenovo’s chief technology officer and senior vice president, was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society, and the publisher of the prestigious scientific journal Science. Rui was elected for “distinguished contributions to the field of multimedia computing and AI applications, particularly in multimedia analysis, retrieval and understanding,” according to the AAAS.

“It’s an honor to be elected an AAAS fellow,” said Rui. “I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to those who supported my nomination.”

Debanjan Saha

DataRobot appointed Debanjan Saha as the company’s new president and chief operating officer. Saha will be responsible for driving the continued rapid expansion of the company’s AI Cloud platform to deliver more impact to customers globally. Saha brings to DataRobot 20 experience leading data and cloud businesses, including Google and Amazon Web Services. 

“AI will drive the next wave of innovation and transformation for business and society, and we have to put it in the hands of more people,” said Saha. “Unlike innovation in infrastructure, which is primarily about cost savings, this is about creating value and driving top line growth for businesses. I believe in DataRobot’s mission of democratizing AI and empowering the entire organization — not just a few — to use the awesome power of data to its full potential.”

Kar-Han Tan

Osmo from BYJU’S, a company that makes hands-on learning games in which players use objects in the real world to interact with the digital world shown on their iPad or Fire tablets, appointed Kar-Han Tan as its head of computer vision and machine learning. Tan brings over 30 years leading teams in robotics and AI research and development. 

“It’s an important moment for Osmo to capitalize on the explosive breakthroughs in computer vision technology driven by advances in deep learning in recent years,” said Tan. “When combined with advances in neural engines and discoveries of new algorithms for devices, it offers a realm of new capabilities for all devices. Osmo is part of a new ‘space age,’ transforming what was previously imagined as sci-fi fantasy into a concrete reality within the realm of gamified learning and tools.”  

Danica Wang, Kiran Mehta, and Eric Sun

Alluxio, the developer of the open-source data orchestration platform for data-driven workloads such as large-scale analytics and AI/ML, appointed Danica Wang as its senior vice president of global legal and head of China operations.  Before joining Alluxio, Wang worked as associate general counsel with Hillhouse Capital. 

In addition, Kiran Mehta joined Alluxio as its vice president of engineering. Before joining Alluxio, Mehta held engineering and product leadership roles at MapR (acquired by HPE). Prior to HPE/MapR, at Informatica, he was responsible for the development of Informatica's zero-code high-performance data integration platform. 

Lastly, Eric Sun joined Alluxio as its vice president of business development in China. Before Alluxio, Sun worked as head of business development with Amazon China. Before that, he was the GM of mobility solutions with SAP China. Sun joined SAP from Watchguard, where he ran the China business as Greater China GM. 

Fernanda Weiden

VTEX, the enterprise digital commerce platform provider, appointed Fernanda Weiden as its chief technology officer.  Weiden will be responsible for overseeing the engineering, product, and design departments and prioritizing platform reliability and solution scalability. 

“I have been following VTEX since September 2020, when I started supporting the company as an advisor,” said Weiden. “During this period, I got to know a Latin American company globally revolutionizing the digital commerce market, and I accepted the challenge, delighted with all the growth possibilities ahead. We have the talent, potential, and dedication to deliver products and lead new solutions. My main role from day one is to stimulate the talents we already have and attract new ones, to build an extraordinary future for the digital commerce ecosystem.” 

David Zinsner

Intel Corp. appointed David Zinsner as its executive vice president and chief financial officer. Zinsner has more than 20 years of financial and operational experience in semiconductors and manufacturing, including most recently as executive vice president and CFO at Micron Technology, Inc.

“I am excited to join Intel, a company I’ve long admired with a storied history of innovation and technology leadership,” said Zinsner. “Intel’s scale, re-invigorated culture and depth of technical talent positions the company to capitalize on the unprecedented demand for semiconductors across the globe. I look forward to working with Pat and the rest of the leadership team to help drive the IDM 2.0 strategy forward and create long-term value for shareholders.”


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.

EnterpriseAI