AI Career Notes: May 2022 Edition 

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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:

Sara Andrews

Marvell, a provider of data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, appointed Sara Andrews to its board of directors. Andrews currently serves as the chief information security officer at Experian. She also serves on the board of directors at Mandiant and has previously served on the board of LogMeIn.

Before Andrews joined Experian, she served as the senior vice president and chief information security officer at PepsiCo, Inc., where she was responsible for safeguarding networks and data across all PepsiCo business units and brands globally.

Marcella Arthur, Michael Hughes, Haniel Ilouz, and Rina Serlin

Duality Technologies appointed Marcella Arthur as its vice president of global marketing. Arthur comes to Duality from Unbound Security (acquired by Coinbase), where she led the company’s marketing practice, after a string of appointments at companies including Microsoft and Mimecast. At Duality, she will ensure marketing strategy is integrated with sales objectives and help advance Duality’s brand awareness.

In addition, Duality Technologies appointed Michael Hughes as its chief business officer. Hughes also comes to Duality from Unbound Security, where he served as CBO. Before that, Hughes led six firms through either successful acquisition or IPO, including Bonfire Interactive, WatchDox, Watchfire, and Delano Technology. 

Haniel Ilouz joined Duality Technologies as its vice president of engineering, Prior to joining Duality, Ilouz held engineering leadership roles in large companies such as HP and served as a VP of engineering at startups including Cyren and Feedvisor, as well as at several government organizations. At Duality, Ilouz will productize Duality’s technology and ensure that a growing engineering team is integrated into Duality’s new GTM strategy.

Lastly, Rina Serlin joined Duality Technologies as its vice president of human resources joining the team. Serlin has over 15 years of experience in HR leadership across vastly different organizational structures- from small startups to multinational enterprises. Rina's past experience includes leadership positions at HP - Indigo, Nova Measuring Instruments, and Komoona. 

David Brayford

Intel appointed David Brayford as its HPC architect. Brayford is a senior scientist specializing in HPC and artificial intelligence and a scientific and numerical computing software developer. He comes to Intel from Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, where he served as a senior HPC and AI scientist. Before he joined LRZ, he was a research scientist at AutoTune EU project and Mont-Blanc EU project.

Brayford currently serves on the OpenHPC technical steering committee, a Linux Foundation collaborative project, and from 2019 to 2022 he served as a lab representative on the governance board at OpenHPC.

Nicolas Chaillan, Paul Machle, and Sanjay Poonen 

Tetrate, the enterprise service mesh company founded by creators and maintainers of Istio and Envoy, appointed  Nicolas Chaillan as its strategic advisor. Chaillan became the first U.S. Air Force and Space Force chief software officer in 2019 and served in that role through 2021. He also has held IT leadership roles in the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, where he developed cloud, cybersecurity, DevSecOps and software initiatives.

In addition, Tetrate appointed Paul Machle as its chief financial officer. Machle brings over 20 years of experience on senior leadership teams for both private and public high-growth software companies.

Lastly, Tetrate appointed Sanjay Poonen as its strategic advisor. Poonen is a technology executive with more than 25 years of experience leading enterprise software companies, such as VMWare, SAP, and Informatica.

Trish Damkroger

Hewlett Packard Enterprise appointed Trish Damkroger as its chief product officer of HPC & AI. Damkroger brings to HPE over 30 years of experience in HPC. Her most recent role was at Intel, where she served as vice president and general manager of HPC. Damkroger was responsible for leading the strategic initiatives to deliver compute, accelerators and memory optimized for supercomputers, including exascale-class supercomputers. 

Before Damkroger joined Intel, she held the role of deputy associate director of computation at the U.S. DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. At the Lab, Damkroger led more than 1,000 engineers and scientists focused on supercomputing efforts.

Kerry Desberg 

Agiloft, providers of no-code contract lifecycle management software, appointed Kerry Desberg as its chief marketing officer. Desberg brings more than 30 years of experience in B2B and B2C marketing with some of the world’s top Fortune 500 corporations and agencies, including Procter & Gamble, Owens Corning, Danaher, Lockheed Martin, and Fleishman Hillard. 

“Agiloft is an irresistible combination of award winning, transformative technology that customers love, an absolutely exponential market opportunity to transform the way companies manage their contracts, and a deeply thoughtful company culture,” said Desberg. “I simply could not be more excited to join this team and help Agiloft continue its amazing growth trajectory.”

Al Emondi 

NTT Research, Inc., a division of NTT, appointed Dr. Al Emondi as its head of partner strategy. Emondi joined NTT Research in March 2022 on a contract basis as part of its leadership advisory team. He is also president and chief executive officer of Piontier, LLC, a technology development and neurotech product line consultancy.

“With my stint at the neuroscience research bench behind me, I have spent much of my professional career building successful interdisciplinary research environments – both programs and laboratories,” said Emondi. “Motivated by creativity and driven by the challenge of identifying new technical opportunity space, I have a proven history of building successful research programs, as well as creating new technical capabilities within organizations. The opportunity to build on the existing success at NTT Research is incredibly exciting.”

Chip Ernst 

Speedb, the maker of a data engine that helps organizations evolve their hyper-scale data operations, appointed Chip Ernst as its vice president of US sales. Ernst brings over 20 years of experience in building global sales teams from the ground up and driving strategic partnerships at both deep-tech startups and large multinationals. 

He joins Speedb from Lightbits Labs, where as vice president of strategic sales, he drove US enterprise business development efforts and helped build highly scalable sales practices, while also overseeing its indirect channels program. Previously Ernst served as VP of sales and business development for Reduxio (now Ionir), where he opened the US Northeast market and achieved the company’s first sales, before leading its worldwide sales organization.

Margie Evashenk

Nyriad, Inc. appointed Margie Evashenk to its board of directors as an independent director. Evashenk brings three decades of wide-ranging business, engineering, and board-level experience with a focus on storage and artificial intelligence. Evashenk has 30 years’ experience in high-tech, from co-founding storage semiconductor start-up Sierra Logic (sold to Emulex Corporation in 2006) to overseeing global engineering for Emulex as senior vice president and chief development executive.

“I am excited and privileged to be joining the Nyriad Board,” said Evashenk. “When I learned about UltraIO’s groundbreaking architecture, which gives customers both performance and resilience with remarkable value, I wanted to be a part of it.  I look forward to contributing to Nyriad’s growth and market leadership.”

Fernanda Foertter

Fernanda Foertter joined Voltron Data as its director of developer relations and HPC business development. Foertter comes to the company from NextSilicon, where she was director of applications. Before NextSilicon, Foertter was a senior scientific consultant at Bioteam. Previously, at Nvidia, she was the global alliance manager for genomics HPC+AI. Prior to Nvidia, she spent six years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as an HPC data scientist.

“I’ve been an advisor to Voltron and it was time to jump fully on board,” said Foertter on Twitter. “I’m looking forward to doing what I love most in this world, building community. I’m lucky I get to do it with old friends. data+hw+sw+HPC+opensource+standards… combines all the things!”

Allen Ganz 

Incode, the next-generation identity verification and authentication platform for enterprises, appointed Allen Ganz as its vice president of business development. Most recently, Ganz led strategic alliances and enterprise sales for NEC, where he was responsible for some of their most high-profile biometric deployments. Prior to NEC, he helped grow Visionics, one of the first facial recognition companies, into what is today known as Idemia.

“I have had the pleasure of contributing to the evolution of the digital identity space for over 20 years and being a part of some exceptional teams,” said Ganz. “I am excited to join Incode at such a pivotal time in the evolution of digital identity. Acceptance is at an all-time high, driven by consumer demand for frictionless and secure experiences everywhere we go and in everything we do. Incode is at the forefront of this evolution and is well-positioned to be the clear market leader. I look forward to working together to drive growth and help the company realize its full potential.”

Arthur Hu

Lenovo promoted Arthur Hu chief technology officer of the company’s Solutions & Services Group. In his new role, Hu will lead the newly formed research and development unit within SSG.

“I’m excited to lead this dynamic team that brings together technologists and creators while also taking Lenovo’s Group IT to the next level as part of SSG,” Hu said. “New IT will power the next generation of technology services and experiences for consumers and businesses alike, and there couldn’t be a better time to develop innovative solutions for our customers around the world.”

Sophie Kitson and Tej Redkar

Sumo Logic, the SaaS analytics platform to enable reliable and secure cloud-native applications, appointed Sophie Kitson as chief human resources officer. Kitson brings a strong track record of building talent-centric organizations and the operational systems that allow them to scale at innovative companies such as Mercury Interactive, Salesforce, Nimsoft and PagerDuty.

In addition, Tej Redkar joined Sumo Logic as its chief product officer. Redkar has led various engineering, product management, UX and data science teams at many companies including Microsoft, Cisco/AppDynamics, IBM and SAP. He most recently was the CPO at LogicMonitor, where he led a product development team of several hundred engineers and product managers.

Martin Klein

C3 AI, the enterprise AI software company, announced that Major General Martin F. Klein, USAR (TPU) has joined its executive team to oversee the company’s defense and intelligence operations. General Klein most recently served as the chief operating officer of the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

“I look forward to building on the work of the trusted professionals from C3 AI who are bringing enterprise AI to solve some of our nation’s hardest problems,” said Klein. “Our defense and intelligence communities are on the precipice of fully embracing all the potential that commercial software and data provide to overmatch near-peer adversaries and assuring information dominance. I can’t think of a better software platform, or company, to accelerate our nation’s security transformation into the digital era.”

John Langton 

AtScale, the provider of semantic layer solutions for modern business intelligence and data science teams, appointed John Langton as its vice president of AI engineering. Langton will oversee the development of technical strategy and architecture delivery, and work closely with customers to innovate on new approaches to integrate the AtScale semantic layer with AI to accelerate time to value and drive business outcomes.

“AtScale is a high energy organization focused on the convergence of AI and traditional business analytics,” said Langton. “I am honored to join the company during this exciting time of rapid growth and to be part of the AI solutions that are shaping the future for insight-based decision making that is driving businesses forward.”

Stuart Lawrence 

Stream Data Centers, a provider of data center services to enterprises, appointed Stuart Lawrence as its vice president of product engineering. Lawrence will collaborate closely with customers and industry experts to ensure Stream Data Centers’ facilities remain competitive in today’s rapidly evolving environment.

“I’m very excited to join the Stream team, especially as we continue to rapidly grow and innovate. The strength and experience of Stream’s sales, engineering, construction and operations teams is second to none. To be a part of that was a big draw,” said Lawrence. “There is an open and inclusive culture, where everyone is heard and can participate. Stream’s openness means the team is encouraged to challenge the status quo, which is very exciting. The data center industry evolves quickly, and we have come a long way, but there are so many parts that can still be improved. I’m looking forward to aligning with the luminaries here at Stream to solve those challenges and deliver game-changing experiences and solutions to customers.”

Ronald Meaux, Suresh Pandian, Fred Stemmelin 

Celigo, the enterprise-wide integration platform-as-a-service for the mid-market, appointed Ronald Meaux as its vice president of the marketplace. Meaux will lead the development and growth of the Celigo Marketplace and third-party developer ecosystem.  

In addition, Suresh Pandian joined Celigo as its senior vice president of engineering. Suresh will be responsible for scaling the engineering organization to help Celigo rapidly bring new products and functionality to market. He will be scaling the platform not just to support Celigo's efforts, but to support partners and developers as well.

Lastly, Celigo appointed Fred Stemmelin as its vice president of business and corporate development. Stemmelin will lead Tech Alliances and Ecosystems and start a new Corporate Development practice.  He brings more than 25 years of experience in partnerships, technology and SaaS leadership to the Celigo team.

Eric Ostby

Rigetti Computing, Inc., a provider of hybrid quantum-classical computing systems solutions, appointed Eric Ostby as its vice president of products. Ostby will be responsible for overseeing Rigetti’s QCS product and platform development to advance the Company’s Quantum Computing as a Service business in the public and private sectors. 

“I am thrilled to join Rigetti to lead and grow the QCS product function, and collaboratively take Rigetti’s full-stack quantum computing product to the next level,” Ostby said.“I look forward to working alongside Rigetti’s talented teams, partners, and customers as we develop quantum native applications today that will change how we work and live in the future.”

Kieran Penwill, Chris Sassone, Mike Sheppard, Jeff Whitaker 

Panasas, a provider of high-performance data solutions, appointed Kieran Penwill and Chris Sassone as its sales directors of EMEA and APAC, respectively. In addition, Mike Sheppard joined Panasas as its global director of channels and alliances, and Jeff Whitaker joined the company as its vice president of marketing and product management. 

“I’m thrilled to announce these new appointments,” said Brian Peterson, chief operating officer of Panasas.“The ActiveStor Ultra product line has received high praise from both established and new customers, and Panasas has enjoyed a sharp increase in demand over the last 18 months. As a result, we are investing further in our teams and our products to support our expanding global customer base.”

Richard Petley

Teradata appointed Richard Petley as its executive vice president of the EMEA region. With more than 20 years of experience, Petley joins the team from Oracle, where he was senior vice president of the Western Europe region for Oracle Cloud, and managing director of Oracle UK. Prior to Oracle, Petley held sales leadership positions at IBM, with consistent success in growth areas of enterprise software, SaaS and AI.

“Having watched Teradata’s impressive growth within the EMEA region from afar, I’m incredibly excited to be joining the team to support the sales function to help scale even further,” said Petley. “As an organization, Teradata’s core vision and principles align fully with mine, and I look forward to both strengthening existing customer and partner relationships in the region and further building the pipeline with my own network and experience.”

Matt Poirier

Intel Corp. appointed Matt Poirier as its senior vice president of corporate development. Poirier brings to Intel more than 20 years of leadership, finance and corporate development experience with a focus on mergers, acquisitions and integration, including most recently as senior vice president of strategy and corporate development at AMD.

“For decades, Intel has played an essential role in the global technology ecosystem and is now embarking on a historic transformation that will improve its leadership position supporting customers and partners around the world,” Poirier said. “I’m excited to join Intel‘s phenomenal leadership team and to partner with Pat and our board of directors to deliver significant long-term value for our shareholders as we advance our IDM 2.0 strategy and reshape the semiconductor industry.”

Mubbin Rabbani and  Ram Rangaraj

CLARA Analytics, the provider of artificial intelligence technology in the commercial insurance industry, appointed Mubbin Rabbani as its vice president of product. Rabbani has over 15 years of product management experience focusing on commercial insurance claims.

In addition, CLARA Analytics appointed Ram Rangaraj as its chief technology officer. Rangaraj is a veteran IT leader with over two decades of experience at Kaiser Permanente, where he served in a range of technology leadership roles, most recently as Senior Director of Revenue Management Integration Engineering. 

Hasmukh Ranjan 

AMD appointed the former chief information officer of Xilinx Hasmukh Ranjan as its senior vice president and chief information officer. Ranjan will be responsible for managing the company’s IT organization and for providing strategic oversight of corporate IT infrastructure, maintaining critical technology applications and systems, and delivering advanced solutions to enable more secure and productive business operations.

“There has never been a more exciting time in the semiconductor industry – and especially for AMD,” Ranjan said. “I’m particularly inspired by the collaborative spirit and culture within the company and am eager to leverage our industry-leading products to further bolster our team’s capacity to innovate.”

Karina Robinson 

Multiverse Computing, a provider of quantum computing solutions, appointed Karina Robinson as a senior advisor to the company. Robinson joins Multiverse with over 10 years of experience in providing chief executive officer and chairman advisory services. Currently, Robinson is CEO of Robinson Hambro Ltd and a non-executive director on the board of Atlanti, an Anglo-Swiss fund management group based in Geneva.

“I’m delighted to join Multiverse’s outstanding global team. Quantum is going to transform everything from financial risk to global warming,” said Robinson. “Multiverse’s ability to work with diverse multinational corporations in their quantum journeys, along with its record number of patents and inclusive culture, were an irresistible combination.”

Chip Salyards

Catchpoint, the global leader in digital experience observability, appointed Chip Salyards as its chief revenue officer. Salyards will lead all aspects of the company’s sales, business development and strategic partnerships.

"I am very excited to join Catchpoint at this pivotal time in the company’s journey,” said Salyards, “The digital experience of customers and employees has never been more critical as we define a "new normal" moving forward with remote workers and their productivity. I am also looking forward to going back to my roots where I have 18 years of experience in the infrastructure monitoring and observability space.”

Reggie Townsend

The US Department of Commerce appointed Reggie Townsend to the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee. Townsend serves as director of the data ethics practice at analytics and artificial intelligence software company SAS. The NAIAC will advise the president and the National AI Initiative Office on a range of issues related to AI. 

“AI comes with promise and peril,” said Townsend. “The need for legal, technical, social and academic frameworks to capitalize on the promise of AI while mitigating the peril is not only important but urgent in these times. I’m hopeful we will succeed and consider it an honor and a privilege to do my part.”

Lambert Walsh

Amplitude, Inc. appointed Lambert Walsh as its chief customer officer. With more than 25 years of experience, Walsh will lead Amplitude’s customer success organization and partner with its customers to unlock insights, build winning products, and drive business growth. 

“Customer teams are under immense pressure to drive growth within their organization, and that cannot be done without a deep understanding of customer behavior,” said Walsh. “I’m bullish about Amplitude because I’ve seen firsthand how valuable product data can be for teams tasked with improving adoption, expansion, and retention. I believe in Amplitude’s product, vision, and leadership team, and I can’t wait to work with its world-class customer community.”

Dan Warmenhoven

WEKA, the data platform for AI company, appointed Dan Warmenhoven to its board of directors.  Warmenhoven will help to shape the company’s strategic alliances, go to market and customer acquisition strategies. Warmenhoven served as chief executive officer of NetApp from 1994 to 2009 and later became its executive chairperson from 2009 to 2014. 

“WEKA’s data platform technology and vision are impressive. I believe they have the potential to be as transformative to modern data management as NetApp’s technology was for data storage in the 90s,” said Warmenhoven. “They aren’t just building a better storage mousetrap like so many of their market peers. WEKA’s unique software-based, cloud agnostic approach has the potential to fundamentally change how organizations store, process, and manage their data.”

Dave Wilner

Styra, Inc., the creators and maintainers of open policy agent and providers of cloud-native authorization solutions, appointed Dave Wilner to its board of directors. Most recently, Wilner served as chief revenue officer of Auth0, an adaptable authentication and authorization platform provider. From 2015 to 2021, he helped lead and scale Auth0 through its growth phase, from $1 million to almost a quarter-billion dollars in sales.

“It is hard to imagine a bigger opportunity than cloud-native authorization,” said Wilner. “Authorization that enhances security without compromising user experience will be a given in all applications, it’s just a matter of time. I’m excited to join the Styra board because they are the company best positioned to deliver authorization at enterprise scale. They have set the standard for modern stack companies with OPA and I look forward to joining them as they continue to change the way the industry thinks about authorization.”

National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee 

The U.S. Department of Commerce appointed 27 experts to the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee, which will advise the President and the National AI Initiative Office on a range of issues related to artificial intelligence.

“Artificial intelligence presents a new frontier for enhancing our economic and national security, as well as our way of life. Moreover, responsible AI development is instrumental to our strategic competition with China,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves. “At the same time, we must remain steadfast in mitigating the risks associated with this emerging technology, and others, while ensuring that all Americans can benefit. The diverse leaders of our inaugural National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee represent the best and brightest in their respective fields and will be instrumental in helping the Department strike this balance. Their anticipated recommendations to the President and the National AI Initiative Office will serve as building blocks for U.S. AI policy for decades to come, and I am immensely grateful for their voluntary service.”

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.