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

AI Career Notes: September 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:


John Cooney

SEMI, the global industry association that unites the entire electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, appointed John Cooney as its vice president of global advocacy and public policy. Cooney brings more than 20 years of public policy experience to the role. He will oversee global government relations at SEMI, including directing strategies to manage and strengthen the association’s global public policy agenda and advocacy efforts.

“I am honored to join SEMI at this exciting time for the semiconductor industry as countries worldwide intensify their focus on the semiconductor industry’s vital importance to the broader electronics supply chain and global economy,” Cooney said. “I look forward to working with representatives at SEMI member companies to build on the association’s work to shape government policies on trade, tax, talent, technology and other key issues to help ensure the industry’s continuing growth.”

Stephen Donovan

atNorth, the pan-Nordic colocation, high performance computing and artificial intelligence service provider, appointed Stephen Donovan as its chief development officer. As CDO, Donovan will focus on site selection, design and delivery of new datacenter sites across the Nordics and the rest of Europe, as well as the expansion of the existing atNorth facilities in Iceland and Sweden.

“I am very excited to join the atNorth Executive Team at this pivotal time for the company’s future,” said Donovan. “atNorth is a disruptive energy in the data center space and is poised and ready for substantial growth in its operations in a strategic, sustainable, and commercially responsible way across Europe. I’m thrilled to be a part of this journey with a company that is already ahead of the curve.”

Sean Dwyer 

TheMathCompany, an Illinois-headquartered data analytics and engineering firm, appointed Sean Dwyer as its chief growth officer. Dwyer joined the company from Gartner, where he served most recently as vice president of global business sales, and marketing BU Americas.

"TheMathCompany has been consistently doubling in size year-on-year and has seen tremendous growth in the last six years,” Dwyer said. “I look forward to bringing my experience to lead this growth charter while ensuring that we continue to create unmatched value for our customers as a market leader."

Nicole Fitzpatrick and Sue Quackenbush 

Software intelligence company Dynatrace appointed Nicole Fitzpatrick as its general council. Fitzpatrick will be accountable for all Dynatrace legal and regulatory affairs worldwide and will lead the company’s global Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) program.

In addition, Dynatrace welcomed Sue Quackenbush as its chief people officer. Quackenbush will be responsible for driving Dynatrace talent strategies and a workplace culture that continues to foster innovation, customer-centricity, and inclusiveness.

John Harechmak

Hammerspace appointed John Harechmak as its worldwide vice president of systems engineering and customer success. Harechmak will be responsible for leading the solution architect team, overseeing the post-sales implementation and customer education, and ensuring ongoing customer success. He comes to Hammerspace from Cohesity and prior to that, he served in various roles at a number of data storage companies, including NetApp, Nutanix and Nimble Storage.

“For years, organizations have been seeking a way to share data across sites in the data center and the cloud, under one management interface, as one big namespace, and with optimized orchestration – but to no avail. Hammerspace has solved this difficult challenge and is shifting the data paradigm with its very powerful Global Data Environment,“ said Harechmak.

Richard Ho and Ritesh Jain

Lightmatter, a leader in photonic computing, appointed Richard Ho as its vice president of hardware engineering. Ho joined LIghtmatter from Google, where he spent nearly 9 years at the company leading the Cloud Tensor Processing Units project.

In addition, Ritesh Jain joined Lightmatter as its vice president of engineering. Jain joined the company after more than 21 years at Intel leading systems and packaging engineering for data center programs.

Rebecca House 

Marvell, a provider of data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, appointed Rebecca House to its board of directors. House currently serves as the senior vice president, chief people and legal officer and secretary of Rockwell Automation, Inc.

“Becky has an extensive background in talent management, ethics and compliance, public affairs, security and sustainability, and is a proven leader in building and maintaining exceptional company cultures within large, multinational companies,” said Murphy. “Her insights and counsel will be very valuable as we continue to scale and grow Marvell’s business globally.”

Gary Lac

NEC Corporation of America, a provider and integrator of advanced IT, communications, networking and biometric solution, appointed Gary Lac as its vice president of solutions. Lac brings more than 20 years of biometric and identity solution sales, development and delivery experience to NEC.

“NEC is transforming the biometric and digital identity industry with world-class technology that is proven and trusted,” said Lac. “As our partners in law enforcement and governments transform to digital-first organizations, I’m excited to develop innovative solutions that will improve society and support our customers in their mission to create safe and secure communities.”

Mike Lebow

Stream Data Centers, an industry provider of data center experiences to global enterprise and hyperscale clients, appointed Mike Lebow as its senior vice president of location strategy and development. Lebow will lead all aspects of the pre-construction project lifecycle, from market analysis, site identification and acquisitions, to zoning, permitting, utility upgrades and interconnections.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join the Stream Data Centers team,” said Lebow. “Stream is a company that is both fantastic to work with, and to work for. They have a long track record of success, strong financial partners, and robust customer pipeline; but the thing I value the most is the team’s entrepreneurial attitude. Leadership here is willing to take risks and support new initiatives that solve problems for our customers in this dynamic industry. I look forward to helping accelerate Stream’s new ventures and expansions, identify ideal data center locations, and deliver shovel-ready sites to meet our customers’ evolving needs. It is an honor to be part of one of the industry’s most customer-centric companies and I’m excited to help scale the platform with the implementation of robust processes and industry best practices.”

Jay Liu 

Zapata Computing appointed Jay Liu as its vice president of product. At Zapata, Liu will be responsible primarily for leading strategic direction and management for the company’s product portfolio, including its Orquestra platform.

“Demand at the intersection of quantum computing, ML, and next-gen compute is accelerating, and it’s clear that there’s a massive opportunity ahead for Zapata Computing and its Orquestra platform,” said Liu. “Orquestra helps enterprises create and capture value from Big Compute – the powerful, heterogeneous, and distributed compute resources, both quantum and classical, needed for the most computationally complex problems. I’m looking forward to helping Zapata deliver innovative products to customers that tackle these problems head on and expand the Enterprise Quantum market category that we are creating and leading.”

Leland Mankin

LightEdge, a provider of colocation, cloud, and managed service solutions, promoted Leland Mankin to the role of vice president of operations. Mankin will oversee the areas of data center infrastructure, systems, implementations, professional services, and customer care.

Mankin joined LightEdge in 2018 as part of the company’s acquisition of OnRamp, a world-class cloud and colocation solutions provider in Austin, Texas. Regarding his newly appointed role, Mankin said, “Meeting the needs of our customers is a mission we take very seriously.”

Sarah McAuley 

Paperless Parts, a vertical SaaS platform driving automation throughout the manufacturing value chain, appointed Sarah McAuley as its chief marketing officer. Before joining Paperless Parts, McAuley served as CMO for cloud infrastructure automation company, Quali, and as head of global marketing for CloudHealth by VMware.

“Every great company has three things in common: great people, a great product, and a big, interesting market opportunity. Paperless Parts has all three: the people at Paperless Parts are passionate, mission-driven people who are looking to transform an entire industry, the product team is world-class, and our offices are adorned with letters from customers describing how our platform has fundamentally changed their ability to attack the market and grow their businesses,” said McAuley. “I’m honored to join the Paperless Parts team and look forward to working with such a talented team to build on our incredible vision and strong momentum.”

Christopher Neumeyer 

Quantum Corp. appointed Christopher Neumeyer to its board of directors. Neumeyer has served as a non-voting board observer since 2016. He currently serves as the executive vice president and portfolio manager at Pacific Investment Management Company LLC.

"I am excited to join Quantum's Board. I look forward to working closely with the other directors and the Quantum leadership team to unlock the value that I don't believe the current stock price reflects," said Neumeyer.

Eoin O’Connor

GridGain Systems, a provider of enterprise-grade in-memory computing solutions powered by the Apache Ignite distributed database, promoted Eoin O’Connor to the role of president and chief executive officer. O’Connor has been with GridGain since 2016, serving as chief financial officer and more recently as chief operating officer.

“I am excited to lead GridGain as we continue to grow and build on the momentum we have created over the last few years,” said O’Connor. “At a time of rapid digital transformation across many businesses, I expect to see more and more enterprises turning to GridGain to address their data challenges.”

John Pechacek and Laura Richardson

Agiloft, the global standard in no-code contract lifecycle management software, appointed John Pechacek as its chief technology officer. Pechacek brings over 30 years of experience in enterprise technology. Prior to Agiloft, Pechacek served as Velocity Solutions’ CTO.

In addition, Agiloft welcomed Laura Richardson as its general counsel. Previously, Richardson served as general counsel and senior counsel within technology companies such as Osso VR and Intel Corp. She is also a charter member of TechGC.

Pradheepa Raman

GlobalFoundries, a semiconductor manufacturing company, appointed Pradheepa Raman as its chief people officer. Raman joined the company from Stanley Black & Decker, where she held the dual roles of global head of human resources and chief transformation officer for the company’s largest business unit.

“I am incredibly excited to begin my journey at GF at a time when the semiconductor industry is so vital to the global economy,” said Raman. “I am really looking forward to working with GF’s global team of talented engineers, technicians and business leaders. GF’s diverse talent pool is a real strength and their relentless commitment to developing their employees was critical in my decision to join the leadership team. Employees are a company’s most important resource, and I have spent my career creating HR systems to engage, develop, and empower talent. I can’t wait to get started at GF.”

Eisuke Saito

TigerGraph, a developer and provider of enterprise graph technology, appointed Eisuke Saito as its vice president and country manager for Japan.  Saito will be responsible for the go-to-market strategy and execution in Japan, building out the Japan GTM team, and growth initiatives around supply chain, digital twin, and fraud detection solutions.

“Graph Technology continues to grow on a global scale, and I am pleased to join TigerGraph, a company that is leading the way with cutting-edge technology and products,” Saito said. “Data management is a prerequisite for the growth of Japanese companies. Together with our partners, we will promote the spread of TigerGraph’s graph technology and support the growth of Japanese companies.”

Alex Shih

Q-CTRL, a developer of quantum technologies through quantum control infrastructure software, appointed Alex Shih as its head of product. Shih will lead the company’s product management teams to deliver the technology’s value and ROI to customers and end users in new, broader markets.

“Moving from large, traditional Silicon Valley corporations to a fast scaling quantum software company brings new challenges and exciting opportunities that I look forward to embracing in this new role,” said Shih. “I am inspired by quantum technology’s potential to revolutionize computing and accelerate resource-intensive applications and use cases across industries. My aim is to leverage my experiences building and scaling products from various domains to deliver real value to our customers, from speed of delivery to performance gains to cost savings, which is simply infeasible with alternative technologies.”

Wendy Steinle 

Domo appointed Wendy Steinle as its chief marketing officer. Steinle brings executive leadership in business-to-business tech marketing experience to Domo, including serving at least six years at Adobe where she led new cross-functional go-to-market strategies.

“Domo represents a perfect trifecta of opportunity. It has an extremely passionate customer base, differentiated business-critical technology, and a vibrant culture powered by dedicated employees who love doing what’s right for customers,” said Steinle. “The need for better, more informed decision making and action continues to accelerate. I’m looking forward to bringing my experience to the Domo team and helping customers of all sizes drive exponential impact by realizing the full value that data and Domo can deliver to their business.”

Josh Stephens and Gautam Shankar

BackBox, a provider in network automation, security and management solutions, welcomed Josh Stephens as its chief strategy officer. Stephens will focus on product growth, strategy, providing value to managed security providers, forging key technology partnerships, and helping to architect a community program to enrich the experience of BackBox customers.

In addition, BackBox welcomed Gautam Shankar as its vice president of MSP sales. Shankar will focus on building a mutually beneficial MSP/MSSP channel program to bring the benefits of network security automation to more companies, with a particular emphasis on reaching SMBs.

Steven Stone

Rubrik, the zero trust data security company, appointed Steven Stone as the head of Rubrik Zero Labs. Stone will lead Rubrik’s new data threat research unit to uncover real-world intrusions from a range of threats. He has over 15 years of experience in threat intelligence with roles in the U.S. military, intelligence community, and private sector, including Mandiant/FireEye and IBM.

“Data and insights are critical for understanding, responding, preventing, and recovering from cyber events. In many cases, the data aspects are the least understood across the threat landscape, and we want to close this delta. Comprehensive threat intelligence will enable organizations to make informed decisions so they can be prepared for a full swath of cyber threats,” said Stone. “I’m thrilled to pioneer the data threat intelligence unit at Rubrik and help to deliver valuable insights to our customers and the cybersecurity industry so that together we can stay ahead of the evolving data threat landscape.”

Lip‑Bu Tan

Intel Corp. elected Lip‑Bu Tan to its board of directors. Tan currently is the executive chairman of Cadence Design Systems Inc., chairman of Walden International, and founding managing partner of Celesta Capital and Walden Catalyst Ventures. Tan will also join the M&A Committee of Intel’s board of directors.

“Intel is an iconic company with a rich history, and I am honored to join its board of directors,” Tan said. “Under Pat Gelsinger’s bold leadership, Intel is undergoing a massive transformation to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead, and I look forward to being a part of this exciting journey.”

Benjamin Thomas

EDJX, a pioneer in decentralized global serverless edge computing, appointed Benjamin Thomas as its chief executive officer. Thomas also joined the company's board of directors. He is a founder of two companies, which combined sold for over $200 million dollars in enterprise value to strategic acquirers on less than $60 million in equity investment.

"Serverless is the future for IoT technology because it's nimble, cost-effective, and close to the action. Think 'computing-as-a-service,' where servers are used for capacity when needed. The world's next-gen IoT applications must be able to move from server to server in near real-time, which requires a completely different architecture than current cloud tools," said Thomas. "I am honored to join EDJX at this exciting time in the company's growth trajectory. I look forward to leading the company and offering our amazing platform available to the market. EDJX's multi-tenant mesh compute, storage, and sensor hosting network makes it incredibly easy for developers to deploy to the edge. As our recent round of funding attests, now is the time to bring serverless edge to the mainstream, and EDJX is on the cusp of this shift.

Elif Tutuk

AtScale, the provider of semantic layer solutions for modern business intelligence and data science teams, appointed Elif Tutuk as its vice president of product. Tutuk will lead AtScale’s global product team, spanning the Bay Area to Boston to Bulgaria, with responsibility for product management, product strategy, design and innovation.

“I’ve worked in business intelligence and analytics for the past 18 years and I’m thrilled to join AtScale, the category-defining leader for semantic layer technology,” said Tutuk. “The advent of powerful cloud data platforms, powerful data visualization tools, and pervasive AI/ML bring the potential to truly democratize insight creation. I see the semantic layer as the missing link that can truly connect organizations to their data assets.”

Fabio Vernillo

Tachyum appointed Fabio Vernillo to its newly created board of observers. Vernillo currently serves as the head of investments for Avanea, a next-generation asset manager founded by IPM Group. He is responsible for driving the investment activities within Avanea, originating, executing transactions and managing the investment team.

“I am extremely excited to join the Tachyum family and support the management team in taking Tachyum to the next level,” said Vernillo. “Tachyum’s Prodigy Universal Processor is a game-changing product that will be crucial for the world to cope with an increasing data processing need while addressing decarbonization through more efficient use of resources.”

Michelle Wilson

Cockroach Labs, the company behind the cloud-native distributed SQL database CockroachDB, appointed Michelle Wilson to its board of directors as its first independent director. The former senior vice president and general counsel for Amazon, also served on the boards of  Pinterest, Okta, Zendesk and Stripe.

"The database industry is undergoing a tremendous transformation, one that has welcomed a surge of new, innovative solutions to market," said Wilson. "It's clear that Cockroach Labs has a bold vision and a unique opportunity to seize the cloud database-as-a-service opportunity. I look forward to working alongside the Board of Directors and leadership team as we continue on that journey."


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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