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

AI Career Notes: January 2023 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:


Roland Acra

PsiQuantum appointed Roland Acra as its chief business officer. Acra will be responsible for leading the company’s business strategy, including commercial, global market expansion, quantum applications and software development.

“I am delighted to be joining this exceptional and diverse team of world-leading quantum computing, semiconductor manufacturing and systems engineering experts to help bring what we believe will be the world’s first utility-scale quantum computer to market,” Acra said. “Fault-tolerant quantum computing promises to play a critical role in solving currently intractable problems in decarbonization technologies, pharmaceuticals and several more areas at the frontiers of science.”

Armughan Ahmad

Appen Limited, an AI lifecycle company, has brought on Armughan Ahmad as CEO and president. With over 25 years of experience scaling multi-billion-dollar technology businesses and building strong global teams, Armughan plans to accelerate adoption within the fast-growing enterprise AI market.

“I am thrilled to join Appen as the new CEO and am excited to enable our customers to build mission critical AI applications that deliver new customer experiences,” said Ahmad “The pace of AI is accelerating with new innovation in generative AI like ChatGPT and DALL.E from Open AI. As a fast-growing AI industry leader generating more than $440M revenue in FY21, Appen is well positioned to evolve with the changing needs of AI, and I believe we have a unique opportunity to deliver an ethical, trusted AI for good. As the leading provider of data for AI, we have a responsibility to set the standard for excellence and integrity in the industry. We will continue to push the boundaries of AI and make a positive and sustainable impact on the world.”

Rima Alameddine and Wendy Thomas

IonQ, a quantum computing solutions provider, appointed Rima Alameddine as its chief revenue officer. Alameddine joined IonQ’s leadership team from NVIDIA, where she served as vice president of enterprise sales for the Americas across multiple industries. At IonQ, she will lead the company’s commercial strategy to make quantum applications a widely-accessible reality.

In addition, Wendy Thomas, president and chief executive officer of Secureworks, joined the IonQ board of directors. Thomas leverages over 25 years of experience in strategic and functional leadership roles in the enterprise and brings a track record as a transformative leader in the technology industry.

Giordano Albertazzi

Vertiv, a provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, appointed Giordano Albertazzi as its chief executive officer. As CEO, Albertazzi will aim to increase Vertiv’s customer base as it addresses the infrastructure and business needs of the data center, communication networks and industrial applications.

“I’m honored to take the helm of Vertiv as CEO. I’m looking forward to working closely with our leadership team and employees around the world to continue to increase the value we create for our customers, further strengthen our financial performance and create long-term value for our shareholders,” said Albertazzi. “As I’ve shared with Vertiv employees, we will work to achieve our full potential by focusing on building a high-performance culture of collaboration and innovation; institutionalizing operational excellence and execution; and ultimately delivering profitable growth and improved cash flow.”

Robert Blair

Supermicro, an IT solution provider for cloud, AI/ML, storage, and 5G/edge, appointed Robert Blair to its board of directors. Blair was president and chief executive officer of ESS Technology, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, for 19 years from September 1999 through July 2018, where he also served as a director from September 1999 through August 2019.

Blair’s background also includes more than 35 years of experience in marketing, sales, engineering, operations, and general management, principally in the computer hardware, software, and semiconductor industries.

Steve Conway

Intersect360 Research, an HPC, AI and hyperscale analyst firm, appointed Steve Conway as a senior analyst. Conway joined Intersect360 Research from Conway Communications, where he was president of HPC and AI Industry Analyst Services.

“I’m excited to be reuniting with my former colleagues Addison Snell and Dan Olds, and to help with the leading-edge work Intersect360 Research has agreed to perform for its sterling roster of HPC clients in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region,” Conway said.

Marc Gemassmer

CloudBees, the software delivery platform for enterprises, appointed Marc Gemassmer as its chief revenue officer. Gemassmer will lead the company’s global go-to-market and customer success efforts, partner and channel group, as well as the professional services organization.

“I have a passion for building high-performing teams at scale and look forward to putting this passion to work at CloudBees,” said Gemassmer. “The people I have met – at every level of the organization – share my passion and are ready to work together to drive the next phase of growth for the company. That’s a great foundation for success.”

Tim Karaca

SolarWinds, a provider of IT management software, appointed Tim Karaca as its group vice president of strategic finance and investor relations. In this role, Karaca will oversee financial planning and analysis, serve as the primary contact for the investment community, and play a leadership role in guiding data analytics and business intelligence for the company.

"It's exciting to join SolarWinds at such a transformational time in the company's history as it continues to innovate and deliver platform-based observability solutions to the market, as we recently unveiled our SolarWinds Platform SaaS solution," said Karaca. "With a strong leadership team and a well-established global customer base in place, I look forward to further building the organization's finance capabilities while engaging the investor community in a meaningful way."

Subodh Kulkarni

Rigetti Computing, Inc., a pioneer in hybrid quantum-classical computing systems, appointed Dr. Subodh Kulkarni as its president and chief executive officer. Kulkarni was most recently president, CEO, and member of the board of CyberOptics Corp., a developer and manufacturer of high precision sensors and inspection systems for the semiconductor and electronics industry.

“Rigetti’s mission to build the world’s most powerful computers to help solve humanity’s most important and pressing problems greatly inspires me,” said Kulkarni. “Quantum represents the first paradigm change in computer technology in the seventy-five years since the transistor was created. I am humbled and honored by the opportunity to support Rigetti’s brilliant technologists and build upon its many achievements so far. I look forward to working with this exceptionally talented team to further develop, scale, and commercialize Rigetti’s full-stack hybrid quantum computing offering.”

Julie Law 

Rocket Software, a developer of enterprise software solutions, appointed Julie Law as its chief people officer. Law will be responsible for building upon Rocket Software’s people-centric culture and will focus on ensuring a positive experience for all her current and prospective colleagues.

“Rocket Software’s people are at the heart of the company’s mission,” said Law. “It’s clear to me that the leadership team understands how critical our colleagues’ experiences are to delivering outstanding customer outcomes and I look forward to embracing Rocket’s core values of Humanity, Empathy, Trust and Love as we foster an environment in which current and prospective Rocketeers alike will continue to thrive.”

Gordon Messenger 

C3 AI, the enterprise AI application software company, appointed Royal Marines General Sir Gordon Messenger to its advisory board. Messenger recently retired and served as vice chief of the defense staff of the British Armed Forces from 2016 to 2019.

“This is a critical time for the defense and intelligence sectors and I am eager to work with C3 AI,” said Messenger. “C3 AI is an industry leader in enterprise AI and has worked with many agencies in the U.S. Department of Defense. The company’s leadership understands what it takes to advance defense capabilities for the modern age.”

Mark Montierth

Micron Technology, Inc., promoted Mark Montierth to the role of corporate vice president and general manager of its mobile business unit. Prior to this appointment, Montierth was vice president and general manager of high-bandwidth and graphics memory product lines in Micron’s compute and networking business unit.

Montierth joined Micron in March 2021 after serving as vice president and general manager at Marvell and NXP Semiconductor. His track record includes driving strong business results and product leadership across wireless connectivity, custom silicon, mobile application processor and mobile power management businesses.

Aaron Passey

Aaron Passey, co-founder and chief technology officer at Qumulo, has returned to Qumulo as its senior engineer. Passey cofounded Qumulo with Peter Godman and Neal Fachan in 2012 with a shared vision of making data management easier for customers.

“It feels like a true homecoming to return to Qumulo, and I’m excited to be part of the team that I founded more than a decade ago,” said Passey. “With a great leadership team, happy customers, and code that is rock solid, how could I not rejoin? I’m excited to help take things to the next level.”

Niels Provos

Lacework, the data-driven cloud security company, appointed Niels Provos as the company’s first head of security efficacy. Provos brings nearly two decades of industry experience in creating healthy engineering teams that build security infrastructure and systems that solve large-scale cloud security problems.

“I have helped to build two world-class security organizations and during that time have seen adversaries become more sophisticated and attacks increase in frequency and volume. I deeply believe that every company needs to be enabled to protect their customers’ data against threats from outside or inside. That’s why my next challenge is being part of a team with the greater mission of helping customers be secure in a more hostile environment,” said Provos. “Lacework is in a great position by focusing on customer outcomes that matter to help scale security like no other company before.”

Inbal Shani

GitHub appointed Inbal Shani as its chief product officer. According to her biography, before joining GitHub, Shani led engineering and product teams at Amazon and Microsoft, focusing on the development of enterprise- and consumer-facing services.

“At GitHub, we strive to be ‘the home for all developers,” said Shani in a blog post. “Hundreds of millions of developers work throughout the stack, ranging from those who create embedded software that runs on a small CPU to cloud developers who have no real limitations. Building products and solutions for such a vast population is a humbling and ambitious mission. This has been a core mission throughout my career, and I’m thrilled to be joining GitHub in this journey as chief product officer.”

Kara Sprague

F5 promoted Kara Sprague to the newly created role of chief product officer. Sprague will be responsible for overseeing F5’s entire portfolio of multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions. Sprague joined F5 in 2017 to lead the application delivery controller business.

“I’m honored to take on this role at such a pivotal time,” said Sprague. “As customers face the daunting challenge of managing complex hybrid and multi-cloud application infrastructures, we are focused on continuing to enhance our capabilities and radically simplifying the security and delivery of extraordinary digital experiences.”

John Thompson

Rubrik, the zero trust data security company, appointed John Thompson as the lead independent director of Rubrik’s board. Thompson brings more than 40 years of leadership experience in the technology industry. He succeeded Bill Gates as chairman of Microsoft’s board and now serves as the lead independent director. Previously, Thompson was the chairman and chief executive officer of Symantec and he currently serves as the chairman of Illumina’s board.

"While data is the most important asset of every organization, the traditional cybersecurity strategies have failed to protect data against modern cyberattacks such as ransomware,” said John W. Thompson. “In order to win this war on data, Rubrik is redefining the cybersecurity industry with data security that gives organizations business resilience. I’m honored to expand my role on Rubrik’s board and be a part of the company’s hyper-growth trajectory.”

Alyson Welch 

Neo4j, the graph data platform provider, appointed Alyson Welch as its first chief revenue officer. Welch will lead Neo4j’s global field and partner operations, services, and customer success organizations. Welch previously led enterprise sales across North America for Twilio.

“Neo4j’s pace of innovation is why its technology is used today by more than 75 percent of the Fortune 100 – and that’s only just the beginning,” said Welch. “I’m honored to join this generational leader with an unprecedented set of opportunities ahead of it, and whose customers are pushing the envelope on what’s possible for their data and their business at scale.”


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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