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

AI Career Notes: February 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. Here's the place to read about the movers and shakers, your colleagues, your friends, and maybe yourself.


Armughan Ahmad 

Appen Limited appointed Armughan Ahmad as its chief executive officer and president. Ahmad brings over 25 years of experience having served in leadership positions at KPMG and Dell Technologies.

"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,” Ahmad said. “The pace of AI is accelerating with new innovations in generative AI like ChatGPT and DALL.E from Open AI. As a fast-growing AI industry leader generating more than $440M in 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."

Mike Allen, Kate Hennessy, and Hildegard van Zyl

Verne Global, a provider of sustainable data center solutions for high intensity computing, appointed Kate Hennessy as its chief financial officer. Hennessy will manage the finances of Verne Global’s expanding data center portfolio.

In addition, Mike Allen joined Verne Global as its chief operating officer. Allen will be responsible for optimizing the organization’s operational capabilities and implementing business strategies.

Lastly, Verne Global appointed Hildegard van Zyl as the company’s first general counsel. Van Zyl brings a wealth of IT and legal tech experience, having worked for Amazon and later Atos, and having completed a range of multi-million dollar deals worldwide, in both public and private sectors.

Sanjay Aurora and Madhukar Kumar

SingleStore promoted Sanjay Aurora to the role of senior vice president, and head of sales. Aurora will be responsible for overseeing the U.S., EMEA and APAC sales teams. He will work closely with Madhukar Kumar to scale collaboration between SingleStore’s sales and marketing efforts.

In addition, SingleStore appointed Madhukar Kumar as its chief marketing officer. Kumar joined SingleStore from DevRev where he served as head of growth and marketing and led the development and scaling of its product-led growth engine.

Jeff Cherrington and Peter Wassel

Open Mainframe Project appointed Peter Wassel and Jeff Cherrington to its governing board. Wassel currently serves as the director of product management for Mainframe DevOps solutions at Broadcom Inc. Cherrington holds the position of vice president of product management and system Z at Rocket Software.

The Governing Board of the Open Mainframe Project plays a key role in leading the ecosystem and continuing to grow it. Founded in 2015, the Open Mainframe Project is a focal point for the deployment and use of Linux and Open Source in a mainframe computing environment.

Jennifer Curry

DataBank, a provider of enterprise-class colocation, interconnection, and managed services, appointed Jennifer Curry as its senior vice president of managed services. Curry will lead DataBank's product and technology teams, where she will be responsible for the architecture, design and engineering, service delivery and support of the company's managed services and network service offerings.

"DataBank is unmatched in its colocation and infrastructure footprint," said Curry. "It's an organization building the foundation for the next generation of the internet as the world embraces innovations in digital transformation like AI and Web 3.0. I'm honored to be part of the team that empowers the carriers, enterprises, and hyperscalers to do great things."

Frank D’Amelio

Hewlett Packard Enterprise appointed former executive vice president and chief financial officer of Pfizer Inc., Frank D’Amelio, to HPE’s board of directors. D’Amelio will also serve as a member of the board’s audit committee.

“HPE’s differentiated edge-to-cloud strategy and portfolio are well-positioned to meet the needs of customers and continue to propel the company’s transformation and success,” D’Amelio said. “I am delighted to join the Board during this exciting period as HPE accelerates its leadership.”

Tamar Elan

Matillion, the leader in data productivity, appointed Tamar Elan to its newly created role of chief people officer. Prior to joining Matillion, Elan was the executive vice president of people at Versatile and Walkme and previously held senior HR leadership roles at Nova Measuring Instruments.

"Matillion has built and is growing an incredible business by enabling data teams to get business-ready data, faster, and Matillioners - our people - have been core to that success," said Elan. "In order for Matillion to continue its focus on helping modern data teams, we need to maintain our own strong foundation by empowering our people to do their best work in a supportive culture built on teamwork and empathy. Matillioners are some of the brightest minds in the industry, and I am excited to be part of this amazing team."

Jakki Geiger 

Hazelcast, Inc. appointed Jakki Geiger as its chief marketing officer. Most recently, she served as CMO of Pyramid Analytics and previously held senior leadership roles at Informatica, Reltio and others.

“Most executives know they need to modernize their data processing capabilities to process data quickly, but replacing their existing infrastructure is a cost-prohibitive non-starter,” Geiger said. “That is what makes Hazelcast so appealing to its customers; its real-time data stream processing platform can plug into existing systems as a data abstraction layer to process and merge new, fresh data with the historical context to quickly boost conversions in the Real-Time Economy.”

Kenneth Gianella

Quantum Corp. appointed Kenneth Gianella as its chief financial officer. Most recently, Gianella served as vice president of investor relations leading investor relations; mergers, divestitures, & acquisitions; and their environmental, social & governance strategy at Itron, Inc.

"I am extremely excited about the opportunity ahead for Quantum and I look forward to advancing the strategy started by Jamie, Mike, and the rest of the leadership team. I believe the Company is strongly positioned to hit its goals and I look forward to contributing to the Company's future success and driving long term shareholder value," said Gianella.

Andrew Girardi 

Efinix, a provider of programmable product platforms and technology, appointed Andrew Girardi as its vice president of sales and business development. Girardi will lead the sales and business development teams in the Americas as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Girardi brings over 25 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, having held multiple leadership and sales roles at IDT, Xilinx, NVIDIA, Microsemi (acquired by Microchip), and Lattice Semiconductor. Most recently, Girardi was vice president of sales at Flip Electronics.

Bob Griswold

Cloudian appointed Bob Griswold as chairman of the company's board of directors. Griswold’s prior roles include vice president of strategy and planning at HPE, senior vice president product line management at Seagate, and VP, chief strategist for Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business at Cisco.

“I am thrilled to join Cloudian at this pivotal moment in the storage industry,” said Griswold. “Cloudian is exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on today’s transition to cloud-native technologies, and I believe strongly in the company’s strategy and its enterprise-proven platform; so much so, that I personally invested in the current funding round.”

Carolyn Harvey

LXT, an AI training data vendor, appointed Carolyn Harvey as its vice president of operations. Harvey will be responsible for leading and expanding LXT’s global operations organization, including defining and implementing strategies, structure, and processes.

“Companies that are successfully deploying AI know that high-quality data is a critical component of their AI strategy,” said Harvey. “Having worked in the AI data industry for over a decade, I understand that quality service delivery is complex and constantly evolving to meet customers’ changing data needs. When considering my next opportunity, it was important for me to join an organization with a vision and culture that prioritizes operational excellence for clients of all types, no matter where they are in their AI maturity journey. I am honored to join the LXT team and am excited to use my experience to help the company continue to deliver high-quality data for its clients worldwide.”

Ashley Haynes-Gaspar 

Lumen Technologies appointed Ashley Haynes-Gaspar as its executive vice president of customer success, wholesale and international. Haynes-Gaspar will focus on nurturing and growing enterprise customer relationships, in addition to leading the company's international and wholesale businesses.

"Lumen brings value to customers with a winning combination of leading-edge technologies and smart, talented employees," said Haynes-Gaspar. "I will focus on building on the great work the team is doing. We will work together to deliver growth products that come straight from the ideas of our customers."

Jean Hu

AMD appointed Jean Hu as its executive vice president and chief financial officer. Hu joined AMD from Marvell, where she served as the company’s chief financial officer since 2016 and was responsible for all aspects of financial planning, accounting, reporting, treasury, tax and investor relations.

“I have long admired AMD and I am thrilled to join the company during such an exciting time of growth and diversification,” said Hu. “I look forward to partnering with the leadership team and leading the finance organization as we build on the company’s successful operating model and drive long-term shareholder returns.”

Monica Kumar 

Hitachi Vantara, the modern infrastructure, data management and digital solutions subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., appointed Monica Kumar as its chief marketing officer. Kumar was most recently the senior vice president of global marketing and cloud go-to-market at Nutanix.

“As a company, Hitachi Vantara has some incredible stories to tell,” said Kumar. “I am excited and honored to have the opportunity to help showcase not only the solutions, capabilities, and accomplishments of Hitachi Vantara, but the tremendous power of Hitachi and the opportunities it opens for our customers and partners today and tomorrow."

Ren Lee

Dataiku, the platform for everyday AI, appointed the former head of Google's global demand operations Ren Lee as its senior vice president of marketing for the Americas. Most recently, Lee ran demand generation at SailPoint Technologies.

“Dataiku’s mission to create the most usable AI solutions eclipses my belief that the best products bring with it an abundance of helpfulness and happiness to users every single day,” said Lee. “I love that Dataiku is a truly human-centered and highly accessible platform helping everyday office heroes supercharge their data with ease.”

Elena Loghin

Neural Technologies, a provider of modular revenue protection, data integration, signaling, and AI-machine learning software, appointed Elena Loghin as its chief executive officer. Loghin brings over more than 20 years of experience with a background in the IT and telecommunications industries.

“I’m very much looking forward to leading the dedicated and innovative team through the next stage of growth and delivering the best experience for our customers around the world,” said Loghin.

Steve Lucas

Boomi, the intelligent connectivity and automation leader, appointed Steve Lucas as its chief executive officer. Lucas joined Boomi from iCIMS and brings more than 27 years of experience in enterprise software.

“I’ve spent more than two decades building and growing software companies, and the need for integration across the enterprise has never been more clear or critical,” said Lucas. “Boomi is one of few independent, cloud-native platforms of scale that is enabling greater automation and efficiency across the organization, helping teams understand, share, and optimize data in better and faster ways. I am excited to partner with the team to grow and expand our platform for the benefit of our customers.”

Taggart Matthiesen

LogicMonitor, the provider of the SaaS-based unified observability platform for enterprises and managed service providers, appointed Taggart Matthiesen its chief product officer. Matthiesen will oversee all aspects of product strategy for the company and their unified observability platform, LM Envision, including product management, UX and data science.

“Observability tools have always been key to building and delivering great products. From monitoring top level metrics, such as ride requests and ETAs, to more detailed diagnostics and insights, like identifying fraudulent vectors or outdated turn restrictions – observability tools are essential to delivering a resilient platform and providing the best possible user experience,” said Matthiesen. “I see great growth potential in the observability space and LogicMonitor is in a unique position within that space, with an incredible team and product.”

Chaim Mazal

Gigamon, the deep observability company, appointed Chaim Mazal as its chief security officer. Mazal will be responsible for global security, information technology, network operations, governance, risk, compliance, and internal business systems, as well as the security of Gigamon product offerings.

“As today’s threat landscape becomes ever-more dangerous, I am excited to join the Gigamon leadership team to help mitigate security threats internally and externally, as we tap into the expansive value we can deliver with our deep observability pipeline,” said Mazal. “I look forward to helping chart our course in making our customer’s hybrid cloud infrastructure more secure and resilient.”

Mark McLaughlin

Rubrik appointed Mark McLaughlin, former Palo Alto Networks chairman and chief executive officer, to Rubrik’s board of directors. McLaughlin currently serves as chair of the board of directors for Qualcomm.

“Data security threats—especially ransomware—are some of the most profound and urgent challenges every CEO, board of directors, and cybersecurity leader must be prepared to face,” said McLaughlin. “Rubrik is working to change the trajectory of the cybersecurity industry with its mission to secure the world’s data. Relying on Rubrik, governments and companies are able to deliver business resilience even in the face of the most sophisticated cyber events. I’m honored to join Rubrik’s board and help the company maintain its leadership position in data security.”

Willem Meintjes

Marvell Technology, Inc. promoted Willem Meintjes to the role of chief financial officer. Meintjes joined Marvell in 2016 as the company’s senior vice president of finance and was promoted to chief accounting officer and treasurer two years later.

“I am thrilled to step into this role and continue working alongside Matt and the rest of the executive team,” said Meintjes. “We have tremendous momentum in our business as demand for data infrastructure continues to grow, and the opportunity in front of us is enormous. Marvell is on a clear trajectory for success and I look forward to helping the company execute its next phase of growth and innovation.”

Josh Mesout

Civo, a pure play cloud native service provider, appointed Josh Mesout as its chief innovation officer. Mesout joined Civo from AstraZeneca, where he led the teams building the company’s enterprise machine learning and AI platforms. In addition to this, Mesout has led the technical implementation of deep learning-based clinical diagnostics using cloud-native technologies, built rapid prototypes in its Innovation Lab, and won an award for his contribution towards implementing ML into the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

"Civo lives and breathes cloud native at a time when interoperability and choice is the key enabler to hybrid cloud adoption, cost savings and access to the cutting edge tools," Mesout said. "Civo is thinking differently about how it positions its ML products, focusing on being able to be leveraged by organizations of all sizes and scaled gracefully as our customers grow. Lowering the barrier of entry to using Machine Learning to solve your problems and democratizing access to people who aren't experts in cloud computing or configuring complex machine learning tools"

Esa Niinimäki

Nokia promoted Esa Niinimäki as its chief legal officer and member of the group leadership team. Niinimäki has worked at Nokia for more than 15 years holding multiple leadership roles, including as vice president, deputy chief legal officer and board secretary.

“Nokia has a strong ethics culture with compliance as a key value, uniting the efforts of the business and legal teams. I am honored to lead this best-in-class legal and compliance function and be a member of the Group Leadership Team as the company continues its strategic transformation,” said Niinimäki.

Mary Puma

Mary Puma, president and chief executive officer of Axcelis Technologies, was elected to SEMI’s board of directors as its new chairperson. Puma has served as Axcelis’ CEO since January 2002 and was instrumental in the company’s spin off from Eaton Corporation in 2000, when she was named president and Chief Operating Officer.

Puma will lead the SEMI International Board of Directors in evolving the association’s operations, programs and services worldwide to support the growth of member companies throughout the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain.

Robert Renzoni

Hammerspace appointed Robert Renzoni as the director of technical sales and will lead the newly created Hammerspace U.S. federal division. Renzoni will be responsible for leading the federal sales team.

“The ability to free data from vendor-specific storage ‘prisons’ and enable enhanced workflows that can span across various on-prem storage vendors, multiple clouds and agencies will dramatically change the storage paradigm within the public sector,” said Renzoni. “I’m excited to join the Hammerspace team and help bring its unique capabilities to the federal community during this pivotal time when so many agencies are working to modernize data workflows and management.”

Rob Rosiello

Vectra, a provider of AI-driven threat detection and response for hybrid and multi-cloud enterprises, appointed Rob Rosiello as its new senior vice president of sales for the Americas. Rosiello joined Vectra from Skybox Security, where he served as its chief revenue officer and executive vice president of worldwide sales and field operations.

“Organizations of all sizes are confronted with an ever-expanding attack surface, coupled with continually emerging threats, making it of paramount importance that organizations take a proactive and comprehensive approach to their cybersecurity. Vectra and its technology are perfectly placed to help organizations overcome these challenges and expand on their cyber defense capabilities while leveraging current investments,” said Rosiello.

John Sedleniek 

Coalesce.io, the data transformation company, appointed John Sedleniek as its chief revenue officer. Sedleniek brings over 20 years of technology sales experience, most recently focused on data replications and integration. Before he joined Coalesce, Sedleniek was vice president of strategic accounts at Fivetran.

“There is a big opportunity in the data market for a modern data transformation solution. New data technologies and products have accelerated the need for curated data that is timely, accurate, and easy-to-access,” said John Sedleniek, Chief Revenue Officer at Coalesce. “Coalesce has built an impressive product with tremendous early customer adoption and I look forward to being a part of the next stage of growth.”

Jeffrey Wang

MemVerge appointed Jeffrey Wang as its vice president of engineering. Wang will lead the MemVerge engineering organization as it builds out its big memory management technology for cloud workloads and solutions using the compute express link memory standard.

“In the software-defined transformation of today’s modern compute infrastructure, the last frontier to virtualize is memory,” said Wang. “Memory is now the key to enable data-intensive applications, from analytics to AI and machine learning, to deliver the digital transformation required by data-centric user cases. I’ve always been focused on delivering technology that has a real impact on the customer. MemVerge Big Memory software is a truly game-changing innovation that will alter the shape of tomorrow’s applications. I look forward to contributing to MemVerge’s growth and success as we lead the industry in changing the way applications use memory services to increase processing scale.”

Frank Yeary

Intel Corp. appointed Frank D. Yeary as an independent chair of the company’s board of directors. Yeary has served as a director of Intel since 2009. He also is a managing member at Darwin Capital Advisors, a private investment firm.

“I am deeply honored to take on this expanded role during such a pivotal time for Intel,” Yeary said. “While the company certainly has big tasks ahead of it, I’m confident we have the right strategy in place. It’s imperative that we execute well and simultaneously deliver value to our stockholders.”


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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