AI Career Notes: October 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:
Moshe Bar, chief executive officer and chairman of CodeNotary, was appointed to the board of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, an open source, community-governed and forever-free enterprise Linux distribution. Before CodeNotary, Bar was a co-founder of Qumranet, which was acquired by Red Hat. He went on to serve as senior vice president for four years at Red Hat.
“The world needs a Linux distribution that is truly owned and supported by the community and prioritizes security, provenance guarantee and trust,“ said Bar. “AlmaLinux has taken on that role amid enthusiastic community adoption.”
LIQID Inc., a leading data center composability solutions provider, appointed John Bertero as its chief revenue officer. Bertero joined the company from Nutanix, where he ultimately served as chief operating officer of the Americas. He also served in leadership positions at SAP, Sr. Vice President at Hitachi Security Systems, and EMC.
“Liqid Matrix CDI software and solutions have the potential to change the way the industry architects its data centers. By introducing unprecedented software-defined data performance and operational efficiencies that meaningfully reduce capital- and operational expenditures, Liqid Matrix offers the opportunity to manage bare-metal resources such as GPU with the agility that VMware brought to traditional server architectures,” Bertero said. “I look forward to collaborating across Liqid’s sales, engineering, marketing, operations, and leadership teams to identify new markets, develop new revenue streams, and expand customer and partner successes with Liqid Matrix software and solutions.”
Crate.io, the enterprise data management company enabling data insights at scale, appointed Akos Berzi as its chief financial officer. Berzi is an entrepreneurial-minded finance leader with more than 20 years of experience in the field of strategic finance and business development.
“I am incredibly excited to join Crate.io at such an important time for the company,” Berzi said. “With plans to scale further globally, I am looking forward to supporting our ambitious growth plans. Crate.io has a great team in a forward-looking industry that represents the next big thing after my endeavors at Organica Water and Transcend Software in the cleantech space. I believe that Crate.io will play a substantive role in the industry 5.0 ecosystem and beyond, and I feel privileged to be part of the next wave of digitalization.”
Quantexa, a data and analytics software company, appointed Annabelle Bexiga to its board of directors. Bexiga currently serves as the non-executive director for DWS Group, Stonex Group, and Triton International. Prior to her current roles, she served as the chief information officer advisor at Zoom.
“This incredible journey of continuous learning from brilliant technologists and courageous leaders continues through my board and advisory work,” said Bexiga. “I am especially excited to join the board of Quantexa because they truly understand that today in the face of rapidly changing conditions, enterprises need to drive greater accuracy in decisions and innovation with data and analytics technology at the core. The Quantexa team are working to help organizations solve today’s major challenges in utilizing data effectively to improve their operations and the services they provide to their customers.”
Dataiku, the platform for everyday AI, appointed Daniel Brennan as its chief legal officer. Before joining Dataiku, Brennan served as vice president and deputy general counsel of Twitter. He also spent 11 years at Dell Technologies, where his last role before moving on was as director, legal, of its global services business unit.
“I have long been fascinated with the power of software, and nowhere is that power more profound than in the fields of AI and machine learning,” said Brennan. “Dataiku’s platform is catching on like wildfire among global enterprises. This groundbreaking AI technology, along with the company’s employee-first culture, was an incredibly appealing combination, and I am looking forward to playing a part in the company’s growth.”
Databricks, the lakehouse company, appointed Samuel Bonamigo as its senior vice president and general manager of the EMEA region. Bonamigo joined Databricks from Google, where he most recently served as EMEA South VP for GCP helping to grow the team, manage large partnerships, and work with the entire ecosystem of partners and GSIs.
“I’m thrilled to join Databricks and I really think we are in the early days of the potential for growth in the EMEA region,” says Bonamigo. “The impact we are going to make over the next year as more customers adopt our Lakehouse architecture will be huge. I can’t wait to see the continued impact that we will have on customers across all industries, as data and AI are increasingly needed to transform businesses and solve some of the world’s toughest problems.”
Arm appointed Jason Child as its chief financial officer. Child brings more than 30 years of experience in leadership to Arm, most recently having served as senior vice president and CFO at Splunk. At Arm, he will be responsible for leading the company’s global finance and IT organizations.
“Since its founding, Arm has had an incredible history of innovation and leadership in the semiconductor industry,” said Child. “Arm is a world-class, category leader and I am thrilled to join as CFO during this exciting time for the company.”
Quantinuum, a quantum computing company, appointed Nathan Cobb as its chief commercial officer. Cobb has led sales teams at SAP, Apple, Oracle, and EY where he developed growth strategies led change management efforts, and built strategic partnerships.
“I am honored to join Quantinuum at this crucial moment in the industry,” said Cobb. “The company has built the highest-performing, most fully integrated quantum solution on the market and is putting all the right elements in place to scale it.”
Amplitude, Inc., a digital analytics platform provider, appointed Tifenn Dano Kwan as its chief marketing officer. Dano Kwan will be responsible for leading all aspects of Amplitude’s marketing organization. Dano Kwan most recently served as the chief marketing officer at Collibra.
“People love Amplitude’s product. Not only does it give visibility into the entire customer journey, it helps companies build incredible products that drive growth,” said Dano Kwan. “Amplitude’s product superiority combined with its passionate and humble leadership team is exactly why I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to join. I look forward to working with this growing team and am excited to become an Amplitude power user myself. I believe digital analytics is going to transform the way businesses grow.”
Hewlett Packard Enterprise appointed Regina Dugan to its board of directors. Dugan currently serves as president and chief executive officer of Wellcome Leap and was a former director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. At HPE, She will also serve as a member of the board’s technology committee.
“Edge-to-cloud architectures are essential to competitiveness for so many companies, and HPE’s products and services are laser-focused on this future,” Dugan said. “It’s an exciting time to join the Board.”
Arm appointed Karen Dykstra and Jeff Sine to its board of directors. Dykstra previously served as chief financial and administrative officer of AOL, a web portal and online service provider. Before AOL, she was a partner at Plainfield Asset Management and served as chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Plainfield Direct, Plainfield’s business development company.
Sine currently serves as co-founder and partner of The Raine Group, a global merchant bank focused on technology, media and communications. Before establishing Raine, he served as vice chairman and global head of Technology, Media & Telecom Investment Banking at UBS Investment Bank, was a managing director at Morgan Stanley, and was an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and London.
NTT Research, Inc., a division of NTT, appointed Takashi Goto as head of its technology promotion team, a group set up to help productize well-developed research concepts. Goto was previously a director in the NTT R&D Planning Department and before that he served as a senior manager and senior research engineer at the NTT Information Network Laboratory Group.
Goto will also join the executive team at NTT Research, where he will be responsible for exploring the market potential for technologies under development at NTT Research, as well as NTT R&D.
Zapata Computing appointed Lieutenant General Michael Groen, USMC, Retired, as an advisor to the company. Groen will be responsible for helping the company with product and go-to-market strategy for its growing public sector offering.
“Throughout my career in the public sector I have focused on driving transformational change in military capabilities. Quantum computing represents the next generation of technology that will be truly transformational,” said Groen. “There’s no question that the pace of digitally enabled defense transformation is increasing. That’s exactly why it’s so important for the U.S. government to get quantum ready now, and it’s also the reason I’m so excited about working closely with the team at Zapata.”
Cornelis Networks appointed Matt Jacobs as its chief commercial officer. Jacobs will be responsible for all go-to-market elements of the company, including revenue generation, partnerships, marketing, and corporate strategy. Jacobs was previously chief strategy officer at Penguin Computing, where he worked for over 20 years.
“I am thrilled to join Cornelis Networks at this critical inflection point for both the company and the markets we serve,” said Jacobs. “Modern HPC and AI workloads are data-driven, requiring more powerful computing platforms and enhanced networking fabrics to drive them. We have an amazing opportunity to outpace the growth of these already fast-growing markets by providing our customers an independent, platform-agnostic, scale-out interconnect that unlocks the true potential of their workloads to drive increasingly critical business outcomes.”
Don Jaworski and Hugues Meyrath
Quantum Corp. appointed Don Jaworski and Hugues Meyrath to its board of directors. Jaworski has more than 40 years of experience and currently serves as president and chief operating officer of Lacuna Technologies, Inc. Prior to joining Lacuna, Jaworski was chief executive officer of SwiftStack, Inc., an open-source cloud data management company focused on large scale data applications, which was acquired by Nvidia.
Hugues Meyrath most recently served as chief product officer of ServiceChannel, a market-leading facilities management software platform, which was acquired by Fortive in 2021. Previously, he served as vice president at Dell Technologies Capital, where he was responsible for driving venture funding and mergers and acquisitions, while also holding other advisory roles for a diverse set of portfolio companies.
Lumen Technologies appointed Kate Johnson as its president and chief executive officer. Johnson specializes in leading digital and business transformations to drive growth, having held leadership roles across a variety of Fortune 100 companies including Oracle, General Electric and Microsoft. She also joined the company's board of directors.
“I am proud to take on the CEO role and eager to advance the strategy Jeff and the team have created,” Johnson said. ”Lumen has made significant progress strengthening its balance sheet, expanding its fiber footprint and enhancing its portfolio of digital capabilities. I'm looking forward to leading this great company through its next chapter and helping customers leverage the Lumen platform to power amazing digital world experiences."
Zyte, the leader in reliable web data extraction for small businesses and enterprises, appointed Kevin Magee as its chief technology officer. Magee will be responsible for managing Zyte’s research and development, technical operations, data science and AI capabilities.
“As analytics and other forms of data consumption continue to evolve, organizations are finding that their data collection and integration operations are evolving in ways that aren’t necessarily efficient,” said Magee. “Trends over the last five years are reflecting that there is a real struggle for organizations to come to grips with the data that they need to innovate and accelerate their businesses. The opportunity that this presents a web extraction market leader like Zyte is tremendous. With a successful history, a large customer base, and a green field of opportunity, I’m looking forward to engaging with the Zyte leadership and culture to create solutions that drive our customers’ initiatives forward.”
Rackspace Technology, a cloud technology solutions company, promoted Amar Maletira as its chief executive officer. Maletira joined Rackspace Technology in November 2020 and has served as the company’s president and chief financial officer. Prior to joining Rackspace Technology, he was CFO at Viavi Solutions.
“I thank the Board for the opportunity to lead Rackspace Technology. I am very excited about the journey ahead and look forward to leading the company as we transition to our new strategy and operating mode,” Maletira said. “Powered by our strong Racker culture and devotion to driving Fanatical Experience for our customers, we believe the execution of our strategy will establish the company as an industry leader.”
SnapLogic, a leader in intelligent integration and enterprise automation, appointed Ahsan Malik as its chief financial officer. Malik will be responsible for leading SnapLogic’s global finance and legal organizations as well as financial activities including accounting, reporting, and financial planning and analysis.
“I am excited to join SnapLogic at such a pivotal time and take on this new challenge of helping drive the company’s growth,” said Malik. “My teams will be focused on refining the company’s financial strategy and execution, and delivering insights and action plans to support efficient operations. SnapLogic has a strong balance sheet and a tremendous opportunity for continued growth.”
Cohesity appointed Kevin Mandia to its board of directors. Mandia currently serves as the chief executive officer of Mandiant. Mandia brings more than 25 years of experience in information and cybersecurity to Cohesity’s board.
“We’ve recently witnessed an explosion of vicious ransomware attacks where cybercriminals are getting smarter, often seizing legacy backups in an effort to paralyze companies and force payouts. Data security and data management leaders must work hand-in-hand to keep bad actors in their place,” said Mandia. “I’m excited to join Cohesity’s board as the company plays a critical role in helping enterprises improve their security posture. In my mission to help organizations protect themselves from cyberattacks, Cohesity’s modern data security architecture and focus on defending data and recovering from attacks is a significant asset in the fight against cybercrime.”
Nokia appointed Shaun McCarthy as its president of sales in the North American region and will lead all aspects of sales across the US and Canada. Shaun, a 20-year sales veteran, most recently served as vice president of worldwide sales for the Mass-Scale Infrastructure Group at Cisco.
“It’s an incredibly exciting time to join Nokia,” McCarthy said. “Nokia’s end-to-end networking portfolio is firing on all cylinders, the opportunities to help customers modernize their operations and accelerate growth are plentiful, and the time to close the digital divide is now. In North America, we need to create ubiquitous access to today’s digital world, and no company is better positioned than Nokia to enable innovative, high speed, reliable, and affordable broadband access across rural and urban communities.”
Signal AI, the provider of the Signal AI External Intelligence platform, appointed Nancy McNeill as its global chief revenue officer. McNeill brings over 20 years of experience to the role, including serving as CRO at Dow Jones. She has also held senior executive positions at Thomson Reuters.
“From its technology to its people, Signal AI’s potential is immense – especially in the U.S. It is a privilege to join such an outstanding, innovative team. I know that together we will be able to dramatically expand Signal AI’s footprint in both established and emerging markets,” McNeill said. “I especially look forward to working closely with our customers to provide the tools they need to make informed and confident decisions in a way that’s not been possible before.”
Mark Miller and Paul Edmondson
Green Revolution Cooling (GRC), the leader in single-phase immersion cooling for data centers, appointed Mark Miller as its director of business development for the public sector. Miller brings to GRC a strong background leading public sector sales for companies including HP and Compaq.
In addition, GRC appointed Paul Edmondson as its vice president of sales for the EMEA region. Edmondson brings over 30 years of experience in the IT industry, including having served as sales director for Technimove and commercial director and enterprise account director for Cinos, Ltd.
BrainChip Holdings Ltd., a commercial producer of neuromorphic AI IP, appointed Chris Stevens as its vice president of worldwide sales. Stevens will leverage his sales leadership experience and semiconductor network to drive customer opportunity and revenue.
“I have tracked BrainChip’s progress closely, as I’ve been selling into the same edge AI market. I am thrilled to take this sales leadership role with confidence as Akida is uniquely superior and positioned to be the de facto standard for edge AI semiconductor IP”, said Stevens. “With use-case, market, and customer targeting, I’m certain I will contribute to further ecosystem penetration and accelerated sales.”
Shlomit Weiss and Navid Shahriari
Intel Corp. promoted Shlomit Weiss to senior vice president from her current role as senior vice president and co-general manager of the Design Engineering Group (DEG). Weiss will lead the company’s design, development, validation and manufacturing support of intellectual properties and system-on-chips.
In addition, Intel’s senior vice president Navid Shahriari was appointed as the new co-general manager to lead DEG and focus on data center products. Shahriari joined Intel in 1989 and has served in many engineering and technical leadership positions, with a reputation for driving disciplined engineering and execution excellence. Most recently, he has led the Manufacturing and Product Engineering organization.
Aliro Quantum, the first pure play quantum networking company, appointed Michael Wood as its first chief marketing officer. Wood will lead Aliro’s global marketing initiatives and will be responsible for messaging, positioning, growth marketing, demand generation, analyst, and media relations.
“Just like the modern-day Internet has done, the impact of quantum networking will be more transformative and remarkable than anything we can imagine today,” said Wood. “It’s an incredibly exciting time to join Aliro Quantum, and I look forward to helping to build, market, and brand commercially available quantum networks that establish unhackable connectivity, scale quantum computers, and operationalize distributed quantum sensing.”
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 mariana@taborcommunications.com. We look forward to hearing from you.