Covering Scientific & Technical AI | Tuesday, October 8, 2024

AI Career Notes: November 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:


Dana Anderson, William Clark, and Laura Hale

ColdQuanta, the global quantum ecosystem solutions provider, appointed the active chief technology officer Dr. Dana Anderson as its chief strategy officer. As CSO, he will be guiding the company’s long-term quantum strategy. Anderson is a co-founder and the former chief executive officer of ColdQuanta.

In addition, ColdQuanta appointed Dr. William Clark as its vice president of quantum development. Clark joined ColdQuanta from General Dynamics Mission Systems, where he was a senior engineering fellow and the founder and director of the Quantum Laboratory and Quantum Center of Excellence.

Laura Hale joined ColdQuanta as its vice president of government programs. Hale brings exceptional leadership experience to the company having held positions with NASA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the Space Development Agency, and various elements of the US Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.

Brent Bombach

NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a provider and integrator of advanced IT, communications, networking, and biometric solutions appointed Brent Bombach as its vice president and head of government relations and public policy (GRPP). Bombach has been with NEC since 2018, serving as director and senior director of GRPP.

In his new role, Bombach will lead the GRPP team and advance NEC’s strategic partnerships and public policy engagements with the U.S. Congress, executive branch agencies, industry groups, think tanks, academic researchers, and civil society organizations.

Sue Bostrom

SingleStore, the cloud-native database built for speed and scale to power data-intensive applications, appointed Sue Bostrom to its board of directors. Bostrom, a former executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Cisco Systems, serves on the board of directors of ServiceNow, GitLab, Samsara, Druva, and Outreach.

“SingleStore has a unique value proposition that meets a very important need in the market,” said Bostrom. “This is reflected in both its high growth rate and customer retention. I look forward to working with Raj Verma and the rest of the board to help SingleStore fulfill the promise of this exciting market.”

Marianne Budnik

F5, Inc. appointed Marianne Budnik to its board of directors. Budnik is an accomplished leader, with extensive marketing and cybersecurity expertise, as well as more than 25 years of operating experience in the technology sector. Budnik currently serves as chief marketing officer for Talon Cyber Security.

Budnik previously served as CMO for CrowdStrike, where she also oversaw the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Her prior roles also include serving as CMO for CyberArk, as well as leadership roles with SimpliVity, Acme Packet, CA Technologies, and EMC Corporation.

Ran Harpaz

Noname Security, the most complete, proactive API security platform, appointed Ran Harpaz as its chief operating officer. In his new role, Harpaz will oversee the customer journey with a focus on driving growth and customer satisfaction.

“The market opportunity for API Security is massive, as organizations continue to embrace digital transformation,” said Harpaz. “I am honored and invigorated to join the Noname leadership team at this pivotal time, and I look forward to helping drive the company towards its next phase of growth.”

Jim Jeffers

Jim Jeffers, an accomplished computer engineer and expert in the field of high-end visualization, has joined Nvidia as senior director, product management, HPC (High Performance Computing). Prior to joining Nvidia, Jeffers held a number of high-level engineering roles at Intel spanning more than a decade.

In a LinkedIn post, Jeffers shared, “I am beyond excited to start my new position […] at Nvidia! I plan to do my utmost working with customers, collaborators and our team across the globe to deliver on the promise of ExaScale and beyond with world changing platforms including Grace CPUs and Nvidia high performance GPUs all tapped with powerful HPC development tools and OmniVerse to solve humankind’s most pressing problems in climate change, medicine, sustainable energy, the physical sciences and more through massive computation and the world’s best AI solutions.”

Chris Kaddaras

Juniper Networks, a leader in secure, AI-driven networks, appointed Chris Kaddaras as its executive vice president and chief revenue officer. Kaddaras will be responsible for leading a global organization that includes direct and indirect sales, systems engineering, advanced technologies sales and field operations.

“I've watched Juniper change the networking industry by enabling digital transformation for customers of all shapes and sizes that are increasingly seeking cloud-delivered, AI-driven and secure solutions to power their strategic evolutions,” Kaddaras said. “It’s no longer enough for a network to be ‘up;’ it must also be ‘good’, and Juniper is uniquely positioned to deliver on that promise. The opportunity to continue to grow Juniper’s market share in enterprise and continue to serve as a trusted strategic partner with service providers and cloud providers is huge. And as a sales leader, it’s always exciting to have technology that’s not only highly differentiated but can also actually deliver real outcomes for organizations. I couldn’t be more motivated to join this team.”

Sébastien Kamphuis

SiPearl, the company designing the high-performance low-power microprocessor for European exascale supercomputers, appointed Sébastien Kamphuis as its chief information officer. Kamphuis will be responsible for leading SiPearl’s IT organization, including managing SiPearl’s data centers, telecom infrastructure and research and development centers network.

Kamphuis brings 15 years of experience in the IT industry to SiPearl. He started his career working at ICS as a systems & network administrator in 2006. In 2012, he joined Sogeti, the IT services branch of Capgemini, and in 2019, he joined Engie.

Mahesh Karanth

Achronix Semiconductor Corporation, a solutions provider of high-performance FPGAs and embedded FPGA IP technology, appointed Mahesh Karanth as its chief financial officer. Karanth comes to Achronix with more than 30 years of financial experience at multi-national public and private companies. Most recently, Karanth served as CFO of Rockley Photonics.

“As semiconductor companies look for new ways to differentiate their products, Achronix offers a unique value proposition as the only independent supplier of high-end FPGA and eFPGA IP solutions designed to address a wide variety of data acceleration applications,” Karanth said. “In a dynamic industry, Achronix is well-positioned for rapid growth. I look forward to being part of the leadership team that is primed to drive Achronix through this exciting next phase and beyond.”

Harald Kroeger 

SiMa.ai, the machine learning company enabling effortless deployment and scaling at the embedded edge, appointed Harald Kroeger as its president of the automotive business unit. Kroeger will also join the company’s board of directors. He brings over 30 years of experience in the industry working with some of the world’s most influential automotive companies including Bosch, Rivian, Mercedes-Benz and Tesla.

“I’ve been in the automotive business for the better part of my career and during this time, I’ve worked with some of the most innovative companies in the space. I can spot the early signs of an industry disruptor and SiMa.ai has what it takes,” said Kroeger. “There is a significant opportunity for SiMa.ai to take advantage of the pressing need in the automotive market. The technology necessary for change is no longer based on classic computer vision algorithms, but is completely reliant on machine learning. SiMa.ai has built the holy grail of ML chips that leads the embedded edge market and will now partner with top tier automotive manufacturers and change the industry forever.”

Ravi Kunju 

Altair, a global leader in computational science and artificial intelligence, appointed Ravi Kunju as its chief product and strategy officer. In this role, Kunju will be responsible for the strategy and vision of Altair products, which includes facilitating the development, sales, pricing, and marketing of Altair’s solutions for industry verticals and business lines.

Prior to this role, Kunju has served in several leadership roles within Altair, including senior vice president of business strategy across all business lines, vice president of strategy for enterprise computing, managing director of enterprise computing for the Americas region, and managing director of the U.S. North Central region.

Nancy Louisnord

MANTA, the data lineage platform, appointed Nancy Louisnord as its chief marketing officer. Louisnord will be responsible for driving the company’s product marketing strategy and global marketing initiatives as it looks to increase product and brand awareness.

“I am delighted to join MANTA at such a pivotal moment in its business journey as more companies strive to be truly data-driven organizations,” said Louisnord. “I look forward to working with such a talented team and am deeply committed to building on its mission to transform complex data environments by driving the global marketing strategy and strengthening its market positioning.”

Bill Mannel

Established tech leader Bill Mannel begins a new role as chief technologist for Americas HPC & AI solution sales at HPE, following eight years as vice president and general manager overseeing HPC and AI activities for the company. Mannel came to HPE via the tech giant’s aquisition of SGI, where Mannel held director and managerial positions for 13 years and was responsible for the compute and storage business unit prior to the acquisition.

“I’ll be working closely with customers to develop HPC and AI solutions for their toughest problems, by merging science, technology and speed,” Mannel shared in a LinkedIn post. “Success in this position means leveraging HPE’s award-winning Exascale technologies across widely diverse workloads and markets. Initial market focus will be Health & Life Sciences, Manufacturing (including Energy) and Financial Services; initial territory focus will be central U.S. but I’ll help throughout the Americas. I’ll continue to support key relationships as Executive Sponsor such as NASA and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Engine rev’ed up!”

Steve Mathews and Chris Wood

ColdQuanta also appointed Steve Matthews as its vice president of sales and business development for quantum information platforms. Matthews brings 20 years of enterprise software sales experience to the company. He previously worked at the quantum computing software company, QC Ware.

Lastly, Dr. Chris Wood was promoted to chief technology officer from his current role of vice president of photonic technologies. As CTO, Wood will guide ColdQuanta’s technology and new product strategy, which includes overseeing the critical transition from research to engineering to product.

Tia Phillips 

Digibee, an enterprise integration platform as a service company, appointed Tia Phillips as its chief people officer. Phillips is a former Facebook and Lyft executive who brings more than two decades of enterprise software human resources experience.

“I’m passionate about building diverse and motivated people-first organizations that deliver business results,” said Phillips. “I’m excited to join Digibee as it scales around the world. In addition to its innovative integration platform, Digibee will lead the pack when it comes to people practices, employee experiences, and the future of work. As a remote-first, global team, Digibee is setting a great example for how you can scale a company by building a team that works collaboratively in any environment."

Anders Svensson

atNorth, the pan-Nordic colocation, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence service provider, appointed Anders Svensson to its board of directors. Svensson brings years of leadership experience having served in senior executive management and board-level positions. In 2014, he cofounded the strategy, sourcing and M&A advisory firm Burnt Oak Partners Nordics.

“I am delighted to join the atNorth Board of Directors at this pivotal time of expansion for the business and industry as a whole,” said Svensson. “At a time when a shift in digital transformation is fueling the need for high-performance computing solutions, atNorth’s vision to leverage innovative data center design to provide sustainable and highly scalable computing solutions across Europe is exceptionally unique. I look forward to playing a critical role in supporting the team at this time of real strategic growth.

Bill Tennant

Blue.cloud, a digital transformation company and provider of cloud-only solutions, appointed Bill Tennant as its chief revenue officer. Tennant will contribute to Blue.cloud’s strategic growth and revenue goals by maximizing profit through customer success strategies in addition to expanding Snowflake and ThoughtSpot sales and delivery capabilities.

“Blue.cloud's ability to achieve tremendous success across accounts along with their rapid growth made this a natural transition for me,” said Tennant. “The opportunity to equip our customers with game changing business intelligence products like ThoughtSpot and Snowflake while also moving the needle on the modern data stack delivery end-to-end is a huge motivator in this new role and critical to driving the industry forward.”

Mike Wall

Verge.io, the company with a simpler way to virtualize data centers, appointed Mike Wall as chairman of its board of directors. Wall was chairman and chief executive officer of Amplidata, an object storage software company, and led its sale to Western Digital in March 2015. He’s also served as general manager of Intel’s Storage Group, where he led the industry’s transition to storage systems designed with commodity microprocessors and chipsets.

“I am honored to be part of the effort to help organizations find simpler, more efficient and less costly ways to deploy their infrastructure,” said Wall. “The IT industry has changed dramatically in the past few years, as organizations rely more on cloud platforms, and high-level IT talent is growing scarce. Verge.io addresses these trends and more.”

Ian Wilson

Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) appointed Ian Wilson as its chief innovation officer. Wilson brings his diverse knowledge of enterprise innovation in deep technology to NAG, having previously served as global head of AI at HSBC and driven product innovation at several other leading businesses.

“Joining NAG at this pivotal point in its growth journey represents a unique opportunity for me to bring together all the experience of my career to date,” said Wilson. “The enhanced Innovation function will exploit NAG’s huge reputation and vast technical IP to create significant enterprise value. I am honoured to be trusted with such a transformational responsibility.”


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.

AIwire