AI Career Notes: June 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.

Niels Anderskouv and Tim Stone

Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries (GF) appointed Niels Anderskouv as its chief business officer. Anderskouv will be responsible for driving GF’s business strategy, including product and technology roadmap, sales, and go-to-market execution. He joined GF after serving as senior vice president and executive officer at Texas Instruments.

In addition, GlobalFoundries appointed Tim Stone as the company’s chief financial officer. Stone will focus on accelerating GlobalFoundries’ financial performance. He brings over 20 years of experience to the company, including serving as CFO for Amazon’s AWS and Devices businesses.

Vivian Blanchard

SiPearl appointed Vivian Blanchard as its vice president of hardware research and development. Blanchard’s career to date has been in research and development working for Bull and Atos in the computing domain and especially HPC.

He started his career as a physical design engineer, then held several positions in logical design, servers and ASIC architecture. In 2010, he took up the responsibility of Atos’ ASIC Research and Development department. In this capacity, Blanchard worked with Philippe Notton, CEO and founder of SiPearl, and Ying Chih-Yang, CTO, toward the launch of the European Processor Initiative consortium project which incubated SiPearl.

Steve Burke

Snowflake, the data cloud company, appointed Steve Burke to its board of directors. Burke most recently served as chief executive officer of NBCUniversal. He currently serves on the boards of directors of J.P. Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway.

“Snowflake has established itself as a transformative force for businesses across industries and around the world,” said Burke. “I am honored to join the Snowflake Board of Directors and look forward to leveraging my experience and insights to help guide the company as it continues to innovate and deliver for its customers.”

Torborg Chetkovich

atNorth, the Nordic colocation, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence service provider, appointed Torborg Chetkovich to its board of directors. Torborg currently holds the position of managing director at Private Infrastructure Europe at Partners Group, a global private markets firm and majority owner of atNorth, on behalf of its clients.

“I am delighted to join the atNorth Board of Directors at this time of significant growth for the business and the industry as a whole,” said Chetkovich. “As the demand for high performance data center solutions continues to grow, it is essential that businesses are met with scalable offerings that are truly sustainable and future proof. I look forward to collaborating with atNorth’s leadership team and my board colleagues to guide the success of the business at this pivotal time”.

Karen Dykstra

VMware, a provider of enterprise software solutions, appointed Karen Dykstra as its chief financial officer and executive vice president in addition to her current role as a member of the VMware board of directors.

“Having been a member of the VMware Board since 2016, I am pleased to now take on the CFO role and work even more closely with the executive team and company,” said Dykstra. “VMware’s focus on helping its customers navigate this multi-cloud era, its tremendous innovation engine and its unique culture are all reasons for me to join as CFO and help lead the company.”

Dean Geribo

Alcatraz AI, provider of autonomous access control solutions, appointed Dean Geribo, vice president of corporate security at Moderna, to its advisory board. Geribo has decades of experience in leadership and corporate security, and also serves as an advisory board member for Base Operations, the Board of Executive Protection Professionals, HiveWatch, and RaySecur.

“With the rise of bad actors and evolving physical security risks, solutions like Alcatraz AI can be a game changer in how organizations look to harden their defenses and improve security,” said Geribo. “Both the ease in which the Rock can be deployed and the sensitivity of the devices make it best-in-class, which is why I wanted to join Alcatraz AI as an advisor. The team is phenomenal, and understands the needs and opportunities within the access control segment and are creating a platform to scale with the industry.”

Maheen Hamid and Michael Lercel

SEMI appointed Maheen Hamid and Michael Lercel to the SEMI North America Advisory Board. Hamid, co-founder, chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Breker Verification Systems, oversees the company’s operational growth as it moves from startup to established software supplier. She drives the company’s strategic direction, corporate communications and branding.

Michael Lercel, senior director of global strategic marketing at ASML, guides corporate strategy. He joined ASML in 2015 and brings a background in semiconductor manufacturing. He helped develop a number of next-generation lithography techniques and was involved in pioneering EUV work in 1998.

Pete Harteveld

Aryaka, a fully managed SD-WAN and Unified SASE solutions provider, appointed Pete Harteveld as its chief revenue officer. Harteveld comes to Aryaka from Veracode, where he was also CRO. Harteveld previously held positions at companies including Compuware, CA Technologies, and Deloitte Consulting.

“I look forward to working closely with Matt and the incredible Aryaka team to continue growing Aryaka’s business and exceeding customer expectations,” said Harteveld. “Aryaka presented the perfect opportunity to leverage my expertise in helping security businesses successfully take on industry giants. I’m eager to find new ways to help Aryaka disrupt this exciting market and, most importantly, to help provide our customers with the unmatched networking and security solutions and experience they love us for.”

David Joseph

Cornelis Networks, the provider of intelligent, high-performance networking solutions, appointed David Joseph as its chief financial officer. Joseph will be responsible for expanding the global financial, administrative, and operational functions to support this phase of growth. He will also oversee the company’s HR and legal functions.

“AI is a technology disruptor akin to the Internet that can’t scale without the performance, reduced latency, and processing power that Cornelis Networks interconnects bring to the market,” said Joseph. “Further driving the company’s success is a visionary leadership team that I am honored to join as we continue to support our customers in achieving their objectives.”

Dave Kielpinski

Q-CTRL, a developer of quantum technologies through quantum control infrastructure software, appointed Dave Kielpinski as its principal quantum control scientist. Kielpinski’s background and expertise will help expand the range of hardware platforms supported by Q-CTRL’s software, building on the company’s track record of validation on real quantum computers.

“I am excited to join the Q-CTRL team because the future is bright for the company and the entire quantum tech industry. We are going to see a major change in how quantum is perceived by the wider community as quantum hardware takes over certain key computing tasks,” said Kielpinski. “Exactly when that happens will be down to both hardware improvements and, just as importantly, the ability to extract useful performance from that hardware through software. The second part is where Q-CTRL comes in.”

Lea Kissner

Lacework, the data-driven cloud security company, appointed Lea Kissner as its chief information security officer. As CISO, Kissner will be responsible for leading the development and implementation of Lacework’s overall security strategy and programs.

“I am thrilled to join the team at Lacework and our mission to secure the cloud at a time when enterprises are increasingly expanding their cloud environments” said Kissner. “My whole career I’ve been passionate about helping people build respectful, secure products that just work for their users. Lacework’s unique, data-driven approach to cloud security allows customers to do just that while taking advantage of all the inherent benefits of the cloud.”

Michael Knowles

One Stop Systems, Inc. (OSS), a provider of AI transportable compute and storage solutions, appointed Michael Knowles as its new president and chief executive officer. Knowles has held executive leadership positions at several defense contractors, including Cubic Corp.

Knowles said, “I’m excited to build on the inspiring AI product suite, driving growth in both defense and commercial markets and creating a powerful business model. OSS has the foundations for a team, products, and innovation mindset to succeed in the global marketplace and accelerate greater pipeline and business growth.”

Mary Krakauer

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. appointed Mary Louise Krakauer as the chair of the board of directors. Krakauer also serves as a director of Mercury Systems, Inc. and Proterra Inc.  Krakauer retired as executive vice president, chief information officer of Dell Corp. in January 2017. Prior to that, she served in various executive positions at EMC Corp.

“Cadence’s growth has been phenomenal over the past several years, and I’m ready to explore new market opportunities and drive strategic initiatives to further advance the company’s position in the computational software industry,” said Krakauer. “I share Anirudh’s passion for innovation and customer success, and I look forward to collaborating with Anirudh and the executive team to build upon Cadence’s strong foundation and take the company to new heights.”

Daren Mancini

Submer, immersion cooling solutions provider, appointed Daren Mancini as its senior vice president of sales. Mancini brings decades of experience in marketing, sales management, and technology having held leadership positions at BT, Ericsson, Microsoft, HPE, and Lumen.

“The opportunity ahead for Submer is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster, and continue to transform and evolve our relevance in the future of datacenters, that simply make sense,” Mancini said. “A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring the innovation of Submer to our customers more clearly and quickly.”

Megan Maslanka

Starburst, the data lake analytics platform, appointed Megan Maslanka as its chief people officer. Maslanka joined Starburst from Five9, where she held hte role of vice president of people. Before Starburst, she was head of talent operations at DocuSign.

“We are building a sustainable organization that is very focused on building growth the right way,” Maslanka said in a blog announcement. “The challenge to do it the right way is really appealing to me. Justin and the exec team have such strong values that are rare to find; I thought it was really important to be partnered with an executive team and CEO that knew what it took and had a value system that was different from a lot of startups.

Kelley Mullick

Iceotope Technologies Limited (Iceotope), a provider of precision liquid cooling technology solutions, appointed Kelley Mullick as its vice president for technology advancement and alliances. Mullick joins the company from Intel Corp., where she worked in product management and strategy for the datacenter and AI group

Mullick said, “Today, existing challenges to mitigate against the climate emergency are joined by the technological expedients of AI applications such as ChatGPT. These compute-intensive operations need the support of compute-intensive infrastructure. The limitations and inefficiencies of air cooling are well known… When I appraised Iceotope’s technology, I saw complete differentiation from anything else in the market. In addition to all the benefits of liquid cooling, it offers high levels of heat reuse, almost completely eliminates the use of water, and offers greater compute density and scalability than other solutions like cold-plate and tank immersion. It is the technology of the future that I want to invest my calories in.”

Neil Murphy

ABBYY, a provider of intelligent automation solutions, appointed Neil Murphy as its chief sales officer. Murphy will be focused on extending the company’s efforts in helping global enterprises put their information to work and accelerate business value from their digital transformation initiatives.

“I look forward to continuing our focus on customers’ needs and driving their successes,” Murphy said. “ABBYY is the only intelligent automation company that has decades of experience in innovating AI for documents and perfecting it with more than 10,000 customers. Its why customers can rely on us to transform any document in any format, any language into actionable outcomes with industry-leading accuracy. It is this differentiation that makes ABBYY and our customers win.”

Christine Nurnberger

OutSystems, a high-performance application development solutions provider, appointed Christine Nurnberger as its chief marketing officer.  Most recently, Nurnberger served as CMO at ExtraHop, a cybersecurity company. Prior to that, she served as CMO at Bottomline for eight years.

“I’m thrilled to join OutSystems. OutSystems global and growing customer base is the most passionate I’ve seen, as the value of the OutSystems platform shows clear and direct impact on their business,” said Nurnberger. “This is a smart, dedicated, visionary group of people around the world all pulling for their customers’ success. OutSystems is poised to have an even greater impact on the low-code market and the future of application development. I’m excited to contribute to the team as we embark on the company’s next phase of growth and innovation.”

Ryan Packer

BambooHR, a cloud-hosted software provider, appointed Ryan Packer as its chief technology officer. Prior to joining BambooHR, Packer spent 12 years at Adobe leading various engineering organizations, including serving as vice president of engineering in Adobe’s Experience Cloud business unit.

“I’m thrilled to join BambooHR, a company that’s at a unique inflection point, with the opportunity to impact tens of thousands of companies and millions of people with tools that allow them to do great work,” said Packer. “As CTO, I hope to help the organization balance delivery and execution with long term strategy and vision, building on the existing foundation with new technologies that will give HR and people leaders even more powerful tools to put their people strategy front and center.”

Kye Prigg

Lumen Technologies appointed Kye Prigg as its executive vice president of enterprise operations. Kye most recently served as SVP of Access Networks and Operations for Rogers Communications. He brings to the company an extensive telecommunications and operations background, with 30 years of experience at companies including Vodafone, Softbank, and Ericsson.

“I am honored to join the Lumen leadership team at such a pivotal time for Lumen and its customers,” said Prigg. “I have a deep appreciation for communications technology, working with exceptional teams, and the profound impact our performance has on the experience of our customers. Our world-class teams will connect customers around the world to high performing, reliable, and resilient networks, leveraging the strength of Lumen’s unmatched network capabilities.”

Gurvinder Sahni

Persistent Systems appointed Gurvinder Sahni as its chief marketing officer. In this role, Sahni will be responsible for leading and setting the strategic vision for Persistent’s global marketing team.

“I am truly honored to join this exceptional team as the Chief Marketing Officer,” Sahni said. “As someone who is passionate about achieving excellence in marketing, I look forward to leveraging my experience and diverse skill set to drive growth and enhance the brand value. Together with the team, I am committed to delivering exceptional results and creating lasting value for our clients, team members, and stakeholders.”

Roger Schnüriger

Stäubli, a leader in industrial and mechatronic solutions, has appointed Roger Schnüriger as its new group chief financial officer and member of the group executive committee. He holds an Executive MBA from London Business School and advanced diplomas in Treasury, Risk and Corporate Finance.

“We are fortunate to have found in Roger Schnüriger such a valuable contributor to the further implementation of our business strategy, and we look forward to fostering the expansion of the entire Stäubli Group together,” said Gerald Vogt, CEO.

Andrew Sotiropoulos

NetApp, a cloud-led, data-centric software company, appointed Andrew Sotiropoulos as its senior vice president and general manager for the Asia Pacific region. Sotiropoulos’s priorities include growing NetApp’s enterprise storage and cloud business, strengthening its partner ecosystem, and extending its leadership in regional markets.

“NetApp is resolute in helping APAC organizations mitigate complexities to accelerate their digital transformation journeys, across on-premises and hybrid multi-cloud environments,” said Sotiropoulos. “I am excited to build on the 30-year foundation that NetApp has laid down, letting customers further boost their innovation speed, lower costs, and improve agility.”

Wing To 

Digital.ai, the enterprise platform for AI-driven software development, promoted Wing To to the role of general manager of its Intelligent DevOps business. To joined the company in 2020 and most recently served as vice president of R&D of Intelligent DevOps at Digital.ai. He joined Digital.ai after serving 14 years at IBM, in VP roles across strategy, product management and development.

“I am excited to take on the general manager role at this time in Digital.ai’s development,” said Wing. “Organizations are navigating complex business environments and need data and insights that truly help them understand software delivery and digital transformation’s impact on the entire business. Digital.ai customers depend on our products to help build and manage the software that runs their businesses and enables them to access the data companywide to make timely, accurate decisions.”

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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