AI Career Notes: April 2020 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:
Davis Chen joined Kneron as vice president of Engineering and will be responsible for leading the company’s engineering team. Chen comes from Qualcomm Taipei, where he spent 25 years, managed six business units, and won eight Qualcomm Annual Achievement Awards.
“I joined Kneron not only because we are at the forefront of commercializing on-device AI inferencing solutions, but because I believe in the vision of the Edge AI Net,” Chen said. “I’m excited to work on realizing that vision and democratizing AI from the cloud to everyday devices. Edge AI is a vital catalyst for the future of AI adoption, especially at the consumer level.”
Red Hat's Paul Cormier succeeds current IBM President Jim Whitehurst as president and chief executive officer of Red Hat. Cormier previously served as Red Hat's president of Products and Technologies and has been with the company since 2001. During his tenure at Red Hat, Cormier has spearheaded over 25 acquisitions and assisted with developing a full and modern IT stack.
"When I joined Red Hat, it would have been impossible to predict how Linux and open source would change our world, but they are truly everywhere," Cormier said. "The transformations I see happening in our industry are exciting, as they present new challenges and opportunities. The opportunity for Red Hat has never been bigger than it is today and I am honored to lead the company to help our customers solve their challenges and to keep Red Hat at the forefront of innovation."
Ryan Davis and Jay Liu
NS1 appointed Ryan Davis and Jay Liu to its executive team. Davis will serve under the role of chief information security officer (CISO) and Liu as vice president of product strategy. They will help shape the company's practices and guide product discovery for NS1's solutions.
Davis has a 15-year background in information technology and security industries. He's held the roles of CISO and CIO at Veracode, where he directed global IT operations, security and threat management, and risk and compliance. Liu spent six years at VCE and Dell/EMC in the Office of CTO and Product Management, leading the strategy across all GTM operations for converged, hyper-converged, and hybrid cloud infrastructure solutions.
Dataiku's CEO, Florian Douetteau, was listed as part of the DataIQ 100, which celebrates the most prominent practitioners of data and analytics in the UK. In 2013, Douetteau co-founded Dataiku, which enables enterprises to build their own path to AI.
"In 2012, my partners and I saw what represented an opportunity in the fragmented data science ecosystem to promote collaboration among users and to navigate the journey to successfully implementing Enterprise AI.," Douetteau said. "We founded Dataiku, where we're dedicated to making AI human-centric and building a community that is collaborative and inclusive. In the past year, we've seen a real focus on responsible AI, and that's something that should continue as we progress through 2020. It's an exciting time to be part of the industry, and I'd like to thank the DataIQ team for this recognition."
Dave Johnson and Larry Kosch
Green Revolution Cooling (GRC) tapped Dave Johnson to serve on its board of directors. Johnson is the former executive vice president of the Secure Power division at Schneider Electric. GRC also appointed Larry Kosch to the role of director of product marketing. For 15 years, Kosch held different engineering and product management roles at Dell EMC.
"As densities continue to increase, GRC's innovative approach to liquid immersion cooling will help solve the space, power, and cooling challenges for data center and edge deployments across the globe," Johnson said. "GRC's solutions allow customers to adapt to a variety of environments and building specifications for both data centers and the edge. I look forward to helping GRC drive its next phase of growth."
"I look forward to bringing my experience with enterprise data center architecture and global product management to contribute to GRC's rapid growth and development while expanding its immersion-cooling product lines, ICEraQ, ICEtank, HashRaQ, and HashTank," Kosch said. "I am excited to join the GRC team at this pivotal time when enterprise data centers bring new computing platforms online, which focus on high-density computing, AI, 5G, Edge Computing, and more."
Nellie Manktelow
Ground Labs appointed Nellie Manktelow as its chief executive officer. Manktelow has over 12 years of experience working at European banks in Singapore, Hong Kong, and London. Before Ground Labs, she was the director of business management at the Royal Bank of Scotland.
"I am truly honored to take on the role of CEO at Ground Labs and to help lead our company as we look to increase global employee headcount and deliver stronger revenue growth for our existing product line," Manktelow said. "We have a lot of exciting momentum right now as we continue investing heavily in the development of our next-generation product line, which will fuel revenue growth come 2021 and onward. I couldn't think of a more thrilling time for Ground Labs."
Formulus Black tapped Brett Miller for the role of field CTO. He is responsible for expanding the company's persistent in-memory computing solutions. Before Formulas Black, he held the position of senior solutions architect at MemVerge. Miller was also the field CTO and solutions architect at Violin Systems. He currently serves as a strategy advisor for me:now, and was an advisory board member for Aicumen Technologies Inc.
"This is the right opportunity at the right time for the right company," Miller said. "Formulus Black is perfectly positioned to change the storage game, and I'm looking forward to contributing to the company's success. In my experience, customers are looking for any performance gain they can get, and FORSA is a solution that addresses this need by providing in-memory performance of any workload while reducing cost and complexity. I'm excited about joining this great team."
Tim Nielsen
Otava announced the addition of Tim Nielsen under the vice president role for the Sales and Solutions division. Nielsen will lead Otava's teams of Enterprise Direct, Global Partner, Inside Sales, and Pre-Sales Architects to stimulate the current growth of the business. Before Otava, Nielsen spent 20 years in IT managed services, application hosting design, and security. Most recently, at Radware, Nielsen served as a regional sales director.
"Given Otava's significant growth over the last 18 months, it's exciting to be part of a team that is leading the charge to support the cloud and business application needs of organizations in compliance-sensitive industries," Nielsen said. "Otava partners with the best in the business and understands the evolving regulatory requirements for companies around the globe. I look forward to engaging with customers and building new relationships to deliver secure, compliant, tailored environments that achieve their goals."
Nick Rockwell and Laura Thompson
Fastly, Inc. announced the addition of Nick Rockwell as senior vice president of Engineering and Laura Thomson as vice president of Engineering. Under these new roles, they will work towards scaling Compute@Edge and investing in the company's security portfolio.
"I know first-hand the impact Fastly's technology has on the internet, having driven the transformation of The New York Times' digital business, so I'm thrilled to help many more companies improve their end users' experience," said Rockwell. "In addition to working on critical projects that extend our edge computing and security work, like Compute@Edge, I feel strongly about fostering a structure that maximizes the impact of each Fastly engineer. I look forward to being part of a culture that values openness and integrity, and that rallies around the shared goal of building a trustworthy internet."
Thomson said, "It's been incredibly inspiring to see how much Fastly really cares about developers, both outside and inside the company. I'm deeply connected to Fastly's mission to support and lift developers up, and I am excited to further that mission through the projects my teams and I will drive."
Rubrik appointed Dan Rogers as president, who is now responsible for leading Rubrik’s GTM Operations and spearheading the company’s product, marketing, and GTM strategy. Before Rubrik, Rogers served as ServiceNow’s CMO, and he is credited for scaling the company’s growth. Rogers has also held leadership positions at AWS, Salesforce, and Microsoft.
“Data is every organization’s most valuable asset, and every company is undergoing a data transformation. Over 2,500 enterprises and government agencies trust Rubrik to manage, govern, and orchestrate their critical data across data centers and the cloud, and Rubrik is fast becoming the leading data platform,” Rogers said. “I’m looking forward to working side by side with Rubrik’s exceptional leadership, sales and engineering teams to accelerate the company’s next phase of growth.”
David Silver
David Silver is the recipient of the 2019 ACM Prize in Computing. He was selected for breakthrough advances in computer game-playing. At DeepMind, a Google company that focuses on artificial intelligence, he is the principal research scientist. Silver’s most recognized accomplishment was leading the team that created AlphaGo, a computer program that defeated the world champion of the game Go.
The ACM Prize in Computing carries a prize of $250,000, with funding supported by Infosys Ltd. Silver will tentatively receive the award at the annual ACM’s banquet on June 20, 2020, in San Francisco.
Steve Walton joined CoolIT Systems as chief executive officer. He has over 20 years of experience scaling technology companies and helping them to restructure their operations. Walton is credited with the growth of AC Photonics while also introducing solutions to increase operational efficiency. Walton has also held several executive roles at MicroTechnologies, Huntington Capital PE Group, and WFM.
"Joining CoolIT at this stage of the company's growth was an easy decision for me," Walton said. "CoolIT is already trusted by the industry's largest players and I will be investing in increasing our expertise and further strengthening these relationships."
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.
