30 Notable IT Executive Moves: September 2020

Forescout, Exclusive Networks, SiFive and Corel all get new CEOs while major executive appointments and departures happen at HP, Intel, Xerox, Nvidia, HPE and Insight.

Former Symantec CEO Takes The Reins At Forescout

September saw new CEO appointments at Forescout, Exclusive Networks, SiFive and Corel Corp., but there were plenty of other notable executive moves that happened last month.

That includes a major executive hire as well as several departures at Intel. There were also moves of consequence to the IT channel, with former Dell channel chief Joyce Mullen joining Insight, George Hope becoming Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s new channel chief and former Lexmark channel executive Sammy Kinlaw joining Tech Data.

Other big personnel moves happened at HP Inc., Teradata, Talend, Avaya, Nvidia and AMD.

What follows are the 30 notable IT executive moves that happened in September 2020.

Greg Clark

Former Symantec CEO Greg Clark was named as Forescout’s new CEO just weeks after the company’s contentious sale to Advent International closed.

Longtime Forescout President and CEO Mike DeCesare will exit day-to-day management after leading the San Jose, Calif.-based cybersecurity vendor through multiple rounds of outside funding, a $116 million initial public offering in October 2017 and the sale to private equity firm Advent at a reduced price of $1.4 billion. DeCesare will join Clark as co-chair of Forescout’s board.

A source told CRN that DeCesare’s exit as CEO is part of a broader set of leadership changes at Forescout, which will also include the departure of Chief Revenue Officer Steve Redman and Vice President of Worldwide Channel Sales Jonathan Corini. Also joining Clark at Forescout will be former Symantec Americas channel chief Keith Weatherford, the source told CRN.

Steve Fieler

Steve Fieler departed as chief financial officer of HP Inc. following a tenure of just over two years in the position, the company announced.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based PC and printer giant disclosed that Fieler would be succeeded on Oct. 1 by current HP executive Marie Myers, who will serve as acting CFO. HP will undertake a “comprehensive” search, both internally and externally, to find a permanent CFO, the company said.

Fieler, a company veteran who assumed the CFO role in July 2018, is leaving for a “a role outside the company.” Fieler had succeeded longtime HP CFO Cathie Lesjak in the position, and has spent 13 years in total at HP. Prior to becoming CFO, he headed HP’s treasury and corporate finance functions.

Jesper Trolle

Exclusive Networks appointed former Arrow executive Jesper Trolle as its new CEO, taking over from Olivier Breittmayer, who is becoming a non-executive board member.

Trolle was most recently president of the Americas for ECS Arrow Electronics. He had been working at Arrow since 2005, when the company acquired DNS Denmark, a company that had acquired a previous venture he founded, Next DenMark A/S, a few years earlier.

The company said the appointment, which brings an end to Breittmayer’s 17-year tenure as CEO, was part of a planned succession strategy.

“Olivier’s vision of creating the only specialist distributor on a global scale, focused on high-performance cybersecurity infrastructure, was imaginative and disruptive – and that vision has become reality,” Trolle said in a statement. “Exclusive continues to buck market trends, growing at pace organically, expanding geographically and still disrupting.”

Patrick Little

SiFive, a provider of RISC-V platforms and custom silicon solutions, appointed former Qualcomm executive Patrick Little as president and CEO, taking over from Naveed Sherwani, who will remain chairman of the company’s board of directors.

Little was most recently senior vice president and general manager of the global automotive business at Qualcomm, where he worked for nine years. He previously served in a variety of executive roles at Xilinx, where he worked for six years.

“Across the technology industry, a sharpened focus on workload-acceleration to solve next-generation computing challenges is driving demand for SiFive’s configurable RISC-V-based platforms,” Little said in a statement. “Our industry-leading technology portfolio provides a unique platform that empowers our customers to deliver differentiated solutions in their markets.”

William Osbourn

Xerox announced that William Osbourn, its chief financial officer and executive vice president for the last three-plus years, is leaving the company for personal reasons.

Taking over for Osbourn on an interim basis on Sept. 30 as chief financial officer is Xavier Heiss, a 32-year Xerox veteran. Heiss is expected to stay in that role while the Norwalk, Conn.-based company conducts an internal and external search for a permanent successor.

Osbourn was a Xerox mainstay during a time of massive change as the company split into two, managed to avoid being taken over by former partner Fujifilm, and tried doing a hostile takeover of Hewlett Packard. Osbourn joined Xerox in early December of 2016 just prior to the move by Xerox on December 31, 2016 to split into two publicly-traded companies, Xerox and Conduent.

Safroadu Yeboah-Amankwah

Intel hired former McKinsey partner Safroadu (Saf) Yeboah-Amankwah as senior vice president and chief strategy officer, roles that will put him in charge of the Global Strategy Office and Intel Capital.

Most recently, Yeboah-Amankwah was a senior partner and global head of the Transformation Practice for the Telecom, Media and Technology practice at McKinsey. He was also global lead of client capabilities for the Telecom, Media and Technology practice.

“A profound evolution in computing is opening a much larger opportunity with implications for every aspect of our business,” Intel CEO Bob Swan said in a statement. ”Saf has strong experience in strategy and international markets, a deep technical background, and he knows Intel well. He is an excellent addition to our executive team as we work to accelerate our business transformation and culture evolution to create world-changing technology that enriches the lives of every person on Earth.”

Christa Quarles

Corel Corp. appointed former OpenTable CEO Christa Quarles as the company’s new chief executive, taking over from Patrick Nichols, who resigned earlier this year.

Quarles worked for more than three years as CEO of OpenTable. Prior to that, she was chief business officer at Nextdoor. She also previously served as senior vice president and general manager of mobile and social games at The Walt Disney Company.

“With an impressive track record of driving strong growth at innovative technology companies navigating transformational change, Christa has proven herself to be an impeccable leader,” said John Park, chairman of Corel’s board, in a statement. “We are confident her deep strategic, commercial, and financial expertise will accelerate Corel’s growth and M&A success, further solidifying the company’s position as one of the world‘s top software platforms.”

Joyce Mullen

Insight Enterprises nabbed one of the industry’s top channel executives with the hiring of Dell Technologies’ former global channel chief, Joyce Mullen, as its new president of North America.

Mullen is a 21-year Dell veteran who led the company’s massive $50 billion channel organization from 2017 to August 2020. Mullen, Dell’s former president of global channel, embedded and edge solutions, was responsible for Dell’s global channel strategy, partner program, solution provider enablement and channel sales execution, as well as relationships with distributors and OEMs.

“We have found an exceptional leader to take our North America business into the future,” said Insight President and CEO Ken Lamneck in a statement.

George Hope

George Hope, a 22-year channel veteran with deep enterprise and SMB channel roots, was named the new worldwide channel chief for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Hope, who had been acting as interim worldwide channel chief since the promotion six weeks ago of former worldwide channel chief Paul Hunter to managing director of North America, officially took the job Oct. 1. The executive said he has been advocating for channel partners for his entire career starting out as a sales rep in 1988 for electronic component distributor Future Electronics, as a senior channel sales executive for storage stalwart EMC for 16 years and then as vice president of global channels for hyperconverged superstar SimpliVity, which was acquired by HPE In 2017.

“I have been involved with all aspects of the channel from managing distribution to the national and global partners to enterprise commercial midmarket and SMB,” said Hope in an interview with CRN.

Sammy Kinlaw

Sammy Kinlaw departed his role as vice president of worldwide sales and OEM at Lexmark to become senior vice president of endpoint solutions for Tech Data’s Americas business.

Kinlaw had previously spent more than two years at Lexmark, where he helped launch a new product lineup that replaced 94 percent of the company’s models and created a global channel sales program called Go Line in early 2019 that focused on smaller-footprint devices. Prior to that, he spent more than nine years at Lenovo, where he most recently served as the North American channel chief.

“Sammy’s experience and depth of knowledge across a host of technologies and vendors as well as his deep understanding of the channel make him a perfect fit for Tech Data,” said John O’Shea, president, Americas, at Tech Data. “We are pleased to welcome him to the company and look forward to the impact he will have on our business in service to our channel partners.”

Nicolas Chapman

Teradata appointed former Imperva executive Nicolas Chapman as its new chief strategy officer.

Most recently, Chapman was senior vice president of strategy at Imperva. Before that, he held leadership roles at McKinsey & Company.

“As we execute across the company to be cloud-first and accelerate our position as a profitable growth company, we must ensure that we have a well-defined strategic and operational plan that guides our way,” said Steve McMillan, CEO at Teradata, in a statement. “Nicolas has a proven track record in accelerating organizational performance through cohesive strategy planning and execution. Teradata has made solid progress on this front over the last several years and Nicolas will help us build on our momentum.”

Stephen Spears

Avaya appointed former SAP executive Stephen Spears to the company’s newly created role of chief revenue officer.

Spears had previously spent 17 years in a variety of senior leadership roles at SAP, where he was most recently chief revenue officer of SAP SuccessFactors.

“Stephen has a keen understanding of what it takes to drive sales, marketing and customer success, making him an ideal fit to help lead execution on our very deliberate strategy,” said Avaya CEO Jim Chirico in a statement. “The re-imagined Avaya has never been more relevant to our growing base of customers and partners globally, and the way we are executing shows the winning mentality, expanding commitment to our customers, and strong culture of Avaya. We could not be more excited to have Stephen join our team.”

David Turek

CATALOG, which said it’s developing the first “DNA-based platform for massive digital data storage and computation,” appointed former IBM executive David Turek as its CTO.

Turek was previously a high-performance computing executive at IBM, where he worked for more than 20 years and led the commercialization of the IBM Deep Blue Supercomputer.

“David Turek‘s skills experience in commercializing emerging technologies are coming to CATALOG at the right time,” said CATALOG CEO and co-founder Hyunjun Park in a statement. ”Our proven DNA-based storage and computational technology are set to change how the world views processing and storing data. While we have demonstrated the utility of DNA for data storage, an intriguing aspect of our work is determining how we can leverage the scalability and parallelism intrinsic to DNA for solving complex compute problems. Turek and the new capital will play a critical role in commercializing this technology to a wide set of users.”

Claire Dixon

Intel saw a handful of recent executive departures: Chief Communications Officer Claire Dixon, data center executive Jason Waxman, Culture Transformation Lead Steve Sciarappo and Platform Solutions Group executive Daaman Hejmadi.

Intel confirmed to Wccftech that Dixon, who was previously VMware’s chief communications officer, had resigned for personal reasons. Dixon had joined Intel in June 2019.

Waxman had spent 23 years at Intel, where he was most recently corporate vice president and chief strategy officer in the Data Centric Group, according to his LinkedIn. Sciarappo had been a vice president, serving as culture transformation lead for at Intel, where he worked for more than 25 years. Hejmadi, a former Qualcomm executive, was corporate vice president and general manager of the Infrastructure and Platform Solutions Group.

Krishna Tammana

Talend appointed former Splunk executive Krishna Tammana as chief technology officer.

Tammana was most recently vice president of engineering and product advocacy at Splunk. Prior to that, he held engineering management roles at Dun & Bradstreet, YouSendIt and E*Trade.

“Digital transformation is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, and agile product innovation is more essential than ever to meet the needs of businesses at every step of that journey,” said Christal Bemont, CEO of Talend, in a statement. “I‘m delighted to welcome Krishna as our new CTO. He has the background and market experience that’s essential to lead Talend’s engineering organization and ensure that we are consistently at the forefront of innovation and driving the redefinition of the data market.”

Adam Clay

Beyond Identity appointed former Logz.io executive Adam Clay as chief revenue officer.

Most recently, Clay was CRO at Logz.io for a little under two years. Prior to that, he was vice president of worldwide sales at Black Duck Software, where he worked for more than four years. He has also held executive sales leadership roles at Mendix, Shunra and Keynote Systems.

“Adam has a proven track record of building and leading world-class revenue organizations. And his appointment as Beyond Identity’s first CRO marks an important company milestone,” said Beyond Identity CEO Tom Jermoluk in a statement. “We’re excited to deepen our executive bench with a successful leader known for scaling global sales organizations and achieving strong business performance. We welcome Adam and look forward to capitalizing on his leadership and experience to help propel Beyond Identity to its next phase of corporate growth.”

Ashish Karandikar

Nvidia made two executive appointments, according to LinkedIn: Ashish Karandikar as vice president of engineering and Craig Thompson as vice president of business development the Networking Group.

Karandikar had previously worked at Nvidia for more than 16 years, most recently as vice president of ASIC/hardware engineering. But then from 2019-2020, he worked at Intel as vice president and general manager of the Data Center Silicon Engineering Group.

Thompson was most recently vice president of optoelectronic and RF devices at Finsair Corp., where he worked for more than eight years. He previously held roles at EMC and intel.

Joe Sykora

Channel superstar Joe Sykora resigned from his post as Bitdefender’s global sales leader and channel chief to become chief operating officer for another cybersecurity vendor.

Sykora told CRN he had long been interested in moving into a COO or chief revenue officer role, but knew such an opportunity wasn’t available at Bitdefender. The Bucharest, Romania-based cybersecurity vendor said Sykora’s position as head of global sales and channels will be filled on an interim basis by Steve Kelley as Bitdefender identifies a permanent successor.

Bitdefender hired Sykora in December 2017 as the first-ever vice president of worldwide channel development to ensure consistency around the structure, benefits and governance for the company‘s partner program. Sykora came from Fortinet, where he was responsible for the company’s inside sales teams, distribution teams, reseller engagements and enhanced technologies groups in the Americas. In February 2019, Sykora was promoted to vice president of global sales and channels.

Ajit Mathews

AMD saw one executive departure and one arrival, according to LinkedIn. Ajit Mathews, who was corporate vice president of compute and machine learning software engineering, departed for Facebook to become director of engineering for AI and machine learning. And Brian Amick, a former Marvell Semiconductor executive, joined AMD as a corporate vice president.

Mathews had spent more than two years at AMD, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he spent six years at Intel, where he was most recently senior director of engineering.

Amick was most recently senior vice president of engineering of the Processor Business Group for Marvell Semiconductor, where he worked for more than two years. Prior to that, he was vice president of engineering at Synopsys. He had previously worked at AMD for 10 years.

Santosh Kumar

T2 Tech Group promoted Santosh Kumar to the role of chief technology officer.

Kumar, who has worked at T2 Tech Group for more than six years, was previously a network architecture at the company, for which he worked on several major IT projects, including a high-speed research network at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Prior to joining T2 Tech Group, Kumar was a network architect and consultant at Telstra. Before that he worked as a network and security engineer at Cisco Systems.

Lisa Stewart

SHI International made two executive appointments: Lisa Stewart as senior vice president of enterprise commercial and David Olzak as senior vice president of new business development.

Stewart was most recently vice president of customer experience and engagement at McAfee, where she worked for 10 months. Prior to that, she was vice president of software solutions at CDW, where she worked for four years. Olzak was most recently senior vice president of Majors East at Trace3. Prior to that, he was senior vice president of sales for cybersecurity and managed services at Presidio.

“Lisa and David will build on and complement our outstanding team,” said Thai Lee, president and CEO of SHI, in a statement. “Both are natural leaders who bring experience, perspective and external insight that will help us evolve our strategy for delivering more value to our market. With Lisa and David in their new roles, SHI is even better positioned to meet customers’ current and future needs.”

Hans Thalbauer

Google Cloud made four executive appointments: SAP veteran Hans Thalbauer as managing director of global supply chain, logistics and transportation; former Blue Yonder executive Paula Natoli as director of supply chain, logistics and transportation solutions for North America and Latin America; former U.S. Bank executive Derek White as Google Cloud’s vice president of global financial services; and SAP veteran Joe Miles as managing director of healthcare and life sciences.

“[Thalbauer and Natoli] bring a wealth of industry and customer experience that will ensure we’re well-positioned to address our customers’ supply chain and logistics needs,” said Lori Mitchell-Keller, Google Cloud’s vice president of industry solutions. “We’ll continue to grow the team and provide customers with solutions that drive digital transformation and tangible business outcomes.”

Thalbauer has 20-plus years of supply chain experience at SAP in development, product and solution management, and go-to-market functions. Natoli formerly was vice president of product management at Blue Yonder, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based digital fulfillment platform and supply chain solutions provider.

A 20-year financial services vet, White also worked as global head of client solutions at Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria in addition to his time at U.S. Bank, spent almost nine years at Barclays and was the technology ambassador for the city of London, England. Miles worked at SAP for more than 15 years, most recently as the general manager of global health sciences responsible for SAP’s life sciences and healthcare provider industry business units.

Gorka Sadowski

Exabeam appointed former Gartner analyst Gorka Sadowski as chief strategy officer.

Most recently, Sadowski was a senior director and analyst at Gartner, where he focused on security operations for IT leaders. He was also the author and co-author of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities research for SIEM solutions.

“We are excited to welcome Gorka to the team, as he thoroughly understands what security analysts and leaders need in this competitive market,” Exabeam CEO Nir Polak said in a statement. “He has watched us skyrocket from a supplemental technology adding intelligence to vendors like Splunk to also being a SIEM market leader in our own right, and we look forward to the knowledge he will bring to accelerate our growth and industry disruption further.”

Kevin Mosher

AppViewX appointed former Bromium executive Kevin Mosher as chief revenue officer.

Mosher was most recently in the same role at Bromium, where he played a pivotal role in the company’s sale to HP Inc. He has also held leadership roles at Delphix, ArcSight, Oracle and Portal Software.

“There is a huge, growing need for low-code automation platforms that is still something the channel hasn’t jumped on yet,” Mosher said in a statement. “These low-code automation platforms will single-handedly play a huge role in democratizing digital transformation for enterprises.”

Steve Pataky

Area 1 Security snagged solution provider superstar Steve Pataky to launch an all-out channel offensive by embracing MSSPs and selling exclusively through partners.

Pataky started Aug. 17 as Area 1’s chief revenue officer and will be working under Patrick Sweeney, who joined the company four-and-a-half months earlier as president and CEO. Pataky and Sweeney worked alongside one another at SonicWall in 2016 and 2017, where Pataky oversaw sales and channels while Sweeney spearheaded marketing and product management.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based email security vendor has tasked Pataky — a veteran of the SonicWall, FireEye and Juniper channel organizations — with fast-tracking a formal MSSP program and adding between 30 and 40 channel partners over the next six months. Pataky will also be laser-focused on building out a sales and technical enablement engine to help partners evangelize Area 1 to prospects.

Rich Halbert

WorkJam appointed Microsoft veteran Rich Halbert as chief strategy officer.

Halbert was most recently a principal program manager for Microsoft Teams, where he served as a Firstline subject matter expert to drive Teams solutions for frontline workers. He worked at Microsoft for more than 17 years. Prior to that he held management positions at two startups, Digeo and Mercata.

“As WorkJam continues to aggressively grow, the addition of Rich Halbert will strengthen our ability to continue to innovate and deliver the leading digital workplace platform for frontline workers,” said Steven Kramer, CEO and president at WorkJam in a statement. “Rich‘s vision is so well aligned with WorkJam’s and what is required to further allow organizations to save significant costs while providing the tools necessary to be competitive in today’s environment.”

Edward Hsu

Rescale, a provider of enterprise big compute solutions, made two appointments: Edward Hsu as vice president of product and Chris Choi as vice president of finance.

Hsu was most recently vice president of product and product marketing at D2IQ. Prior to that, he was senior director of product marketing for software-defined data center products at VMware. He has also held roles at McKinsey and Oracle.

Choi was most recently CFO for Shopkick, which he helped sell to Trax Retail in 2019. He has also held finance leadership positions at SK Planet.

Steven De Maayer

Carousel Industries appointed former Wipro executive Steven De Maayer to the company’s newly created position of chief service officer.

“It shows the commitment of Carousel in services, and where they are really going to be focused in the market,” De Maayer said in an interview with CRN. “So, [I’m] excited, just started, and [I’m] really looking forward to expanding and growing our services.”

While at Wipro, De Maayer was general manager of the company’s Technology and Communications business for its cloud and infrastructure services group. Prior to that, he was senior vice president for services at Dimension Data.

Tom Marx

Evoque Data Center Solutions appointed former CenturyLink executive Tom Marx as chief revenue officer.

Most recently, Marx was senior vice president of global sales at CenturyLink. Prior to that, he served as vice president of wholesale and alliances channel at Level 3 Communications, which was acquired by CenturyLink in 2017. He has also worked for XO Communications and Bank of America.

“Tom has a proven record leading large sales organizations and rapidly growing revenues and delivering results,” Andy Stewart, Evoque’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “After joining Evoque, I said my mission was to grow the company and double its size over the next few years. Tom is an executive who will help us achieve that goal, assembling a team that can expand our client base, push into new industry segments, and identify additional opportunities for growth.”

Édouard Tabet

Wirewerks, a Montreal-based provider of network infrastructure solutions, appointed Édouard Tabet as vice president of engineering and operations.

Tabet has been with Wirewerks since 2009, when he joined as a senior project engineer. He was then promoted to director of engineering in 2013.

“Edd’s vision and leadership, his deep understanding of both the technical and commercial aspects of our targeted markets, and his ability to drive innovation across our entire product line are invaluable to the company’s continuing growth and success,” Wirewerks President Jais Cohen said in a statement.