This month some big personnel moves happened at Boston tech companies like Cybereason, Brand Networks, VoltDB, Brightcove and Turbonomic. We also saw the departures of some big-time executives and longtime employees at companies like Analog Devices, EMC and Nuance for early-stage startups. Hope you had a good March.
• Andy Byron, who was Fuze's president and COO, recently joined Cybereason as chief revenue officer.
• Dana Cordova has joined Safr, a ride-hailing startup for women, as CMO. She was previously in the same role at Startup Institute.
• Dan Szot has joined Cambridge Semantics as its vice president of sales for the company’s life sciences division. Previously, he was vice president of sales at PerkinElmer.
• Dave Rouse has joined NextWave Hire, which provides recruitment marketing solutions, as its new director of sales. Rouse had previously been the first salesman at Embedly, which Medium acquired last year.
• David Chang, an angel investor and PayPal Media vet, is joining Babson College as its summer venture program director.
• David Flower has become CEO and president at VoltDB, a Bedford-based provider of database management software, announced it has a new CEO and president. Flower, the company's former chief revenue officer, is taking over the mantle from Bruce Reading, who stepped down last month. A spokesperson told me Reading will continue with VoltDB in an advisory capacity.
• David Zinsner, CFO of Analog Devices, is stepping down to join a VC-backed tech startup in Boston this month. He hasn’t disclosed the new company yet.
• Diane Hessan, chairman of C Space, joined the board of directors for Brightcove. Another board director, Chet Kapoor, resigned this month over disagreements with the company's direction.
• Ed Davis has joined Janeiro Digital, a digital business consultancy, as its COO and CFO. Davis was previously COO at Brand Networks, COO at Federal Street Advisors and CFO at Arnold Worldwide.
• James Seibel, formerly of Lola and Apperian, has joined Airfox, a Boston-based company providing a mobile data platform to wireless carriers, as its director of engineering.
• Jeff Whatcott has been hired as CMO at Onshape, a Cambridge-based cloud CAD software provider. Whatcott was most recently an senior vice president at Qwiklabs. He was previously CEO and co-founder at Outlearn, CMO at Brightcove and vice president of marketing at Acquia. He also worked at Adobe and Compaq.
• Jennifer Heard joined Turbonomic as senior vice president of global strategic partnerships. She was previously vice president of worldwide sales and marketing strategy at Microsoft.
• Jim Chilton was hired by Cengage, the local textbook publisher turned edtech company, as its new chief information officer. Chilton previously held vice president and CIO roles at Dassault Systemes.
John Manferdelli, director of engineering at Google, will now be the head of the Northeastern University Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. Manferdelli also spent 16 years as an engineer at Microsoft.
• John Voith, an athenahealth vet, has joined Virtudent as its senior vice president of operations. Voith was most recently director of interoperability at the Watertown health IT giant.
• Ken Goldman, Yahoo’s CFO, has joined the board of directors for Zerto, a VC-backed data replication software provider.
• Larry Kim, founder and CTO at WordStream, stepped down from the company to start a new mobile marketing startup called MobileMonkey. He will remain on WordStream’s board.
• Margaret Lawrence has joined Wayfair as its vice president of Wayfair Trade and Business programs. Most recently, Lawrence was the chief services officer at Motus. She has also held several senior leadership positions at Google.
• Mark Jaffe has joined Bedrock Data as a board director. Jaffe was previously CEO and co-founder of Prelert, an IT security company.
• Matthew Cooney has left Dell EMC as a principal product manager to head up the VR and AR division at Nickerson PR as its director of social media and emerging technologies.
• Mayank Choudhary has been named vice president of products at Observe IT. Kristin Thornby also joined the company, as its vice president of people strategy. Choudary previously held leadership roles at IntraLinks and Dell EMC. Thornby was previously at Publicis Groupe.
• Mike Schneider is now CMO at BevNET.com after he had a four-month stint as CMO at Apptopia. He previously served the same role for GasBuddy.
• Olivia Vanni, former staff writer at BostInno, has joined the Boston Herald as its Inside Track columnist.
• Paul T. Dacier has joined Indigo Agriculture as general counsel. He was previously EMC’s longtime top lawyer prior to the company’s acquisition by Dell.
• Peter Mahoney, the SVP and GM of Dragon, a division of Nuance Communications, is leaving the company this month to start a marketing startup.
• Ryan Ferguson, general manager of our sister site DC Inno, has left to become director of community engagement at HUBweek.
• Sarah McCrary has been promoted to COO at GasBuddy. She was previously vice president of operations at GasBuddy.
• Steve Isaac has been appointed to the board of directors for Ready4, a mobile test prep startup and 2016 50 on Fire finalist. Most recently, Isaac founded the Forbes Education Initiative and before that was CEO of EducationDynamics.
• Todd Taplin, a former Yahoo exec, has become CEO at Brand Networks, a social media advertising software provider. He takes take over from founder Jamie Tedford. Taplin joined Brand Networks last year as its CRO after serving as EVP and CRO at Boston-based Celtra. Tedford will remain chairman of the company's board and focus on corporate development and strategic partnerships.
Featured photo (clockwise from top-left): Andy Byron, Diane Hessan, Larry Kim, Jim Chilton, David Chang, Margaret Lawrence and Mayank Choudhary.
Think we missed someone? Let me us know at dylan@americaninno.com/boston.
