For the month of April, two longtime Boston tech executives started new careers as venture capitalists. We're talking about E Ink co-founder Russ Wilcox and former Actifio CMO Mike Troiano, of course, who have joined early-stage VC firms Pillar and G20 Ventures, respectively. Lots of tech companies made executive appointments, including Placester, Nasuni and Wayfair.
Here are the top Boston tech hires, promotions and departures for April:
(Editor's note: This post has been updated with personnel news for Affirmed Networks, Applause, CIVIQ and Fuze.)
• Affirmed Networks, an Acton-based network tech company that has raised $163 million, hired David Zinser as president and COO. Zinser was previously CFO of Analog Devices.
• Applause added two new executives: Charlie Ungashick as CMO and Matt Engel as SVP of strategic development. Ungashick was most recently CMO of PTC, and Engel was previously CEO of Attend, an event marketing startup that was acquired by a D.C. company last year.
• Bigtincan, a Boston-based provider of AI-powered sales enablement software, hired Kent Erickson as vice president of customer success and Brian Beane as vice president of worldwide sales operations. Erickson was previously manager of sales operations at AT&T, and Beane was previously vice president of global sales operations at Lavastorm Analytics.
• Cazena, a Waltham big data startup, hired Sam Berg as its vice president of sales. He was formerly SnapLogic's vice president of field operations. Before SnapLogic, Berg held leadership positions at VoltDB and Nexaweb.
• CIVIQ Smartscapes hired Brian Diver as chief revenue officer. Prior to CIVIQ, Diver was COO at Certive, where he led business development and acquisition activities.
• EMC’s RSA security division lost David Castignola, its senior vice president of sales, who left to join Optiv Security in Denver. He will serve as the company’s first executive vice president of worldwide sales.
• Endurance International Group, the Burlington company that owns Constant Contact, announced that Chief Product Officer Ken Surdan is expected to resign in July 2017. No word yet on what's next. Surdan became CPO last June after serving as senior vice president of product at Constant Contact.
• Everbridge hired Cara Antonacci as vice president of human resources. She was previously senior vice president of human resources at Jack Morton Worldwide.
• Fuze, which raised a $104M round earlier this year ahead of potential IPO plans, has added another C-level executive, Chris Conry, who will serve as CIO. Conry was previously vice president of IT and office services at Arbor Networks, which was previously led by Fuze CEO Colin Doherty.
• G20 Ventures added Mike Troiano as an investing partner. He was most recently CMO of Actifio and had been serving as a limited partner at G20.
• Hexadite, a provider of security automation software, added Jessica Couto as its vice president of channel. Couto, who will run the company's new security automation channel program, was previously vice president of channel sales at Carbonite. Prior to that, she was at Carbon Black and Kaspersky Lab.
• InCrowd, whose CEO we recently profiled, has made three executive appointments: Janet Bays as vice president of business development, Kathy Reilas as another vice president of business development and Katie Ka as senior director of client success. Bays was previously executive director of business development at RxC Health, Keilas was most recently senior vice president of Radius Global Market Research and Ka has been a marketing research consultant.
• Janeiro Digital, a Boston firm that provides design and development services for large companies like Samsung and IBM, hired Nahel Gandhi to expand its Internet of Things practice as senior vice president and managing director. Gandhi was previously global director of Internet of Things at multinational firm CHN Industrial.
• MageMail, a digital marketing solution for online retailers, appointed Erik Bullen as CEO. Bullen was previously vice president of digital strategy at Mobiquity and vice president of global services at Brightcove.
• Mendix, a mobile application development platform, hired Tara Griesbach as director of talent acquisition. Previously, she held recruitment leadership roles at Rapid7 and athenahealth.
• Mylestone, Dave Balter’s digital memories startup, hired Drew Condon as its head or product. He was most recently a lead product designer at HubSpot. Before HubSpot, Condon was at RunKeeper and Compete.
• Nasuni, a Natick-based provider of cloud enterprise file services, hired Paul Flanagan as president. Flanagan was most recently managing director at Sigma Prime Ventures.
• Pillar VC added Russ Wilcox as an investment partner. Wilcox was a co-founder of E Ink Corporation and went on to eventually serve as its CEO. He also co-founded Transatomic Power and Piper Therapeutics, the latter of which he served as CEO. The firm also added healthcare tech vet Stan Lapidus as a co-founder of its venture capital fund. Co-founders at Pillar invest in the firm's fund and can also sit on boards of portfolio companies. Lapidus brings a wealth of healthcare expertise to the table, having founded Cytyc, which sold to Hologix for $6.2 billion in 2007, and Exact Science, which went public in 2001. His most recent company is SynapDx, which is developing lab tests for autism and other developmental disorders.
• Placester, the real estate marketing software startup that recently raised $50 million, hired Sham Sao as its CRO. Sao was previously senior vice president of product and marketing at Endurance International Group, the publicly listed company in Burlington that acquired Constant Contact.
• Qstream, a Harvard Medical School spinoff that makes sales coaching software, made two executive appointments: Michael Gear as senior vice president of worldwide sales and Joe Gruttadauria as senior vice president of corporate development. Gear held prior sales leadership roles at Akamai, Webtrends and Cedexis. Gruttadauria was previously Qstream's senior vice president of sales.
• SnapApp, a Boston-based provider of self-serve marketing software, hired Mark Collura as its vice president of sales. Collura previously held the same position for PointClear, a Boston company that provides lead-gen services.
• State Street’s Technology Research hired Ravi Arimilli as its new head of the division. Arimilli was previously at IBM, where he served as chief architect for the company's analytics, big data and blockchain platforms.
• Turbonomic hired Sean Casey as its vice president of alliances. He previously held sales leadership roles at Zerto, OnApp and IBM.
• TVision Insights, which uses computer vision and eye-tracking technology to track audience behavior, hired former Nielsen executive Mark Green as its chief strategy officer.
• Vivoom, a Boston-based mobile adtech startup, added John Harrobin, former CMO of Verizon's consumer and mass business division, as a board adviser.
• Wayfair hired Eric Trickett as director of talent acquisition. Trickett was previously head of global product and engineering recruiting at TripAdvisor.
• Zerto, an IT cloud provider, hired Coley Burke as vice president of sales for the Americas and Steve Lobisser as global director of technical support. Both of the new additions were previously at Dell EMC.
Think someone's missing? Let me know at dmartin@americaninno.com.
