For the Boston tech community, one of the biggest personnel changes in May came towards the end of the month with the announcement that Acquia's longtime CEO would step down while its co-founder would take a larger role. There were also big moves reported at Catalant, Endurance International, MassChallenge, Startup Institute, TrueMotion and WordStream.
Here are the top Boston tech hires, promotions and departures for May:
• Acquia CEO Tom Erickson said he is planning to step down while co-founder and CTO Dries Buytaert will take on a larger leadership role. However, that doesn't mean Buytaert will be taking over Erickson's role. Instead, Erickson will remain as CEO until they find a replacement who will work with Buytaert for the company's new "Office of the CEO."
• Alignable hired Ryan Kelleher as director of product design and Brandon Shar as a senior software engineer. Kelleher was previously a creative director at CSC. Shar was previously at IAM Robotics.
• Building Engines, a real estate software company that raised a $26M growth equity round last year, hired Derek Lessard as regional vice present of sales for its western division. He was previously vice president of commercial sales of North America at Metalogix Software.
• Catalant Technologies hired Jim McInerny as vice president of sales. Previously, he was an executive sales leader of Turbonomic (formerly VMTurbo).
• The city of Boston's first-ever chief digital officer, Lauren Lockwood, has left for Philadelphia.
• Confirm.io, a Boston-based identity authentication startup, added Tom Wheeler, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to its advisory board.
• Customer Portfolios, a Boston marketing technology company, hired Raffi Yardemian as vice president of sales. Yardemian was formerly vice president and CRO for Experian Data Quality.
• Endurance International Group, which owns Constant Contact, appointed Marc Montagner as interim COO. He will continue to serve as CFO. Ron LaSalvia, now president of hosting brands at Endurance, ended his role as COO in February. The company also hired Allen M. Chaves Jr. as its CTO. Chaves was previously chief software architect for Ultimate Software.
• e-Spirit hired Michael Gerard as CMO. Prior to joining e-Spirit, Michael was the CMO of Curata.
• Evergage hired Josh Baumrind as its senior vice president of partnerships and corporate development. Prior to joining Evergage, Baumrind held executive roles at Kibo Commerce and Janrain.
• GasBuddy promoted Bob Breznak from director to vice president of engineering. Prior to GasBuddy, he headed up engineering for Soofa and Evertrue.
• General Catalyst, a Cambridge venture capital firm added former Demandware CEO Tom Ebling as its new executive-in-residence at Cambridge VC firm. While some XiRs at GC go onto to start their own companies — like OM1 or Evolv Technology — Ebling told me he will focus on investing in startups along GC, as well as mentoring entrepreneurs.
• Kyruus, a Boston healthcare tech startup, hired Scott Andrews as senior vice president of delivery. Andrews has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the healthcare industry, including 17 years with athenahealth.
• MassChallenge: John Valentine left as senior director of U.S. partnerships to become manager of technology discovery and communications for Thales xPlor. XPlor is the innovation arm of Paris-based Thales, a large employer that works in aerospace, transportation, defense and other sectors. Valentine told us the Boston office has eight employees.
• Netra, a Boston startup that provides visual intelligence and search software, added Pam Hamlin, CEO of creative agency Arnold Worldwide, to its board of directors. You can read more about Netra here.
• Polaris Partners added Josh Mandel-Brehm as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Previously, Mandel-Brehm worked in both business development and strategy at Biogen and in the rare disease business unit at Genzyme.
• Progress Partners, an M&A firm based in Boston and New York, brought on Bret Base, former head of corporate strategy at Somerville adtech startup clypd, as a managing director. The firm also brought on Warren McCarthy as a senior associate. McCarthy was previously at KPMG.
• Skillsoft, an elearning and talent management company based in downtown Boston, hired Larry Neal as CEO, taking over the position of Bill Donoghue. Neal was previously president of S&P Platts, a business unit of S&P Global.
• Startup Institute named longtime employee Rich DiTieri as its new CEO, taking over the position previously held by Diane Hessan. DiTieri was previously program manager for Startup Institute’s Boston location. The company also announced several other new additions to its leadership team: Peggy Yu as COO, David Yourgrau as VP of business development, Jaime Goldstein as VP of curriculum, Elizabeth Ames as Boston’s managing director and Justin Miller as VP of marketing. Previously, Yu was interim director at Harvard Business School's Rock Center for Entrepreneurship; Yourgrau held roles at Offerpop and LevelUp; Goldstein was program director at the MIT Communication Lab; Ames was a consultant for social enterprises; and Miller, formerly of Barton Associates, had helped launch Tech in Motion and InnoNorth.
• TetraScience, a Y Combinator alum, hired Doug Morgan as director of engineering. He previously held the same position at Lola Travel, the startup founded by Kayak co-founder Paul English. Before that, Morgan was CTO and co-founder of San Francisco-based travel booking startup hopOn, which Lola acquired in 2015.
• TrueMotion, which is developing apps to reduce distracted driving for insurance companies, hired former Liberty Mutual exec Ted Gramer as its new CEO. Scott Griffith, Zipcar's former chairman and CEO, had been serving as interim CEO.
• Ventureapp confirmed that two of its founding members, Boris Revsin and Caitlin Bolnick, have left. Revsin, who previously co-founded Dailybreak, had been serving as president. Bolnick had been part of Ventureapp's founding team as a product manager, and she is now a summer associate at VC firm Accomplice. The company recently hired Katie Muto to work on the product team. Muto was most recently co-founder and CEO of Spots, a real-time search service for businesses that went through MassChallenge.
• Visual IQ hired Wayne St. Amand as CMO. Most recently, he was CMO at Boston adtech company Brand Networks.
• WordStream, a Boston adtech company, named Howard Kogan as its new president. Kogan was most recently president and COO of C Space, which named Jessica DeVlieger as its new leader earlier this year. This comes after WordStream founder Larry Kim stepped down earlier this year to work on his new startup, MobileMonkey.
