Best Startup
At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United States based Director operating in the Software space. If you think a Director is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Dev Patel
Director of Strategic Growth of Infobip
Dev Patel has been serving as Director of Strategic Growth at Infobip since January 2019.
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About Infobip: Infobip specializes in omnichannel engagement powering a range of messaging channels, tools, and solutions for advanced customer engagement.
Andy Parsons
Sr. Director, Content Authenticity Initiative of Adobe
Andy Parsons is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Workframe. Mr. Parsons was a Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Happify. He has deep expertise in building search, data analysis and photo technologies. He has also served as the founding Chief Technology Officer of McKinsey Academy. Mr. Parsons has been a frequent speaker on Web technologies, mentor and advisor to many companies and investors and is an accomplished jazz saxophonist.
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About Adobe, Kontor Inc: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Dave Johnson
Director of Engineering, PhoneGap of Adobe
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
John Warnock
Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Adobe
Since John Warnock co-founded Adobe in 1982 with Charles Geschke, the two have worked closely together to develop a stream of pioneering software products that have established Adobe as a leader and innovator in digital experiences across every screen. For nearly three decades, Warnock’s vision and passion have been integral to Adobe’s success, building the company from a small start-up to one of the largest, most recognized software brands in the world. He was president of Adobe for the company’s first two years and CEO for the next 16 years. Warnock retired as CEO in 2000 and as the company’s CTO in 2001. Today, he is co-chairman of the board with Geschke, continuing to shape direction for the company with more than $4 billion in annual revenue. Before co-founding Adobe, Warnock was a principal scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Prior to joining Xerox, he held key positions at Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation, IBM and the University of Utah. Among many awards, Warnock, along with Geschke, was the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, one of the nation’s highest honors bestowed on scientists, engineers and inventors. Warnock holds a doctorate in electrical engineering (computer science), a master’s degree in mathematics and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and philosophy from the University of Utah. He was also awarded an honorary degree in science from the University of Utah.
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About : Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Rob Burgess
Member of the Board of Directors of Adobe
Burgess has served since 2005 as an independent investor and board member to technology companies. He was chief executive officer from 1996 to 2005 of Macromedia, Inc., a provider of internet and multimedia software, which was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc.; he also served from 1996 to 2005 on its board of directors and was executive chairman for his final year. Previously, he held key executive positions from 1991 to 1995 at Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), a graphics and computing company; and, prior to its acquisition by SGI, was chief executive officer and a board member of Alias Research, Inc., a publicly traded 3D software company. Burgess serves on the board of Adobe Systems Inc., IMRIS, Inc. and several privately-held companies.He holds a BCom degree from McMaster University. He joined the NVIDIA board in 2011.
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About : Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Charles Geschke
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Adobe
Charles Geschke co-founded Adobe in 1982 with John Warnock, driving technology innovations that forever transformed how people create and consume content across every screen. A respected and inspiring industry leader, Geschke was instrumental in developing some of the software industry’s most pioneering technologies. Through his vision and passion, Geschke helped build Adobe from a start-up into one of the world’s largest software companies. Today, he and Warnock are co-chairmen of Adobe’s board of directors and continue to shape direction for the company with more than $4 billion in annual revenue. Geschke has served as chairman of the board with Warnock since September 1997. He was chief operating officer of Adobe from December 1986 until July 1994 and president from April 1989 until his retirement in April 2000. Prior to co-founding Adobe, Geschke formed the Imaging Sciences Laboratory at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and was a principal scientist and researcher at Xerox PARC’s Computer Sciences Laboratory. Among many awards, Geschke, along with Warnock, was the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, one of the nation’s highest honors bestowed on scientists, engineers and inventors. Geschke holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University as well as a master’s degree in mathematics and an A.B. in classics, both from Xavier University.
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About : Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Seth Berman
Senior Director, Performance Marketing of Adobe
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Divya Jain
Director, Adobe Sensei of Adobe
Divya Jain is the Director, Adobe Sensei Platform at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
John Bates
Director of Product Management of Adobe
John Bates is the Senior Product Manager for Data Science & Predictive Marketing Solutions for the Adobe® Marketing Cloud. His core responsibility is to develop the software product roadmap for all advanced analytics and data science capabilities (i.e., including advanced statistics, data mining, predictive modeling, machine learning and text mining/natural language processing solutions) found within the products of Adobe’s Marketing Cloud. Before joining Adobe Product Management, Bates founded and managed the Predictive Analytics Consulting practice for Adobe Consulting – consulting with some of the world’s largest companies and brands using data mining and predictive modeling techniques in order to drive greater digital marketing success. Bates has a B.A. in Economics from Brigham Young University and a M.S. in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University.
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About Adobe, Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Matthew Purdon
Sr. Product Director, Creative Cloud for Enterprise & SMB of Adobe
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Sridhar Mahadevan
Director of Adobe
Sridhar Mahadevan is currently Director of Data Science at Adobe Research in San Jose, and holds faculty appointments at Stanford Univeristy (visiting professor in the School of Engineering) and a Full Professor at the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), in recognition of his distinguished contributions to machine learning. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles in AI and machine learning over a 30 year career. His most recent paper on Imagination Machines received the Blue Sky Best Paper Award at the AAAI Conference in New Orleans in February 2018. He has lectured widely on AI and machine learning in over three dozen countries and many leading industrial research laboratories, including Google Brain and Deep Mind, IBM Watson Research (Almaden Labs and Yorktown Heights), and Microsoft Research (Cambridge, Boston, and New York).
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About Adobe, The School of Engineering at Stanford University, University of Massachusetts Amherst: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Ali Bohra
Director, Strategy & Product Marketing of Adobe
Ali Bohrai is the Director, Strategy & Product Marketing at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Markus Spiering
Director Product of Adobe
At Adobe Markus is building beautiful and engaging products to help millions of people becoming better creators with Adobe’s Creative Cloud products. Prior to Adobe, Markus was the Vice President of Product and Design at Udacity and did oversee the online university’s student experience together with the product management, product design, data, service, community and operational teams in his business unit. In this capacity he lead a 100+ people organization, impacting all global students and is directly responsible for their success. Prior to his role at Udacity, Markus worked as the Chief Product Officer of EyeEm, a global community and marketplace for photography. Under his leadership the company transformed from a Berlin-based startup to a company with a world-class product and design and achieved global footprint. Before EyeEm, Markus lead Flickr as the Head of Product and managed the global product direction and product management team of Yahoo!’s photo-sharing service since 2011. As the head of product, Markus led the biggest redesign of Flickr in years, including significant updates for its iPhone and Android apps and one terabyte of free space to all Flickr users. Under his leadership, Flickr has reached about 100 million unique users and daily photo uploads have increased up to 7x across the company’s desktop and mobile experiences. Markus has published several books and articles about mobile development, HTML5 and photo-sharing. In late 2013 Markus was named as one of Silicon Valley’s top 40 under 40 by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Prior to 2010 Markus worked in senior product management roles driving several mobile-focussed areas at Yahoo! since 2006. Markus joined Yahoo! after co-founding a Berlin, Germany based start-up focussing on mobile app distribution and development.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Matt Richmond
Director of Experience Design of Adobe
Matthew Richmond is Director of Experience Design at Adobe. Together with his exceptional team, he is designing and building the current (and next) generation of Adobe’s Digital Imaging and Photography products for the next generation of creative professionals, like you. For the past twenty years, Matthew has presented and instructed on all aspects of digital and analog design, photography and illustration. When not in the office, Matthew can be found teaching digital illustration, branding, identity and advanced techniques to the graduate students at the School of Visual Arts.
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About Adobe, School of Visual Arts: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Khoi Vinh
Senior Director of Product Design of Adobe
Khoi Vinh joined Adobe as Senior Director of Product Design in 2019.Khoi Vinh is a user experience designer, speaker, blogger and author of the book “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design” from New Riders. Until recently, he was the design director at NYTimes.com, where he led the in-house design team in user experience innovation for digital products of all kinds. For over a decade, he published his thoughts on design, technology and culture at the widely-read blog Subtraction.com. He is the Interactions columnist for Print Magazine, and has lectured all over the world on design matters. Previously, Khoi was the co-founder of the award-winning New York design studio Behavior, LLC. He studied communication design at Otis School of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and practiced branding and graphic design in print for several years in Washington, D.C., before moving to New York.
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About Adobe, Lascaux: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Tom Cignarella
Director of Security Coordination Center of Adobe
Tom Cignarella is the Director of Security Coordination Center for Adobe. In this position, he is responsible for security monitoring, incident response and threat intelligence for all Adobe products and services, as well as the Adobe enterprise. Tom sets the strategy and builds out the framework for day-to-day operations for how teams monitor environments, investigate incidents, and communicate with internal stakeholders and customers. He was formerly the Director of Product Operations for Adobe’s CloudOps group and technical operations for Adobe eSign (now part of Adobe Document Cloud). Tom brings more than 20 years of technology experience to this role. Prior to joining Adobe, Tom held Technical Operations leadership positions at Limelight Networks, Clickability, Symantec, BEA, Autodesk, Ariba and Excite.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Alexander Danoyan
Director of Engineering of Adobe
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About Adobe, Control4: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Kendall Plant
Associate Creative Director – Engagement Design of Adobe
Kendall Plant is an art director and designer on the Adobe Studio team, where she creates inspirational and innovative learning experiences. Outside of work, she enjoys combining her love of photography with her passion for the outdoors and traveling.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Erica Larson
Associate Creative Director of Adobe
Erica Larson is a graphic artist, designer, and art director on Adobe Studio. Since joining Adobe she has discovered a fondness for illustration, volunteering, and teaching. She’s happiest when making work at the intersection of all three.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Tom Nguyen
Director of Product, Adobe Spark of Adobe
Tom Nguyen is Principal Product Manager and product lead for Adobe Voice, an award-winning storytelling app that lets anyone create engaging explainer videos in minutes. Its mission is to democratize storytelling, to help people make an impact by sharing stories that matter. Previously at Adobe, he managed gaming and video technology used by over 1 billion people, powering experiences from Angry Birds to Unreal Engine to the Olympics. Before Adobe, Tom managed new products at the Reuters Innovation Studio, teaching design thinking and launching the first user generated photography service for the world’s largest news agency. He was also selected as Primetime Emmy Award finalist for his work in interactive media. Tom holds MBA, M.A. in Education, and B.S. in Computer Science degrees from Stanford University.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Jill Steinhour
Global Director, High Tech and B2B Industry Strategy & Marketing, Digital Strategy & Solutions of Adobe
Jill joined Adobe Systems in June 2011 as Director of High-Tech and B2B Strategy. In this capacity, she defines the marketing and go-to-market strategy and delivers sales enablement, demand generation and content/social marketing for the High-Tech industry and B2B. Jill leads strategic engagements with Adobe’s top tier clients in support of their efforts to develop and transform their digital strategies and is a contributor to Adobe thought leadership forums and frequent speaker at digital marketing conferences and High-Tech & B2B events. Prior to joining Adobe Systems, Jill held leadership positions at HP, Agilent and IBM. She has expertise in market research & sizing, customer insights & predictive model development and business performance management strategies for consumer & commercial markets. During her tenure at HP, Jill directed efforts to integrate & extract intelligence from large and diverse data stores to deliver HP’s first comprehensive data repositories that supported the development of addressable market & consumer predictive models.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Colin Morris
Director, Product Management, Adobe Analytics Mobile of Adobe
Colin Morris is the director of product management for Adobe Analytics Mobile. Morris is responsible for the strategy, roadmap, and solutions within Adobe’s app measurement space. He’s focused on helping customers surface critical insights for driving business outcomes, better user experiences, and cross-channel customer intelligence. Colin has spent the last 7-plus years in the mobile space, building and managing apps, analytics tools, and ad networks, at Flurry (now Yahoo) and Goodshop. Prior to his mobile experience Colin led product, content, and business development efforts across various startups in the ad tech, social networking and online media space.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Lisa Croft
Director of Digital Media Product Enablement of Adobe
Lisa Croft is the Director of Digital Media Product Enablement at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Alan Stearns
Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Adobe
Alan Stearns is a Co-Chairman of CSS Working Group at Adobe Systems.
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About : Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Lidia Lukianova
Senior Art Director & Adobe Studio of Adobe
Lidia Lukianova is the Senior Art Director & Adobe Studio at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Michael Klein
Global Director, Industry Strategy & Marketing- Retail, Travel & Consumer Goods of Adobe
Michael Klein is the Global Director, Industry Strategy & Marketing – Retail, Travel & Consumer Goods at Adobe Systems
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Adam Morgan
Executive Creative Director of Adobe
Adam Morgan is the Executive Creative Director at Adobe.
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About Adobe, Real Creative Leadership: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Elliot Sedegah
Director, Strategy & Product Marketing of Adobe
Elliot is a senior manager of strategy & product marketing at Adobe. In his role, Elliot leads global business growth & go-to-market for digital asset management & rich media product offerings in Adobe’s digital experience management business. Elliot holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, a MS in Engineering Management from The George Washington University, & a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland. Elliot is also a co-founder of the educational non-profit, The A.B. Foundation.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Josh Haftel
Director of Product Management of Adobe
Director of Product Management at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Jeremie Noguer
Product Director – Substance 3D Ecosystem of Adobe
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Bryan O’Neil Hughes
Director of Product Management & Partner Outreach, Creative Cloud of Adobe
Bryan O’Neil Hughes is the Director of Product Management & Partner Outreach, Creative Cloud at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Steve Gustavson
Chief Creative Director of Adobe
Steve Gustavson si the Chief Creative Director at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Brian Glover
Director, Product Marketing of Adobe
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Tom Moran
Director, North America Customer Support of Adobe
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Inna Meklin
Director, GTM – Creative Cloud of Adobe
Inna Meklin is the Director, GTM – Creative Cloud at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Bryan Hughes
Director of Product Management & Partner Outreach, Creative Cloud of Adobe
Director of Product Management at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Justin Patton
Lead Creative Director of Adobe
Lead Creative Director at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Nicolas Brousse
Director, Operations Engineering of Adobe
Nicolas Brousse manages and scales the Adobe Advertising Cloud Infrastructure. Previously senior director of operations engineering at TubeMogul and the company’s sixth employee, Nicolas has grown TubeMogul’s infrastructure over the past decade from several machines to a few thousands servers that handle hundreds of billions of requests per day for clients like Allstate, Chrysler, Heineken, and Hotels.com. Adept at adapting quickly to ongoing business needs and constraints, Nicolas leads a global team of site reliability engineers and database architects that monitors Adobe Advertising Cloud infrastructure 24-7 and adheres to DevOps methodology. Nicolas is a frequent speaker at top US technology conferences and regularly gives advice to other operations engineers. Before relocating to the US, Nicolas worked in technology for over 15 years, managing heavy traffic and large user databases for companies like MultiMania, Lycos, and Kewego.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Vladimir Petkovic
Creative Director of Adobe
Vladimir Petkovic is a computer artist from Serbia, currently working as an Art Director of Project Phylo at Adobe Systems. He is specialized in various areas of 3D graphics: hard surface and organic modeling, texturing, rendering and lighting. During his carrier, he has gained advanced experience in art direction, streamlining workflows, UI/UX design and concept art, while working on diverse projects – motion pictures, video games, product visualization and software development. He had the privilege to work with companies like Adobe, Google, Facebook, Autodesk, Maxon and many more. He lives in San Francisco and travels the world in free time.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Julieanne Kost
Digital Imaging Evangelist Director, Photoshop & Lightroom of Adobe
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Julieanne Kost
Digital Imaging Evangelist Director, Photoshop & Lightroom of Adobe
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Bryan Hughes
Director of Product Management & Partner Outreach, Creative Cloud of Adobe
Director of Product Management at Adobe.
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About Adobe: Adobe is a software company that provides its users with digital marketing and media solutions.
Jared Murrell
Director of GitHub
Jared Murrell is the Director at GitHub.
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About GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Jeremy Adams
Director, Business Development – BD/Alliances of GitHub
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About Cellar Door Coffee Roasters, GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Kyle Daigle
Senior Director, Strategic Programs of GitHub
Kyle Daigle is the Senior Director, Strategic Programs at GitHub.
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About GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Jamie Jones
Director, Field Architecture of GitHub
Jamie Jones is the Global Head of Field Services at GitHub.
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About Dcode, GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Nathan Henderson
Director of Solutions Engineering – AMER East of GitHub
Nathan Henderson is the Director of Solutions Engineering – AMER East at GitHub.
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About GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Danielle Leong
Director Of Engineering of GitHub
Danielle Leong is the Director Of Engineering at GitHub.
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About GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Matt Duff
Director of Delivery – Professional Services of GitHub
Matthew Duff is the Director of Delivery – Professional Services at GitHub.
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About GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Matt Duff
Director of Delivery – Professional Services of GitHub
Matthew Duff is the Director of Delivery – Professional Services at GitHub.
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About GitHub: GitHub provides code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects in organizations.
Robert Balousek
Director of Engineering of Carta
Robert Balousek is the Director of Engineering at Carta
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About Carta, Luna – Moonlit Deliveries, Radeeus: Carta is a global ownership management platform that helps companies, investors, and employees manage equity and ownership.
Marie Forshaw
Director of Product Marketing of Gainsight
Marie Forshaw is a Director of Product Marketing at Gainsight, where she drives go-to-market strategy and competitive intelligence for Gainsight’s product and services. Prior to the Gainster life, she was a Strategy and Operations Consultant at Deloitte. Marie is an enthusiastic Georgetown Hoya, a polite midwesterner, and just a little bit snarky.
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About Gainsight: Gainsight is a technology company that offers a range of software for optimizing the customer experience and improving product analytics.
Minh Phan
Senior Director of Product Management of Gainsight
Minh Phan is a Senior Director of Product Management at Gainsight, the Customer Success company. Minh is designing new solutions that extend the reach of Customer Success to other teams for a seamless experience across a company. Minh joined Gainsight after roles in Product Management, Customer Experience, and Finance at Seagate Cloud, Symantec, and Oracle. Outside work, Minh has enjoyed being a guest at the Thai royal palace, dancing along with half-a-million Cubans at the Rolling Stones concert in Havana, and taking his parents to the peaks of Machu Picchu. Minh is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan.
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About Gainsight: Gainsight is a technology company that offers a range of software for optimizing the customer experience and improving product analytics.
Kate Peter
Client Outcomes Director of National Accounts of Gainsight
Kate Peter is a client outcomes director of national accounts at Gainsight.
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About Gainsight: Gainsight is a technology company that offers a range of software for optimizing the customer experience and improving product analytics.
Daniel Kochis
Director of Global Business Development of SmartContract
Energetic self-starter with experience in business development, corporate development, strategic partnerships, account relationship management, and product management. Specialties: Sourcing strategic partnerships and M&A; evaluating partnership and acquisition opportunities; diligence and issue resolution, business case development; partnering with cross-functional teams; negotiating multi-million dollar contracts and partnerships; maintaining and managing multi-million dollar partnerships.
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About SmartContract: Smart Contracts verify an execute themselves by monitoring external data sources.
Brandon Middaugh
Director, Climate Innovation Fund of Microsoft
Brandon Middaugh is the Director of Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund program and strategy. In this capacity, she is focused on accelerating the widespread adoption of climate solutions and investing in innovative technologies. Previously, Brandon led the company’s global distributed energy strategy for Microsoft’s cloud energy and sustainability team. Prior to joining Microsoft, Brandon was a Vice President at SunEdison. Earlier in her career, Brandon led consulting engagements for energy clients and sustainable investment clients as a Vice President at Albright Stonebridge Group. Brandon holds an MBA degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business and environmental science degrees from Yale University.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Scott Hunter
Director of Program Management of Microsoft
Scott Hunter works for Microsoft as a Director of Program Management for the Azure Developer Experience Team overseeing the server frameworks, such as ASP.NET, MVC, Web API, Web Pages and NuGet. Before this Scott was the CTO of several startups including Mustang Software and Starbase, where he focused on a variety of technologies – but programming the Web has always been his real passion.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Roy Sharples
Global Director, Industry Product Marketing and Microsoft Cloud of Microsoft
Roy Sharples is the worldwide leader for Microsoft’s industry product marketing management team that help industries innovate advance human achievement and positively impact society. Roy has held a range of product development marketing and consulting leadership positions with diverse international experiences at bringing new products and services to market profitably. Developing growth businesses with large enterprises emerging markets and start-ups across global north American European and UK markets.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Gundrala Devender Goud
Sr Director – Systems Engineering /Azure of Microsoft
Gundrala Devender Goud is a Sr Director for Systems Engineering /Azure at Microsoft.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Mahendra Sekaran
Partner Director of PM – Skype and Teams Services of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Allison Saltzer
Partner Sales Director of Microsoft
Allison Saltzer has spent the last 13 years at Microsoft, where she is the IOT Partner Director for the Americas in the Global Black Belt Sales Team. Prior to this role, Allison was the Senior Business Development Manager for Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research (AI & R) focused on Microsoft’s newest innovations in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Cognitive Computing.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Tina Tran
Director Of Business Development of Microsoft
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About Microsoft, Oculus: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Mandana Javaheri
Global Director, Business Development of Microsoft
With more than 20 years of experience in cybersecurity and networking industries, Mandana Javaheri currently leads Microsoft Cybersecurity Business Development team. Before joining Microsoft, Mandana served as the CTO and head of technology alliances at Savvius, a network forensics company, where she defined product and technology directions as well as led strategic partnerships, product management and development. Mandana has a BS in Electrical Engineering and a MBA with concentration in finance and management. She also holds certifications in security, product management and leadership.
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About Microsoft, Savvius, Savvius, Tagatoo: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Mark Shaw
Director of Hardware Engineering of Microsoft
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About Microsoft, Microsoft, Open Compute Project Foundation: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Mikhail Prudnikov
Director, Business Strategy of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Clayton Fernandez
Global Sales Director, Internet of Things (IoT) of Microsoft
Clayton is the Global Director for the Internet of Things and has been responsible for the growth of multiple emerging business for several high tech companies. Clayton has lived & worked Australia, UK, USA & Singapore and has extensive international experience. In his earlier career Clayton successfully led high profile enterprise infrastructure projects in several countries. Joining the Microsoft worldwide team in January 2013 as the first Internet of Things employee in Asia, he was responsible for defining the Internet of Things strategy around how Microsoft delivers experiences to a world of connected devices in Asia Pacific. Today Clayton is responsible for the Global Internet of Things Sales within the Intelligent Cloud Business. Clayton helps enterprise customers and partners take advantage of new, cloud-based opportunities, and fundamentally rethink their orthodoxies about value creation and value capture by leveraging Azure.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Mira Lane
Partner Director, Ethics & Society – Cloud & Artificial Intelligence of Microsoft
Mira Lane is the Partner Director of Ethics & Society within Cloud & AI at Microsoft. Mira runs a multidisciplinary team within an engineering context that is responsible for guiding technical and experience innovation towards ethical, responsible, and sustainable outcomes. The technology areas of interest to her team include speech & language, computer vision, ambient devices, intelligent meetings, intelligent agents, and mixed reality (AR, VR, HoloLens). Mira’s history at Microsoft has focused on experience strategy, incubation of new product concepts, and bringing products to market. She holds numerous patents across platforms and collaborative interfaces. She has held various roles through her technology career in development, product management, UX architect and design. Mira has a background in art, computer science, and mathematics. Her video art has been featured in film festivals and galleries.
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Jaime Perena
Director Marketing and Strategy and Enterprise Artificial Intelligence of Microsoft
Jaime Perena is a Director of AI Marketing focused on Enterprise Solutions. He joined Microsoft in Feb 2009 as a Product Manager in the SQL Marketing Team. He has a large international career having held positions in Western Europe, as Modern Datacenter, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe leading Business Development activities. Prior to joining Microsoft, he obtained a Master’s degree in the Stanford Graduate School of business. Before moving to the US, he was the founder of the first ever Spanish Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. He also has experience as a consultant and researcher. In his early days as student he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Physics and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.
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Itir Aloba-Curi
Sr. Director of Microsoft Advertising Sales, East Region of Microsoft
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Payal Gupta
Director of Program Management, Marketing Technology and Engineering of Microsoft
Payal is a marketing technology leader at Microsoft, leading the strategy and engineering for modernizing marketing at Microsoft by building the modern marketing cloud – including deploying first and third party cloud marketing capabilities, ecosystem integrations, data flow optimizations and building deep insights and analytics. Her deep focus is on deploying the global demand center capability for Microsoft to generate and nurture demand for their products.
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Jonas Nicholson
Director, Automotive Industry Technology Strategy of Microsoft
Jonas Nicholson is part of Microsoft’s Automotive Industry team. Rejoining Microsoft in June of 2018, he is responsible for the development of Microsoft’s global Automotive industry technology strategy. Leveraging the breadth and depth of Microsoft technologies along with partner solutions, Jonas focuses on strategy and business development in the areas of connected vehicles and smart mobility. Jonas has 19 years of experience building and delivering successful hardware and software products and services around new and emerging technologies. He originally joined the Microsoft WinCE Automotive team in 2000, working on the original Toyota G-Book project in Japan, Fiat’s Blue and Me in Turin, Italy followed by early work in the Ford Sync program. At Tweddle Group Technologies (TGT) in 2009, he designed and built the underlying server and mobile handset technologies that drove the “Toyota Entune,” “Lexus Enform App Suite” and “Chrysler Uconnect App.” During his tenure at TGT, he successfully led the company to acquisition by Nuance Communications. As CTO of OpenCar, his leadership and experience with the acquisition process led to another successful company buyout, this time by Kirkland-based Inrix. Jonas comes to Microsoft most recently from Kymeta, where he led the engineering and product development of a holographic beam-forming satellite Ku Band satellite antenna and the supporting Azure-based Virtual Network.
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Perry Lea
Director Of Architecture of Microsoft
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Amer Hassan
Senior Director, Principal Group Program Manager, Skype Business Services of Microsoft
Amer Hassan is a Senior Director, Principal Group Program Manager, Skype Business Services at Microsoft.
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Ian Bergman
Managing Director, Americas – Microsoft for Startups of Microsoft
As Managing Director, Microsoft for Startups, Ian is responsible for reaching and supporting the best early-stage technology startups in North and South America.
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David Weston
Director of Enterprise and OS Security in Azure Edge and Platform of Microsoft
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Sven Seger
Global Creative Director of Brand of Microsoft
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Russell Wilson
Partner Director of Microsoft
Russ Wilson joined Microsoft in December 2014 as a Partner Director and Head of Design for Business Intelligence, a collection of features and services that enable you to visualize data, share discoveries, and collaborate in intuitive new ways. Prior to Microsoft, Russ was the founder and Director of IBM’s Mobile Innovation Lab. The mission of the lab is to identify disruptive mobile technologies and trends and transform them into new products and solutions that deliver significant value to individuals and companies. Russ also served as the Head of Design for IBM’s Application and Integration Middleware business unit, providing design leadership for Websphere, MobileFirst, Pure, IoT, and SmarterProcess. As one of IBM’s new Design Executives, Russ helped to teach and evangelize design thinking throughout IBM, and influence a new era in software product development. Prior to IBM, Russ was the worldwide Senior Vice President of User Experience at CA Technologies where he led the development of an enterprise-wide design language and a common application platform. Russ joined CA as part of the acquisition of NetQoS, where Russell was one of the original executives. Russ is a serial entrepreneur, an experienced executive, and has proven success in both startups and large companies. His interests include approaches to innovation, user experience design, rapid prototyping, and team building.
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Amol Adgaonkar
Director, Manufacturing Industry of Microsoft
Amol Adgaonkar is a Director of Business Strategy within the Manufacturing & Resources Industry team at Microsoft. The team is responsible for driving Microsoft’s industry strategy, sales, marketing, solutions development, development of Microsoft’s global industry partner ecosystem, as well as strategic engagements with global multinational customers. With a core focus on solution areas like Connected Field Services, Product Lifecycle Management, Configure-Price-Quote and Contract Lifecycle Management, Amol drives the go-to-market initiatives to transform manufacturing focused enterprises. He also focuses on field enablement and works with our solution sales teams & partners to drive industry solution wins globally. With a passion to enable digital transformations for customers along the Industry 4.0 initiatives, his interests lie in the Aerospace, Industrial Equipment and High-Tech industries all of which make up key verticals in the Manufacturing industry space.
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Chris Charla
Senior Director, Content Curation and Programs of Microsoft
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Irena Hsu
Director, Global Commercial Lifecycle Marketing of Microsoft
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Ravi Kandukuri
National SAP Sales Director, Retail & Consumer Goods (US) of Microsoft
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Harald Becker
Director Customer Engagements & Insights, Modern Work Customer Co-Innovation of Microsoft
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Nicholas Bouvier
Art Director of Microsoft
Nicolas Bouvier (Sparth) has been an active artistic director and concept designer in the video game industry since 1996. Born in France, he now lives in Seattle, Washington, working for Microsoft. He has contributed to the development of several released games since 1997; Alone in the dark 4 (2001), Cold Fear (2005), Prince of Persia – Warrior Within (2004), Assassin’s Creed (2007), and Rage (2011). Sparth also published two books highlighting his digital art, Structura I and Structura II, as well as more than 80 book covers for the book industry. In 2003, he decided to leave Paris for Montreal in order to join Ubisoft on their ongoing projects. He then left Montreal for Texas in October 2005, where he spent more than three years working for IDsoftware in Dallas. Finally, in January 2009, he joined Microsoft to participate to the future HALO adventures, releasing the awards winning game Halo 4 in November 2012.
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Michael Smuga
Principal Program Manager Director and Chief Of Staff of Microsoft
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Adam Isgreen
Creative Director of Microsoft
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Caroline Goles
Senior Director, Business Strategy of Microsoft
Senior sales & marketing executive with 16 years of software industry experience, specializing in go-to-market and connected sales-marketing strategies. Agile leader of global organizations with international leadership posts in Japan and Asia Pacific. Currently, a senior director in the Global Corporate Accounts Strategy team, leading digital sales strategy.
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Sachin Gupta
Americas Director, Advanced Compliance GBB Team of Microsoft
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Ali Alpay
Senior Director, Surface Commercial Marketing Leader of Microsoft
Ali Alpay is responsible for worldwide marketing of Surface to commercial, public sector, and educational organizations. Working closely with a broad network of partners, his team helps people do great things with the most productive devices on the planet, including Surface Go, Surface Pro, Surface Laptop, Surface Studio, Surface Book, and Surface Hub. In his 15 years at Microsoft, Ali served in several leadership positions, ranging from developer evangelism to product management, spanning commercial, business operations, consumer and online. Prior to Microsoft, Ali was a senior consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York. Ali holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.B.A. from The Wharton School, and an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Sandra Larrea
Director Technical Specialist Management, US NSO Dynamics Finance and Supply Chain of Microsoft
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Fernando Hernandez
Director Supplier Diversity & Sustainability of Microsoft
Mr. Hernandez serves as Supplier Diversity Director for Microsoft Corporation. In this capacity, he drives Microsoft’s strategies to achieve supplier diversity objectives. He is responsible for Microsoft’s $3.2 Billion annual Supplier Diversity initiative and $4 Billion in indirect sustainability. Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Hernandez served as Senior Vice President of Multicultural Marketing Strategy for Washington Mutual Bank where he established, developed, and implemented comprehensive multicultural marketing initiatives. He formerly served as Executive Director of Multicultural Marketing with AT&T. Mr. Hernandez was the first to establish and implement multicultural business to business and consumer marketing (Hispanic, African-American, and Asian) at AT&T in 1991. This resulted in the creation of a $1.5 Billion market segment. He holds a degree in Accounting from Saint Peter’s College and his Masters in Information Systems from Stevens Institute of Technology. He studied at the Wharton School of Business.
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Kathy Minnis
Director of Product Strategy, Modern Workplace Verticals of Microsoft
Kathy Minnis is Director of Product Strategy for Modern Workplace Verticals at Microsoft. She helps shape Microsoft’s vision and product innovation roadmap for addressing the need for modern collaboration tools in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and other specialized industries. She has played a key role in the expansion of Office 365 and Microsoft Teams with capabilities to empower the world’s more than 2 billion Firstline Workers. Prior to her current role, Kathy was part of Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence & Research group, where she was involved in innovation planning and product design for Microsoft’s search business and AI user experience, as well as driving a cross-company effort to develop ethical design principles for AI products. Before shifting to the technology sector, Kathy was an Emmy-award winning journalist and independent television/documentary producer passionate about empathetic storytelling. She brings that passion to product development at Microsoft helping drive empathy in product design, putting the customer at the center of product strategy.
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Max Wheeler
Engineering Director of Microsoft
Max Wheeler has been serving as Engineering Director at Microsoft since December 2015.
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Andrew Flick
Director of Microsoft
Andrew Flick joined Microsoft in December 2018 and is responsible for DevOps on Azure. His role can best be described as ensuring that Azure is perceived as the best solution for DevOps which includes both 1st party and 3rd party solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft, Andrew was a Senior Director at HP/Micro Focus responsible for their DevOps toolset. Andrew graduated from Bradley University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science.
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Omeed Rameshni
Studio Senior Business Director of Microsoft
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Carr Phillips
Director of Product Marketing of Microsoft
Carr Phillips is the industry product marketing director for the financial services industry.
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Eric Bailey
Global Director, VenueSource, Payment of Microsoft
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Jeremy Diamond
Global Director, Financial Services, Insurance of Microsoft
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Julie Strauss
Partner PM Director of Microsoft
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Portia Wu
Managing Director of US Public Policy of Microsoft
Portia Wu is Managing Director of US Public Policy for Microsoft; her team handles federal policy issues critical to the technology industry, including Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, workforce, and emerging technologies. Wu previously served in the Obama Administration and as Labor Counsel to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
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Tren Griffin
Senior Director of Microsoft
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Jon Farmer
Director, Financial Services Industry Marketing of Microsoft
Jon Farmer is the Director of Financial Services industry marketing for the Microsoft 365 unit of Microsoft. Jon focuses on modern work initiatives in banking, capital markets and insurance – specifically in the areas of collaboration, productivity, security and trust. He is a graduate of UCLA and Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and resides in Seattle area.
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