Actian Leadership
The Actian executive team brings together deep industry knowledge and experience. The team understands enterprises are faced with an ever changing operational landscape and envisions a world where data-driven insights are at the center of every important decision from the boardroom to the network’s edge.
Leadership Team
Lewis Black serves as Chief Executive Officer. Lewis brings nearly 30 years of experience in the information technology space with expertise in communications services, networking, enterprise software, cloud and SaaS businesses. Prior to his appointment as CEO, Lewis served as Actian’s Chief Financial Officer responsible for the company’s financial and capital management strategies, strategic and operational planning and driving the operational execution.
Before joining Actian, Lewis was the General Manager of the Nexmo line of business in Vonage where he scaled the business significantly while integrating the business into Vonage. Prior to Vonage, Lewis was the CFO of Nexmo where he played an important role in guiding the direction of the company and was a key member of the team that sold the business to Vonage. Lewis has had broad finance and operational leadership experience in building, scaling and optimizing businesses globally in companies such as AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Avaya and Citrix. He is a certified accountant in the UK and graduated from Strathclyde University in Glasgow.
Marc serves as Chief Financial Officer of Actian and has over 25 years of experience at technology companies in the software, life sciences and renewable energy industries.
During his tenure at Actian, he has led the finance organization through the acquisitions and integrations of Pervasive Software, Versant and ParAccel that more than doubled the size of Actian. Prior to Actian, Marc helped several companies grow their businesses, raise capital and achieve successful exits for their investors. At NEXTracker, he led the finance and legal teams that supported the company’s explosive growth and acquisition by Flex for $330 million. While at Access Closure, he built the G&A function that supported the launch of the company’s first product to achieve over $100 million in annual revenue on a cash flow positive basis and eventual exit via a $320 million acquisition by Cardinal Health. Marc is a CPA and graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in accounting and information systems.
Marc Potter serves as Chief Revenue Officer for Actian. Marc has over 20 years of enterprise sales leadership experience in information technology. He is an inspirational sales leader that believes in leading from the front and working as a team.
Most recently, Marc served as Vice President of Sales at Oracle Corporation, where he was responsible for the Management and Security organization that was focused on selling Cloud solutions. He has held strategic leadership roles at Cabletron Systems, Computer Associates, Dell, Quest Software and ObserveIT. His international leadership experience over the years includes serving as General Manager for Cabletron Systems in Germany, VP of Americas for Quest Software and VP of Global Sales for ObserveIT. Prior to joining Oracle, Marc worked at ObserveIT, where he built the sales organization, launched the global partner program and expanded international operations which resulted in over 200% growth. Prior to ObserveIT, Marc held senior-level positions at Quest Software which was later acquired by Dell, Computer Associates and Cabletron Systems serving in leadership roles selling to large enterprise accounts. Marc holds a BA from the University of New Hampshire and resides in Marietta Georgia.
As SVP of Engineering at Actian, Emma leads research and development for Actian’s Portfolio. Emma has over two decades of experience leading a global software development organization focused on innovation in high-performance analytics, data management, integration, and application development technologies. A recognized authority in data management and analytics technologies, Emma holds multiple patents and is a sought-after speaker at industry conferences. Prior to joining Actian, Emma was Vice President for Ingres at Computer Associates. Educated in Ireland, Emma holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Dublin City University.
Melissa Ribeiro is Chief People Officer at Actian. She has led global HR organizations in information technology, entertainment and the news industry, during tenures with Thomson Reuters, Yahoo, Opera MediaWorks and Deluxe Entertainment Group. In her previous role Melissa was the EVP of Human Resources at Deluxe Entertainment Group, a billion-dollar company in entertainment, post production and technology based in Los Angeles, where she led HR operations for this globally distributed organization.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from UNOPAR – Universidade Norte do Paraná, Master’s degree in Business Administration and Management from UNESPAR – Universidade Estadual do Paraná and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Argosy University in Georgia.
Pamela Fowler is currently Senior Vice President, Customer Success managing the Global Support Services, Managed Services, Consulting Services and Education delivery teams at Actian Corporation. Pamela is responsible for the entire supporting infrastructure, strategic direction and tactical execution of the global support, managed/consulting services and education organizations. She controls all aspects of the global support delivery model, policies, procedures and infrastructure, and provides strategic leadership by representing the ‘voice of the customer’ to management across all functional areas within Actian. Pam is passionate leader with more than 25+ years experience in customer facing roles and helping to ensure success of customers in the enterprise technology world.
Pamela has been at Actian since November of 2005 when it was divested as a new entity from CA. Previously, Pamela held several leadership roles within CA heading technical support and was instrumental in driving CA’s supporting operations. Prior to CA Pamela was the Vice President of Technical Support for the enterprise and database management software at Platinum Technology, Inc.
Pamela holds both a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems from DeVry Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Dominican University.
Steve is Chief Information Officer for Actian world-wide, overseeing Information Technology, Facilities and Cloud Operations and Management.
He has over 30 years experience in Information Technology Management. Prior to Actian Steve was CIO for Pervasive Software, which was acquired by Actian. Prior to that, he held CIO/CTO positions at Supporktids and Tivoli and was a senior IT director at Dell. Steve has an MBA in Information Systems Management and a BS in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin.
Volker John is Vice President of Engineering at Actian. His current responsibilities include overseeing the research and development efforts for all of Actian’s NoSQL, Graph, and BaaS technologies, as well as providing senior engineering leadership on the executive staff. He joined Actian in 2012 when it acquired Versant GmbH, where he was managing director. He previously held senior positions in product management and business development at several software and service providers. Volker is based in Hamburg, Germany.
Romy Mager serves as VP Global Renewal Sales managing all aspects of worldwide renewals and expansion within the existing customer base across all Actian channels and product lines.
Studying in the UK and Germany she holds a Master’s in Professional Business Administration from DAG as well as a Bachelor’s in Professional Marketing from DAA in Frankfurt, Germany.
With more than 30 years’ experience in the software industry, Romy knows how to market and sell into the SMB space, into SaaS as well as into Enterprise markets. She came to Actian via an acquisition from Pervasive Software where she held several Sales and Marketing leadership positions. Prior to Pervasive she was working for Borland and Ashton Tate in several Marketing Management leadership roles as well as for Dow Chemical and Fluor International in Sales and Field Organizations.
Board Members
Robin Abrams is the Chair of the Board for Actian Corporation, and also serves as a Director of HCL Technologies. She was most recently interim CEO at ZiLOG. She had been the President of Palm Computing and Senior Vice President at 3Com Corporation.
Ms. Abrams was formerly the President and CEO at VeriFone. Before joining VeriFone in 1997, Abrams held a variety of senior management positions with Apple Computers. As Vice President and General Manager of the Americas, she oversaw sales and channel management for U.S., Canada and Latin America. Prior to that, she was the Vice President and General Manager of Apple Asia, where she was responsible for sales and marketing in the region.
Ms. Abrams spent eight years with Unisys in several senior-level positions. Her responsibilities included managing the delivery of business solutions focused on banking, airlines, government and networking. A portion of her tenure at Unisys included a five-year stint in Asia Pacific. The first twelve years of her career were in various management positions at Wells Fargo Bank (formerly known as Norwest Bank).
Ms. Abrams has served several U.S. public company boards including ZiLOG and BEA Systems (until it was acquired by Oracle) and currently serving Sierra Wireless and Openwave Systems. Ms. Abrams also serves on the Anita Borg Institute Board and several academic advisory committees. She holds both a Bachelor of Arts and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Nebraska.
Lewis Black serves as Chief Executive Officer. Lewis brings nearly 30 years of experience in the information technology space with expertise in communications services, networking, enterprise software, cloud and SaaS businesses. Prior to his appointment as CEO, Lewis served as Actian’s Chief Financial Officer responsible for the company’s financial and capital management strategies, strategic and operational planning and driving the operational execution.
Before joining Actian, Lewis was the General Manager of the Nexmo line of business in Vonage where he scaled the business significantly while integrating the business into Vonage. Prior to Vonage, Lewis was the CFO of Nexmo where he played an important role in guiding the direction of the company and was a key member of the team that sold the business to Vonage. Lewis has had broad finance and operational leadership experience in building, scaling and optimizing businesses globally in companies such as AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Avaya and Citrix. He is a certified accountant in the UK and graduated from Strathclyde University in Glasgow.
Prahlad Rai Bansal is the Deputy Chief Financial Officer at HCL Technologies and has held a number of senior roles in HCL over the past twenty-five years. Mr. Bansal is a qualified Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and has more than 35 years of post-qualification experience in the field of finance and accounts.
Vijay Anand Guntur, Corporate Vice President, HCL, heads the Hitech and Communication (HnC) Delivery within the Engineering and Research & Development Services (ERS) division, where he oversees global delivery.
He is a passionate, Go-to-Market leader with over 29 years of global experience in the Products and Platforms Engineering business, Digital and IoT solutions, and service delivery across multiple industry segments of independent software vendors, E-commerce, Telecom and Networking, Media and Entertainment, OEM, and Retail and Manufacturing.
With his technology cognizance and acute business intellect, Vijay has been implementing strategies to accelerate the Mode 2 and 3 business initiatives and building leadership capabilities in ERS. Vijay has provided leadership for the incubation of Mode 3 and its growth in HCL. He has headed several organization-wide initiatives like Business Process Reengineering (BPR), including value creation, rewards and recognition, integrated service delivery, and multiservice delivery. He also spearheads initiatives like diversity and inclusion programs in HCL.
Prior to the current role, Vijay headed the incubation and building of a global business in the Media and Entertainment, and Retail verticals in HCL. He started his journey with HCL in 1989 from research and development — starting from building products to incubating HCL in the services business. He is responsible for building the system software capabilities of the organization.
Vijay has an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business with a Computer Science degree from BITS Pilani.
George Kadifa is a Managing Director of Sumeru Equity Partners focused on the firm’s software investments and is a member of the Investment Committee. He has three decades of operating experience in the technology sector.
Prior to co-founding Sumeru Equity Partners, George was Executive Vice President at HP, reporting to the CEO and member of Executive Committee. He was responsible for leading growth initiatives and alliance programs with key partners, service providers and the largest customers. Mr. Kadifa previously served as Executive Vice President of HP Software. He led HP’s $4-billion software business that includes IT/Cloud Operations Management, Application Delivery Management, Enterprise Security, and HP Big Data.
George previously served as Operating Partner at Silver Lake, a global technology investment firm with over $26 billion of assets under management. He was responsible for driving growth and operational improvement in a wide range of enterprises within the company portfolio of the firm’s large-cap investment fund. George has significant expertise in building and managing technology businesses. He has held various leadership positions at technology and management consulting companies such as IBM, Corio Corporation (founder), Oracle, Booz-Allen & Hamilton and Xerox.
Kalyan Kumar is Corporate Vice President & CTO IT Services, of HCL Technologies. He leads the Global Cloud Native Services and DRYiCE products & platforms.
As a visionary, KK drives product and technology strategy across emerging technologies. He is responsible for enabling thought leadership, driving the exploration and incubation initiatives with the start-up ecosystem, and identifying new technology alliances. He drives our autonomics/AI and service-orchestration offerings across the XaaS ecosystem. The ecosystem is comprised of holistic automation capabilities, including ‘IT operations automation’, ‘cloud and DevOps automation’, and ‘cognitive process automation’. Besides, he defines cross-organization cloud strategy for business growth and cultivates the SaaS tribes across HCL.
Besides, KK continues to be an ambassador and mentor for the next-generation leaders. He is the member of the eminent Wall Street Journal CIO Network responsible for identifying key challenges in technology and new opportunities for innovation. Also, KK is the member of HCL’s ‘Talent Council’ focused on encouraging and empowering young talent. In addition, he is the honorable member of the Technology Partner Advisory Boards and has participated in Special Academic Programs at Wharton and Harvard Business School. He is a regular participant in the Singularity University Programs.
Also, KK is widely acknowledged as an eminent expert and author in the fields of Business Service Management, IT Service Management, IT Architecture and Cloud Platforms. He has co-authored six books in the space of service management and XaaS/Cloud Services.
Sanjeet Mitra is a Managing Director at Sumeru Equity Partners focused on the firm’s software, cloud and hardware company investments and sits on the investment committee. Prior to co-founding Sumeru Equity Partners he was a Principal at Silver Lake Sumeru, the middle market investment strategy of Silver Lake and predecessor fund to Sumeru Equity Partners. Sanjeet has more than ten years of investing and investment banking experience.
Prior to joining Silver Lake Sumeru, Sanjeet worked in the Investment Banking Division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in San Francisco, where he worked with clients in the industrial, TMT, and healthcare sectors.
Ram is the Executive Vice President of Human Resources at HCL America Inc. and a member of the HCL’s Corporate HR Leadership Council focused on HR strategy and Operations for the IT & Engineering Services businesses across Americas. He has three decades of HR management experience in IT Services business across UK, India and USA.
Prior to taking on the current role, he spent nearly two decades as European HR Director at HCL and previously at TCS. During which time he specialized in managing HR workstream in M&A and large-scale IT outsourcing engagements as well as Performance and Incentive designs for IT services sales organization across GEOs. Before moving to the UK, he has held various HR management positions at TCS in India.
Ram is a Graduate of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) UK. He holds a post graduate degree in Human Resources Management from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), India and an honours degree in Mechanical Engineering from Coimbatore Institute of Technology (CIT), India.
