We’re the Data Activation Company

Ken is an experienced business leader, having held a number of senior executive and non-executive positions within UK-listed firms. He is currently Non-Executive Director at Veertu Motors plc and Rockwood Strategic plc, as well as Deputy Chairman of Rainier Developments Limited. Ken has recently stepped down as Non-Executive Chairman of Biffa plc and RPS Group plc. Ken was also a Non-Executive director at Blue Prism plc, an intelligent automation software business, where he was Chair of the Audit Committee. In his executive career, Ken was latterly Chief Executive Officer of technology, business services and insurance software business Xchanging plc. Ken is a member of the Advisory Board of the Alliance Manchester Business School and has served on the UK Accounting Standards Committee of the Financial Reporting Council.

Length of tenure

Appointed March 22, 2023 (Executive Chairman from 03 April 2023)

Stephen Kelly is a successful serial growth CEO with global experience in complex enterprise software & technology businesses with strong partner and direct sales channels. Stephen has an exceptional leadership record from start-ups to the largest organizations in both private and public sectors. Stephen led the turnarounds as CEO of Sage (FTSE50), Micro Focus (FTSE250), and grew Chordiant rapidly (Nasdaq) adding approximately $10bn of market value increase over almost 50 quarters during his stewardship as a public company CEO. The companies led by Stephen all became global market leaders in their sectors.

In the 1980s, Stephen joined an early-stage European team at Oracle where annual triple-digit revenue growth was the standard in the enterprise data business. Stephen was on the founding team at high growth Chordiant, which grew from zero to $70 million revenues in 4 years, became a fintech market leader with 12 of the top 20 global retail banks standardizing on the Chordiant enterprise platform and listed in a $2 billion IPO on Nasdaq in 2000.

Stephen led the rapid and successful transformations to profitable growth at both Micro Focus and Sage while enhancing customer advocacy & market leadership. Micro Focus tripled its revenues to over half a billion dollars in 3 years with EBITDA moving from 20% to 43% and was the top performing FTSE stock with 7-fold stock increase in 4 years. Sage cloud revenues went from near-zero to over $500 million ARR in 3 years and stock price doubled for Sage to become one of the UK’s few tech companies valued at over $10 billion.

Length of tenure

Appointed 23 February 2017

Skills and experience

Dr Aahlad is a recognised worldwide authority on distributed computing. He is named in 73 WANdisco patents, including US and international patents, continuations and divisionals. It was Dr Aahlad’s vision and years of persistence that led to the invention of technology that many thought was impossible – that of Active-Active replication (WANdisco’s patented DConE technology). Prior to WANdisco, Dr Aahlad served as the distributed systems architect for iPlanet (Sun/Netscape Alliance) Application Server. At Netscape, Dr Aahlad joined the elite team in charge of creating a new server platform based on the CORBA distributed object framework.

Prior to Sun/Netscape Dr Aahlad worked on incorporating the CORBA security service into Fujitsu’s Object Request Broker. Dr Aahlad designed and implemented the CORBA event services while working on Sun’s first CORBA initiative. Earlier in his career, Dr Aahlad worked on a distributed programming language at IBM’s Palo Alto Scientific Center.

Dr Aahlad has a PhD in Distributed Computing from the University of Texas, Austin, and a BSc in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras.

External appointments

None.

Ijoma Maluza is a Chartered Accountant with over 20 years of experience in Finance including as CFO of listed and private equity-owned companies in the Technology and Software industries. Ijoma was CFO of Blue Prism plc, a software company listed on the London Stock Exchange, before its sale to SS&C Inc in 2022. Prior to Blue Prism, he was CFO of IP.Access, a private equity-owned, hardware and software developer of small cells radio solutions. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, Ijoma worked in Investment Banking in the TMT team at Rothschild & Co. before joining Xchanging, a FTSE 250 company, where he became Corporate Development and Corporate Strategy Director leading all M&A activities.

Paul Scott-Murphy, Chief Technology Officer at WANdisco, is responsible for the company’s product and technology strategy, including industry engagement, technical innovation, new market and product initiation and creation. This includes direct interaction with the majority of WANdisco’s significant customers, partners and prospects. Previously VP of product management for WANdisco, and Regional Chief Technology Office for TIBCO Software in Asia Pacific and Japan, Paul has a Bachelor of Science with first class honors and a Bachelor of Engineering with first class honors from the University of Western Australia.

Rich has worked in IT for 20+ years. His experience spans business operations, pricing, partner alliances, business development, and sales (SMB, Enterprise, & Global Key Accounts). He’s held leadership positions across the UK, Ireland and EMEA. Product sets include hardware, technology, big data, middleware, applications (CRM, ERP & CX), analytics, and mobile across on-prem, hybrid, public and private clouds. He’s worked for both corporate and partner organisations globally.

Chris has deep expertise in modern B2B technology marketing and connecting brands with buyers through powerful messaging, content, demand gen, and digital experiences. He has led content strategy with Gartner and Charles Schwab as well as digital marketing and demand gen programs for Persado AI, SANS Institute, and NextHealth Technologies. He delivered double-digit traffic, lead, and revenue growth for GU Energy Labs and Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.

Chris spent years advising C-level technology executives while at the Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner) and holds an MBA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies as well as certificates in advanced digital marketing analytics.

Anne was the VP HR of Envivio. She was also the VP HR for Harmonic, Inc. as well as the Director General of Harmonic Europe. She has also held senior level positions at Quantum (Seagate), Schlumberger Limited and Computer Sciences Corporation (“CSC”). Anne earned her BA at Clarke University and completed graduate studies in Linguistics at Emory University and postgraduate studies at L’université Paris-Sorbonne. She has a Master of Arts degree in Business Leadership and Ethics from St. Mary’s College of California.

Justin has successfully built and led high-performance technology teams capable of delivering unmatched customer experiences for over 20 years.  Justin was a Director of Product Management at Dell-EMC, where he developed an extensive knowledge of replication and migration technologies.  During his leadership of EMC’s $500M Global Data Migration practice, Justin spearheaded multiple initiatives to drive efficiencies into the core storage platform technologies and tools used to reduce customer cost associated with migrating data between platforms. Justin pursued his undergraduate degree in Business Information Systems, later focusing on project management, process improvement and business operations, obtaining his MBA from St. Mary’s of California.

Larry previously worked at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a large California-based law firm, where he provided advice and services both to large corporations and emerging growth technology companies. He also had roles in Gunderson Dettmer, another Silicon Valley firm, and Hughes & Luce, a Dallas law firm. He started his legal career at telecommunications giant Northern Telecom in Texas. Larry holds a JD from Brigham Young University, a BSc in Business Management and a BA in Asian Studies, also from Brigham Young University.