IBM

As Vice President of IBMs Global Technology Service Providers (TSPs), Marie leads the sales strategy, working directly with clients, business partners and IBM markets around the world. Under Maries leadership, IBM has expanded their global TSP ecosystem of Cloud Service Providers, Managed Service Providers, Independent Software Vendors by building a focused GTM plan for these NextGen Partners.In her 20-year tenure with IBM Marie has spent 15 years working directly with TSPs. As such she is an expert in building teams, guiding clients and partners to the right technology solution, and championing programs such as the CSP Growth Initiative. She is also a frequent guest-speaker and thought-leader at IT Conferences. Join us Wednesday at 11 as Marie will deliver the IBM keynote address here at ITEXPO. Marie comes from a Systems Engineering background and holds a Bachelors of Science degree from Franklin Pierce University, New Hampshire, U.S.

Poly

Tim Root has a long history in the Unified Communications industry, starting with PictureTel where he held many engineering roles. Tim was the CTO of Picturetel when it was acquired by Polycom. At Polycom, Tim held several roles including the CTO of the Video Division working on technology that started the HD product lines. For the next 13 years Tim worked at several different startups. He founded VGo Communications (acquired by Vecna) and then served as CTO of Revolabs (acquired by Yamaha). Tim is now the VP & General Manager of the Video & Audio Conferencing Group at Poly (the recent combination Plantronics and Polycom), responsible for the full engineering strategy for the conference room family of products. Tim holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Northeastern University, a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a dual master’s degree in engineering and management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Sloan School of Management.

Cisco

Aruna Ravichandran is VP/Chief Marketing Officer for Webex Collaboration Marketing at Cisco and leads all aspects of global marketing, including brand management, product marketing, digital marketing, and demand generation. Aruna has a passion for helping customers transform their workplaces using todays powerful collaboration technologies. Prior to Cisco, Aruna held marketing and engineering leadership positions at CA Technologies (acquired by Broadcom), Juniper Networks, and Hewlett Packard. She holds an MS in Computer Engineering and an MBA from Santa Clara University and a BS in Computer Science from Bangalore University. Aruna has also completed Northwestern Universitys Kellogg Chief Marketing Officer program. She has published two books on DevOps and is a contributing blogger for the Forbes Technology Council. Aruna is on the Advisory Board for Graphics Communications at California Polytechnic State University and the Advisory Board for Panzura, a leading provider of cloud file sharing solutions. Outside of work, Aruna helps guide students into technology-related majors and careers by mentoring students and giving talks at local high schools. She also practices martial arts and is a certified kickboxing instructor.

Google

Kate Matsudaira joined Google just over a year ago and is a Director in Google Tech Engineering. Her teams help build the infrastructure that powers Google. Prior to coming to Google, Kate helped build several successful startups that have gone on to get acquired by companies like eBay, O’Reilly Media and Limelight. Kate started her career as a software engineer and lead at Microsoft, and Amazon. She is a keynote speaker, published author, and has been honored with recognition like NCWIT Symons Innovator Award and Seattles Top 40 under 40.

RingCentral

Curtis Peterson has more than 20 years of experience managing information technology and carrier-scale data and packet voice communication networks. At companies ranging in size from startups to Fortune 500 firms, Curtis has managed teams responsible for engineering, project management, operations, data security, network security, data center, carrier operations, and internet backbone design and operation. Curtis has been a pioneer in VoIP services in the business communications space and has been developing, launching, and operating Class 4 VoIP and customer-facing hosted PBX systems since 2002.

8x8, Inc.

Vik Verma is Chief Executive Officer at 8x8, Inc., the world’s first communications cloud provider, empowering over 1 million business users to communicate and collaborate across dispersed locations to deliver exceptional customer experiences. 8x8 is a pioneer in unified communications and customer engagement solutions with over 150 patents, driving global innovation in how companies communicate with their employees and customers.Verma is an engineer at heart who began his career at Savi Technology, Inc. (Savi), a leader in RFID and cloud-based technologies as a design engineer and went on to become the Chief Operating Officer and eventually the Chief Executive Officer of Savi in 1997. He holds eight patents and was named one of 40 “Technology Pioneers” by the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland in 2003 for a successful track record in building profitable businesses around emerging technologies.Verma joined 8x8 as a board member in 2012 and was appointed Chief Executive officer within a year to lead the company’s global expansion. He is the driving force behind 8x8’s market leadership in a 50 billion dollar unified and contact center communications market and its continued push for innovation in areas like Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and data analytics. Under Verma’s leadership, 8x8 has evolved into a global player in unified cloud communications from its inception as a Silicon Valley startup.With more than 25 years of industry and management experience, Verma has successfully transformed several technology businesses through organic growth, international expansion and strategic mergers and acquisitions. Prior to 8x8, he was President of Strategic Venture Development at Lockheed Martin where he led early-stage technologies to new global commercial markets through collaborative incubators, intellectual property portfolio licensing and strategic partnerships with multi-national companies. Prior to this, Verma was the President of the IS&GS Savi Group, a Lockheed Martin technology and information services division providing real-time supply chain management and security solutions for government and commercial markets worldwide. His journey with Lockheed Martin began when he was Chairman of the Board and CEO of Savi, that was acquired by Lockheed Martin in 2006.Verma holds a B.S.E.E. degree from the Florida Institute of Technology, an M.S.E. degree from the University of Michigan in electrical engineering, and the post-graduate degree of Engineer in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Subsequently, in keeping with Silicon Valley tradition, Verma left his PhD program at Stanford to join the startup world. He is also an alumni of the Executive Management programs for CEOs at Harvard Business School, Stanford University, and the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.Verma’s Florida Tech honors include being a recipient of the Faculty Honors Award (Co-Valedictorian) Class of 1987, the 1987 Tau Beta Pi Williams Fellowship, the 1999 Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award, and being selected as a commencement speaker in 2002. He served on the Florida Tech Board of Trustees from 2002 to 2007 and rejoined the board in 2015.

ScanSource

Mark Morgan is Executive Vice President of Strategy at ScanSource, a $4B leading provider of technology products and solutions. A Transformational Leader, Mark serves as an expert in delivering growth through innovation, technology and new business models. Throughout his career, he has held senior leadership roles in Corporate Strategy, M&A, Sales, Marketing, and Technology. Mark managed P&L and led growth transformations for multiple technology businesses ranging from $500M-$1B. He has extensive experience in POS, mobility, telcom, UCaaS, CCaaS, connectivity and cloud services.

Rudin Management

Digital Colony

WeWork

Darlene Pope is Vice President and Global Lead for Smart Buildings and Digital Workplace at WeWork. Ms. Pope is a smart building industry veteran with more than 28 years of experience in commercial real estate, technology, and smart building consulting. Prior to WeWork, Ms. Pope served as EVP and Global Practice Lead for JLLs Smart Building Program. She expanded the program into a global service line, focusing on driving value to clients through the integration of intelligent building systems and smart workplace applications. Ms. Pope has developed and delivered smart building master plans for numerous global clients, and led groundbreaking smart building projects, including the McDonalds HQ project in Chicago, and MetLifes District Center in Washington, DC. Ms. Pope was the founder and CEO of CoR Advisors, a woman-owned smart building consulting business, which she sold to JLL in 2015. She has a long career history of executive level positions at leading CRE technology firms such as Broadband Office, OnSite Access, and Realcomm. Ms. Pope was awarded Visionary of the Year in DC for her work advancing smart building solutions, the Presidents Award for Excellence at JLL, the DaVinci Award for innovation at JLL, Bisnows Power Woman in CRE award, and is among the Top 10 Women to Watch in Connectivity and Technology for 2020.