Management Team

Chris Stone brings over 28 years of experience in the technology industry from development to executive/operational leadership. Prior to joining SiCortex, Chris was CEO of StreamServe, a European-based document management company.

Chris began his career at Data General (now EMC) in software development, and product management. He managed the team that built the first multi-user office system on minicomputers. Then, he founded the Object Management Group (creators of the industry software standard CORBA). The Group became know as the organization that brought object-oriented programming to the mainstream. As Executive Vice President at Novell, Chris was part of the team responsible for the turnaround and resurgence of Novell. The team concentrated on Open Source, Linux, Directory (LDAP), and Internet technologies. Chris was responsible for Novell's strategic direction focused on reasserting the company’s technology leadership in Directory Services and Identity Management/Security. Chris formed Novell Ventures, a $50M fund that had early stage investments in Red Hat, Linux Networx, Akamai, Oblix, Weblogic, enCommerce, Indus River, and others.

In 2003, as Vice Chairman, Office of the CEO, he was instrumental in acquiring SuSE Linux, Ximian, which resulted in Novell becoming one of the world’s largest supporters and providers of Open Source Software. He garnered numerous Linux and technology related awards, including being named a top ten entrepreneur by Red Herring, and one of The Top 50 People in High Tech by Ziff Davis. Chris is on the advisory board of Utah-based EPIC ventures, and a director of Iovation Software in Portland, Oregon.

Chris has a B.S in Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire and an AMP/MBA from Harvard Business School.

Brian Day brings 20+ years of experience in financial and operational functions with special strengths in customer, partner and investor relations, contract negotiating and manager activities.

Brian joined SiCortex after serving as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Viseon, a telecommunications equipment manufacturer. During his tenure at Viseon, he ran finance, legal and operations, and managed the transition of production from the U.S. to China. Prior to Viseon, Brian was involved as CFO of several venture backed Companies in the Boston area including Gomez and Octave Communications. He was also CFO of LifeHarbor, Inc. from May 2003 until December, 2003 and President from December, 2003 until he engineered the successful sale of that Company in July 2004. Brian began his career with Fleet Financial Group where he was a Vice President in the Fleet’s structured finance group.

Brian has a B.A. in Economics from the University of New Hampshire, and a J.D. from Suffolk University Law School.

John Goodhue brings more than 25 years of technical and managerial experience to SiCortex. His career has been characterized by a range of technology and business ventures that anticipate and meet the needs of an ever-changing marketplace.

John began his career at BBN, where he worked on numerous computing and communications projects. Within a twelve-year period, John served as a hardware and software engineer, Engineering Manager, Vice President of Engineering for BBN's parallel processing business, and Vice President of Engineering for the Communication Division. Also during this period, John was co-founder and President of Dash, Straus, and Goodhue, which became one of the largest compliance consulting firms in New England. Following his tenure at BBN, John was Vice President of Engineering on the founding team at Lightstream Inc, a spin-off of BBN and UB Networks that was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1995. At Cisco, John served as Director of Engineering in the ATM and Core Router business units, Vice President of Engineering for Cisco's entry into the DSL business, and General Manager of Cisco's broadband aggregation business unit.

John has a B.S. in Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Fred Allman brings over 20+ years experience in the computer industry as an executive leader and manager of sales organizations. He has a demonstrated ability to build and motivate high performance sales teams, deliver results, and foster strong customer relationships.

Fred began his career at IBM. Over a 13-year period, he held numerous sales and sales management positions including Manufacturing team leader, Risc/6000 sales leader, and Business Unit Executive of a client/server solutions business.

Prior to joining SiCortex Fred worked for 12 years at SGI in a variety of sales leadership positions, including Branch Manager, Director of Strategic Sales, Director of U.S Industry business and Vice President, Americas West. As VP Americas West, Fred was responsible for all commercial and federal business operations in the western United States, Canada, and Latin America.

Fred has a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Political Science from Southern Methodist University, and an M.B.A. from the University of Texas-Austin.

Mark Blessing brings 25 years of international marketing experience gained living and working in five countries and driving marketing for up to 60 countries. Mark’s experience spans all functional areas of marketing in organizations ranging from startups to billion dollar corporations.

Prior to joining SiCortex, Mark has held senior positions in FAST, SAS Institute, BEA Systems, Cayenne Software, Computervision, MIPS Computer Systems, and Data General.

Mark has a BA in Economics from Northwestern University and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia.

Ann Johnson brings over 24 years experience in software and application design and development within the graphics and high performance computing industries. Prior to joining SiCortex, Ann was Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at ClearSpeed Technology, Inc., where she built and led global teams responsible for technical customer support, application and solution engineering, technical marketing and field application engineering. Before joining ClearSpeed, Ann led the worldwide applications, benchmark, and performance engineering teams at Silicon Graphics (SGI), and was an aerospace application development engineer at TRW and at Northrop Grumman.

In 2004, Ann received a YWCA Tribute to Women and Industry award recognizing Silicon Valley’s outstanding women executives. She holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Louisiana State University.

Kem Stewart has 25 years of hardware development and manufacturing experience at five Boston-area startups.

Kem began his career as an ASIC designer at Alliant Computer, became a board and system designer at Stellar Computer and Thinking Machines, served as VP of Hardware Engineering and Manufacturing at Virtual Machine Works, and was Netezza's hardware architect. He directed systems architecture, engineering, and manufacturing at SiCortex before becoming VP of Hardware Engineering.

Kem has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and holds a dozen patents.

David Kaufman brings over 20 years experience with software development and software management experience at Boston-area companies.

David began his career as a software developer at MIT and Symbolics. He served as Director of Software Development at Delphi Internet Services (then a division of News Corporation), and as Director of Product Management at Argon Networks, purchased by Siemens. He was a member of the founding teams of American Internet Corporation, acquired by Cisco Systems, and Brix Networks, acquired by EXFO.

David has a B.A. from Yale in Computer Science.

Jud Leonard brings 40 years of significant experience in applications development, operating systems, and processor design to SiCortex. His career has been characterized by a penetrating grasp of technical detail consistently applied and transmitted via his articulate leadership.

Jud began his computing career while at Oberlin College, first on an IBM 1620, then a 360/44. He graduated to Digital Equipment Corporation where he contributed to the PDP-12, PDP-11, and PDP-10 software groups, wrote the microcode for the KL-10 and DecSystem-20 processors, led the microcode effort for the original VAX-11/780, and became an early advocate of RISC technology within the company. At Symbolics, he provided technical leadership for Sapphire, a RISC-like LISP machine. Jud's entrepreneurial aptitude led him to co-found three companies: Agile Systems (multiprocessor Lisp systems), TLW (where he provided contract VLSI design services to various semiconductor companies) and, most recently, SiCortex.

Jud holds four U.S. patents in computer technology.