Our Management
Shridhar Mittal, CEO
Shridhar joined iTKO in September 2005. He has an accomplished executive career leading global teams in marketing, sales, implementation, and business development of software applications. Prior to iTKO, he held several key management roles during a 10-year tenure at i2, including CMO, SVP and GM of the High-Tech Business Unit, and VP of eBusiness solutions. His deep understanding of sales management, product management, development and end customer business needs were essential in helping i2 grow from a startup to a world-class enterprise software company. He started his career as an applications engineer for Ford Motor Company.
Shridhar holds software and process engineering patents, and earned Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University and SUNY Buffalo, respectively.
John Michelsen, Chief Scientist & co-founder
John has over fifteen years of experience as a technical leader at all organization levels, designing, developing, and managing large-scale, object-oriented solutions in traditional and network architectures.
He is the chief architect of iTKO's LISA automated testing product and a leading industry advocate for software quality.
Before forming iTKO, Michelsen was Director of Development at Trilogy Inc., and VP of Development at AGENCY.COM. He has been titled Chief Technical Architect at companies like Raima, Sabre, and Xerox while performing as a consultant. Through work with clients like Cendant Financial, Microsoft, American Airlines, Union Pacific and Nielsen Market Research, John has deployed solutions using technologies from the mainframe to the handheld device.
Ruston Vickers, CTO & co-founder
As co-founder and CTO, Ruston has been instrumental in advancing iTKO's capabilities and product suite. Vickers manages all customer product deployment and he is the lead developer of LISA's integration frameworks, which has helped clients gain tremendous extensibility and quality within complex IT environments.
Prior to iTKO, at AGENCY.COM and EDS, Ruston designed and built solutions for world-class clients such as British Airways, Enron, VHA, Sprint, Motorola, Cendant Financial, Comerica, Allstate, USFreightways, Answer Financial, IBM, Halliburton, American Airlines/AACargo, and General Motors. Early in his career, Ruston developed some of the first highly interactive online experiences for EDS, General Motors and Dr. Martens. He worked closely with Netscape and Macromedia during development of new technologies for dynamic and streaming content delivery.
John Lauck, COO
With more than 25 years of experience in high growth technology organizations, Mr. Lauck has held a wide range of executive management positions at Oracle, Parametric Technologies, Chatham Technologies (acquired by Flextronics Corporation), and Fuego (acquired by BEA) where he was Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Lauck has been on iTKO's Board of Advisors for over two years, where he advised on corporate strategy and watched iTKO's LISA product deliver increasing strategic value to a growing range of industry leading enterprise customers.
Tim Levey, CFO
Tim has over 15 years experience as CFO, consultant, and sell-side analyst for emerging technology companies, and has been directly involved in private and public equity transactions in excess of $60 million. Prior to joining iTKO, Tim was with Vcfo, serving as fractional CFO and advisor for numerous high-growth technology companies ranging from software, to services, to telecom equipment. In addition, he has held senior financial roles with Coreintellect, Promere Software, and Alve Software, and previously was Sr. Analyst for technology-based investment banks William K. Woodruff and Co. and ComVest Partners (which he co-founded). Tim holds an MBA from the University of Texas - Arlington.
Howard Sewell, Senior Vice President, Global Sales
With 20 years of experience in sales and management, Howard Sewell is known for building strong teams. Prior to coming to iTKO, Howard held the role of Regional Sales Director at Mercury Interactive (now HP Software), where he managed the sales team for the South region, and was a repeat top performer for the business technology optimization vendor.
Howard's past sales management positions include Area Sales Director at Business Objects, a business intelligence software company, as well as Regional Manager at Oracle Corporation, an application software firm. Howard graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.
Satendar Bhatia, VP SI Alliances & APAC Sales
In the interconnected, interoperable world of SOA technology, relationships are key. Satendar joined iTKO in July 2006 to manage key partnerships with technology and services providers. Prior to iTKO, he was VP of Strategic Alliances at ICS, a leading systems integrator, where he built partnerships with SAP, i2, Oracle, Accenture and others. Before ICS, Satendar spent 10 years at i2 with roles spanning consulting, customer support & services, business development and alliances. A graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, he started his career as a SCM consultant followed by program managing major implementations at 3M and TI. He then went on to direct and build instrumental revenue-generating support operations consisting of about 150 consultants for i2 in India and South Asia. He spent his last year at i2 managing Alliances with Microsoft & TCS and buliding go to market relationships with top IT services firms Infosys, Patni, Satyam and Wipro.
Chris Dworkin, Vice President, Solution Architecture
Chris is responsible for managing iTKO's global solution architecture team. He brings iTKO more than 14 years of experience engineering, implementing and growing software products in the testing and telecommunications industries, and as a leader in delivering and proving value to customers, his knowledge of continuous validation and virtualization methodologies helps to ensure that they can deploy software with higher quality and with less risk. Prior to joining iTKO, Chris held positions with Bellcore / Telcordia and with Parasoft. At Parasoft, he was responsible for managing regional field level engineering activities. During his 10 years with Telcordia, Chris was engineering OSS solutions in the wire line network planning space as well as working with Telcordia's Applied Research organization to design, develop and bring to market new product offerings in the wireless space.
Kevin Kidd, Vice President, Professional Services and Education
Kevin Kidd leads iTKO's Worldwide Professional Services and Education Organization. With 20 years of IT and consulting leadership experience, he has a proven track record of successfully building and managing professional services organizations by focusing on methodology, business development and growth, and most importantly, customer success. Kevin ensures that iTKO's PSO team is dedicated to the success of our customers and their implementation of iTKO LISA. Prior to joining iTKO, Kevin led and strengthened professional services practices at Ernst & Young, LLP, Mercury Interactive (now HP), and TIBCO Software, respectively. His multi-industry consulting experience includes providing repeatable solutions for SOA, EAI, BPM, Quality Assurance and Performance Testing, Application Monitoring, and custom development. Kevin has earned a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in Computer Information Systems at Northeast Louisiana University.
Derick Townsend, Vice President, Marketing
Derick has over 15 years of experience marketing and managing high tech products and services for organizations spanning entrepreneurial startups to Fortune 50 companies. At iTKO, Derick is responsible for all aspects of marketing including corporate messaging, product marketing and go-to-market programs. Prior to joining iTKO, Derick was responsible for Business Process Management marketing and messaging at IBM Software Group. Derick joined IBM through the acquisition of Webify Incorporated, where he lead marketing for Webify's SOA-based composite applications and underlying technology platform. He has held key sales, marketing and operational roles in leading technology companies including United Technologies, Momentum Software, Sterling Information Group, and HotLink Incorporated which he also co-founded. Derick holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and an engineering degree from the University of Arizona.
Jason English, VP Communications
Jason joined iTKO in January 2004, bringing more than 15 years of experience in executing marketing plans, re-engineering business processes and meeting customer requirements for companies such as IBM, EDS, Delphi, TaylorMade, Sun, Motorola and Sprint. As Director of eMarketing and Executive Producer, in2action Consulting at i2 Technologies, he was responsible for i2's outbound messaging during a period of extreme growth, as well as marketing services and working directly with clients to build easy-to-learn front ends to B2B systems. Prior to that, he managed customer experience as an Information Architect at Agency.com. Jason scored and designed several internationally released computer games in addition to conventional print advertising and television commercials.
Board of Directors
Shridhar Mittal, Ph.D., CEO -- iTKO, Inc.
John Michelsen, Chief Scientist and co-Founder -- iTKO, Inc.
Bill Bock, Managing Director -- CenterPoint Ventures
Ian Bonner - CEO, Coldspark Technology
Steve Coffey, President and Managing Director, Technology -- Hunt Ventures, L.P.
Jeff Hinck, Senior Managing Director - Vesbridge Partners