Joe Pinto joined Pure Storage in 2019 as Chief Customer Experience Officer, responsible for leading the Global Services teams and Pure PEAK education and certification program, and overseeing the continued scale and evolution of the Pure’s Customer Experience model. In the new digital world, his team continues to build capabilities around automation, migration services, and customer success, while holding an industry-leading NPS score of83.5

Prior to joining Pure, Joe was Senior Vice President at Cisco, overseeing the Technical Services team. During his 28-year tenure at Cisco, his team also developed Cisco’s first Technical Support website and created an industry-leading Solution support offer for global customers and partners, including lifecycle capabilities (onboarding and adoption), plus education and learning capabilities. He also created the Cisco Certification Program which has over three million technical certifications issued to individuals across the globe. His organization garnered numerous industry awards under his leadership.

Jim Walsh is the former Head of Growth Marketing and Enterprise Sales at Cisco.  Jim brings decades of experience positioning technology solutions that enable customers to transform their businesses. During his tenure at Cisco, Jim married Cisco sales and marketing functions to deliver actionable insights to the sales team, integrated personalized customer journeys into the sales process and influenced customer and partner decisions using data and analytics. He also crafted a go-to-market blueprint for Cisco’s segments, including Global Service Provider, Global Enterprise, Global Commercial, Global Small Business, and Global Public Sector.

Walsh has held several executive positions at Cisco, including Senior Vice President of Growth Marketing, Senior Vice President of Global Enterprise Segment, Senior Vice President of Cisco’s Cyber Security Sales, and Vice President and Chief of Staff for Cisco’s President of Development and Worldwide Sales.

Walsh has a Bachelor of Science in finance from Villanova University and an MBA from Fordham University. He is based in Naples, Florida.

Robert is a Special Advisor at Two Bear Capital and brings decades of government experience to Graphiant.

Robert has worked with leaders throughout the world on numerous assignments across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe/Eurasia. He specializes in various areas such as national security / defense, cyber, energy, appropriations, and policy.

His distinguished career includes serving as a former United States Presidential Appointee, Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance and Chief of Staff in the United States Congress. He also served on the Presidential Defense Base Realignment & Closure Commission (BRAC). In 2020, he was appointed to the United States Small Business Administration's Regulatory Fairness Board.

Also, he served on the advisory board of Rampart Aviation and was a partner at NEK Advanced Securities Group. Both Rampart and NEK specialize(d) in providing direct operational support, intelligence, and training to the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), National Security Agency, John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, and School (SWICK), Naval Special Warfare (NSW), FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), and other U.S. government agencies. NEK was later acquired by Cubic Corporation (NYSE: CUB).

Member of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, Lifetime Member Veterans of Foreign Wars, Member of the National Defense Industrial Association, National Security Space Association, U.S. Congressional Chief’s of Staff Alumni Association, Global Special Operations Foundation and American Consumer Council.

David Reilly brings extensive experience and a passion for helping organizations achieve their aspirational goals by leveraging digital transitions, preparing for unforeseen challenges, and adapting to the ever-evolving nature of their industries. As a seasoned CIO and CTO, he believes in the importance of understanding the business problem that technology or service solves, being receptive to diverse perspectives, and continually seeking ways to improve and enhance products or services.

David previously served as CIO for Global Banking and Markets at Bank of America and as their Chief Technology Officer before that role. He has also held a number of senior technology and network security leadership roles within several large global financial institutions including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc, and Merrill Lynch & Co, Inc., among others.

Dr. Abed Benaichouche is a highly accomplished entrepreneur and technologist specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and big data analytics. Currently serving as the CEO of Open Innovation and Cyber AI Trust, he leads these rapidly expanding tech companies that focus on advancing AI and ensuring its safe utilization. Dr. Abed's impressive educational foundation includes a Ph.D. from France's prestigious Ecole des Mines de Paris.

Dr. Abed's journey in the UAE tech industry began when he joined G42 as one of its founding team, holding the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). In this role, he was responsible for conceiving and implementing AI and big data solutions tailored to clients across various sectors.

One of his notable achievements was the establishment of AIQ, a collaboration between G42 and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), where he assumed the role of CTO. Under his leadership, a substantial team of data scientists and software engineers worked diligently to create the UAE's first commercial supercomputer. Simultaneously, they successfully commercialized numerous AI-powered applications and patented innovative oil and gas AI technologies, propelling AIQ to a unicorn valuation within an astonishing three-year span.

As President and CEO for WWT International, Omar Mir is focused on nurturing the most critical technologies impacting Telco, service providers and enterprise businesses. Omar is responsible for WWT’s International business drawing on over 20 years of experience in the Global Telco, Tech and Cloud service provider industry. He is also a Board Member for all non-USA markets leading in advisory and execution of P&Ls, Strategy and GTM.

He founded WWT’s International division in 2015, growing the business from the ground up to generate revenues of over $6bn+ in just six years. Omar is especially passionate about innovation, and driving agility and speed to market, particularly in transformative, disruptive technologies such as AI, ML, 5G, IoT, MEC/EDGE, NFV or O-RAN and the transformational outcomes they enable across every industry and sustainability/ESG.

Omar is an expert in innovation, start-up incubation from Silicon Valley and acts as an advisor across different industries and continents. In 2023, he was named Advisor of the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, part of the Abu Dhabi Government with a focus on accelerating an innovative Sustainable Knowledge-based Economy enabled by technologies with a special focus in AI & Data Science across the entire economy.

In addition, Omar is also the Senior Advisor to Graphiant (Silicon Valley-based provider of next-generation Edge services) and Nile (Wired and wireless Network-aaS disruptor).

Michael Timmeny spent over 25 years at Cisco where most recently he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Government Strategy Officer, leading Cisco’s government relations worldwide. He led a global team charged with advancing issues that supported Cisco’s robust corporate and technology policy agenda. This included shaping policies that foster innovation and digital technologies, promoting broadband adoption, and protecting global competitiveness.

Michael opened Cisco’s first Washington, D.C. office in 1998. He focused on strengthening Cisco’s relationship with governments around the globe, expanding his team’s presence in Cisco’s growth markets, and driving positive results for Cisco, as well as the governments and constituencies in which it operates. In addition, Michael was the country sponsor for the United Arab Emirates and for Ireland – two key markets for Cisco. Additionally, he served on the Executive Leader Team.

Prior to joining Cisco, Michael spent twenty-one years on Capitol Hill in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, where he served as Chief of Staff to five members of Congress including U.S. Senator Patty Murray (WA) and U.S. Representatives Anna Eshoo (CA), Joseph P. Kennedy II (MA), Chuck Schumer (NY), and Ted Weiss (NY). Previously, he worked for U.S. Representative Peter Peyser in his home district in New York and was given his start on Capitol Hill by U.S.

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Bill Coughran, Managing Partner at Sequoia Capital, is a business partner to growing companies and coach to founders and teams. After getting his PhD in computer science, he went to Bell Labs. Some of the work he was involved with—core modeling and computer systems work—shaped his thinking about how to build large-scale systems and designs for many years, and it’s something that has served him well at Google. There, he had the opportunity to work with some of the most sophisticated systems at that time.

After his time at Bell Labs, he co-founded Entrisphere in late 2000. That company was acquired by Ericsson after he left. He soon joined Google in 2003. What he brings is intellectual breadth and pragmatic organizational psychology, coupled with a lot of operational experience. He's overseen a wide range of technologies, from semiconductors up to large distributed systems, search, security, and other web and mobile services.

Brian Long, Founder and Managing Partner at Atlantic Bridge, has active investments and board seats include Movidius Inc, Blue Data Inc, Hedvig Inc, 3D Robotics Inc, Swrve Inc, Boxfish Inc, Lion Semiconductor, GBox Inc, Nod Labs, Navitas Semiconductor, and Highlight Semiconductor. Some of his previous investments and board seats include Maginatics (Acquired by EMC), Ozmo Devices (Acquired by Atmel), BridgeCo (Acquired by SMSC), Silicon Blue (Acquired by Lattice Semiconductor), Osmetta Inc (Acquired by Facebook). Brian was founder and CEO of Parthus-CEVA technologies 1993 - 2003 which he took public (IPO) on Nasdaq and London Stock Markets (Nasdaq: CEVX) . He was founder and Chairman of GloNav Inc which developed the first single chip GPS solutions used on Galaxy mobile phones (Acquired by NXP).

Brian has a Master's Degree in Electronic Engineering from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Brian grew up in Dublin Ireland and now lives and works in Palo Alto California.

Michael Elmore holds the position of Chief Information Security Officer at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Prior, he was Operational Technology Security at GlaxoSmithKline, where he joined in April 2019.

Before joining GSK, Michael was the Chief Customer Success Officer at Cisco, and before Cisco, he was the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Cigna Healthcare.

Michael has spent his entire career building and leading technology teams across several functional areas, including cyber security, IT infrastructure, and contact center technology. He has executive experience on both the customer and vendor sides of the table, leading large infrastructure and cybersecurity transformations at UnitedHealth Group and Cigna as well as driving customer experience transformation at Cisco. He brings a unique view toward digital-enabled transformation, while continuously improving security and compliance posture and driving cost optimization.

Michael Goguen, Founder & Managing Partner at Two Bear Capital, is passionate about making as positive an impact as possible on the lives of others - as a philanthropist, a venture capitalist, and as a first responder. After a 30 year career as a leading technologist and venture capitalist in silicon valley, Michael now resides full-time in Montana. He's focused on finding solutions to local and state-wide challenges to improve the lives of MT residents, and on helping great entrepreneurs across the US start and build new and innovative companies that positively impact us all.

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Khalid Raza, CEO and Founder of Graphiant, was the co-founder and CTO of Viptela and is widely regarded as the “Father” of SD-WAN. He is a visionary in routing protocols and large-scale network architectures. In the past 25 years, he has redefined expectations and delivered innovative solutions across all industries for Tier-1 carriers and Fortune 100 companies.

Ali Shaikh, CPO, is responsible for the strategic direction for Graphiant, technical alliances, and driving the product roadmap. He led Systems Engineering for Meraki & Viptela at Cisco and was the first Solution Architect and Customer Success Engineer at Viptela. He was responsible for designing and deploying the largest SD-WAN implementations globally.

Venu Hemige, VP of Engineering, is a serial startup guy. He has been a part of five amazing startups. He finds joy in being among a high concentration of talent with everyone working towards the same goal. He is an engineer at heart and has always been very hands-on with making impactful engineering decisions and learning from successful leaders and engineers throughout his career.

Dave Knuth, VP of Customer Services, has 25 years of experience in engineering, service delivery, and leadership. He runs the cloud development organization, site reliability team, backbone engineering group, and Graphiant QA test team and is responsible for all things DevOps at Graphiant. Dave has a history of delivering projects and services on time and on budget. From his earliest days at MCI, Dave has built an industry reputation as the person to turn to when you have to “get it done.”

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Matthew Krieg, VP of Sales and Marketing, is responsible for Marketing, Sales, Channels, and Business Development worldwide. He brings a 20+ year track record of success that includes sales and technical leadership positions at Elisity, Open Systems, and Viptela. Matt has strong experience growing companies in all phases of the technology lifecycle and is a powerful communicator about the benefits of adopting disruptive technologies for business transformation.

Woody Sessoms, Chief Business Officer, is responsible for leading business development and strategic partnerships. He spent 25 years at Cisco Systems, serving in various global leadership positions. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President of Cisco’s Global Service Provider Business. Prior to that, he was responsible for Cisco’s Global Enterprise Business. These responsibilities gave him a deep understanding of worldwide people, cultures, and practices. Before Cisco, Woody spent time at Burlington Industries, Rolm, IBM, and Siemens.

Adnan Ansari, VP of Operations and Finance, is a 20+ year veteran of the networking industry with a strong track record of building and managing business operations, support, distribution, and alliances. At Graphiant, he is responsible for finance, logistics, supply chain and order management, regulatory and export compliance, and facilities.

Stephanie Anderson, Director of Revenue Operations, wears many hats and uses her leadership and problem-solving skills to assist with the daily operation of an organization. Her experience in program management, project management, and early education allows her to provide department leaders with recommendations and consultation to improve teamwork.

Ida Khodami is a Partner based in San Diego with expertise in genomics, biotech, and operations. Ida joined TBC from Illumina, where she held multiple leadership positions across Engineering and Operations for over a decade. She built and led the first company validation consortium that resulted in FDA approval for the first ever Next-Generation- Sequencing platform: MiSeqDX. Over the past three years, she has led the global business strategy and operations for the Direct-to-Consumer genomics market. Ida has an M.Sc from University of Waterloo in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She is passionate about learning, interdisciplinary innovation, and helping the next generation of company builders realize their vision and create positive impact.

Andrew Smyth, a Partner at Atlantic Bridge, focuses on identifying and evaluating new investment opportunities. Andrew has helped lead investments into a number of Atlantic Bridge portfolio companies including Graphiant, Vectra.ai, Striim, Aizon, Elisity, Selector Software, Secondmind, and Logtrust (acquired by Insight Venture Partners).

Prior to joining Atlantic Bridge, Andrew was with Arma Partners in London as part of their M&A and Research practice, he started his career as a consultant with PWC and holds a MSc in Economics and Statistics from the University of London and a BSc in Business Management from the Dublin Institute of Technology.