Leadership

Peter Wang has been developing commercial scientific computing and visualization software for over 15 years. He has extensive experience in software design and development across a broad range of areas, including 3D graphics, geophysics, large data simulation and visualization, financial risk modeling, and medical imaging. Peter’s interests in the fundamentals of vector computing and interactive visualization led him to co-found Anaconda (formerly Continuum Analytics). Peter leads the open source and community innovation group. As a creator of the PyData community and conferences, he devotes time and energy to growing the Python data science community and advocating and teaching Python at conferences around the world. Peter holds a BA in Physics from Cornell University.

With more than 25 years years of executive-level financial development experience for a wide range of businesses, Angela Pierce now provides financial stewardship and executive leadership at Anaconda. Angela is no stranger to crafting financial management plans for technology leaders. In her tenure as the CFO for AirStrip Technologies, a med-tech software company backed by Sequoia Capital, she supported the successful scale of the business and raised more than $100 million in equity and debt financing. Previously, as CFO of Trillion Partners, she spearheaded the effort to raise $60 million in debt and private equity for the business. As VP of Finance at Broadwing, Angela led the raising of more than $200 million and managed the company's M&A activities and investor relations functions.

Angela also previously managed financial services and corporate banking as an executive with The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi and Deutsche Bank. She is a CPA and has a Bachelors in Finance and an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.

Jessica has over a decade of HR experience focusing on all parts of the Human Resources umbrella. Prior to joining Anaconda, Jessica led the HR function for ClearDATA, a Healthcare cloud computing company, where she built the HR framework from ground up while leading recruiting efforts in opening their Austin HQ office. Prior to ClearDATA, Jessica was the HR Director for JMJ Associates, a global company in the oil and gas industry specializing in professional services in safety. She led a team responsible for core HR functions in EMEA, APAC, Europe, and the Americas. In her earlier career she worked for both small and fortune 50 companies in various HR roles.

Jessica graduated from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and Strategic Communication. She also attended The University of Texas and holds her Professional Human Resources Certification (PHR).

Kelly has spent more than 15 years helping technology brands tell compelling stories, solve customer problems with great products, and establish distinctive industry leadership positions. At Anaconda, Kelly leads worldwide communications, demand generation, creative and brand, as well as media and analyst engagement.

Kelly's career has included marketing leadership roles at the Wi-Fi Alliance trade association, where she built the global marketing organization that helped turn Wi-Fi into a household name. She went on to work at Bazaarvoice, where she established its first customer marketing function, oversaw demand generation, and ultimately led North America marketing for the company. Earlier in her career, Kelly has held product marketing, business development, and customer engagement roles in a variety of companies.

Kelly holds an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Communications from Loyola University of New Orleans.

With over 20 years of experience in companies that deliver software as a product, Nick now leads enterprise engineering at Anaconda. During his tenure here, he helped transform Anaconda from a services company into a product company. His leadership and implementation of Agile methodologies has helped Anaconda to produce software in a consistent, predictable manner to meet the demanding goals of our enterprise end users.

Nick possess a unique mixture of skills ranging from design and coding to management. His skills in product leadership and new product execution at Evariant helped them secure a $42M Series C round. At Click Security his initial prototype, Agile implementation, design, and direction of all new features led to an $8M Series A round, then to an $18M Series B round, and the eventual acquisition by AlertLogic. He was also a part of one of Austin's largest M&As as the UI designer behind TippingPoint Technologies, which was acquired by 3Com for $500M.

He has a B.S. in radio, television & film and a minor in business from The University of Texas at Austin.

Brian has spent the last 12 years building and leading Sales and Customer Success organizations in the tech industry in Austin, Texas. After beginning his sales career at Dell, he started on the path of leadership through stewardship. The next 10 years of his career were spent gaining insight and knowledge from exceptional leaders and mentors. At VMware, he led as a partner representative while selling through Dell. At Compass Learning and Tableau, he built both the Customer Success and Sales teams from scratch. Prior to his career in sales, Brian taught algebra and coached the swim team at Anderson High School. He has a passion for teaching and motivating while using the most up-to-date best practices for sales opportunity management and adult learning.

A self-proclaimed “data guy,” Brian Churchin holds a BS in mathematics from Delta State University, where he earned All American honors and was the captain of the swim team.

Lanham is the ex-CEO of Rackspace and co-founder of BuildGroup. BuildGroup is a software holding company that exclusively invests in founders and senior teams who have the grit to play the long game. Our model optimizes for the long term so founders can focus on building a great company instead of raising the next round. Our typical investment is a minority position in a software company that is preparing for major growth.

Lanham is driven by the challenge to build great tech companies that last for years, companies that are known for incredible products, services, and cultures that bring out the best in customers and employees.

He cut his teeth building a great company at Rackspace, where over his 14-year tenure he held multiple executive roles from CFO to CEO and served on its board of directors. During those years the company grew from a startup in San Antonio, TX to a publicly traded, multinational company with $1.5 billion in sales. While the numbers sound fun, the real fun was going on an incredible journey with great folks who care for each other and their customers.

Lanham would love to meet you in the real world, so please reach out. BuildGroup is always under construction at buildgroup.com.

Paul Sagan is a managing director at General Catalyst, the venture capital firm. He invests in enterprise software and internet infrastructure businesses. Before joining General Catalyst, Paul worked at Akamai Technologies, Inc., where he became employee #15 and chief operating officer in 1998. He joined the company before it delivered its first product, and when he left the board of directors 21 years later, revenues were approaching $3 billion. Paul became Akamai’s president in 1999, and he was appointed CEO and elected to the board of directors in 2005. Paul served as chief executive through 2012 and as a director until 2019. He is a director of two public companies, VMware (NYSE: VMW) and Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA).

Paul served as senior advisor to the World Economic Forum from 1997 to 1998. Previously, Paul was a founder of Road Runner, the world’s first broadband cable modem service, and Pathfinder, one of the early Web properties that pioneered Internet advertising.

President Barack Obama appointed Paul to the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee in 2010, and he served until January 2017. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker appointed Paul to chair the Commonwealth’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from 2015 until 2019. Paul is a three-time Emmy Award winner for broadcast journalism in New York, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2008, and the 2009 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the technology category. The World Economic Forum named him a Global Leader for Tomorrow in 1996. Paul is a graduate of Northwestern University.

Gray is Managing Director at BuildGroup LLC, an operator-led investment company providing permanent capital to entrepreneurs building the next generation of technology businesses. Gray’s 30 years in the software/IT industry includes 9 years as CEO of Alert Logic and 8 years as Co-Founder and CEO of VeriCenter. Both Alert Logic and VeriCenter were fast-growing market leaders pioneering new business models in cybersecurity and IT infrastructure. At BuildGroup, Gray is focused on identifying the next generation of business model pioneers, making investments, and working with BuildGroup portfolio companies to ensure they benefit from Gray’s decades of experience. Gray currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Anaconda, Inc.; Cybrary, Inc.; and Houston Exponential.

Peter Wang has been developing commercial scientific computing and visualization software for over 15 years. He has extensive experience in software design and development across a broad range of areas, including 3D graphics, geophysics, large data simulation and visualization, financial risk modeling, and medical imaging. Peter’s interests in the fundamentals of vector computing and interactive visualization led him to co-found Anaconda (formerly Continuum Analytics). Peter leads the open source and community innovation group. As a creator of the PyData community and conferences, he devotes time and energy to growing the Python data science community and advocating and teaching Python at conferences around the world. Peter holds a BA in Physics from Cornell University.

Travis is a co-founder of Anaconda, Inc. and holds a PhD from the Mayo Clinic and BS and MS degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering from Brigham Young University. Since 1997, he has worked extensively with Python for numerical and scientific programming, most notably as the primary developer of the NumPy package, and as a founding contributor of the SciPy package. He is also the author of the definitive Guide to NumPy.

Travis is a board member of Anaconda and advises on furthering the company's open source projects. He also has served as a director of the Python Software Foundation and as a director of NumFOCUS.

Michael is a computational mathematician specializing in optimization, signal processing, and simulation, and a contributor in classroom, research, and commercial settings. He assists clients in the development of advanced Python data science applications using Anaconda Distribution. As a recognized subject matter expert in convex optimization, Michael’s open source modeling tools for optimization have twice been recognized with awards from the International Society for Mathematical Programming.

Prior to joining Anaconda, Michael served as a consulting assistant professor in the Information Systems Laboratory, a research associate in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University, and a staff scientist in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology.

Michael received a PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.

With more than 20 years in the technology industry, Stephen now serves as the VP of Product at Anaconda. Stephen and the team are focused on shepherding the open-source community shaping the future of AI, machine learning, and data science while building solutions to allow organizations to collaborate, govern and deploy their Python and R data science in enterprise data centers and cloud.

Prior to joining Anaconda, Stephen Nolan held several leadership roles at Rackspace for over 12 years. Most recently he served as General Manager of Rackspace Data Services, a portfolio of database and data analytics services that enabled customers to scale fast while focusing on their core business rather than the operations of their data layer.As General Manager, he led ObjectRocket, A Rackspace Company, providing an enterprise-grade Database as a Service platform delivering the best in class open-source database technologies. Under his leadership tenure at ObjectRocket, the company experienced significant growth and scale while expanding its service offerings and adding the industry's most widely-used public cloud options to its platform.

Prior to his leadership in Rackspace Data Services and ObjectRocket, Nolan served as Director of Product and Operations at Rackspace in San Francisco and San Antonio. Before joining Rackspace Stephen focused on enabling and delivering Enterprise Storage services on the EMC product line at Dell Inc.