John Vitalie
Chief Executive Officer
John is a seasoned executive, board director, and CEO renowned for driving innovation, growth, financial performance, and customer success.
Before joining Aktana, he led global teams across various technology domains, including AI/ML, SaaS, CRM, and CX. Notably, he spearheaded the scaling of the Healthcare & Life Science business for Salesforce and Siebel Systems, and he led the CX business for Oracle.
John has served as CEO for three different software companies, mostly recently at Aizon. Under his leadership, Aizon pioneered a new market segment by introducing an advanced GxP AI and data management platform specifically designed to optimize biopharma manufacturing. In 2022 he was recognized as one of the Top 25 Biotech CEOs by the Healthcare Technology Report.
John has served as a board member for The Tech Museum of Innovation and eHI (Electronic Healthcare Initiative), while actively participating in various Silicon Valley and Stanford University non-profit associations. He holds a BS degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s business honors program and is an alumnus of the esteemed Stanford Executive Program.
Derek Choy
President & Chief Product Officer
As co-founder of Aktana, Derek spent the last decade developing and refining Aktana’s product, evangelizing Aktana’s vision in the life sciences industry, and delivering Aktana’s products and services to customers across four continents to establish Aktana as the global leader in decision support for life sciences. Now as chief operating officer, Derek is responsible for strategic definition and scalable execution of Aktana’s vision. In this role, he oversees strategy, product, customer success, and services at Aktana.
Prior to co-founding Aktana, Derek held a number of different roles in technology and services sector, developing his expertise in sales force optimization, change management, and technology development and implementation. He drove initiatives to enter new markets and develop new products at Intuit, developed and implemented strategies for a diverse range of public and private sector clients at The Boston Consulting Group, worked at several large law firms in Australia and Hong Kong, and co-founded a medical IT company in Australia.
Derek has dual degrees in computer science and law (honors) from the University of Melbourne.
Mark Desrosiers
Chief Revenue Officer
As Chief Revenue Officer, Mark is responsible for the global sales organization and global revenue growth, as well as ensuring our enterprise customers ultimately achieve their targeted business outcomes and ROI.
Mark is a seasoned sales executive with more than two decades of leadership experience with market leaders in the technology space. He played a pivotal role at Salesforce for more than eight years in multiple sales leadership roles and ultimately became responsible for North American Platform sales. Mark’s data-driven approach and expertise in client partnerships have consistently driven growth and achieved ambitious targets.
In addition to Salesforce, Mark held pivotal positions in other industry-leading companies, including Chief Revenue Officer at Copado, Chief Revenue Officer at Impact, and Group Vice President at Oracle, where his influence and transformative leadership inspired colleagues and emerging sales leaders alike.
Mark holds a BA from University of Maine and is based in our headquarters in San Francisco. When he’s not working long hours, you can find him sailing on San Francisco Bay.
Clay Hausmann
Chief Growth Officer
As Chief Growth Officer, Clay oversees Aktana’s strategic alliances, marketing strategy and business development. Before taking on this role, Clay served as Aktana’s Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Marketing Officer.
Clay has spent the last 25 years in technology marketing, beginning his career on the agency side leading go-to-market campaigns and communication programs for brands such as LG, Sun Microsystems, and Advent Software. He spent six years at Plantronics as vice president of corporate marketing where he led the largest rebranding effort in the company’s 50-year history. Clay also served as vice president of marketing for oneID, a digital identity management company funded by Khosla Ventures.
Clay spent several years pursuing screenwriting and was a finalist for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. He also leads a marketing consultancy called treatment. that utilizes the methods of the screenwriter to help brands build and tell their unique story. Clay graduated from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University with a BS in broadcast journalism.
David Logue
Chief Commercial Officer
As Chief Commercial Officer, David plays a key role in setting the strategic direction of the company and oversees strategic alliances. He brings more than two decades of experience in the life science industry, most recently as Chief Strategy Officer at Tact.ai, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Veeva Systems, and previously as a consulting Partner at Accenture.
At Tact.ai David led the life sciences strategy and execution. Before that he was responsible for go-to-market strategies for Veeva Commercial Cloud in Europe, and prior to that David spent 20 years as a Consulting Partner at Accenture focused on digital strategy projects and large-scale business transformation programs in the pharma and healthcare industries.
His experience covers the full value chain in Life Sciences, but his current focus is in the Commercial & Medical domains, helping customers’ Sales, Marketing & Medical teams be more successful.
David holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Psychology from University College Dublin and a Business Studies degree from the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.
Dmitri Daveynis
SVP of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer
As SVP of Engineering and CTO, Dmitri is responsible for championing innovation through strategic and operational aspects of software architecture, product development and cloud operations. A seasoned technology executive, he brings more than 20 years of software engineering and technology operations leadership experience in both consumer and commercial markets.
Before joining Aktana, Dmitri served as VP of Engineering at Verint, a leading global provider of customer engagement, security and business intelligence solutions, where he was responsible for leading global engineering teams and overseeing product development of Workforce Management and Experience Management product portfolios. Prior to Verint, Dmitri was SVP of Engineering at Capsilon, a leading provider of AI-powered mortgage automation solutions. His career also includes CTO / VP / SVP Engineering leadership roles at Quantros, HP and Kodak.
Dmitri is based in San Francisco and holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Mathematics from Belarus University as well as an MBA from the University of Rochester.
Pini Ben-or
Chief Science Officer
Pini is an experienced technology leader who oversees artificial intelligence (AI) and analytic innovation at Aktana. He has spent much of his career focused on improving business decisions using advanced analytics, optimization, business intelligence, and machine learning. In addition to being a data science expert, Pini enjoys and excels at building highly capable teams and nurturing a culture of innovation.
Prior to Aktana, Pini served as Global Head of Analytics at Actimize where he helped transform the company from reliance on rule systems and expert models to deploying fully agile machine-learning-based models for financial crime detection. Throughout his career Pini has introduced analytics innovations in the applications of machine learning, data management, operations optimization, marketing channel optimization, and business intelligence. He has multiple patents and patents pending, most recently in the area of machine-learning on network graph data.
Pini has a BSc in Physics, Mathematics, and Philosophy from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a MA and MPhil in Philosophy from Columbia University in NY, where his research areas were Decision Theory, AI, and Philosophy of Physics.
Manny Triggiano
SVP Professional Services
As SVP of Professional Services, Manny is responsible for leading the Services organization to achieve the highest levels of client satisfaction, operational efficiency and cost effectiveness in the areas of client management, implementation, managed services and support. An experienced program leader, he also oversees Aktana’s Services and Customer Impact & Analytics Centers of Excellence.
Prior to joining Aktana, Manny spent five years as the COO of Theorem, where he led the Client Services, Delivery, IT, Marketing and HR teams while supporting Sales and setting the company’s strategic direction. Before Theorem, Manny spent 20 years at IMS health (now IQVIA), where held a number of leadership roles related to process and quality improvement, consulting delivery and client services—including VP of Quality Management and VP of Global Delivery and Customer Support.
Manny is based in New Jersey and holds a B.S. in industrial engineering and an MBA from Rutgers University. He has also attended numerous executive training programs associated with the University of Pennsylvania and holds a project management certificate from George Washington University.
Karen Byrnes
Vice President, Finance
Karen currently serves as VP of Finance, where she is responsible for overseeing Aktana’s financial planning & analysis as well as the accounting functions. An accomplished financial executive, Karen has more than 20 years of hands-on experience working at tech start-ups.
She has held leadership positions in a full range of finance and accounting functions, leading organizations through numerous successful rounds of venture funding and two acquisitions.
Prior to joining Aktana, Karen held leadership roles at Paraccel, Inc and EWI, Inc as well as several other entrepreneurial engagements. She has a BA from UC San Diego and an MBA from the University of Washington with an emphasis in technology.
Kris Hinckley
Vice President, People
As VP of People, Kris is responsible for creating and aligning Aktana’s people strategy to enable our business to achieve its key objectives and results. Throughout an employee’s lifecycle, she and her team provide the frameworks and support to ensure Aktana’s talent and leadership are empowered to succeed. Kris has more than 20 years of experience in leading successful teams in fast-paced, performance-based companies.
Before joining Aktana, Kris led the Talent Acquisition function at SoFi, a high-growth Fintech start-up. Prior to SoFi, she led Customer Service Operations at both Peet’s Coffee & Tea and UPS.
Kris holds a BS in Business Administration and Marketing from Eastern Montana College/Montana State University and is based in the San Francisco Bay area.