Tom Cook

Chief Executive Officer and President

Tom Cook, Chief Executive Officer and President, is responsible for guiding the company’s strategy and vision. Cook has more than 20 years of experience leading growth stage technology companies. Prior to joining Permabit, Cook led and completed the sale of web application developer, Curl Corporation to a division of the Sumitomo Corporation. Prior to Curl, Cook was President and CEO of audio tool maker, Cakewalk Software (acquired by Roland Corporation), which he led from start-up to worldwide market leadership. He also served as a director of or advisor to more than a dozen companies and organizations.

Cook has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, Dartmouth College, and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard University.

Jered Floyd

Chief Technology Officer and Founder

Jered Floyd, Chief Technology Officer and Founder, is responsible for exploring strategic future directions for Permabit’s products, and providing thought leadership to guide the company’s data optimization initiatives. He has previously deployed Permabit’s effective software development methodologies and was responsible for developing Permabit product’s core protocol and initial server and system architectures.

Prior to Permabit, Floyd was a Research Scientist on the Microbial Engineering project at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, working to bridge the gap between biological and computational systems. Earlier at Turbine, Floyd developed a robust integration language for managing active objects in a massively distributed online virtual environment. Floyd holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He is also the Co–Chair of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Fixed Content Aware Storage (FCAS) Technical Work Group, responsible for developing the XAM standard, and frequently speaks at events on technology and software development practices.

Michael Ivanov

Vice President of Marketing

Michael Ivanov, Vice President of Marketing, is responsible for Permabit’s product marketing execution, new business development, and overall marketing strategy to help drive sales for the company.

Ivanov has over 15 years of experience in the storage management industry. Before joining Permabit, Ivanov headed CommVault Systems’ Archive Center of Excellence, a dedicated cross–functional team focused on CommVault’s enterprise archive solutions. Prior to CommVault, Ivanov was vice president of product marketing for Mimosa Systems. At Mimosa, he was responsible for all areas of marketing and was instrumental in defining and launching both the product and the company brand. Before Mimosa Systems, Ivanov held senior management roles in product management and marketing for Veritas Software. Over the course of his nine-year tenure at the company, which merged with Symantec in 2005, Ivanov was responsible for the overall Microsoft Windows strategy and managed the Backup Exec, Volume Manager, Storage Replicator, Storage Migrator, NetBackup Professional, and WinINSTALL product lines. Michael holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Central Florida.

Katherine Boardman

Vice President of Human Resources

Katherine Boardman, SPHR, Vice President of Human Resources is responsible for designing and managing Permabit’s human resources with a focus on growth, retention, leadership development, and assimilation of new team members. Boardman is a senior human resource professional with more than 15 years of HR experience from start–ups and venture–backed companies to leading professional service firms. Prior to joining Permabit, Boardman worked as a member of the human resources team in the Boston office of PricewaterhouseCoopers and focused on recruitment as well as facilitated leadership training for management staff.

Consulting to senior management on strategic and operational Human Resources issues, she has managed, designed, and implemented HR functions and initiatives in environments faced with the opportunities and challenges of change and growth. Katherine has played a key role in the HR functions with companies and clients in both the public and private sectors with a focus on high tech, biotechnology and professional services entities. Katherine holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Guilford College. She is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management Association (SHRM) and Northeast Human Resources Association (NEHRA).

Brett Hawkes

Vice President of Business Development

Brett Hawkes, Vice President of Business Development, is responsible for developing Permabit’s alliances and OEM relationships with strategic industry partners.

Hawkes comes to Permabit from Onaro Inc, acquired by Network Appliance in 2008. He has more than 25 years of sales and sales management experience, with over 15 years in the storage industry. At Onaro, Hawkes was responsible for the development of key tier 1 storage OEMs. Prior to Onaro, he managed OEM relations for Aarohi Communications and Vixel both resulting in acquisitions by Emulex Corp. Earlier in his career, he held sales and sales management positions with CommVault Systems, StorageTek and Stratus Computer. Hawkes holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Syracuse University.

Michael Fortson

Vice President of Engineering

Michael Fortson, Vice President of Engineering, is responsible for Permabit’s engineering, quality assurance, product support, and IT teams. In addition, he works with OEM engineering teams to ensure successful adoption of Permabit’s Albireo deduplication technologies.

Fortson has over 10 years of software design and development experience in the data storage industry. Prior to his current role, he led the development of Permabit’s scale-out storage technology, Enterprise Archive, and drove engineering for Albireo from early prototype to production. During his tenure Permabit has been awarded 26 patents in deduplication technologies and other core areas.

Before joining Permabit, Fortson was Director of Software Engineering at OVEN Digital. While at Carnegie Mellon University, he was a research programmer at the Digital Mapping Laboratory, working on applications of computer vision to automated cartography.

Fortson holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.