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Autonomic
Autonomic

Our Leadership

Our nimble, dynamic group is led by individuals who set out to solve the mobility challenges of tomorrow — today. This spirit resonates throughout Autonomic, in every employee, team, and office. We take pride in our software. But it is our people who truly embody the visionary mindset needed to create transformative change.

The Transportation Mobility Cloud improves people’s lives and creates better mobility experiences. Our leadership team embodies the visionary mindset of our product.

Discover Our Values

Rich Strader
CEO

Rich is inspired by how technology can be used to design and develop solutions for connectivity. He brings 30 years of experience to Autonomic, having held executive roles managing the evolution, infrastructure, and product solutions for connected vehicles at Ford. He previously oversaw the development of the technology underpinning Ford’s mobility business, including the FordPass platform, vehicle management as a service, and transportation as a service.

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Manish Mishra
Chief Product Officer

Manish has spent his career defining, developing, and implementing products and strategy geared towards engineering and operating multi-cloud, multi-tenant, large-scale, and high-volume SaaS platforms and solutions. Prior to Autonomic, he led Cloud Engineering, SRE, DevOps, IoT Solutions, UX/UI, and Program Management at Aeris Communications. Most recently, his focus has been on the implementation of IoT-based solutions and the successful launches of connected vehicle platforms for several global OEMs.

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Julie Davies
COO and General Counsel

Julie has over a decade of experience advising public and private companies, venture capitalists, and corporate investors in matters arising during every stage of a company’s life cycle. Prior to Autonomic, she was a partner in the Palo Alto office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

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Brandon Sproul
Senior Director of Engineering

Brandon brings 14 years of software engineering and management experience to Autonomic. After working with Telus Health, he joined the team at Xtreme Labs (later acquired by Pivotal), where he worked on major apps for companies such as Facebook, Uber, and Twitter and which led him to become a Director. In this role, he acted as a client liaison between delivery teams and Ford while the FordPass app was under development. Given his experiences creating mobile products for Uber and Ford, his professional interests include the IoT and the automotive and ride-hailing space. He believes that his work with the TMC is a clear realization of his passions.

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Josh Kwan
Director of Engineering

Josh has been in the tech industry for over 10 years as a software engineer and engineering manager. Before Autonomic, he spent time with Xtreme Labs, where he established architecture and coding styles for iOS applications with millions of users. Josh remained with the Xtreme Labs team as a Senior Software Engineer and Engineering Manager after the company was acquired by Pivotal Labs. He is a rock climber in his free time, but his latest adventure is fatherhood.

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Aimme Keener
Director of Engineering

Aimme brings 25 years of experience in software development to Autonomic after previous engagements with Cengage Learning, Flagstar Bank, Xede Consulting, Great Lakes Consulting, and EDS. She takes pride in having led the team that created all of Autonomic’s SDKs and the team that built Autonomic’s first open-source libraries. She is passionate about internal hackathons and their ability to inspire employee engagement through monumental ideas. Aimme is a frequent conference organizer and cares deeply about supporting the community. When she’s not building up team members or focusing on customer experience, she can be found introducing middle schoolers in rural areas of Michigan to software development.

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Leonora Teng
Head of Finance

Leonora is an industry veteran with over 30 years of experience. Prior to joining Autonomic, she worked with All Turtles, Clever, Evernote, Marklogic, PayPal, and KPMG. She loves building out finance functions in high-growth companies, including M&A activities and international tax structure. Her professional passions include learning about new technologies, and she enjoys supporting the leadership team in determining metrics to make decisions.

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Eric Herde
Director of Engineering

Eric brings 10 years of experience in software development to his role as Director of Engineering at Autonomic. He is driven to solve problems in the fields of cloud infrastructure, software reliability, and performance. His mission at Autonomic is to empower engineers to maximize their utility with the tools that they can’t live without.

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Sara Menna
Director of Recruiting

Sara quickly made an impact as one of the first engineering recruiters with Alphabet. During her 10 years with the company, she eventually became the Staffing Manager and oversaw the engineering hiring for Google across nine national locations. After many years of industry experience in fast-paced hiring, she moved to Alphabet’s X to help build a top-notch recruiting team and grow the engineering teams for several projects: Waymo, Loon, Glass, G-Cam, and Verily, among others. She now brings this breadth of experience to Autonomic as our Director of Recruiting. She is enthusiastic about solving hard problems and learning new things, and when she’s not at work, she loves spending time with family and doing most anything outdoors and near water.

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George Tuma
Vice President of Engineering Operations

As Vice President of Engineering Operations, George’s 20 years of experience with early-stage technology companies inspires Autonomic’s growth. Prior to joining Autonomic, he worked at Pivotal Software and helped create a world-class resource for organizations looking to build apps, modernize apps, accelerate platform development, and become more educated about IT modernization, particularly in cloud-native and modern app environments. From electric vehicles to self-driving cars, he believes that Ford and Autonomic are changing the world for the better. Outside of the office, he loves dogs and anything with a motor.

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Mark Protas
Director of Product

Mark brings over 20 years of experience in product management and engineering to the Autonomic team. His work has spanned many verticals, including automotive, financial technology, and online advertising. He is passionate about building effective teams, developing a deep understanding of customers’ pain points, and evolving highly available systems. He remains engaged with his work by helping other product professionals grow their careers; solve hard, ambiguous problems; and derive customer value from massive datasets.

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Greg Haskins
Vice President of Engineering

As Senior Director of Engineering in our Detroit office, Greg offers 12 years of software engineering experience in the software industry. Prior to Autonomic, his professional experiences include consulting with large and small companies in the Midwest, with roles ranging from coder and coach to senior leadership and executive consultant. At Autonomic, he gets to use modern technology to reignite innovation in a century-old automotive industry. He’s excited every day to work with a fantastic team of smart, caring colleagues.

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Amanda Lachapelle
Vice President of Human Resources

Prior to joining Autonomic in Palo Alto, Amanda was involved in the development of several companies during their early stages and remained integral until successful exits and/or acquisitions occurred. Her background in human resources includes experience with fast-growing companies and global, multinational organizations. She is passionate about creating and supporting human resources strategies in expanding tech environments.

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Srinivas Rajagopalan
Director of Product

Srinivas offers more than 28 years of software industry experience as the Director of Product in Autonomic’s Palo Alto office. His career has spanned the areas of engineering, professional services, and product management. He is continually excited by the prospect of learning and leveraging the latest technologies to solve business problems.

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Jarrett Quan-Hin
Director of Product

Jarrett’s 10 years in Agile Software Product Management includes extensive work in front-end mobile application development and cloud service development. His previous experience includes time with Little Guy Games, Xtreme Labs, and Pivotal Labs. Having worked on early versions of the FordPass app, Jarrett also supported proof-of-concept businesses such as Transportation as a Service (TaaS), Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT), and Commuter Shuttle Service. Today, he continues to build out the APIs that will empower new and existing applications and use cases. He considers the opportunity to be involved in an industry shift that will transform the way customers think about and use their vehicles — and provide manufacturers with the potential to deliver additional value — to be a constant motivator for his work at Autonomic.

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Amit Jethani
Director of Product

Before joining the Autonomic team in Toronto, Amit was a Product Manager at Avid Life Media, Pivotal Labs, and Top Hat. His experience in the online dating/matchmaking, banking, retail/loyalty, and EdTech domains served as his introduction to the tech industry. In his free time, he enjoys third-wave coffee, mechanical keyboards, color grading (mostly for overproduced dog videos), and cooking one-pot meals. He wakes up every day excited about working with an awesome team to build the connected car platform of the future.

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Mel Zukowski
Vice President of Product

Prior to becoming Autonomic’s Senior Director of Product and Delivery in our Detroit office, Mel played critical roles in the successful delivery of highly visible projects such as the Ford Connected Vehicle Programs, Ford to Autonomic Cloud migration, Tweddle Groups Technology Center Start Up, Cengage Learning’s highest-profile and investment products, GM/OnStar, GM’s launch of XM Satellite Radio, and the Sustain Organization start-up. Her 20+ years of experience has allowed her to lead teams that focus on delivery, goals, decisions, and insightful recommendations. She loves complex problems, working with talented teams, and building truly impactful solutions.

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Tyler D’Orazio
Director of Production Engineering

As Director of Production Engineering, Tyler brings 10 years of technical operations and software engineering leadership experience to Autonomic. After leading a team of support engineers in a self-service solutions company, Tyler joined Autonomic with a passion for leveraging technology to automate processes. He is interested in using artificial intelligence to solve complex problems such as the aggregation of data across multiple data points on the TMC to pinpoint precise customer issues. His passion for leadership and innovation is evident as he guides team members and customers through processes that improve product efficiency and effectiveness.

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Alpa Shah
Director of Engineering

Alpa’s 20+ years in enterprise software have yielded expertise in cloud-native applications and multi-tenant, large-scale SaaS platforms. Her experience with IoT and connected vehicles in multiple regions led her to Autonomic’s engineering team. She enjoys building her knowledge of cloud services, distributed systems, data engineering, microservices, and operational excellence. Her mission is to always make tomorrow better than today through a passion for technology and inclusive teams.

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Karthi Sadasivan
Director of Engineering

Karthi brings extensive experience leading organizations in distributed systems, cloud engineering, DevOps, security, and production engineering with previous director positions at Happiest Minds Technologies, DocuSign, and Aeris Communications. Karthi is keenly interested in helping organizations scale during the growth phase. She has repeatedly built collaborative, global teams across Asia, Latin America, and multiple locations in North America. She is devoted to a company-wide sense of belonging through workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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Mahesh Venugopala
Director of Security

As Director of Security, Mahesh builds high-performing teams that deliver solutions to protect vehicles on the road. His professional experience includes roles in product security, security architecture, cryptography, key management, encryption in transit and rest, cloud security, secure software development life cycle (SDLC), and secure DevOps. In his free time, he enjoys photography, gardening, woodworking, and learning new technologies.

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Dave Roach
Vice President of Field Operations

Dave brings over 35 years of industry experience to his role in Autonomic’s Detroit office. Prior to joining the Autonomic team, he worked alongside companies such as Pivotal Software, EMC, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems in various customer success, digital transformation, technology consulting, enterprise architecture, sales, and customer support roles. He is passionate about helping our customers transform their businesses and achieve their goals.

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How We Work

Developing the leading platform for connected vehicles requires the energy, curiosity, and mindfulness of remarkable individuals across the globe.

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