Executive Team

Thomas Joyce

President and Chief Executive Officer

Tom is responsible for the strategic direction and general management of the company. He has 20 years of experience in product marketing, product management, and sales. Before joining Akorri, Tom worked at EMC Corporation for eight years where he was VP and GM of the IP Storage business unit. As VP of Platforms Marketing, Tom was responsible for EMC's flagship storage platform products, including Symmetrix, CLARiiON, Celerra, and Connectrix. Prior to that Tom also executed mergers and acquisitions as part of EMC's New Business Development group, and was instrumental in the acquisition of Data General and many other companies.

Rich Corley

Chief Technology Officer and Founder

Rich brings more than 20 years of experience leading and contributing to technology-based companies. Before founding Akorri, Rich was the founder and Executive Vice President at Pirus Networks, where he was responsible for the company's overall leadership, technical strategy, and product architecture leading up to its acquisition by Sun Microsystems in 2002. Previously, Rich was Director of Advanced Technology at Nortel. Earlier in his career, Rich held founding and engineering management positions at Aptis, Arris, Chipcom, Data General, and Concord Data Systems. Rich holds an MSEE from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a BSET from Northeastern University. Rich is an active member of the College of Engineering Industrial Advisory Board at Northeastern and was awarded the College of Engineering Outstanding Alumni Award in 2004.

John Gavin

Chief Operating Officer

John Gavin is responsible for leading Akorri’s financial, fulfillment, and support organizations. He brings more than 25 years of financial and operations experience from leading technology organizations. Prior to Joining Akorri, John served as COO and Interim General Manager for SMaL Camera Technologies which was acquired by Cypress Semiconductors. He also served as Vice President and CFO of Pirus, where he was instrumental in developing business strategies and optimizing planning processes that were critical to the company’s successful acquisition by Sun Microsystems. Prior to joining Pirus, John was Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for C-Port Corporation, where he was one of the chief architects of the $430 million merger of C-Port and Motorola. Previously, he held senior financial management positions at Compaq and Digital Equipment Corp., including Vice President of Finance, Sales and Marketing for North America.

Eric Fischer

Vice President of Sales

Eric Fischer is responsible for Akorri’s worldwide sales organization. Eric has more than 20 years of sales experience and a track record of driving early-stage companies to high growth. Prior to Akorri, Eric spent two years at OATSystems, Inc. as VP of Worldwide Sales. He was VP of Sales for eRoom Technology for six years and drove the integration after it was acquired by Documentum. Eric also held sales and business development roles at Powersoft Corporation (acquired by Sybase) and Cortex Corporation.

Bob Fusaro

Vice President of Channel Sales

Bob Fusaro brings over 25 years of sales and business development experience primarily in the software and professional services industries. Most recently, Bob served as Business Development Director for The Soma Group, a professional software consulting firm, where he defined, established and sold IT contract services. Prior to The Soma Group, Bob spent over ten years in various positions at EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions. Most recently he was Director of Software Business Development, where he identified and closed business opportunities with major strategic partners. While at EMC, he also served as Director of Software Product Marketing and as Regional Manager of Professional Services. Before his years at EMC, Fusaro held various positions at DMR Group, PTECH Inc., and Bachman Information Systems.

Steve Ricketts

Vice President of Marketing and Product Management

Steve Ricketts brings 24 years of sales and marketing experience within high growth technology companies to Akorri. In his most recent role, Steve was Program Director, WebSphere Portal at IBM Corporation - a role he took on after IBM purchased Bowstreet, where he was serving as Vice President of Marketing.  At IBM, Steve secured recognition for the company as the top rated Enterprise Portal vendor in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.  At Bowstreet, he formulated an expansion strategy that transformed the company from a “tools” vendor to the leader in portal-based composite applications. Prior to this Steve was Vice President of Marketing at Emptoris, where he was able to recruit a world-class marketing team and grow the company from no revenue to a $40 Million run rate over a four-year period. Steve was also a Co-founder and Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at ScanSoft (now Nuance, NASDAQ: NUAN) and held marketing and sales positions at Xerox and Nortel.

Paul Marichal

Vice President of Customer Support and Services

Paul Marichal is responsible for leading Akorri’s customer support and services team.  He has more than 25 years of experience at leading storage and data networking companies. Prior to joining Akorri, Paul served as CTO of Sandial, where he established and executed the company’s strategic technology direction. Previously, he served in various senior engineering management roles at Cabletron Systems, where he oversaw the development of many of the company’s high-speed networking products. Prior to that, Paul served in software engineering roles at Data General, where he was instrumental in the early-stage development of fundamental storage technologies such as SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) and RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks).

Peter Thompson 

Pete Thompson is responsible for leading Akorri’s Engineering and R&D teams. Pete has more than twenty years of experience in engineering and engineering management. Before joining Akorri, Pete held senior engineering and management positions at Sun Microsystems, Mission Critical Linux, and Digital Equipment Corporation. Pete holds an MSCS from Boston University and a BSEE from Northeastern University.