About / Management
Dr. Mark Allen
President, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
CEO Vision
Dr. Allen founded Corticon in 2000. Under his leadership, Corticon has become the leading independent business rules platform. Prior to founding Corticon, Dr. Allen developed rules-based systems to assist healthcare workers with clinical decision support. Dr. Allen's experiences with the shortcomings of traditional business rule engines led to the discovery of several key innovations, making rules technology far easier to use for business process automation. These innovations provide the foundation for the Corticon solution, which is now applied across diverse industries such as financial services, government, manufacturing and insurance.
Dr. Allen has a B.S. in Applied Physics from Columbia University, and an M.D. from the University of California Los Angeles, where he resigned from an Emergency Medicine residency program to found and lead Corticon.
Pedram Abrari
Chief Technology Officer, Founder
Corticon Technology
Mr. Abrari is considered by many as one of the brightest innovators and thought leaders in the Business Rules domain. He has collaborated with Ronald G. Ross on his publication Principles of Business Rule Approach. He has nearly 20 years of experience in enterprise software, including twelve years as a technical lead and architect. Prior to founding Corticon, Mr. Abrari was an independent consultant at Western Asset, where he performed the first successful integration of a Java application server and an inference engine. Prior to that he founded and built the engineering team at PeopleMover Inc., an enterprise software startup in Manhattan Beach, CA, which was later acquired by Opus360 (NASDAQ: OPUS). Mr. Abrari began his career at Rockwell International, where he worked on mission critical applications for the space shuttle and other rockets. Mr. Abrari has a B.S. in Computer Science from UCLA and an M.S. in Computer Science from USC. He was also an instructor at California State University Northridge.
Bob Schoettle
Chief Marketing Officer
Why Corticon?
Mr. Schoettle brings over 25 years of high technology marketing leadership experience to Corticon. He has a strong track record of successfully bringing new products and applications to market as well as rapidly driving revenue growth in emerging companies. Recently, Mr. Schoettle spent six years as interim CMO/Vice President of Marketing for a series of venture funded private companies including Panasas, SenSage, Innopath, Qumu and Kelkea, securing venture capital investments and driving successful exits. Previously, Bob served as Vice President of Marketing for iPass and Intraspect and also held key marketing management positions with ROLM/IBM. He holds a B.S. degree from the University of Virginia and a M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
John Sines
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Sines has over 25 years of experience in finance and management in the high-tech industry. His expertise in public and private financing has raised a combined total of $370 million in debt and equity financing. Mr. Sines most recently served as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations for ClairMail, a private start-up, where he helped to reposition the company from enterprise mobile access to selling to major financial and insurance institutions for secure mobile customer access. Mr. Sines has served as CFO for E-H International (EHI) and President to one of their four subsidiaries; CFO for AppStream, Viquity, Cofix, Versity.com. Mr. Sines received his California CPA designation in 1979 while in public accounting at Eadie & Payne CPA's, and holds a bachelor's degree from California State University, San Bernardino with a dual concentration in finance and accounting.
Mike Bleyle
Senior Vice President of Client Services
Mr. Bleyle comes to Corticon with 11 years of experience in professional services, marketing, and operations management in both high technology hardware and software companies. Prior to Corticon, Mr. Bleyle ran technical sales and implementation teams in North America for ECNET, a global supply-chain management software firm, supporting the mission-critical procurement and logistics requirements of major electronics manufacturers. As a Senior Marketing Manager at Applied Materials, Inc., Mr. Bleyle was responsible for three teams of project managers and marketing engineers, delivering semiconductor capital equipment worth more than $500 million annually to customers in North America, Japan, and Korea. Prior to Applied Materials Mr. Bleyle served as a Naval Officer aboard nuclear-powered cruisers, with responsibility for the safe maintenance and operation of reactor electronics, as well as the ship's nuclear training program. Mr. Bleyle holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia, and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.
Don Ames
Vice President of Industry Solutions
Mr. Ames comes to Corticon with over 20 years of IT leadership experience, specializing in product management and technology strategy in the insurance industry. Mr. Ames most recently was Chief Technology Officer for Precedent Insurance, where he was responsible for creating Precedent's award-winning website, which employed Corticon's BRMS to deliver instant underwriting decisions to consumers. As Director of Production Support for M-Plan, Indiana's largest provider-owned HMO, Mr. Ames was responsible for managing all strategic outsourced software and services. Previously, Mr. Ames was Director of Product Management for ChannelPoint (acquired by The TriZetto Group in 2002) where he was responsible for managing web-based customer acquisition products. Prior to joining ChannelPoint, Mr. Ames held management positions at MCI Communications, ConAgra Foods and Stanford University.
Bill Conaghan
Sales, North America - Central
Mr. Conaghan has over 20 years of enterprise sales and marketing experience and joined Corticon in 2008. Prior to Corticon, Bill was Vice President of Regional Sales at BEA Systems, an enterprise software middleware provider acquired by Oracle. At BEA Mr. Conaghan was responsible for regional sales for BEA's Business Interactive Division where he had nine Sale Managers in seven different locations reporting to him. He holds a BS in Business Administration from Kansas State University.
Gary Cutress
Sales, EMEA
Mr. Cutress has more than 21 years of experience in the software industry working at all levels of the business, and is responsible for Corticon sales and services across EMEA. Prior to Corticon Mr. Cutress was with Global360, an existing Corticon partner, where he was responsible for the implementation and growth of the EMEA & Emerging Markets regions with direct sales and key partners, and achieved exceptional growth. Earlier, he was EMEA Managing Director for Attunity as well as European Sales Director for Metastorm, a leading company in the BPM space. During his 5 year tenure he increased EMEA revenues on average over 30% per year.
Lewis Bolla
Sales, North America - Northeast
Mr. Bolla brings over 20 years of successful enterprise sales management to Corticon. Prior to joining the company he worked with Venafi to establish and grow market presence with Fortune 500 companies in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions. Mr. Bolla also worked for Postini, a SaaS internet security provider acquired by Google in 2007. Earlier, he played a key role launching the US operations for Beta Systems Software AG, driving rapid growth and leading to an acquisition by Allen Systems Group. Prior to that, he worked with venture funded private companies including Entact, later sold to ASG, and Sane Solutions which was acquired by Unica Software.
Glen Gamma
Sales, North America - Southeast
Mr. Gamma brings over 25 years of IT sales experience to Corticon. Prior to Corticon he was with IBM/FileNet where his team achieved 200%of target, Vignette where his region was the largest revenue producer in the company and Computer Associates where he managed 100 employees and grew a $120M business. Mr. Gamma was also an early employee at Sun Microsystems and spent 13 years in a variety of management positions including leading Sun's Southeast region where he built a $250M business. He began his career at Burroughs Corporation.
Bret Waugh
Sales, Western Region and Federal
Mr. Waugh brings more than 20 years of software industry experience in sales, marketing, and business development. Prior to Corticon he was with Vitria Technology where he managed a direct and indirect sales team across the United States and Latin America. Previously at Clarify, Inc., he pioneered the company's alliances strategy including successful partner relationships with Ernst & Young (now CapGemini), BearingPoint (now Deloitte), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (now IBM BCS). Mr. Waugh has also worked in many venture backed startup endeavors including being a co-founder and leading the sales efforts at Covalent, Inc. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business & Commerce Administration from the University of Alabama.