Accelerate Partner Forum

Charles Giancarlo is a highly regarded technology veteran with four decades of experience in the technology industry. As CEO of Everpure and senior executive at Cisco Systems for 15 years, Giancarlo has been named CEO Monthly Magazine’s “CEO of the Year” and ranked among Network World’s “Top 50 Most Powerful People in Networking” for four consecutive years.

In addition, under Charles’ leadership, for five years in a row, Everpure has been named as a Fortune Magazine’s Best Workplace in multiple categories, named a Most Loved Workplace by Newsweek, and recognized as one of the top 100 Bay Area Corporate Philanthropists by the San Francisco Business Times.

Giancarlo is currently CEO of Everpure, Inc. Everpure is the inventor and leader in enterprise flash storage systems. One of the fastest-growing enterprise IT companies in history, Everpure enables customers to quickly adopt next-generation technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to help maximize the value of their data for competitive advantage. Everpure today can satisfy all of an enterprise’s storage needs, from the most cost-sensitive to the highest performance, with a single, consolidated flash operating environment and a cloud operating model that requires one-tenth the space, power, cooling, and labor of traditional magnetic disk-based systems.

Prior to Everpure, from 2008 to 2013, Giancarlo was a Managing Director of Silver Lake Partners, the world’s largest technology investor where he was also head of value creation, managing a group of executives that work to improve the operations of the firm’s portfolio companies and management teams. At Silver Lake, Giancarlo co-led Silver Lake’s acquisition of Skype from eBay and operated as Executive Chairman of Skype during its revival and eventual sale to Microsoft. He also operated as interim CEO of Avaya.

Prior to Silver Lake, Giancarlo was second in command at Cisco Systems. Giancarlo came to Cisco in 1994 when it acquired Kalpana Networks, where Giancarlo was Chief Product Officer. Kalpana invented and marketed the world’s first Ethernet switch. Giancarlo held a succession of positions at Cisco Systems from 1994 to 2007. His last position was Executive Vice President, CTO, and Chief Development Officer of Cisco. In this role, he led all of Cisco’s product development and product management activities, including all product and market strategy. He led over 30,000 employees, including over 24,000 development engineers, representing more than half of all Cisco employees and almost $40 billion of product sales.

During his career at Cisco, Giancarlo played a leadership role in all of the company’s major customer segments, including the commercial, service provider, enterprise, and consumer businesses, and in the development and execution of Cisco’s business strategies for these important customer segments. Giancarlo was also responsible for the creation of many of Cisco’s product lines and businesses, including Ethernet switching, security, unified communications, wireless networking, digital video and TelePresence, consumer networking, and Cisco’s initial channel strategy. Additionally, Giancarlo established a process for the consistent development of new businesses within Cisco.

Giancarlo is best known for his groundbreaking work in developing new technologies and markets. He was the driving force behind the creation and success of many common technologies in use today, including Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switching, Ethernet switching, network security, load balancing, Wi-Fi, voice over IP and IP telephony, network access control, and TelePresence. With TelePresence as a typical example, Giancarlo conceptualized the product, formed the engineering and marketing teams, and led the development of the product and go-to-market strategy behind its successful growth.

Giancarlo holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Brown University where he served as a trustee, an MSEE from the University of California at Berkeley where he serves on the board of advisors, and a master’s in business administration from Harvard Business School. He has served on the boards of Accenture, Netflix, ServiceNow, and Avaya, and currently serves on the boards of Arista, Zscaler, and several startup companies.

Kevin Connors is the Vice President of Sales for Strategic Accounts at NVIDIA, focused on developing long-term strategic alliances with global OEM partners. He’s responsible for aligning strategic ecosystem partners with technology roadmaps, developing and executing go-to-market strategies, and setting up sales enablement programs that lead to long-term sustainable growth for NVIDIA and its partners. Connors has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry, holding various sales, marketing, and product management roles. Prior to NVIDIA, he served as a senior sales account manager at ATI Technologies and held management roles at 3ware, Silicon Graphics, and Digital Equipment Corporation. Connors holds a Bachelor of Science in business and economics from Willamette University.

Rodger Manning is the Storage Service Owner and Technical Leader at Ford Motor Company. He’s responsible for global service planning, delivery, and strategy for File, Block, Object Storage and Data Protection Services. Rodger has a proven track record of simplification and transformation, having held positions with Plant Floor Systems, Dealer Systems, PD Systems, and Solaris Engineering & Support, during which time he drove transformational changes, improved operational efficiencies, and reduced time to customer. Rodger earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree with honors in Mechanical Engineering from Brunel University, United Kingdom.

Dan Angst is an accomplished leader in network security, software-defined storage, and data protection, and currently the Director and Segment Leader for Nutanix Unified Storage, Network, and Security. With over 20 years of experience, Dan has become a respected expert in the cybersecurity and data center industries.

As President of Customer and Field Operations, Geoff Haydon is responsible for driving growth, deepening customer and partner relationships, and ensuring operational excellence across every stage of the customer journey.  Haydon brings more than three decades of global leadership experience, building and scaling technology organizations, with a strong track record in cybersecurity and enterprise software.  Most recently, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Ontinue, a leading provider of Al- powered managed extended detection and response (MXDR) services. During his tenure, he helped position the company at the forefront of modern managed security services. Haydon holds a Bachelor of Arts in Honors Business Administration from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Stephen Smith, Senior Director Enterprise Architecture, is a seasoned technical sales leader with over 30 years in the industry. As a customer, integrator, and manufacturer, he leverages a unique set of experiences that allow him to understand not only the targeted outcome but also what is required to get there. He specializes in developing global go-to-market strategies, aligning technical solutions with business outcomes, and driving customer engagement worldwide. Stephen has a strong background in digital workplace solutions, secure networking from edge to data center to cloud, and full-stack AI.

He holds a Bachelor’s in Commerce and Business Administration from the University of Alabama.

Todd Brannon is Senior Director of Ecosystem Solutions for the Compute business at Cisco. Todd has over 25 years of experience in data center technology with a focus on servers, storage, and managed services. He’s held a variety of product management and marketing roles at Cisco, Sprint, and Dell. Todd was a founding member of Dell’s hyperscale computing division and spent two years in Japan launching the server business in region. He joined Cisco to help lead the introduction of Cisco Unified Computing System in 2009. 

Prior to his civilian career, Todd served as Armor branch officer in the United States Army. He’s based in Austin, Texas and holds a Bachelor of Science in Electronic Media from the SI Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He bleeds Orange to this day.

Ricardo Moreno is Vice President of Global Partner Sales at Everpure, where he leads the company’s unified Global Partner Organization, building high-performing, integrated teams. Ricardo is responsible for driving partner-led growth at scale and evolving Everpure’s ecosystem across all partner types worldwide. With over 25 years of experience, Ricardo pairs a deep worldwide perspective with a proven track record of scaling multi-billion-dollar businesses and leading global organizational transformations.

Stephanie Richardson leads the Everpure global product marketing organization, shaping go-to-market strategy and platform storytelling. She brings 20+ years of B2B marketing leadership across enterprise software, data, and infrastructure.

Shawn Rosemarin, Everpure's VP of R&D, Customer Engineering, works with large enterprise customers to simplify and optimize their data estates, reporting directly to co-founder John Colgrove. His prior roles at Everpure include Worldwide VP of Emerging Technology Solutions and Worldwide VP of Systems Engineering.

Before Everpure, he was SVP & CTO at Hitachi Vantara and a Chief Technologist at VMware for four years. Passionate about digital transformation, he covers private/hybrid/multi-cloud, application modernization, and IoT Solutions.

An active seminar presenter, he focuses on sharing experiences, simplifying complex concepts, and highlighting best practices.

He holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Management Information Systems from Queen's University.

Patrick Finn serves as Chief Revenue Officer, leading global sales and channels. He brings over 30 years’ experience in sales leadership positions with leading companies, including IBM, PepsiCo International, Cisco Systems, Teradata, SS&C Blue Prism, Iron Mountain, and Cloudflare.

Tarek Robbiati joined Everpure in 2025 as Chief Financial Officer, responsible for finance, investor relations, indirect procurement, and facilities. He brings more than 25 years of financial, transformational, and strategic leadership experience in technology and telecommunications.

Lynn Lucas joined Everpure in December 2023 as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), leading the global marketing organization. She is responsible for creative strategies that amplify brand awareness, drive demand for the company’s technology portfolio and services, and deliver compelling customer experiences.

Lynn brings 25 years of go-to-market expertise for B2B organizations across hybrid cloud, software and infrastructure markets.

Prior to Pure, Lynn was CMO at Cohesity where she built the global marketing function and was a key leader driving scale in a hyper growth environment, while navigating a successful shift to SaaS. While there, she was selected as one of the Fearless 50 customer-led marketers of 2023. An advocate for diversity in tech, she co-led the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Council and was executive sponsor for the Women’s ERG.

Lynn’s previous roles included CMO at Veritas and Good Technology, and executive leadership positions at Cisco Systems, culminating as Vice President, Collaboration Solutions for the $5B unified communications, telepresence and Webex portfolio.

Lynn holds a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Cheri Schumacher is a leader in Everpure’s Global Partner Organization, with end-to-end responsibility for partner programs and the overall partner experience, including enablement. With more than 20 years of experience, she specializes in building and scaling ecosystems that drive platform-led growth and deliver measurable business outcomes.

Remko Deenik joined Everpure in 2018 and currently serves as Senior Director, GTM and Partner Experience. A global technology and business leader with over 20 years of experience, Remko specializes in turning innovation into measurable business outcomes by connecting technology investment directly to revenue growth, market expansion, and operational efficiency.

Hope Galley is the Vice President of Americas Partner Sales at Everpure. She is a channel leadership veteran with over 24 years of experience driving partner strategy and sales growth.

Craig Robertson is an experienced technology executive with almost 20 years in the enterprise IT industry. As UK&I Channel Sales Director at Everpure, he leads the company's partner strategy across one of its most strategic markets, working closely with global systems integrators, service providers, and channel partners to accelerate growth and deliver customer success.

Andrew Fisher is the Area Vice President, Partners for Asia Pacific & Japan at Everpure, where he leads the company's partner, distribution, and alliance strategy across the region.

Dennis Deane is Vice President of Global System Integrators (GSIs) at Everpure, where he leads the company’s GSI sales organization and builds high-performing, integrated teams. Dennis develops GSI partnerships and drives as-a-Service offerings at scale for mutual customers, leveraging Everpure’s full portfolio and partner ecosystem for Managed Services and Resell worldwide.

Mark Bridges is a seasoned technology executive with over two decades of experience in strategic alliances and global partnerships. As the Head of Global Alliances at Everpure since July 2023, he leads initiatives to expand the company’s ecosystem and drive innovation through strategic collaborations.

Cliff Thomas is Vice President and General Manager of the Worldwide Strategic Theater at Everpure, where he leads the company’s top global enterprise accounts. Known for his innovative approach and results-first mindset, Cliff excels at guiding clients toward strategic outcomes through courageous conversations and strong partnership alignment.