Management Team
Our team is committed to advancing productivity enhancing technology
Tasktop Technologies has assembled a leadership team that combines excellence in technical leadership and technology company management experience.
Mik Kersten, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder
Dr. Mik Kersten is a thought leader on task-focused productivity and leads the Eclipse Mylyn open source project. As a research scientist at Xerox PARC, Mik implemented the first aspect-oriented programming tool support. He then invented the task-focused interface and created Mylyn as part of his PhD at the University of British Columbia. Mik is a popular speaker at software conferences and was voted a JavaOne Rock Star speaker in 2008 and 2009. Mik has also been recognized as one of the top ten IBM developerWorks Java technology writers of the decade. As a prominent member of the Eclipse community, Mik has served as a member of the Eclipse board and Architecture Council. He enjoys building tools that offload our brains and make it easier to get creative work done.
Gail Murphy, Chair, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder
Dr. Gail Murphy is a leading researcher on software evolution and tools. She brings to Tasktop her years of experience as a software developer and as the principal investigator of a large research group. In recognition of her research, Gail has been a keynote speaker at several software engineering conferences and has also received both national awards, such as the NSERC Steacie fellowship, and international awards, such as the AITO Dahl-Nygaard Junior Prize and a University of Washington College of Engineering Diamond Award. She also holds an appointment as a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia where she works on human-oriented software development tools to make software developers more efficient and effective.
Richard McKern, Vice President, Sales
Richard brings extensive experience in building sales and sales organizations for enterprise software companies. Most recently he served as Regional Director Eastern North American Sales for SpringSource, the open source infrastructure software company behind the Spring Framework, which was acquired by VMware (NYSE: VMW) in 2009. Prior to SpringSource, Richard served as Vice President of Sales for SolarMetric, a leading object relational mapping provider, which was acquired by BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS) in 2005. At BEA he grew product revenue by over 200%. Prior to SolarMetric, Richard was Director of Strategic Sales for OPNET Technologies (NASDAQ: OPNT) where he saw the company through their 2000 IPO (cited as Ninth Best IPO of 2000 by ipo.com). A member of the MIT Blackjack team, Richard graduated from MIT with Bachelor of Science degrees in both Chemical Engineering and Science Journalism.
Neelan Choksi, Board Member
Neelan has extensive technology management experience and recently served as the Chief Operating Officer of Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza, which became the most popular ebook reader for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Lexcycle was aquired by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in 2009. Prior to Lexcycle, Neelan served as the COO of SpringSource, the venture backed open source infrastructure software company behind the Spring Framework. SpringSource was aquired by VMware (NYSE: VMW) in 2009. Before joining SpringSource, Neelan served as co-founder and President of SolarMetric, a leading object relational mapping provider, which was acquired by BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS) in 2005. At BEA, Neelan was instrumental in the open sourcing of the acclaimed object/relational mapping tool Kodo as OpenJPA. Prior to SolarMetric, Neelan worked for Andersen Consulting Strategic Services (NYSE: ACN) and Exxon Research & Engineering (NYSE: XOM). Neelan is a graduate of MIT (and was part of the often-publicized MIT Blackjack team) and holds graduate degrees from Stevens Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Stephen Smith, Board Advisor
Stephen Smith serves as a key Tasktop Board Advisor. Stephen is the founder and President of Webnames.ca and has over fifteen years of experience in information technology, specializing in project management and business development within the public and private sector. Prior to starting Webnames.ca in 2000, Stephen was Manager of information technology transfer at the University of British Columbia and Director of Business Development for Ingenuity Works Inc. A finalist for Ernst & Young's 2005 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards for Information Technology in the Pacific Region, Stephen is also a recipient of Business in Vancouver`s Top 40 Under 40 Award for Outstanding Achievement (2005). Steve acts as a mentor to new entrepreneurs in the New Ventures BC Program (2006 and 2007).
