Vetted Executive & Leadership Professionals in California

Jim Woodroffe

Screened

Executive Engineering Leader (CTO/VP) specializing in scaling platforms, AI, and cloud infrastructure

San Francisco, CA24y exp

“Entrepreneurial operator who previously built an AI context layer for personal communication/relationships and has worked with a New York-based venture group to evaluate early-stage ideas from both technical and business angles. Currently exploring broad startup opportunities and collaborating with 2–3 early-stage companies, with a structured approach to assessing market outcomes, competition, and team fit.”

Padmaja Tyada

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive engineering leader specializing in cloud, AI, and FinTech platforms

San Jose, CA25y exp

“Engineering leader with experience scaling teams from 25 to 60+ and delivering both enterprise platform modernization and AI-native product innovation. At Experian, he led an AWS transformation of a high-volume credit platform serving 250M+ consumers, achieving 10x performance gains and 30% cost reduction; at Channel Core, he built AI-powered creator tools using OpenAI and RAG that improved adoption and personalized outreach outcomes.”

Nicholas Ogura

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive Platform & Security Engineering leader specializing in multi-cloud Kubernetes and FinTech

San Diego County, USA18y exp

“Startup-focused infrastructure/security leader who stepped into head of engineering and re-platformed an entire product end-to-end in 3 months to meet launch. In crypto/fintech, recognized the market-data system as an ETL/data product and rebuilt it as a separable, securely accessible platform—prompting inbound interest within a week—while advocating an open-source-first observability stack (Prometheus/Grafana/Loki) to avoid vendor lock-in.”

michael avrahamov

Screened

Executive engineering leader specializing in AI-first SaaS and cloud platforms

San Francisco Bay Area, CA22y exp

“Senior engineering executive who operated as an org-level CTO at both ServiceNow and Oracle, leading global teams up to 150 engineers and driving cloud-native, multi-tenant platform architecture. Particularly strong in observability, streaming systems, and security, with experience delivering large-scale systems ingesting data from millions of agents while building high-performing, high-DORA engineering organizations.”

“Senior public sector sales executive with a strong track record selling SaaS licensing and permitting solutions to state and local governments. Most notably grew Accela from $25M to $100M in four years with 90%+ retention and personally led a complex $10M statewide Oregon deal featuring a custom multi-jurisdiction pricing model. Brings deep expertise in government procurement, RFP influence, forecasting discipline, and building high-performing regional sales teams.”

“Founder building an enterprise agentic AI startup who has already raised about $100K (friends & family plus self-funding). Has prior and current experience engaging VCs (including outreach to both large and small firms) and emphasizes demo-driven pitching, enterprise customer validation, and targeting billion-dollar market opportunities.”

Britney Russ

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive product leader specializing in consumer technology and EdTech

Los Angeles, CA13y exp

“Senior product leader from Codecademy who has spent roughly a decade building and mentoring cross-functional organizations while leading major strategic pivots in education. Most notably, they repositioned Codecademy toward a new learner segment and launched an AI-native learning platform that tripled signup rates, while also creating new revenue streams like live learning and accessible AI workshops.”

“Amazon engineering leader (15+ years) targeting Senior Manager/Director roles, with deep ownership of contact-center latency and reliability initiatives. Shipped a global production improvement cutting call latency 30–40% and led a complex Citrix SDK integration, including incident response and a backward-compatible rollout strategy to protect existing customers while enabling new features.”

“Operations/Continuous Improvement leader with 25 years of Lean/Kaizen experience, including roles at Danaher and 10x Genomics. Known for building enterprise operating rhythms (True North + daily management) and developing internal CI certification programs, while delivering measurable quality and cycle-time gains (e.g., NCR/MRB lead time cut 47→14 days and FPY improvements via global test-equipment relocation).”

“Engineering leader who built and scaled a distributed team (Serbia + US) to deliver an internal multi-tenant Kubernetes-based PaaS, moving a large org from manual ops-driven deployments to automated CI/CD with >99.97% uptime and 100% service adoption. Known for culture change (blameless post-mortems, clear intake via ticketing) and security-first platform practices (tenant isolation, Falco) supporting SOC2 compliance; also operates at exec level with stakeholder communication and fundraising.”

Dhaya Lakshminarayanan

Screened

Executive Operations Leader specializing in AI, climate tech, and high-growth organizations

San Francisco, CA20y exp

“Operator who has repeatedly stepped into founder-level, cross-functional ownership at startups—running full HR (recruiting, onboarding, benefits) with AI-driven process automation, and later serving as interim VP People & Culture during an executive transition. Also managed cap table, 409A, equity grants, and day-to-day investor relations, and built company-wide ELT goals/KPIs and operating rhythms tied to board-approved strategy.”

Sammy Datwani

Screened

Executive biotech leader specializing in microfluidics, diagnostics, and life science tools

Pleasanton, CA25y exp

“Biotech founder building a de-novo protein sequencing company, originally incubated by Versant Ventures and now focused on life science tools and clinical diagnostics. Has raised capital from institutional VCs, strategic investors, and a foundation, and brings unusual ecosystem depth through mentoring at IndieBio, Berkeley SkyDeck, and Biotools Innovator, plus board service with Life Science Angels and VC diligence advisory work.”