Pure//Accelerate® Speakers

Charles Giancarlo is a highly regarded technology veteran with four decades of experience in the technology industry. As CEO of Pure Storage 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, Pure Storage 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 Pure Storage, Inc. Pure Storage is the inventor and leader in enterprise flash storage systems. One of the fastest-growing enterprise IT companies in history, Pure Storage 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. Pure Storage 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 Pure Storage, 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.

John Colgrove, or Coz, is Founder and Chief Visionary Officer at Pure Storage, responsible for developing and executing Pure Storage’s global technical strategy.

Coz co-founded Pure Storage in 2009. Prior to this, he was the Entrepreneur in Residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. It was there he observed the growing acceptance of solid-state storage by enterprises.

Coz was one of the founding engineers at Veritas Software, which merged with Symantec in 2005, where his 20-year career culminated as Fellow and Chief Technology Officer for the Data Center Management Group.

He was the primary architect for the hugely successful Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) and Veritas File System (VxFS) and later served in various other engineering, management, and consultative roles.

Prior to Veritas, Coz worked for Amdahl Corporation where he was a key contributor to the development of the UTS mainframe UNIX operating system kernel.

He holds over 300 patents in the areas of computer system and reliable data storage design. Coz has a Bachelor of Science degree from Rutgers University.

Oz Pearlman is the most sought after mentalist and renowned mentalist in the United States. He developed an interest in magic at a young age and what started as a hobby evolved into a lifelong passion. After a few years working on Wall Street, Oz decided to pursue his dream and become a full time entertainer. He has now been dazzling audiences with his mind reading ability for nearly three decades!

Oz amazed the world on TV’s #1 rated show, America’s Got Talent. Week after week, he performed mind blowing mentalism routines never seen before and quickly became a fan favorite, winning third place out of thousands of acts. In 2018, he joined an elite few, including David Blaine and David Copperfield, to have their own TV special on a major national network. Oz Knows aired on NBC multiple times to rave reviews. The following year he won an Emmy Award for that special.

Oz has had over 100 other television appearances that have aired on both national and international networks, including dozens of appearances on the TODAY Show, Ellen Degeneres Show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Harry Connick Jr. Show, Rachael Ray, Dr. Oz, CNBC Squawk Box, ABC World News, ESPN, CNBC, NFL Network, Bravo, Fox Business and many more.

When he isn’t blowing the minds of audiences around the world, Oz is an avid marathon and ultra-marathon runner, having completed such grueling races as the Badwater 135 Miler, Hawaii Ironman World Championships, Western States 100 and Spartathlon. He takes great pride in his marathon PR of 2 hours and 23 minutes and has won dozens of races throughout the country. In April 2022, he was featured on the cover of the New York Times for breaking the world record for most miles ever run around Central Park in a single day (116 miles) while raising over $100,000 for Save The Children’s Ukraine Relief Fund. Later that year he broke the record for fastest ever crossing of Long Island by foot, running from Montauk to Manhattan in 21 hours on the hottest of the summer no less.

Chadd Kenney serves as the Chief Technical Officer of the Americas at Pure Storage where he is a senior technical advisor to engineering, product management, sales marketing and presales leadership in the field. Chadd joined Pure Storage in 2012 as a founding member of the technical sales staff, assisting in the development of the go-to-market strategy and creation of the sales force to disrupt the storage industry.

Previously, Chadd was the Field Chief Technical Officer and Divisional Systems Engineering Director at EMC Corporation. Chadd has a Bachelors of Science in Computer Information Systems and Accounting from San Francisco State University, College of Business.

Valerie has been a technologist for the past 25 years, working at several tech companies such as EMC, Dell, Google, and currently Pure where she is a Principal Technologist covering Central Enterprise.

Throughout her career, Valerie has held many roles ranging from Systems Engineer to VP of IT Infrastructure, mostly focusing on infrastructure, unstructured data, and AI/HPC.

Valerie earned her degree from the University of Michigan, where she graduated with highest honors.

She is married to Todd Slisher, Executive Director of the Sloan Museum of Discovery in Flint, MI, and proud mom to 2 wonderful 16 year old twin boys, and a sassy fur-baby named Blaze.  She enjoys swimming, gaming, and playing ukulele moderately badly.

Rob Lee serves as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Pure Storage, focused on global technology strategy, and identifying new innovation and market expansion opportunities for Pure.

Rob joined Pure in 2013 as part of the FlashBlade founding team and led the software architecture and development, from concept to launch, for the product which has eclipsed $1B in business.

Prior to Pure, Rob was an Architect at Oracle, where he worked on programming language runtimes for the Oracle RDBMS, as well as high-performance distributed transaction processing systems. During his 12-year tenure at Oracle, he focused on improving the performance, reliability, and programming models behind large-scale distributed systems.

Rob holds over 75 patents in the areas of distributed systems, language runtimes and storage systems.

He currently serves on the board of directors for Bay Area Underwater Explorers and Cordell Marine Sanctuary Foundation - non-profits dedicated to the exploration and conservation of Northern California underwater resources.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Engineering in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lynn Lucas joined Pure Storage 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.

Shawn Hansen is Vice President and General Manager of FlashArray. He is responsible for business operations, product strategy, quality, delivery, and expanding market leadership of the company’s flagship product. Prior to Pure Storage, Shawn spent 10+ years building high-growth startups in various roles, including as COO at Rescale, an HPC cloud leader; and as CMO at Heap, a SaaS analytics company. He also spent 10+ years in enterprise infrastructure at Microsoft, where he helped create and build the popular Azure Synapse data warehouse service, and at Cisco Systems after its acquisition of Topspin, an RDMA networking pioneer. Shawn holds an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Humanities and Japanese Literature from Brigham Young University.

Niki Armstrong serves as the Chief Administrative and Legal Officer at Pure Storage, overseeing worldwide administrative functions, including legal, compliance, corporate governance, privacy, ESG, as well as the People function encompassing DEI, talent acquisition, and the Pure Good Foundation. Prior to this role, Niki served as General Counsel, as well as the Vice President of Global Employment Law, Ethics & Compliance, and Litigation at Pure. 

Prior to Pure, Niki’s career spanned a broad spectrum of technology companies including eBay, Cypress Semiconductor, Flextronics, Auction.com, and Nutanix. She also served as a law clerk to District Chief Judge Lee J. Romero, Jr. (ret.) of the U.S. Department of Labor and spent a number of years as an employment defense litigator at Gordon Rees Scully & Mansukhani LLP. 

Niki received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine and her Juris Doctor from Loyola University.

Naveen has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He spent 7 years at Intel working on CPUs before deciding to branch out into other domains. He’s been at Pure for 11 years where he helped develop FlashArray for 6 years. He has been in the Digital Experience BU since then developing the phonehome and cloud architecture that underpins Pure1 and our Evergreen services.

Matt Burr assumed the role of Chief Operating Officer in October 2023, having previously served as interim Chief Marketing Officer and prior to that as Vice President and General Manager of FlashBlade.

His journey with Pure Storage began in 2010 when he joined as Vice President of Sales; he was the company's inaugural salesperson. His primary responsibility was to establish the North American sales organization from the ground up. During his tenure in this position, Matt dedicated himself to developing and implementing strategic sales plans aimed at driving hyper-growth and ensuring customer satisfaction. Under his sales, and go-to-market leadership, Matt helped Pure shape a monumental milestone: achieving a billion dollars in annual sales revenue by March 2018.

Before joining Pure Storage, Matt led the Western Region growth strategy at Limelight Networks, overseeing a team focused on revenue growth, new customer acquisition, and satisfaction. Previously Matt also held various leadership roles for nine years within Symantec via its merger with Veritas.

Matt holds a bachelor's degree from Ithaca College. His extensive experience and leadership have been instrumental in shaping success at Pure Storage.

Prakash Darji joined Pure Storage in June 2018 as the Vice President and General Manager of the FlashArray business unit, responsible for the overall strategy, growth, and advancement of the company’s flagship product.

Prior to Pure Storage, Prakash spent several years at SAP in numerous leadership roles and most recently the SVP/General Manager of the Platform as a Service cloud business. During his tenure at SAP, he built a new software business in the Database Technology Space that grew to $1B in five years and a cloud platform-as-a-service business that reached triple-digit growth.

Prakash has a proven track record of accomplishments in growing new businesses in the areas of Financial Performance Management, Database, and Cloud Platforms. He is also the author of several publications with a broad range of expertise in GTM, operations, R&D, sales, and services.

He serves on the board of the Santa Clara Ballet.

Prakash holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer software from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Charlie Boyle is the vice president of DGX systems at NVIDIA, responsible for driving worldwide adoption of the company's supercomputing systems and bringing AI to enterprise customers.

As vice president and general manager of DGX Systems at NVIDIA, Charlie Boyle leads the company's effort to drive worldwide adoption of its AI supercomputing systems and bring the world of AI to enterprise customers. Charlie brings a wealth of knowledge in the IT and service provider industry, having run marketing, engineering, and data center operations for some of the world's largest telcos and service providers.

Boyle has over 20 years of experience running marketing, engineering and data center operations. Previously, Boyle held senior roles at Oracle, Sun, Voxeo and Digex.

Shawn Rosemarin is currently Vice-President - R&D – Customer Engineering for Pure Storage. In this role Shawn works directly for the co-founder of the company (John Colgrove) focused on collaborating and co-creating with Pure's largest enterprise customers delivering customer centric innovation that further simplifies and optimizes their data estates.

Prior to this role Shawn was the Worldwide Vice-President of Emerging Technology Solutions carrying direct accountability for Pure’s modern application and analytics solution. In addition, Shawn was the Worldwide Vice-President of Systems Engineering.

Prior to joining Pure Storage Shawn has served as the SVP & CTO for Hitachi Vantara and 4 years as a Chief Technologist at VMware.

Shawn’s passion is working closely with customers to help them transform digitally with everything from private/hybrid/multi cloud to application modernization and emerging IoT Solutions. An active seminar presenter, Shawn enjoys sharingexperiences, simplifying complex concepts and highlighting best practices.

Shawn holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Management Information Systems from Queen’s University in Canada.

Joshua Crater is a visionary staff software engineer at Rivian Automotive, where they lead pioneering efforts in pushing the boundaries of edge computing through open-source technologies and Kubernetes. With significant experience in the field, Joshua and the engineering team have been instrumental in driving Rivian's digital transformation journey, leveraging innovative solutions to revolutionize the automotive industry.

Mike Dehaan is the Infrastructure Services Manager and Enterprise Architect for the Mississippi Department of Revenue. In his time at the agency, Dehaan has had the privilege of leading the agency's entire technology estate as engineer, architect, and manager. In observation of his leadership, he was selected for the inaugural class of the Mississippi LEAD Program to strengthen the leadership skills of state government executives. Dehaan is known for his pragmatic approach to enterprise architecture and dedication to public service. He continues to innovate in IT infrastructure with a focus on long-term impact and data-driven decision-making.

Jonathan currently works as a Senior Systems Engineer for The Queen’s Health Systems as an SME for Linux, storage, compute, and virtualization. He’s worked in IT for 30 years in various industries, including financial, Department of Defense, and healthcare. He lives just outside the Bay Area, in California, and loves all things Pure.

Chad Elliott is a Product Manager with over 20 years of experience in cloud and storage solutions. Since joining TierPoint in 2016, he has worked across various roles, focusing on developing scalable solutions that help businesses manage and optimize their data infrastructure. Chad’s experience spans cloud technologies and storage, with a focus on delivering practical, efficient products that meet the evolving needs of organizations.

Jesse Fasolo, PhD is the head of Technology Infrastructure and Cybersecurity at St. Joseph’s Health, where he leads multiple teams of technology innovators and guides the healthcare system through a digital transformation. He is responsible for developing and implementing technology strategies to align with strategic goals, implementing the latest technology to support business operations, and ensure the security and integrity of all data and systems.

Rodger Manning is the Storage Service Owner and Technical Leader at Ford Motor Company. He is 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 previously 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.

William (Fred) Rowell aligns Companion Data Services’ corporate technology vision with business strategy, providing strategic technology direction that recognizes a visionary application of products, services and processes.

Rowell was instrumental in cultivating CDS’ relationship with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and CMS contract award. He provides decisive leadership to multi-functional teams and has had top secret clearance since 1991. He has served in many capacities in his 26 years with the organization, ranging from application development, system programming and capacity planning through executive management.

Rowell has a Bachelor of Science in Corporate Finance from the University of South Carolina, an associate degree in Computer Science and is working toward a master degree in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina.

Eric G. Simpson is the IT Infrastructure Services Manager at the Arkansas Department of Transportation. With a wealth of experience in managing and optimizing IT infrastructure, Eric has been instrumental in driving technological advancements and ensuring the seamless operation of critical systems. His expertise spans across various domains, including network management, cybersecurity, data center operations, disaster recovery, and cloud computing. He has worked to bring innovative ideas and approaches to be more effective and efficient in disaster recovery and data protection processes and procedures and is known for his innovative approach to problem-solving and his commitment to fostering a collaborative work environment. In addition to his professional achievements, Eric is an active participant in industry conferences and seminars, where he shares his insights and experiences with peers and aspiring IT professionals, and he has an MBA from Washington State University. His dedication to continuous learning and professional development is evident in his ongoing pursuit of cutting-edge technologies and best practices.

Jeff Wilson currently works as a Senior Technical Analyst for OneGas as an SME for Storage and Backup and Recovery.  He’s worked in IT for 30+ years in various industries, including the energy industry and Department of Defense.  He currently lives in Tulsa Oklahoma and has been a fan of Pure since his first Pure array in 2014.

Ashiq Khan has been in the Telecom and Cloud industry for about 20 years. He is the Head of Unified Cloud & Platform Division in SoftBank, responsible for a true HCI deployment of IT, Telecom, Enterprise, MEC and AI/ML infrastructure combined together. He is also responsible for developing automation and orchestration layers for such large-scale HCI across multiple technical and service domains. He started his career in NTT Docomo in 2004, where he led the R&D of NFV, 5G mobile core, network slicing, and the consequent ETSI NFV and 3GPP standardization. He worked in the open source community as a founding member of OPNFV. He then led the development and commercialization of the world's first fully virtualized E2E mobile network in Rakuten Mobile. He received his PhD in Computer Sciences from the University of Tsukuba in 2015.

Thorsten de Vos has been with ROSEN for 12 years. He started his career as a virtualization and storage administrator with a focus on consolidation and virtualization of physical infrastructure. Three years ago, he moved into a platform engineering role with responsibility for consolidating an endo-of-life container platform and all stand-alone hosts into a central modern container orchestration platform with a focus on GitOps and IaC.

Nirav Sheth is Pure Storage’s VP of WW Systems Engineering. As part of this role, Nirav leads an organization of ~700 talented individuals globally as they focus on architecting and building out next generation data platforms for customers and partners around the world with greater than $3B of bookings responsibility. Prior to Pure, Nirav led Okta’s NorthAm SE & Specialist teams driving identity, governance, and privileged access solutions as customers looked to modernize their application architectures. Before Okta, Nirav built and led the multi billion dollar Americas ISV Sales business at Google Cloud working closely with top SaaS providers and start ups seeking to partner with GCP, and, prior to Google Cloud, Nirav enjoyed a long tenure at Cisco spanning roles in Product, Professional Services, Support, and, Global Partner Ecosystems. As part of his tenure at Cisco, Nirav also served an 18 month international assignment to the APJ region. Nirav is a sought after speaker and has a successful track record of prior press and analyst engagements.

A seasoned leader with 30-plus years in technology, management consulting, and a successful venture in technology services, Cliff has elevated his teams and helped steer customers to their strategic outcomes. As Vice President and General Manager of Strategics Accounts in the US and EMEA, he is tasked with driving exponential growth in Pure’s top enterprise accounts.

Cliff was previously at Cisco, where he was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Global Enterprise Segment, leading Cisco’s largest sales theater, responsible for more than 500 of the company’s top strategic global clients representing over $9 billion of annual revenue. Throughout his 20-plus year career at Cisco, Cliff held leadership positions for top-performing teams across the Global Enterprise Segment and Cisco’s Smart+ Connected Communities (S+CC) practice focusing on intelligent urbanization.

With an understanding of business from multiple angles and an educational background in both engineering and economics, Cliff pursues innovative ways to elevate client and partner relationships. His ability to advise and direct clients to strategic outcomes starts with courageous conversations, results-first thinking, and a track record for cultivating high-performing teams.

Graig Kelly is a seasoned IT professional with over two decades of experience in information technology, currently serving as the Technology Manager of Infrastructure at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. In this role, he oversees the Faculty of Health Sciences IT infrastructure, ensuring reliable and secure systems that support academic and administrative functions.

Throughout his career, Graig has held various positions in the IT field, demonstrating versatility and a commitment to technological excellence. His extensive experience encompasses a wide range of IT disciplines, reflecting a deep understanding of the evolving technological landscape.

Graig's educational background includes studies at Mohawk College for Computer Science as well as various leadership courses at McMaster University and Loyalist College, where he developed a strong foundation in information technology. His dedication to continuous learning and professional development has been a hallmark of his career.

At McMaster University, Graig's leadership and expertise have been instrumental in advancing the institution's IT capabilities. His contributions have ensured that the Faculty's infrastructure remains robust and adaptable to the changing needs of the academic community.

Graig Kelly's commitment to excellence in information technology continues to make a significant impact on McMaster University's mission to provide high-quality education and research opportunities.

Mike Webb is a software engineer and technology leader in Austin, Texas, serving as a Staff Software Engineer on Silicon Labs’ Cloud Software team. He brings over a decade of full-stack development experience, with a focus on AI/ML, security, and customer tooling for IoT-enabled embedded systems. Mike holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Chris Cunningham is the Director of Storage and Hardware Engineering at Comcast, where he leads the teams responsible for the backbone of Comcast's video delivery systems, ensuring seamless streaming experiences for millions of customers. With over 20 years of experience in systems architecture, platform engineering, and technical operations, Chris has built and managed some of the most critical infrastructure supporting live and on-demand content at scale. Based in Denver, he's passionate about combining deep technical expertise with pragmatic leadership to drive innovation in content delivery.