Executive Team

Charles Wuischpard

President and Chief Executive Officer

Charles joined Penguin Computing in January 2007. Formerly vice president of worldwide sales at GoldenGate Software, Charles brings 25 years of in-depth enterprise experience, including 17 years with IBM. Prior to joining GoldenGate Software, Charles was vice president of field operations for Versant Corporation, driving all revenue producing activities in the Americas and Asia. Before joining Versant, Charles served as managing director of Perficient, a Java-based internet consulting practice. Charles started his career in sales at IBM in 1986 and held a number of management positions of increasing responsibility, ultimately heading sales and marketing for IBM's Application Integration Middleware Business Unit for the Americas with responsibility for driving over $1 billion dollars of growth in the segment. Charles has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and a Masters of Management from Northwestern University.

George Oliva

Chief Financial Officer

George joined Penguin in the Fall of 2009, as a broad-based financial executive with extensive experience in high growth startups and billion-dollar high tech companies. Before coming to Penguin George served as the Chief Financial Officer and VP Finance & Administration for Pandigital. George also served as Chief Financial Officer of StorCard and Hammer Storage Solutions. Prior to working in industry, Mr.. Oliva was an auditor with Arthur Andersen & Co, a leading public accounting firm. Mr.. Oliva is a Certified Public Accountant in California and his experience is supported by a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with an emphasis on Accounting and Finance from the University of California, Berkeley.

Tom Coull

Senior Vice President

Tom joined Penguin Computing in December 2008 with 22 years of CEO and GM experience in start-up through mid-stage technology companies. Tom has a history of successfully growing or revitalizing self-funded and venture-backed companies, and has successfully sold two high performance computing companies to leading public companies in the CAD and 3D graphics markets. Prior to Penguin Computing, Tom was the CEO of Technology in Learning, REBOL Technologies and Sense8 Corporation. He was also a General Manager for Engineering Animation Inc. (NASDAQ: EAII) from 1997 through 2000. Tom holds both a B.S. and an M.Eng. Degree in Engineering from U.C. Berkeley.

Matt Jacobs

Sr. Vice President Corporate Development

Matt joined Penguin Computing in June 2000 with an extensive sales and product marketing background. In his 8-year tenure at Penguin, Matt has been responsible for setting and executing the company’s HPC strategy from product to industry ecosystem to sales and marketing. Prior to joining Penguin, Matt served as the Western Regional Sales Manager for the Server and Storage division of American Megatrends, Inc. There, he significantly increased AMI's presence in the Western U.S. and was instrumental in the formation of the company's Linux strategy. He holds a B.A. from the University of Georgia.

Phillip Pokorny

Chief Technology Officer

Philip Pokorny is responsible for all aspects of Penguin Computings hardware products. He joined Penguin Computing in Feb, 2001 as an Engineer and has steadily taken on more responsibility in Penguin's hardware organization. He brings a wealth of both customer and engineering experience to the design, development and support of Penguin Computing's products. Prior to Penguin Computing, he worked 14 years in various Engineering and System Administration positions with Cummins, Inc and it's electronics startup Cummins Electronics. He participated in the development of internal network standards, deployed and managed a multi-site network of multi-protocol routers and supported a diverse mix of office and engineering workers with a variety of server and desktop operating systems. He has contributed code to Open Source projects including the Linux kernel, lm_sensors and LCDproc. Philip graduated in 1987 from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with BS degrees in Math and Electrical Engineering with a second major in Computer Science.

Dean Koester

Vice President, Worldwide Sales

Dean joined Penguin Computing in June 2007. Formerly director of sales at Rackable Systems (now SGI), Dean brings 25 years of diverse experience working for Silicon Valley companies. Dean has worked in engineering for Motorola and Siemens before taking on sales and marketing for open source startup Cygnus Solutions which was eventually purchased by Red Hat for almost $700M in 2000. Dean then left Red Hat with some of his colleagues to join another startup called Rackable Systems as director of sales which eventually had a very successful IPO in 2005. Dean has a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University and a Masters of Management from Northwestern University.

Advisors

Donald Becker

Donald joined Penguin through its acquisition of Scyld Computing. Donald is an internationally recognized operating system developer and the original inventor of Beowulf clustering. In 1999 he founded Scyld Computing and led the development of the next-generation Beowulf cluster operating system. Prior to founding Scyld, Donald started the Beowulf Parallel Workstation project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He is the co-author of How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters. With colleagues from the California Institute of Technology and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, he was the recipient of the IEEE Computer Society 1997 Gordon Bell Prize for Price/Performance. Donald holds a B.S. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.