Visionary leaders who care about
making and keeping Austin’s business community thriving.

Lawrence Waugh graduated from MIT with degrees in Aerospace/Astronautic Engineering and Humanities before spending seven years as a U.S. Navy carrier pilot. Leaving the Navy shortly after the first Gulf War, he returned to graduate school, earning his Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. Recruited out of Stanford by Trilogy Software in Austin, he spent the next seven years working with various enterprise software companies in development and consulting roles ranging from individual contributor to Vice President of Engineering. During that time, he became passionately concerned with software quality, and the development processes and tools that promote it.

In 2001 Lawrence and his business partner, Sandeep Gupta, founded Calavista Software which set out to help other companies improve the quality of software delivery. Leveraging their patented innovations in software development methodology, Calavista was able to bootstrap its way to profitability, providing software development and testing services, as well as licensing their proprietary development tools. Over the past dozen years, Calavista has provided software solutions to over 50 companies, including Cisco, Dell, BazaarVoice, Electronic Arts, and The Heritage Foundation. After living and working in Silicon Valley, Boston and Virginia, Lawrence, his wife and their four children have been happy to call Austin home for the past 17 years.

Shay is responsible for overall company growth and strategic direction. He has more than 18 years of entrepreneurial leadership, product development, and management experience with growth-stage, venture-backed companies and high-growth software divisions within Fortune 50 companies.

Previously, Shay was the global leader for Smarter Care at IBM. He successfully led and managed the acquisition of Curam Software to establish IBM’s leadership at the intersection of Social Programs and Healthcare. He has a BS & MS degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from the Acton School of Entrepreneurship.

Shay served for two years as the Vice Chair of Innovation for the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, where his mandate was threefold: 1) initiate programs that support a strong and unique innovation ecosystem in the Austin region, 2) attract world-class talent to Austin’s corporations and research institutions, and 3) attract more investment capital to support growing businesses.

Ronnie Sheth is the Founder & CEO of SENEN GROUP, an international strategic advisory firm focused on delivering innovative, growth-focused data, digital & AI transformations. She is a thought-leader, advisor and speaker in the field of Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology & Operating Models for organizations tackling enterprise-scale transformations in the Data, Analytics & AI space. Under her leadership, SENEN has been recognized as one of the leading data consultancies globally and has helped industry titans and high-growth scale-ups alike achieve consistent success in harnessing and unlocking the power of their data.

Ronnie implements her passion for creating cohesive, sustainable global communities and next-generation ecosystems by partnering with international governmental agencies and NGOs around the world while locally serving on multiple boards including Austin Technology Council and Association of Corporate Growth (ACG) Next-Gen. She also co-chairs the Women’s Initiative for ACG’s Central Texas chapter.

She holds her MBA in Finance and International Business from Rochester Institute of Technology and her Bachelor in Science in Computer Science and Business Administration from Roberts Wesleyan University. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Sustainability at Harvard University.

Mike is a technology industry leader and innovator, having led product and business groups for over two decades at highly successful cybersecurity companies. Most recently, he served as senior vice president at Austin’s own SailPoint Technologies, where he held multiple executive roles, including general manager of SailPoint’s flagship business unit with oversight of engineering, product and services teams. Prior to SailPoint, Mike led global product management and business development for Austin-based Forcepoint.

Prior to moving his family to Austin, Mike built his early technology career in the Silicon Valley where he spent nearly a decade at McAfee, another global leader in cybersecurity. He has executive experience at tech companies of all sizes, ranging from small startups to private equity owned midsized companies, to large publicly-held companies. Mike has helped lead these companies through IPOs and M&A transactions and has a strong appreciation for what it takes to develop a winning culture.

Mike is a two-time graduate of the University of California, Berkeley where he conducted his undergraduate and MBA studies. Mike enjoys mentoring local technology entrepreneurs and in joining the Board of Directors of ATC he hopes to do his part to elevate Austin as a leading global technology capital.

James Beecham is a Founder and the Chief Executive Officer at ALTR, an innovator of automated data access control and security solutions. He has over a decade of experience leading technology and engineering teams in computer architecture design, database and operating system drivers, database security and data governance and privacy system design. James holds multiple software patents and a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Bart Kalsu is the Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer at SolarWinds, Inc. He served as the Executive Vice President, Finance and Chief Accounting Officer from October 2013 to April 2016 and as Chief Accountant and Senior Vice President, Finance from November 2011 to October 2013. Bart joined SolarWinds as Chief Accountant and Vice President, Finance in August 2007. Prior to joining SolarWinds, he worked for JPMorgan Chase Bank as Vice President, Commercial Banking, from June 2005 until August 2007. From April 2002 until June 2005, he worked for Red Hat, Inc. as Senior Director of Finance. He has also served on the board of directors of EP Energy Corporation (NYSE: EPE) and Athlon Energy Inc. (Nasdaq: ATHL). He holds a B.S. in Accounting from Oklahoma State University.

Wade has the keen ability to envision beyond the needs of a position and bring in true Impact Leaders™ who help take an opportunity to the next level and beyond! His 30+ years as a results-oriented start-up, turn-around and high-growth executive starting and driving companies to success enabled him to design a unique results-oriented process that secures significant proven results.

Recovering former McKinsey and Company consultant. Post-McKinsey, have served in a variety of progressively more challenging roles as a finance, sales, and marketing executive. These positions have included Dell, Power Computing, Haystack Labs, TIS, Journyx (a successful, multi-million $$ bootstrapped software company in Austin Texas with over 300 of the F 1000 as clients), and Rimini Street (an even more successful, high-growth, now public success story with most team-members in northern California, where I grew the company from $68 million to a $125 million run rate).

In mid-2002, I started online-focused, direct- and metrics-oriented marketing services firms, and have been growing them successfully since that time, to where my current venture, Apogee Results is now the most respected digital demand generation, search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) firm in Austin, and has won awards as a “Top 3 in North America” search agency.

Goal(s): To have a meaningful and measurable impact on the world around me, and on the bottom line of anywhere I work. To leave everything I get involved in better than it was before I found it. To attract, develop, and retain an team of exceptional people.

Specialties: search engine marketing, pay per click, search engine optimization, online marketing, direct marketing, demand generation, lead generation, web marketing, natural search, paid search, Google Adwords, PR and Analyst relations, content marketing.

Focused on originating and leading growth stage and mid corporate relationships in the technology sector, including: software, fintech, hardware/semi, internet & digital, business transaction services. Execution focused on: debt and equity capital markets, M&A, global treasury & FX, while delivering the entire WF platform.

Direct experience in mid corporate equity and debt, middle market and corporate finance including private equity and sr./jr.debt structures, underwriting, equity models, and capital raising.

Highly skilled and experienced in all aspects of senior debt origination, underwriting and closing. Deep understanding of M&A, PE structures, leveraged lending, corporate finance. Robust experience with complex structures that include all types of subordinated debt, mezzanine, unitranche, preferred equity, true equity

Specialties:

• Experience in direct origination in Technology, media and telecommunications
• Leveraged finance and M&A financing
• Specialized direct experience-Asset based, sell-side advisory, syndicated credit, bi-lateral credit, cross-border transactions, hedging (currency, interest rate, commodity)
• Financial modeling and waterfall analysis
• Private equity capital raising and debt placement
• Valuation analysis

Balazs Barna is the Head of US Engineering and Austin Site Lead at Wise. At Wise, Balazs oversees the US engineering team, which is building the tech and infrastructure needed to facilitate instant, convenient and affordable cross border transactions. He also heads up our newly formed Austin office.

Over his 7 years at Wise, Balazs has led and helped his team build the company’s historic direct access integration to the Hungarian banking sector’s instant payment system, the first of its kind for a company with a payment service license. He also oversaw and built Wise’s core infrastructure that enables the company’s European operations.

Prior to joining Wise, Balazs worked at MSCI and Morgan Stanley. He graduated from Corvinus University of Budapest in Business Information Systems (BSc), and Computer Engineering (MSc) from Pannon University.

Thom is also an accomplished keynote speaker, having delivered speeches at over 1000 conferences across industry lines. He regularly also speaks on behalf of ATC about the “History of Austin Tech”.