The aPriori Management Team
The aPriori senior management team has deep experience generated through leadership positions at top manufacturing and technology companies including Hewlett-Packard, Netegrity, Symantec, PTC, I2, NuGenesis and ProfitLogic. aPriori's senior management team includes:
Stephanie A. Feraday
President & Chief Executive Officer
Stephanie Feraday has over twenty years experience in driving high-growth software businesses in corporate and consumer markets. Prior to joining aPriori, Ms. Feraday held executive-level positions at marquis startup and Fortune 500 technology companies including Netegrity, Hewlett-Packard, Symantec, Delrina and Virtusa. She earned a bachelor’s degree in applied science from the University of Waterloo and completed graduate studies in business administration at the University of Toronto.
Stephanos Bacon
Vice President, Engineering
Stephanos Bacon is responsible for aPriori’s product development and quality control team. He joined aPriori from Progress Software, where he was the Vice President, Product Development and Integration Infrastructure. Prior to his work at Progress, Stephanos was Vice President, Product Management and Development at Iona Technologies. Other experience Stephanos brings to aPriori includes work at Avaki Corporation, BroadVision, and Object Design. Stephanos holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Rick Burke
Vice President, Marketing
As Vice President of Marketing, Rick Burke is responsible for leading the company’s marketing and sales operations efforts to help drive aPriori’s revenue growth. Mr. Burke brings to aPriori 22 years of experience working with high growth software technology companies. He comes to aPriori from Oracle’s Agile PLM Business where he co-led the development of a highly successful global market development program. Prior to Oracle/Agile, he held a variety of marketing and business development roles in software companies focused on product development automation, including Eigner + Partner, PTC and Computervision. Mr. Burke holds a Bachelor’s degree from St. Louis University.
John Busa
Vice President, Professional Services
John Busa has more than 23 years of experience in the commercial software industry. Prior to joining aPriori, Mr. Busa was responsible for all engineering and product management at CXO Systems. Prior to CXO, he was Senior Vice President, Research and Development at PTC. His previous roles within PTC included Vice President, Production Applications Marketing and Development, Vice President, Quality Assurance, and Vice President, Marketing Operations. Mr. Busa holds a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University.
Julie Driscoll
Vice President, Product Management
As Vice President of Product Management, Julie Driscoll leads the development of aPriori’s future product strategy. She joined aPriori from ProfitLogic where she was the Director of Delivery for a line of products significant in establishing the company’s solution suite. Previously, Julie was a consultant at State Street Bank where her focus was improving operational efficiency and customer service by implementing new technologies and process change. Julie holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Babson College.
John Helm
Vice President of Sales
John Helm leads aPriori's sales efforts with more than 15 years of sales and sales management experience. Priori to joining aPriori, Mr. Helm served as Vice President of Sales at Proficiency. Prior to Proficiency, he was responsible for building the European and North American Sales Operations for NuGenesis. Additionally, Mr. Helm spent nearly ten years at PTC, in which his last role was Area Vice President of Western North America Sales. He holds a BA in Psychology from UCLA.
Michael Philpott, Ph.D.
Founder & Chief Scientist
With over 30 years of design and manufacture experience in industry and academia, and over 50 related publications, Dr. Philpott is one of the world's foremost authorities in the areas of Design-to-Cost, Design-for-Manufacture, and Design-for-Assembly. He directed the research on process cost modeling and the development of the aPriori software at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) since 1993. Prior to aPriori, Dr. Philpott was an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UIUC and the Director of the Concurrent Design and Manufacture for the UIUC. Before UIUC, Dr. Philpott started the design-for-manufacturing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and also taught at Cranfield Institute of Technology. Earlier in his career, Dr. Philpott spent twelve years as a design and manufacturing engineer in the British automotive and machine tool industry working at Land Rover, Jaguar, Moulins, and British Leyland. Dr. Philpott has a Ph.D. and MS in Manufacturing from Cranfield Institute of Technology (U.K.).
R. Sebastian Schrader
Co-Founder
As a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois, Sebastian was responsible for some of the seminal work that is the foundation of the aPriori cost management solution. Sebastian holds a BS in Production Engineering from EAFIT University in Colombia and a MS in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Illinois. While at UIUC, Sebastian worked at the John Deere Silvis Product Development Center as a Feature-Based Cost Specialist, analyzing cost data created with third-party costing packages and in-house costing techniques. Prior to UIUC, Sebastian was a Research & Technical Staff member of the Interdisciplinary Research Center (IRC-CAD/CAM/CG) in Colombia, where he developed asynchronous tools for topology recovery, surface smoothing, and mesh optimization. Before working at IRC, Sebastian was a joint owner of CAD-TEC Ltd where he worked as a consultant to firms in graphic design.