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, Oracle, Intel, OpenPages, Moldflow and ProfitLogic. aPriori's senior management team includes:
Stephanie 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.
Eric Sockol
Chief Financial Officer
Eric brings over 20 years of executive leadership managing dynamic growth at both entrepreneurial startups and highly profitable public companies. In his role, he is responsible for all financial and administrative operations of the company. Prior to joining aPriori, Eric held the position of Chief Financial Officer of four technology companies; Gemvara, TechTarget, ObTech and OneWave. Prior to OneWave, he was Corporate Controller of Corporate Software. Eric also has extensive experience with capital markets, including three public offerings. He holds a Bachelors of Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is a certified public accountant.
Richard Underwood
Vice President, Sales
Dick brings extensive experience in sales leadership to aPriori, including more than thirty years of success at both large and entrepreneurial technology companies such as VFA, Soundbite Communications, PanGo Neworks, Moldflow Corporation, Parametric Technology Corporation and Prime Computer. He is responsible for overseeing the development of aPriori's North American sales operation, as well as the expansion of aPriori's sales and distribution channel into the European and Far East markets.
Julie Driscoll
Vice President, Strategic Marketing & Product Management
Julie Driscoll is responsible driving aPriori’s marketing strategy and product direction. She joined aPriori in early 2006, leading the professional services team and working with customer to deploy and drive value with aPriori’s costing solution. Julie brings over eighteen years of marketing and service delivery experience, previously working in a variety of marketing and consulting management roles at Oracle, ProfitLogic and State Street Bank. Julie holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Babson College
Rick Burke
Vice President, Marketing
Rick is responsible for leading the company’s marketing and sales operations efforts to help drive aPriori’s revenue growth. Rick brings to aPriori 24 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.
Michael Knox
Vice President, Professional Services
Michael leads aPriori’s services organization where he is responsible for success and satisfaction of aPriori’s customers. This includes implementation, training and support of aPriori solutions and partnering with clients to achieve optimal product cost management results. Michael brings over 25 years of experience working with clients to ensure they achieve full value from their software solutions. Most recently, Michael led the product management team at OpenPages where he was responsible for the platform direction and solutions design and development. With the acquisition of OpenPages by IBM, Michael led the successful integration of product management into IBM. Other companies where Michael has played a leadership role for services and product teams include Intel and Shiva Corporation.
Stephanos Bacon
Vice President, Engineering
Stephanos 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).
John Busa
Vice President, Cost Modeling
John Busa has more than 23 years of experience in the commercial software industry. Prior to joining aPriori, John 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. John 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.
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.).