TechPoint welcomes Cummins Vice President and CIO Sherry Aaholm as board chair and names new executive committee
TechPoint has announced a new executive committee comprised of leaders from both tech and tech-enabled companies and organizations throughout Indiana that have national and global reach. It’s a noteworthy development from the state’s technology ecosystem growth initiative as companies of all types are poised for more tech-driven growth.
“Tech is intersecting most every part of our economy and state. I’m excited that our executive committee and board represents that breadth along with a remarkable caliber of individuals,” said TechPoint President and CEO Mike Langellier.
The executive committee will be led by Sherry Aaholm, Cummins’ VP and Chief Information Officer. She is joined by Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner at High Alpha, and former co-founder/CEO of ExactTarget; Anurag Varma, Infosys VP, Head of Global Government Affairs; Mary Kay Huse, COO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud; Shane Fimbel, CEO of South Bend-based Trek 10; David Johnson, Central Indiana Corporate Partnership Initiative President and CEO; and Langellier.
“I’m looking forward to being a part of what I know will be an exciting, even groundbreaking year that will bring Indiana further into the national spotlight as the place to be for business and for tech professionals,” Aaholm said.
Langellier said he’s looking forward to Aaholm’s board chair leadership for a number of reasons.
“She leads a large tech organization inside a Fortune 150 company going through digital transformation. That perspective will be really valuable as we chart the course for the tech community and accelerate our impact,” he said. “She also has an impressive personal story of nontraditional ascent to professional success that I hope more young people will hear and draw inspiration from.”
The executive committee sets policy and operational direction and serves as a touchpoint to keep TechPoint on top of the current needs of the overall tech community. The range of company size, type and location represented on the committee was intentional, Langellier said.
Langellier thanked outgoing executive committee chair Scott McCorkle for his contributions.
“Scott has played an outsized role in some of Indiana’s biggest success stories and has been incredibly generous with his time and talent,” Langellier said. “He’s an extraordinary leader. We’ve all learned from and been inspired by him.”
TechPoint board involvement enables executives to build relationships, share common challenges and work together on collective solutions. The larger TechPoint Board of Directors serves in advisory level positions and is comprised of executives from the nearly 90 companies and universities that make up the 2019 membership roster. View the full list of TechPoint’s Board of Directors at https://techpoint.org/board.
Here’s a closer look at the executive committee members:
Sherry Aaholm oversees mission critical information system resources and leads the Information Technology transformation for Cummins. She brings extensive professional experience in technology, information security, and digital, combined with executive leadership achievements in both public and private business sectors. She has developed strategic IT transformation, information security and digital transformation plans to address Cummins’ legacy technology supporting a global footprint of manufacturing, sales & service, and electrification. She is also accountable for the digital strategy, development, and go to market strategy of digital solutions and service tools which improve total cost of ownership and product uptime of Cummins products. Digitizing physical products has required IT to transform the role it plays in collaborating with engineering and the business, as digital solutions become standard product features of physical products sold and serviced, and enable insights into product quality. Aaholm joined Cummins in 2013, after more than 15 years at FedEx Services where she served as EVP of Information Technology and drove IT transformation strategy for the global enterprise to include FedEx Services, FedEx Express, FedEx Freight and FedEx Ground. Previous roles were at GeoLogistics, in Atlanta, Ga. and Schneider National/Schneider Logistics in Green Bay, Wis.
Scott Dorsey is the Managing Partner at High Alpha and won the 2011 Mira Trailblazer in Technology award. Scott co-founded ExactTarget and led the company from startup to IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and ultimate sale to Salesforce for $2.5 Billion. Post-acquisition, he led the ExactTarget Salesforce Marketing Cloud which encompassed 3,000 employees and included the teams at ExactTarget, Buddy Media and Radian6. Scott is an acclaimed business and civic leader who has earned numerous accolades for his leadership, including Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, American Business Awards Executive of the Year, two-time recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash, Central Indiana Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame, Indiana Chamber of Commerce Business Leader of the Year and IU Kelley School of Business Distinguished Entrepreneur Award. Scott serves on a number of non-profit boards in the community, including Chairman of the Indiana Sports Corp., Chairman of Nextech and Global Advisory Board at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Anurag Varma is Vice President and Head of Global Government Affairs for Infosys. He is responsible for designing and executing innovative strategies to achieve policy and business objectives, including enhancing the company’s brand by engaging governmental and non-governmental stakeholders in public policy strategies involving national and regional governments in each of the company’s key markets, including the U.S., Canada, European Union, Australia and India. Prior to joining Infosys, Anurag served as public policy counsel before the U.S. Congress and Administration on behalf of foreign sovereign clients, multinational companies based in the U.S. and abroad and trade and community associations. In parallel, Anurag also worked on the lead litigation teams for national class action racial discrimination cases against the US government, resulting in $3 billion in compensation to African American and Native American farmers.
Mary Kay Huse is currently the COO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, based in Indianapolis where she recently returned after spending time in both London and San Francisco. Mary Kay came to Salesforce via the ExactTarget acquisition, where she started in account management in 2004. During her ExactTarget/Salesforce tenure, she has pioneered many strategic initiatives across multiple functions/clouds, including opening international offices for ExactTarget, transforming Marketing Cloud global services, leading adoption and support for all Salesforce clouds, launching the Accelerator program, and most recently leading product management for Marketing Cloud products across DMP and Social. She is passionate about community involvement and has been recognized for her leadership as one of Indy’s Best and Brightest in Technology. She previously served on the Girls Inc of Alameda County (San Francisco) board and is currently serving on the board of Nextech and TechPoint.
Dr. Shane Fimbel has significant expertise in developing and operating high-growth companies. As the co-founder and CEO for Trek10, Fimbel has developed the company into one of the leading Amazon Web Services Advanced Partners. With a global reputation in the field of serverless computing, Trek10 designs, builds, and supports cutting edge solutions for clients using the best in breed services from AWS. Previously, Dr. Fimbel led the growth of data center, cloud infrastructure, and fiber optic networks in the Midwest closing debt, equity, and tax incentive transactions of over $45 million and built operations achieving consistent annual revenue growth of 40-50 percent. He held leadership roles at the Purdue Research Foundation, where he was responsible for the intellectual property portfolio in the Life Sciences. Dr. Fimbel has worked as an active investor since 2008 by engaging over a dozen high-growth companies in a business foundry, board level, or leadership roles during the formative stages of corporate development through his firm Intellectual Analytics. To date, these companies have raised over $80 million in venture financing. With over 15 years of new venture experience, Dr. Fimbel has served as an Adjunct Professor in the Krannert School of Management at Purdue, where he was responsible for the Technology Realization Program, a multi-disciplinary graduate-level program focused on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and venture finance. Dr. Fimbel holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a Reilly Fellow. A graduate of Wabash College, Dr. Fimbel serves on the founding Board for the Center for Innovation, Business, and Entrepreneurship.
David L. Johnson was elected President and CEO of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership in December 2012. CICP is a unique, nationally-recognized, strategic collaboration of business executives, philanthropic leaders and university presidents brought together to develop initiatives, investments and projects that advance regional prosperity. Johnson also served as President and CEO of CICP’s BioCrossroads life sciences initiative from 2005 to 2018. Among Johnson’s many accomplishments at BioCrossroads are his work raising nearly $400 million dollars in philanthropic, corporate and venture capital funding; organizing and spearheading the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute and the development of the 16 Tech Innovation Community; and forging unique collaborations to advance the national prominence of the region’s life sciences and other technology-driven sectors. Scott McCorckle is CEO at MetaCX and was the 2016 Mira Trailblazer in Technology. He most recently was CEO at Salesforce Marketing Cloud and was president of technology and strategy for ExactTarget prior to the company’s acquisition by Salesforce. Prior to his roles at Salesforce, McCorkle was the co-founder and president of Mezzia, Inc., a planning and budgeting software company that was acquired by VFA, Inc. in 2006, and a vice president of the CRM Product Group at IBM. He was also a vice president at Software Artistry where he worked with fellow Trailblazer in Technology award recipients Don Brown, Bill Godfrey, Robert Compton and Scott Webber; before that, he was a senior analyst for Eli Lilly and Company.