Michelle Munson
President, CEO & Co-Founder

Michelle is co-inventor of Aspera's fasp™ transport technology and is responsible for overseeing the company's direction in collaboration with co-founder Serban Simu. Michelle was a software engineer in research and start-up companies including the IBM Almaden Research center before founding Aspera in 2004. She has dual B.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Physics from Kansas State University and was a Goldwater Scholar for achievement in Science and Mathematics, and later a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University where she received a postgraduate Diploma in Computer Science. She was the 2006 KSU College of Engineering Alumni Fellow (the youngest recipient ever), and has received national achievement awards from Glamour Magazine and USA Today. Michelle is also a frequent speaker on technologies and trends around Big Data Transport, Cloud Infrastructure, and Mobile.

Serban Simu 
Vice President of Engineering & Co-Founder

Serban is co-inventor of Aspera's fasp™ transport technology and is responsible for overseeing the company's software engineering, and sets the technology direction with co-founder Michelle Munson. Serban has a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the Universitatea Politechnica Bucuresti in Bucharest, Romania, and a Masters degree in Telecommunication Networks from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications where he finished first in his class. He came to the United States to work for Cisco's Content Networking group, was a lead software engineer at Digital Fountain, and founded Aspera with Michelle Munson in 2004.

Cary Capece 
Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development

Cary is responsible for all sales and business development activities at Aspera. Cary is a successful executive and entrepreneur with 20+ years experience in the technology industry with extensive knowledge of the Media and Entertainment marketplace. With a rich background in management, sales, and business development, he has held senior management roles at Digital Origin (formerly Radius, Inc.), Mountain Gate (a Lockheed Martin Company), and FWB, Inc. where he led these companies to explosive growth and successful exit strategies.

Mike Flathers
Chief Technologist, Aspera Developer Platform

Mike Flathers has more than 20 years of software development experience. Throughout his career, Flathers focused on enabling third-party technology integrations by creating innovative software solutions and APIs. For the past 10 years, Flathers worked at Sorenson Media where he led the development of Sorenson VCast, one of the industry's first online video delivery platforms and Sorenson VRS, a leading video relay service empowering communication for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. Most recently, he was the chief technology officer for Sorenson Media where he directed research and engineering efforts and managed technology decisions and architecture. Prior to that, he spent 14 years at Novell after the company acquired Excelan where he was a lead developer for the LANWorkplace product, the first suite of TCP/IP utilities for DOS and Windows.

Richard Heitmann
Vice President of Marketing

Richard is responsible for Aspera's marketing activities driving global demand for Aspera's next generation transport technology and products. He brings over 15 years of experience in developing and marketing a broad set of enterprise solutions. He was most recently vice president of marketing at Atempo where he led marketing and product strategy. Previously he was vice president of product management and marketing at EVault an early pioneer in the area of online backup as a service which was acquired by Seagate,  and has held senior leadership positions at Phoenix Technologies, WatchGuard Technologies and Onyx Software. Richard holds a BA in Mathematics and Economics from UCSB and an MBA from the University of Washington.

Steve Pollini
Vice President of Technology Solutions

Steve leads Aspera’s professional services team in the creation of customized solutions for high-speed data transport workflows. Prior to Aspera, he spent 5 years as CTO of Total Immersion Software after serving as CIO and SVP of Engineering and Operations at SiVault, a SaaS provider of biometrically secured financial and medical transactions. As VP of Engineering for Qiva, he led the local and offshore development teams and network operations group. While at UPS’ R&D and Information Systems groups he created an innovative SNMP-based L1-L7 management system and ran multiple large-scale developments teams for real-time, automated package handling and tracking systems, and prior to that, he was a Principal Engineer and manager at General DataComm where he led the design and development of high-speed data and voice networking products. Steve began his engineering career at MITS, Inc., the birthplace of the personal computer where he designed the Altair 680.

Roxana Tsougarakis
Vice President of Operations

Roxana leads the global financial and HR operations for Aspera.  In her tenure, she has implemented enterprise financial systems and controls to support the high growth and profitability of the company.  She brings over 20 years of experience in implementing financial systems, as well as human resource strategy and programs.  Prior to joining Aspera, Roxana had a 20+ year career with the Federal Reserve of San Francisco where she held several executive positions in finance and human resources leading local and national teams.  Roxana holds a BA from the University of San Francisco and an MBA from St. Mary’s College.