Altium has appointed Gerry Gaffney as senior vice president and general manager, Americas. He starts at Altium immediately, and will be based in Altium’s Americas headquarters office in the San Diego area. Mr Gaffney’s appointment is part of Altium’s strategy to add to its world-class leadership and business development talent, and help accelerate growth, the company said. It follows the recent appointment of Jay Cao as Regional Director China, based in Shanghai, and Anand Shankaran as Chief People Officer for Altium worldwide, based in Sydney.
These appointments expand Altium’s business development leadership team which is responsible for capitalising on the opportunity for unified electronics design worldwide. Altium believes that unified electronics design is essential for designers to continue to innovate and to develop electronics in new ways.
Nick Martin, founder, CEO and chief technology officer at Altium, said, “We have outlined our coherent vision for the future of electronics design from the company’s foundation. Altium has consistently delivered ground-breaking technology and products that reflect this vision—to remove the barriers to electronics design innovation and provide every designer and engineer with access to the best possible design solutions. And our principal solution, combining Altium Designer unified electronics design software with the NanoBoard reconfigurable hardware development platform, leads the world in unified electronics design.
“This leadership team will be responsible for maximising the growth that we see from the expanding demand for unified electronics design. Positive market reaction to the recent increase in the number of new functions in Altium Designer validates our confidence that designers are eager to embrace unified electronics design.”
Mr Gaffney joins Altium after 11 years with Cadence Design Systems, where he was most recently group sales director of enterprise sales. Emma Lo Russo, president & chief operating officer, said, “Gerry, Jay and Anand all bring considerable experience in overseeing worldwide sales, business development and talent management. It gives me great confidence to know we have been able to attract this high level of talent and experience. They join the leadership team that will develop the strategies to increase our sales in the Americas, which remains our largest market, and in China, our largest growth market, and with our team worldwide.”
Mr Cao’s experience includes a number of senior positions at Hyperion in China, including managing director, as well as with Oracle following its acquisition of Hyperion. He also held senior positions with SAS Institute, and with Tyco International, both in China.
“Altium has deep market penetration in China with its earlier Protel PCB design product. Jay and his team will exploit that market dominance and product familiarity, combining aggressive new sales and an effective and realistic anti-piracy conversion programme,” said Emma Lo Russo.