Rita Joseph

Vice President of Federal Sales and Operations

With over 25 years of experience in the information technology industry, Rita has created and led successful sales and marketing executive level management teams and organizations. For every company she has represented, she’s contributed significant market growth and incremental revenue.

Recognized throughout her career, Rita’s expertise includes developing software products spanning desktop to mainframe, hierarchical mass storage subsystems and software tools for the collection, analysis, dissemination of large data repositories, as well as cloud computing solutions. Her passions also include introducing emerging technology to the federal space.

Prior to joining Cleversafe, Rita served as Vice President of Federal Operations for Expert System Inc., Cassatt Corporation and Autonomy, where she developed federally focused marketing and messaging around semantic processing and cloud computing capabilities to align with government policy and requirements. Identifying short and long-term pipeline opportunities for tactical and strategic revenue attainment, she recruited top talent and created partnerships in the public sector space.

A Northern Virginia native, Rita began her career at Federal Data Corporation and is a graduate of George Mason University.

Chad Thibodeau

Director of Product Management & Alliances

Chad Thibodeau leads Cleversafe’s product management and strategic alliances efforts. With more than 15 years of technology experience in enterprise storage, telecommunications and the defense industry, Chad brings a solid understanding of the traditional capabilities surrounding, SAN, RAID and replication. Now on the cusp of a new storage era, Chad is leading the way with Cleversafe’s ground-breaking dispersed storage technology to meet the needs of today’s businesses that must scale to the petabyte-level and beyond. Chad is also the co-chair of SNIA’s (Storage Networking Industry Association) Cloud Archive and Long-term Preservation group; driving best practices in digital information archival and preservation.

Formerly a Senior Product Manager at Compellent Technologies, a premier provider of Storage Area Networks (SANs), Chad was responsible for all hardware products and third-party relationships with partners such as Cisco, Brocade, Emulex and QLogic. Prior to Compellent, Chad managed multiple Enterprise product lines for Dell.

Chad holds a Master’s of Business Administration degree from Arizona State University’s High Technology Program and a Bachelor’s of Science in Manufacturing Engineering degree from Miami University of Ohio.

Diane Gillespie

Director of Marketing and Communications

Diane Gillespie brings a wealth of experience, enthusiasm and thoughtful practice to Cleversafe’s marketing and communications efforts. A seasoned marketing veteran, Diane has worked with many of the leading Fortune 50 companies across a wide range of industries as well as emerging start-ups. For more than 20 years, Diane has directed and led new product development efforts and executed communications campaigns, including repositioning Metamor Global Solutions from private holding through to successful acquisition.

With a clear understanding of what it takes to position companies from start-up status through to their long-term vision, Diane is able to successfully navigate the challenges of articulating shifts in business growth and development.

Prior to joining Cleversafe in 2011, Diane served as Director of Marketing at The Nielsen Company where she executed marketing communications strategies across the company’s North America Consumer solution’s portfolio, and managed go-to-market channel strategies for Ingram Micro.

Diane received a Chick Evans Scholarship to Marquette University where she earned her degree in Public Relations/Marketing.

Jennifer Browning

Director of Human Resources

Jennifer Browning brings over 15 years of experience and an entrepreneurial, collaborative and decisive leadership style to Cleversafe in her role as Director of Human Resources. A passionate champion of people, Jennifer has a keen understanding of the unique relationship between performance to optimize growth, which is critical to the success of the business, aligned with individual achievement and fulfillment.

Her insight and vision, coupled with a commitment to excellence, has guided the development of impactful people strategies designed to attract, engage and retain Cleversafe’s high caliber talent and ensure that the dynamic culture that has fueled the company's current success continues to remain a top priority.

Prior to Cleversafe, Jennifer led due diligence and post acquisition integration for a trilateral merger resulting in The Palladium Group and served as their Global Director of Human Capital. Previous roles included a variety of HR consulting and leadership engagements for a diverse set of organizations. Her expertise is focused on organizational development, employee engagement, talent management, high performance leadership and strengthening corporate culture.

Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Robert Joy

Vice President of Finance and Operations

Rob Joy oversees Cleversafe’s finance and operations department. Working alongside Chris Gladwin, Cleversafe’s CEO, Rob ensures the company is well positioned for future growth. With more than 20 years of experience working with successful ventures across a variety of industries, Rob has a keen sense of what it takes to bring a company through its foundational years to market leadership.

Rob experienced firsthand the early market opportunities provided by emerging technologies, within the Telematics and SmartPhones markets. During the course of his seventeen year tenure at Motorola, Rob held a variety of leadership roles in finance including the North American Mobile Devices Director of Finance, Automotive Director of Finance, Telematics Controller and Corporate Auditor. He also held leadership roles in business operations, business development, and general management.

Rob holds a Masters of Business Administration degree from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business and a Bachelors of Science degree in Business Administration from the University of Illinois.

Tom Shirley

Vice President of Product Development

Tom Shirley brings exceptional depth to his role as Vice President of Product Development for Cleversafe with more than thirty years of experience in telecommunications, enterprise software and systems.

Having worked for Motorola for more than 25 years as Vice President and General Manager for the company’s Networks OSS Division he is well versed in bringing new technology to market. During his tenure Tom was instrumental in bringing CDMA, GSM, UMTS and WiMax Infrastructure Network Management Solutions to market for Motorola.

Tom has held leadership roles in product development, IT, customer operations, engineering operations, and manufacturing. He is a board advisor and past board member for the TeleManagement Forum (TMF).

Tom holds a Masters of Science degree and a Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University. He also completed post-graduate studies at Southern Methodist University. Tom currently holds four patents.

Russ Kennedy

Vice President of Product Strategy, Marketing and Customer Solutions

Russ Kennedy brings more than 20 years experience in the storage industry to Cleversafe as the company’s Vice President of Product Strategy, Marketing and Customer Solutions. Having rolled up his sleeves working on automated tape libraries, Russ is still attracted to the technological challenges that have shaped the industry and particularly to the innovative approach that Cleversafe delivers to storage.

Russ joined the company initially in 2007 and left in 2009, staying on in an advisory role. In 2011, Russ rejoined the company seeing a clear opportunity to solve the storage needs surrounding the exponential growth of big data and the unique impact that Cleversafe delivers over traditional systems.

Previously, Russ served as the Vice President of Competitive Intelligence at CA Technologies, and was the Senior Director of Engineering and Product Management at Thin Identity Corporation.

Russ has an MBA from the University of Colorado at Denver and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Colorado State University.

Dan Beal

Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Sales

Dan Beal has spent his career developing strategic sales initiatives and creating new revenue streams for such leading companies as InMage Systems, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and EMC. Now chartered with identifying emerging opportunities for Cleversafe as Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Sales, Dan is focused on making big data storage synonymous with the Cleversafe brand.

During his time at both HDS and EMC, Dan worked with enterprise customers and small-to-mid size businesses. Having a critical sense of the storage needs driving the market from all customer touch points provides a unique opportunity to offer a customized solution that’s not only cost-effective, but that addresses today’s security and compliance needs along with limitless scalability.

Dan holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in Business Administration from the University of Colorado.

Chris Gladwin

Founder, President and CEO of Cleversafe

Chris Gladwin founded Cleversafe in 2004, bringing to the company the same innovative and entrepreneurial approach that has signified his executive leadership throughout his career. Chris, who was previously the creator of the first workgroup storage server at Zenith Data Systems and was a Manager of Corporate Storage Standards at Lockheed Martin, also created and managed a number of successful new technology start-ups, including MusicNow, which was acquired by Circuit City. Chris has been the creative force behind the development of the first Dispersed Storage system to solve the growing global problem of Big Data storage.

Years ahead of the market, Chris understood the growing issues surrounding unstructured data and the inability of traditional technology solutions to accommodate the explosive growth of digital assets such as audio, video and imaging. Using advances in dispersed information technology, he applied that to storage to create a reliable, cost effective, secure solution with a limitless ability to scale.

Chris Gladwin has created over 300 issued and pending patents related to Dispersed Storage technology. Cleversafe, inspired by Chris, continues to be one of the most patenting U.S. companies per employee.

Chris Gladwin holds a degree in Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.