Executive Profiles

Frank Schröder, CEO

Frank brings more than 16 years of experience at senior levels in IT/software companies. He has extensive experience building international operations and managing mergers and acquisitions.

At Polarion Frank is focused on building a market-driven company delivering next-generation application lifecycle management (ALM) tools and solutions. Before joining Polarion Software, Frank was Vice President Sales at Atoss Software AG - a public company providing solutions for process management and resource planning. Before Atoss he lead the European operations of TogetherSoft, a vendor of model-driven development platforms. He built the operations continuously with double digit annual growth.

At MKS, as vendor for configuration management and change management systems, Frank founded the German subsidiary and as the VP International he established the company's international operations and spearheaded their significant growth.

Frank holds a degree in business and administration from the University of Tübingen.

Michael Carey, CEO Americas & Asia-Pacific

Michael brings over 25 years of proven technology sales, service, and operations experience to Polarion. At Workshare he was Executive VP of worldwide sales and produced record breaking numbers. At Symantec, he was VP of a strategic business unit generating more than $170 million annually. He also brings executive sales and operations experience from ON Technology, Novadigm, and MKS.

Michael is an expert in identifying well-timed, high-growth businesses, and was a key player in the acquisitions of ON Technologies by Symantec, Novadigm by Hewlett Packard, and the successful MKS IPO. Michael is an experienced professional in Corporate and Government sales, Channels, Operations, and Strategic Alliances. He is a graduate of the University of Waterloo.

Frank Sterkman, CFO

Frank has 20 years experience in the software consulting, engineering and tool industry. He served in following companies: VP consulting at GFT, CEO and CFO at Object International Software, Co-founder of TogetherSoft acquired by Borland in2003. Private investor and entrepreneur specialized on high technology, software and real estate development projects. Frank holds a degree in computer science from the University of Applied Science in Furtwangen/Germany and graduated with a master´s degree in business and administration from the University of St. Gallen/Switzerland.

Stefano Rizzo, SVP Strategy & Business Development

Stefano brings a wide and heterogeneous set of skills to the company. In a career spanning some 20 years he has been a methodology consultant, a pre-sales engineer, an IT researcher, a university professor, VP of R&D for a large consortium, Regional Sales Director for a U.S. Software company, and CEO of two software development organizations. With his broad experience in the Application Lifecycle Management arena he headed up product management for Polarion's Polarion ALM for Subversion andPolarionSVN Free and Open Source Subversion Tools product lines. Since 2010 he is responsible for strategical development of Polarion Software, serving as official spokesperson and vision leader. Stefano holds a Master Degree of Computer Science from the University of Genoa.

Nikolay Entin, VP Research & Development

Nikolay has over 15 years experience in Software Engineering. He is responsible for all aspects of the company's software development activities. Prior to this position, he was Director of Engineering, and lead the development of an ALM platform for SAP NetWeaver.

Before joining Polarion Nikolay was a Senior Software Developer at Object International Software, which later became TogetherSoft where he lead the Integration Team and served as technical lead of that company's cooperation with SAP. Prior to these companies, he gained some 8 years experience as docent for Computer Science at the Lyceum for Physics and Mathematics in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Nikolay holds an MS in Software Engineering from the Electrical Engineering University, St. Petersburg.

Robert Neher, VP Sales

Robert has an extensive experience as a sales professional and entrepreneur in the computer software industry. Robert is a co-founder of Polarion Software. He leads the sales organization and all business development activities.

In his previous position at TogetherSoft he was the European business development manager. In this role he lead the international indirect/channel business and built relationships with leading system integrators. Robert also had the lead in numerous major accounts i.e. Nokia, Ericsson, Emirates. Before that he established the Together sales team at Object International Software, predecessor of TogetherSoft. At ONTOS, one of the pioneers in object-oriented databases, Robert lead the sales for Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Robert holds a degree in computer science from the University of Applied Science in Furtwangen.