REvolution Computing Inc

Norman H. Nie President and Chief Executive Officer
Norman H. Nie is the co-inventor of SPSS, the predictive analytics product and company he co-founded in 1967 and which he led as president and CEO through 1992. From 1992 through 2008, Nie served as chairman of the SPSS board and as a product design innovator for the company, which was sold to IBM in 2009. Professor Emeritus from the University of Chicago, and currently research professor of political science at Stanford University, Nie is a nationally-recognized scholar in the fields of survey research, quantitative social science, and political behavior. He is a two time winner of the Woodrow Wilson award for the best book published in political science (1976, 1997). In 2007, he was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) for his contributions to survey analytics as well as his works in political behavior. He was recently appointed a fellow of The American Academy of the Arts and Sciences (AAAS). Nie was educated at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, Washington University in St. Louis and Stanford University, where he received a Ph.D. in political science.
David Champagne Chief Technology Officer
David Champagne is a top software architect, programmer and product manager with over 20 years experience in enterprise and web application development for business customers across a wide range of industries. As Principal Architect/Engineer for SPSS, Champagne led the development teams, created and led the text mining architecture team and was responsible for a variety of open source initiatives. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Software Engineering for LexiQuest, in charge of software development, quality assurance and publications for the company's entire product line. Earlier in his career, Champagne was a systems engineer for Honeywell, and was also a free-lance software consultant. He is a 1984 graduate of Southern Illinois University.
Jeff Erhardt Chief Operating Officer
Jeff Erhardt is an executive with more than 11 years of diverse experience at Fortune 400 companies in technology, operations, finance, strategy, and M&A. He began his career at Advanced Micro Devices where he was responsible for the development and commercialization of leading-edge semiconductor devices, eventually authoring more than 30 United States patents. In this capacity, Erhardt was an expert user of numerous statistics and analytics tools—including R—and directed the creation of an innovative, fully-integrated analysis infrastructure to accelerate the development and introduction of new semiconductor technologies. Most recently, Erhardt played a central role in the multi-billion dollar restructuring of Spansion, where he advised on operational and performance improvements as well as structured, negotiated, and led numerous multinational transactions. Erhardt graduated with a B.S. in Engineering Cum Laude, from Cornell University and an M.B.A. with honors from The Wharton School.
Lee Edlefsen Vice President, Engineering
Lee Edlefsen is responsible for the overall development and quality of Revolution Analytics’ products. Before joining the company, he was CEO and co-founder of ExaMetrix, the producer of the ExaStat open source environment for analyzing huge data sets. Previously, Edlefsen served as vice president of development for the data analysis products division at MathSoft (now TIBCO Software). He has co-founded, grown, and sold two successful software companies: Aptech Systems—producer of the GAUSS mathematical and statistical system; and TriMetrix—the creators of the Axum technical graphics and data analysis package. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Sue Ranney Vice President, Product Management
Sue Ranney oversees Revolution Analytics' product planning and execution throughout the product lifecycle. She was co-founder of ExaMetrix, the producer of the ExaStat open source environment for analyzing huge data sets. Ranney also served as vice president of development for the data analysis products division at MathSoft (now TIBCO Software), where she co-managed S-Plus releases, and was the co-founder of TriMetrix —the creators of the Axum technical graphics and data analysis package. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.
David Smith Vice President, Marketing
David Smith has a long history with the R and statistics communities. After graduating with a degree in Statistics from the University of Adelaide, South Australia, he spent four years researching statistical methodology at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, where he also developed a number of packages for the S-PLUS statistical modeling environment. He continued his association with S-PLUS at Insightful (now TIBCO Spotfire) overseeing the product management of S-PLUS and other statistical and data mining products. David smith is the co-author (with Bill Venables) of the popular tutorial manual, An Introduction to R, and one of the originating developers of the ESS: Emacs Speaks Statistics project. Today, David leads marketing for REvolution R, supports R communities worldwide, and is responsible for the Revolutions blog. Prior to joining Revolution Analytics, David served as vice president of product management at Zynchros, Inc.
Michael Minelli Vice President, Sales
Michael Minelli leads Revolution Analytics' sales team. He is responsible for both new business development and strategic alliances. Prior to joining Revo, he was a Sales Director and Global Account Manager at SAS. During his 11 years at SAS, Michael built an extremely successful track record selling large-scale analytic projects associated with customer intelligence, risk management, supply chain and finance. Prior to joining SAS, he was a sales executive at MMS, a start-up ERP and business intelligence firm (MMS was acquired in 1999 by AMOS). In 2003, Michael was listed as a rising "sales superstar" by Entrepreneur Magazine. He is the co-author of a successful business book, “Partnering with the CIO: The Future of IT Sales Seen Through the Eyes of Key Decision Makers” (John Wiley & Sons, 2007). Michael is a graduate of Pace University.
Revolution Analytics Board of Directors
Norman H. Nie, President & CEO Revolution Analytics
Robert Gentleman has been an innovator in the statistical computing world for more than 20 years. In 1996, he and fellow University of Aukland (NZ) professor Ross Ihaka released the “R” statistical computing language as a free software package after five years of development. The goal was to offer technology better suited for their statistics students, who needed to analyze data and produce graphical models of the information. Today, R is used by over 2 million people both in academic and commercial settings, and has become the de facto standard for predictive analytics. In addition to his role on the Revolution Analytics board, Gentleman is a senior director in bioinformatics at Genentech (a member of the Roche Group). In his academic career, he has received multiple research grants and has published more than two dozen articles on statistical computing. He holds a BS in mathematics from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
Zack Urlocker has worked for 25 years in the software industry and has held executive positions in engineering and marketing at a range of enterprise software companies. Most recently, Urlocker held the title of executive vice president of products at MySQL AB, responsible for engineering and marketing the world's most popular open source database. During his tenure at MySQL, Urlocker developed the business strategy that grew the company’s revenue to $100 million annually. He joined Sun Microsystems after its $1 Billion acquisition of MySQL in 2008. Previously, Urlocker held executive product management and marketing positions at Active Software (later acquired by webMethods) and Borland International, where he helped create and launch the award-winning Delphi and JBuilder lines of client/server development tools. Urlocker is a frequent speaker at business conferences on using open source technology for competitive advantage and is the author of the widely-read Open Force blog.
Donald Nickelson has been the director of First Advantage, a risk management consultancy, since 2003. In addition to his role at First Advantage, he serves as vice chairman and director of Harbour Group Industries, a leveraged buy-out firm. Nickelson is also director of the Adolor Corporation, where he is a member of the compensation and audit committees. In addition, he is on the advisory board of Celtic Pharmaceutical Holdings and also serves as chairman of the advisory board of Celtic Therapeutics. Previously, Mr. Nickelson served as President of PaineWebber Group, an investment banking and brokerage firm, and served on the boards of numerous public and private companies.
Basil Horangic is a partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, which he joined in 2007 to help open the California office—moving from Austin Ventures in Texas, where he was a General Partner. Previously, he held a variety of positions with Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, and Oak Investment Partners. As an investor, Basil is active up and down the hardware stack, from materials, tools, and manufacturing equipment up to systems, semis, and devices. His companies have sold into network, enterprise, consumer, industrial and healthcare markets. Basil has started two companies, and successfully incubated four others. Basil is a graduate of MIT with a BS in Computer Science, a BS in Economics, and an MS in Operations Research. He received an MBA from the University of Chicago.