Leadership

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Lingping Gao Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman

Lingping Gao founded NetBrain Technologies in 2004 with a mission to simplify network management. Prior to founding NetBrain, Mr. Gao was the Chief Network Architect at Thomson Financial, where he managed the complexities of large enterprise networks and experienced the challenges of maintaining network performance.

Mr. Gao has experience within multiple areas of business, including management, engineering and international business within the networking, software and automotive industries. Mr. Gao holds a BS and a BA in Automotive Engineering from Tsinghua University and an MS in Engineering from Yale University.

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Bo Thurmond Chief Revenue Officer

Bo Thurmond joined NetBrain as RVP Sales in 2020 and became Chief Revenue Officer in 2021. Bo has 20+ years of sales/channel management and leadership experience with a proven ability for building, motivating, and leading all facets of sales teams. Bo is committed to and believes in building a culture of teamwork, winning, and doing things the right way.

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Barbara Scarcella Chief Customer Officer

Barbara Scarcella joined NetBrain in 2008 as Senior Advisor to the CEO and assumed the role of SVP of Global Sales in September 2016. Ms. Scarcella moved into the Chief Customer Officer role in 2020 and is responsible for global renewals and customer retention.

Ms. Scarcella has deep expertise in building strategic customer relationships; her passion for customer success is the foundation of the culture for the Sales organization. Before joining NetBrain, Ms. Scarcella held multiple executive positions during her 18 years at Thomson Corporation including SVP & Strategic Sourcing Officer, Chief Technology Officer and President of Operations and Technology.

Ms. Scarcella holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Richmond College, Staten Island, New York and a Certificate in Management Development, Columbia University Development Program, New York, NY. Her professional affiliations include Advisory Board Member: AT&T, American Express, Starwood. Keynote speaker for Strategic Sourcing Summit. Presenter, Gartner Symposium. American Management Association and Information Industries Association.

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Weilie Ma Senior Vice President, Operations

Dr. Weilie Ma has served as the Senior Vice President, Office of the CEO at NetBrain since July 2014. She is responsible for the execution of strategic initiatives supporting rapid expansion of NetBrain, including talent development, international expansion, business partnership, and program management. Prior to this role, Dr. Ma served as the Vice President of Operations from 2007 to 2014.

Before joining NetBrain, Dr. Ma worked as a Research Scientist at Children’s Hospital Boston. Dr. Ma holds a Ph.D. degree from Yale University in Biology.

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Song Pang Senior Vice President, Engineering

Song Pang has served as the Vice President of Support and Services for NetBrain since 2016.  He is responsible for ensuring our customers are successful in deploying, adopting, and realizing value out of the NetBrain product through Technical Support, Professional Services, and Customer Success.

Prior to NetBrain Mr. Pang worked for Stroud International, a management consulting firm, where he focused on partnering with operations leadership teams in opportunity identification, results delivery, and designing improvement frameworks. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University.

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Ryan Couch Chief Marketing Officer

With over 15 years of hands-on experience, Ryan Couch has a deep background in driving marketing success across diverse industries, including cybersecurity and SaaS. As the CMO at Fishtech and Cyderes, Ryan played a pivotal role in expanding revenue streams, managing global mergers, and launching successful brand campaigns. His leadership resulted in triple-digit growth, award-winning marketing initiatives, and high-profile media exposure on platforms like CNN and Bloomberg. Ryan is known for his strategic vision, building strong partnerships, and delivering powerful results through creative, data-driven marketing strategies.

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Alex Alvarez Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnership and Channel Sales

Alex is a 20-year sales veteran with previous tenures at network performance monitoring and management provider Riverbed, a global leader in online protection McAfee, and a global leader for storage and information management service Iron Mountain. He will focus on partner success across the network community and introduce new product and service delivery revenue opportunities for partners. Furthermore, he will oversee the program for partners that wish to leverage the adoption of NetBrain Automation.

NetBrain in the execution of their ongoing customer engagements worldwide. Alex has a degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

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Greg Baden Senior Vice President & General Counsel

Greg Baden joined NetBrain’s executive team as SVP, General Counsel in 2024. He is responsible for managing all legal, risk, and compliance matters for NetBrain.

Before joining NetBrain, Mr. Baden served as the General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer for a pharmaceutical services firm and as the General Counsel for two enterprise software platform companies. He has practiced corporate and intellectual property law in New York and London, and, prior to his legal career, worked as an engineer in the software industry.

Mr. Baden holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University, a master’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of Maryland, and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Texas School of Law.

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Emily Liang Senior Vice President, Training, and Enablement

Emily Liang joined NetBrain’s executive team as SVP, Training, and Enablement in 2021.  Before joining NetBrain, Emily was the Global Web Development Manager at Morgan Stanley.  She received her bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from Fordham University.  Emily also graduated from General Electric’s Information Management Leadership Program.

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Eric Wang Vice President, Product Development

Eric Wang has served as the Vice President of Product Development at NetBrain since 2009, responsible for leading the planning and implementation efforts of product development and defining the product roadmap in collaboration with the Company Product Committee. Mr. Wang also works closely with the Support and Sales Engineering teams, helping to ensure customer success.

Before assuming his current role at NetBrain, Mr. Wang built and led the Development and Product departments to innovate the first Computer-Aided Network Engineering (CANE) product at NetBrain between 2005 and 2009. He holds a B.S. degree from Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics.

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Guangdong Liao Chief Computer Scientist and Cofounder

Guangdong Liao joined NetBrain in January 2005 as Co-founder and CTO and currently serves as the company’s Chief Computer Scientist. He is responsible for NetBrain’s product roadmap and development efforts.

Prior to NetBrain, Dr. Liao worked as a senior software engineer at Cisco Systems and as a senior consultant at Computer Sciences Corporation. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics and an M.S. in Computer Science from Boston University and a B.S. from the University of Science and Technology of China.

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Lingping Gao Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman

Lingping Gao founded NetBrain Technologies in 2004 with a mission to simplify network management. Prior to founding NetBrain, Mr. Gao was the Chief Network Architect at Thomson Financial, where he managed the complexities of large enterprise networks and experienced the challenges of maintaining network performance.

Mr. Gao has experience within multiple areas of business, including management, engineering and international business within the networking, software and automotive industries. Mr. Gao holds a BS and a BA in Automotive Engineering from Tsinghua University and an MS in Engineering from Yale University.

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Tom Jennings Managing Director, Summit Partners

Thomas H. Jennings has served as a member of our board of directors since 2014. Mr. Jennings is a Managing Director with Summit Partners, a growth equity firm which has raised more than $16 billion in capital. In addition to serving on NetBrain’s board of directors, Mr. Jennings is currently director of Accedian Networks, ApoCell, AvePoint, Clarabridge, PeerApp, Telerik and Zenoss and is actively involved with the firm’s investments in Casa Systems and Logi Analytics.

Prior to Summit, Mr. Jennings worked as a consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). Mr. Jennings is a Trustee of the Massachusetts Soldiers Legacy Fund, an organization that provides tuition funding for the children of fallen service members from Massachusetts. Mr. Jennings holds an AB in economics and theology from Boston College, where he received the Scholar of the College award.

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Lizuo Jin Independent Director

Dr. Lizuo Jin has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009. In 1997, Dr. Jin founded a strategy consulting firm – Beijing Integrity Consulting Co. to help enterprises streamline management, restructure business and enhance financing.

Dr. Jin holds a B.A degree from Peking University and Ph.D. degree from the University of Oxford.

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Peter Knudsen CEO, Ecoair Corp.

Peter Knudsen has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009. Mr. Knudsen has been the CEO of Ecoair Corp. for the past twenty-one years. Ecoair has designed a proprietary alternator that is manufactured by its joint venture partner in China. Recently, Mr. Knudsen set up a subsidiary in Ecoair that performs consulting in the municipal solid waste to energy field. Earlier Mr. Knudsen founded a company that supplied high rise automated warehouses to the food industry.

Mr. Knudsen has a B.A. in economics from Yale University and an M.B.A. in marketing from Northwestern University.

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Cheng Wu Chairman and Co-founder of APL Software

Cheng Wu, NetBrain’s newest board member, is a 4x founder in the enterprise space and has returned over $6 billion to investors. Mr. Wu is currently the chairman and co-founder of APL software and has previously founded many successful ventures such as Azuki Systems, Acopia Networks, Arrowpoint Communications and Arris Networks. He has also assumed executive roles at Cisco and Ericsson.