Leadership Team

As Executive Chairman, Ron provides strategic oversight and guidance for Skillsoft and is responsible for leading the company through the next phase of evolution. Ron currently serves as the Lead Director of Ansys, the global leader in engineering simulation, a role he has held for the last five years. Prior to working at Ansys, Ron was President and Chief Executive Officer of Intralinks, a global provider of secure SaaS collaboration solutions and virtual data rooms. He led Intralinks back to double digit growth while executing the acquisitions of PE Nexus, MergerID, and docTrackr, and remained at Intralinks through its acquisition by Synchronoss, the leading innovator of cloud solutions, secure enterprise productivity and software-based activation for companies across the globe. Prior to Intralinks, Ron served as Chairman of Ann Taylor for ten years and served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Novell, Inc., where he started as Executive Vice President and President, Worldwide Field Operations in 2003. Ron began his career at IBM, where he held a number of management and executive positions over a 16-year period including Worldwide General Manager in IBM Marketing and Services for the Distribution Industry segment, managing product development of hardware and software, sales and marketing and services.

John Frederick is Skillsoft’s Chief Administrative Officer where he oversees the company’s strategy, business planning and administrative teams, including Finance and HR. In addition to his organizational responsibilities, John will work closely with CEO, the Board, our shareholders and our senior leadership team to drive the evolution of our strategy and support the transformation of our core business processes in support of that strategy. John has more than 20 years of experience leading operating and administrative functions within private and public companies with revenues ranging from $60 million to more than $2 billion. He most recently served as Chief Operating Officer of SnagAJob.com, the largest platform for hourly work, connecting more than 100 million unique visitors annually with employment opportunities at 300,000 employer locations in the US and Canada. Prior to Snag, John was the Chief Financial Officer of Synchronoss Technologies, and prior to that was the Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative and Financial Officer of Avid Technology. Before joining Avid, he held senior finance and administrative roles in consumer product and technology companies.

Bobby was appointed Chief Financial Officer in November 2019. As CFO, Bobby leads the Skillsoft finance, accounting and business applications teams. Bobby is an accomplished CFO with a demonstrated track record in financial strategy, business planning and forecasting, and financial restructuring at companies ranging in size from $20M to $2B. After beginning his career at PwC, he has held executive level roles at several public and private companies, including Sunbeam Corporation and Panavision. Most recently, he served as Managing Director at Fahrenheit Advisors. Bobby has a BS in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As Chief Marketing Officer, Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek (BB) leads a global marketing organization focused on helping companies unlock the hidden value inside their greatest asset – their people.

In her role, Michelle is responsible for the company’s marketing strategy to drive growth, generate awareness, and drive demand for Skillsoft solutions among learners, customers, and partners. She oversees all key functions, including customer marketing, corporate communications, demand generation, marketing operations and business development. Most importantly, she serves as the company’s brand evangelist, helping to build a vibrant community of passionate learners.

Prior to Skillsoft, Michelle held several executive roles in the high tech sector, most notably as the CMO of IBM Watson, where she was responsible for marketing the company's artificial intelligence (AI) products and solutions. Michelle also served as the global head of marketing for The Weather Company, an IBM Business, where she helped companies understand how to anticipate, plan for and ultimately make better decisions - with greater confidence - in the face of weather.

Pat recently joined Skillsoft to drive the development and implementation of an operating framework to better realize business unit alignment with our strategic goals as well as effective, efficient and consistent execution of our core business processes. In addition, Pat is focused on transformation of Skillsoft’s customer experience – developing and executing a strategy designed to deliver customer outcomes within the context of a world-class customer experience.

Prior to Skillsoft, Pat served as Executive Vice President, Global Customer Service and Chief Privacy Officer for Monster Worldwide and was a member of the executive management team that led Monster’s acquisition by Randstad Holding.

He previously was associated with Craig and Macauley Professional Corporation as well as with the law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery and served in the United States Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer.

A graduate of Georgetown University, Pat also holds a Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School.

Greg is Skillsoft's Chief People Officer, and is responsible for leading and managing our global human resources organization. Greg is focused on the continued development and evolution of our culture to enable us to attract the very best talent globally and ensure that Skillsoft is a great place to work. Greg joined Skillsoft in 2002 and has over 20 years of experience in the industry. During his tenure he has been responsible for Skillsoft's global human resources and facilities functions, and has managed a number of other administrative functions including Legal. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Greg held similar roles at CBT Systems/ SmartForce. Greg received his bachelor's degree from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut.

AP is responsible for engineering, product management, cloud operations, and IT across all products in the Skillsoft group of companies. He has extensive experience in supporting rapidly growing technology companies including General Manager and SVP of SaaS at SevOne where he was responsible for its on-demand/ SaaS business segment, after holding the position of SVP Engineering. Prior to SevOne, AP held senior technology positions including Group President in ACI Worldwide and Director of Software at IBM. AP has a PhD in Computer Science from Duke University, an MS in Computer Science from Washington State University and a BS in Computer Science from Jadavpur University, India.

Mark is responsible for leading all aspects of the strategic direction, roadmap and development of Skillsoft’s content catalogue. Prior to his role as Chief Content Officer, Mark was SVP of Skillsoft Books (formerly Books24x7), successfully launching the Company’s book summary product and increasing the company’s audiobook collection by more than 60%, making it the largest collection of audiobooks within the corporate learning market. Today we work with more than 230 global publishers to offer over 40,000 best-selling digital and audiobook titles. Prior to Skillsoft Books, Mark led strategic business development where he worked on cross functional project and services teams to deliver integrated learning experiences with Skillsoft’s key clients. Mark began his career in Skillsoft as VP Content Production after the Element K acquisition in 2011. His career with Element K spanned 15 years, where he was responsible for the company's product strategy, content development and operational execution. Mark earned his MBA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and his undergraduate degree from State University of New York, College at Brockport.

Mike was appointed Chief Operating Officer, SumTotal in November 2019. Prior to his appointment as COO, SumTotal, Mike served as Chief Financial Officer from September 2017 to November 2019. Mike has been with the business since 2005 and has held a variety of senior finance roles during his tenure. He has vast experience of working with various capital structures including public equity and public & private debt. In addition, he has acted as a key liaison with the company’s sponsors, investors and lenders. Mike began his early career at Ernst & Young. He has a BSc. in Corporate Finance from University of Massachusetts – Lowell and an MBA from the Isenberg School of Management at UMASS.

Heide is responsible for driving innovation and growth in the Leadership & Business Customer Market. Her role as General Manager of this customer market concentrates on leading the content, platform, customer success, sales and marketing teams to deliver compelling experiences to our customers.

Heide has extensive experience in the publishing, media and educational technology / training sectors. For decades she has developed award-winning e-learning solutions in the leadership and business market and has held senior roles in product development, innovation and product management for leading content organizations. Heide is passionate about leveraging technology to improve the practice of management. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and is on the faculty of the Management and Organization Department of Boston College’s School of Business.

Michael is responsible for driving innovation and growth in the Technology & Developer Customer Market. His role as General Manager of this customer market concentrates on leading the content, platform, customer success, sales and marketing teams to deliver compelling experiences to our customers.

Prior to Skillsoft, Michael led the council member organization at GLG, focused on growing GLG’s network of professional experts. Before that, Michael spent over a decade at Gartner, where he led several business units serving technology providers, chief information officers, professional services firms, technology investors, digital marketers, and small & medium businesses. He also led Gartner’s corporate marketing and corporate development organizations. Prior to Gartner, Michael was a consultant at McKinsey serving high-tech, telecom, and pharmaceutical clients on a variety of strategic issues.

Michael began his career as a research physicist, leading fundamental R&D efforts in semiconductor nanotechnology at IBM, Philips Electronics, and Bell Laboratories. Michael received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard, and his Ph.D. from MIT.

As Senior Vice President of Product Management, Potoula is responsible for product development, innovation, and user experience design including the launch of the award-winning Percipio intelligent learning platform. Potoula leads the product organization in agile product development and lean product practices of prototype-test-iterate to ensure we are building products our customers will love. Prioir to joining Skillsoft, Potoula held leadership positions in digital product management and marketing at Kaplan Test Prep, The College Board, McGraw-Hill, and JP MorganChase. Potoula has an M.B.A from the Tuck School at Dartmouth and a B.S. from New York University.

As Senior Vice President of Engineering for SumTotal, Kevin is responsible for architecture, product development and training for the SumTotal product portfolio. Since joining SumTotal in 2006, Kevin has held multiple leadership positions including Chief Architect and Senior Director of Development. In these roles, Kevin had the opportunity to lead innovation initiatives across the entire suite, while launching multiple new product modules. Prior to these roles, Kevin was Director of Development at MindSolve Technologies. Kevin earned his BSBA in Computer Science and his EMBA at The University of Florida.

Edi is responsible for leading the global cloud operations team at Skillsoft, where he led the transformation of Skillsoft products from on premise to SaaS, helped establish the Skillsoft Security Governance Board in partnership with our Information Technology team, helped Skillsoft achieve FedRamp certification and played a key role in several of the company’s acquisitions. Edi holds an MBA from Northeastern University.

As Skillsoft’s SVP of Content Production, Fergus is responsible for the production of our US English and International product portfolio. Overseeing production, from product design through QA and release, across a global network, Fergus ensures Skillsoft’s content road map and customer commitments are met. Most recently, Fergus successfully led the transformation of Skillsoft’s content library, by reengineering processes and implementing new operational practices across our content development group. Fergus has over 20 years’ experience in managing various aspects of the content creation processes. Prior to joining Skillsoft in 2002, he worked across a number of industries in the UK & Ireland specializing in the implementation and management of Quality, Production, and Computer Integrated Manufacturing systems. Fergus is a graduate (BSc Mathematics) of University College Galway, Ireland.

As Senior Vice President of Engineering for Skillsoft, Murali is responsible for technology, architecture, product development, innovation and PMO activities for the Skillsoft product portfolio including the award-winning Percipio intelligent learning platform, Skillport product family, Compliance and Books. Prior to joining Skillsoft in 2016, Murali held several senior management and technology leader roles at IBM over a decade. This includes building IBM’s intranet, launching Lotus Greenhouse, bringing several major releases of IBM Connections and IBM Sametime products to market. Murali has a BS in Electronics and Communications from JNTU, India and an MBA from Babson Olin School of Management.

In his role as SVP Customer Success & Support, Ed leads Skillsoft’s Customer Success motion across onboarding, adoption, expansion and renewal readiness by ensuring optimized Customer outcomes and ROI with Skillsoft’s award winning Percipio platform and content, while driving a company-wide culture of Customer Success at Skillsoft. Additionally, Ed is also responsible for both Skillsoft and SumTotal’s product Support, overseeing incident response and resolution, as well as customer satisfaction. Ed is a career-long service professional and customer advocate, most recently serving as SVP Global Services at SevOne where he was responsible for 24×7 global support delivery, professional services, and software upgrades across SevOne’s installed base of enterprise and service provider customers. Previously, he held long term senior global Service and Support leadership roles at Coriant and Sycamore Networks, suppliers of Service Provider networking solutions. He has spent 20 years leading high-growth and large-scale worldwide service organizations, driving operational efficiency, safeguarding recurring maintenance, and supporting extensive and complex customer implementations across the enterprise, service provider and government markets. Ed holds a BSEE degree from University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

In her role as Senior Vice President, Culture and Talent, Sheri drives the company’s strategy to ensure Skillsoft is a great place to work, attracting the world’s top talent while retaining the amazing talent already in place. Sheri’s key areas of responsibility include Employee Engagement, Employee Communication, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, Employer Branding. She will also partner with internal stakeholders with respect to our Community Outreach programs. Sheri has over 20 years of experience building and defining cultures within transformative and growing organizations. Most recently, Sheri was Senior Vice President, Human Resources at SharkNinja, a $1.6B+ global consumer products company. While at SharkNinja, Sheri was responsible for Culture, Talent, HR Operations and Corporate Services. Prior to SharkNinja, Sheri played a key leadership role with Haemonetics Corporation where she led various initiatives to transform the surgical division into a consultative, value based selling organization. Sheri graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree from Lehigh University.

Slav leads Data Architecture, Business Analysis and Data Science for Skillsoft. He is responsible for driving fact-based decisions across the organization and enabling various products and systems to exchange accurate and actionable data.

Slav is a seasoned business leader with extensive experience in the human capital and consumer lending industries. He has held various analytical and leadership roles that have spanned across the full customer lifecycle. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Slav led the Data & Analytics team at Snagajob – the largest marketplace for hourly work in the US which connects tens of millions of job seekers with millions of hiring managers every year. In addition, Slav held various product and marketing analytics positions at Capital One, where he led credit policy for its mortgage originations business, digital marketing for its credit card business and customer experience analytics for its enterprise contact center.

Slav earned a BA in Finance in his native country - Bulgaria, and an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. He is also a CFA charter holder.

In his role as Senior Vice President of Finance, Ryan leads our global accounting, tax and treasury functions. Ryan is a Certified Public Accountant with over 10 years of experience leading global finance organizations for both public and private companies, where he led efforts to improve processes, streamline operations and install organizational discipline. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Ryan was the VP of Finance, Chief Accounting Officer and Treasurer of Avid Technology, Inc., a publicly traded technology company that provides software and integrated solutions for video and audio content creation, management and distribution. Prior to Avid, Ryan held VP of Finance positions at several other companies. Ryan started his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Ryan received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management in Amherst, Massachusetts.

As the SVP for Global Sales, Ted is responsible for developing and supporting sales strategies to drive revenue growth for SumTotal clients, along with identifying new market opportunities and strategic partnerships with marquee clients across product lines and sales channels.

During his tenure at SumTotal, Ted has negotiated multi-year contacts to maximize profitability while re-engineering business processes to boost organizational performance.

Ted’s diverse experience in sales management spans the technology, manufacturing and distribution industries. Prior to SumTotal, he held senior sales and business development leadership roles at Tessco Technologies and Cenveo/Cadmus Communications.

Ted earned his B.S. in Business Marketing from the University of South Carolina. He is a Society member of the Kennedy Krieger Institute and a Life Founding member of the Land Preservation Trust.