Management Team

John M. Jack, President, CEO

Mr. Jack brings over 25 years of sales, marketing, and executive management experience to Fortify Software. He has held CEO and executive positions at Covalent, Shaman Corporation, The Vantive Corporation, and Sybase, Inc. As Vantive’s COO, Mr. Jack led the company’s expansion from early revenues through IPO and successful acquisition by PeopleSoft. Earlier at Sybase, he helped build the company’s sales organizations and, as part of the original management team, was integral to the company's rapid growth to over $1B in yearly revenue.

Michael Armistead, Founder & Vice President of Corporate Development

Mr. Armistead has over two decades of leadership experience in the software security, application development and Internet industries, having held executive and product creation positions at companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Pure Atria (IBM Rational), and Lycos. While VP and General Manager at Lycos, he led development and operational teams in the Financial, Directory and Web-based Email services. Mr. Armistead brings his datacenter, software development process and development tools experience to create partnerships and delivery channels that complement Fortify’s product portfolio and deliver value to customers.

Brian Chess, Ph.D., Founder & Chief Scientist

Brian Chess is a founder of Fortify Software and serves as Fortify’s Chief Scientist, where his work focuses on practical methods for creating secure systems. His book, Secure Programming with Static Analysis, shows how static source code analysis is an indispensable tool for getting security right. Brian holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied the application of static analysis to the problem of finding security-relevant defects in source code. Before settling on security, Brian spent a decade in Silicon Valley working at huge companies and small startups. He has done research on a broad set of topics, ranging from integrated circuit design all the way to delivering software as a service.

Roger Thornton, Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Prior to founding Fortify Software in 2002, Mr. Thornton led key development efforts at E*TRADE, guided a major architecture redesign effort at eBay, and served as an interim executive and investor to a number of other successful startups. Earlier in his career, he held technology and business leadership positions at some of the world’s leading technology companies including Cypress Semiconductor, Apple Computer (Taligent), and Sun Microsystems (JavaSoft). An expert and pioneer in the field of software security, Mr. Thornton is a frequent presenter at industry conferences and works closely with companies beginning to address information security through improved software development processes and technologies.

Jack Marshall, Vice President, Customer Success

Mr. Marshall has an extensive background in working with customers in high technology companies. He co-founded and served as CEO of Photoloft, the world’s first Internet photo sharing site that served over 250 customers including Wal-Mart service provider Photo Corporation of America and Canon Inc. of Japan. Photoloft went public in March of 1999 and was sold to Canon, Inc. of Japan in 2001. Prior to that, Mr. Marshall operated www.altavista.com under licenses with Digital Equipment (Compaq/HP) and held various positions at Megatest, Honeywell and Texas Instruments.

Barmak Meftah, Senior Vice President, Products & Technologies

Mr. Meftah is a technology industry veteran with over 15 years of experience in enterprise software development, product management and management consulting at industry leading companies. He joined Fortify from Sychron, where as Vice President of Engineering and Product Management he managed the strategy, development and release of products in the ground-breaking grid computing industry. Prior to Sychron, Mr. Meftah spent seven years in various senior management roles within Oracle's server technologies division. Most recently he was the group head of product management for the Oracle 9i Database on Windows and .NET platforms. Earlier in his career, Mr. Meftah served as Managing Principal Consultant at Price Waterhouse LLC and as a Group Manager and Technical Lead with Wells Fargo Bank.

Richard Trovato, Vice President, Sales

Mr. Trovato has more than 20 years experience in the expansion of small private companies to publicly traded industry leaders. As Vice President of Global Sales at Onaro, he was instrumental in identifying and closing key foundational sales. Before Onaro, Mr. Trovato worked as Vice President, Worldwide Sales at HighGround Systems, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in April 2002 for $440 million. During his three-year tenure at Vantive Corporation, he helped grow the company’s revenues to $225 million and saw the company through its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and later $600 million acquisition by PeopleSoft.

John Richardson, Vice President, Finance

John has over 14 years of experience working with both public and private technology companies in Silicon Valley. Prior to joining Fortify, he was Corporate Controller of the enterprise endpoint security provider Sygate Technologies where he played a key role in facilitating the sale of the company to Symantec. John has also held senior finance and accounting positions in Teros, Tera Optic Networks, Marketfirst Software, and Intellicorp. John is a licensed CPA, began his career at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

Clark Newby, Vice President, Marketing

Mr. Newby was most recently with PolyServe, a data center software company that was acquired April 2007 by Hewlett-Packard. As VP of Marketing, he drove strategic marketing and communications initiatives as well as oversaw product marketing. Prior to PolyServe, Mr. Newby was Senior Director of Global Marketing at Mercury Interactive, where he directed worldwide marketing campaigns for the company's business technology optimization products. Mr. Newby came to Mercury in 2003 with the acquisition of Kintana, where he held positions in marketing, business development and strategic alliances, and was instrumental in creating the 'IT governance' market category. Prior to Kintana, he managed manufacturing industries marketing for Silicon Graphics, a high-performance server and storage vendor.

Jim Yares, Vice President, Global Services

Yares has over 20 years of technology consulting and management experience, most recently at BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting). At BearingPoint, Yares led the North American sales force for the company's Commercial Services Industry Business Unit to over $400 million in revenue, and also formed and led the company's High Technology industry practice group where he consulted with the firm's high-tech clients on strategy, transformation, operations excellence and sales force effectiveness. Prior to BearingPoint, Yares served in leadership positions at Vantive Corporation and began his career at Unisys and Hewlett Packard.