Brendan Madden
Chief Executive Officer

Brendan Madden founded Tom Sawyer Software in January 1992. Brendan helped grow the company from a startup to the leading global provider of high performance data visualization, layout, and analysis systems it is today. With more than twenty-five years of experience, Brendan is a key contributor to company business and product strategy, operations, and worldwide sales. Brendan has a highly specialized and intricate knowledge of the software industry and other industry sectors.

Through Brendan’s expertise in the visualization industry, Tom Sawyer Software has been recognized for its excellence in component based software technology development by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. Prior to founding Tom Sawyer Software, Brendan was employed at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, the IBM Santa Teresa Laboratory, and Vitalink Communications. At IBM, Brendan was the author of two automatic layout systems.

Brendan holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Physics from Ithaca College, and has attended graduate school in Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University.

Jonathan Wolter
Chief Financial Officer

Jonathan Wolter is responsible for managing the Finance and Administration departments and assists the Chief Executive Officer with planning and business strategy. He brings more than thirty years of experience to the company in managing various Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, and facilities operations for both public and private companies.

Jonathan joined Tom Sawyer Software in January 2010 because he felt that his experience would help the company continue to grow. He also believes that the company makes the "best visualization products and has a development team that has kept the technology on the leading edge". He is also currently a partner at FLG Partners, a CFO services and board advisory firm in Northern California. Prior to joining Tom Sawyer Software, he was an International Controller for Bearingpoint, Inc. Jonathan began his career with Arthur Andersen & Co. in San Francisco, where he practiced in the audit division for eleven years and later became the Vice President and Treasurer at First Republic Bancorp, Inc.

Jonathan is a CPA in California and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley.

Francois Bertault
Chief Technology Officer

Francois Bertault brings nearly fifteen years of research experience in the Information Visualization and Graph Drawing industries. He joined Tom Sawyer Software in 2000 as a Senior Software Engineer. Today as the Chief Technology Officer, he oversees the strategy, innovation, design, and development of all Tom Sawyer Software products. He played a key role in delivering the company’s flagship product, Tom Sawyer Perspectives, from inception to the general release. He directs his teams with the main focus of delivering exceptional user experience, design, and continuous improvement.

Prior to joining Tom Sawyer Software, Francois held a Post Doctoral position at the University of Newcastle in Australia where he taught classes in Computer Graphics and Compilers. He has published a number of international scientific papers in the area of graph layout of compound graphs and combinatorial graph labeling.

Francois holds a PhD in Computer Science from Henri Poincaré University in France, a Research Degree in Applied Mathematics and Parallel Computing and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Université Joseph Fourier in France.

Phil Griston
Vice President of Business Development

Phil Griston brings more than eighteen years of international software and telecommunications commercial experience to Tom Sawyer Software. Phil's primary role is to develop new market opportunities by working with customers, industry partners, and channels to create compelling visualization and analysis applications.

Immediately prior to joining Tom Sawyer Software, Phil was a member of the leadership team in Cisco Systems Network Management Technology Group, where he was responsible for all partnering, business development, and technology licensing. During his time at Cisco, Phil's team was responsible for partnerships with multiple ISV and alliance partners critical to the company's business. He also negotiated multiple acquisition, original equipment manufacturer, and component licensing deals with Cisco technology suppliers. Previously, Phil led Sales and Business Development at Parc Technologies, a UK-based start-up acquired by Cisco in 2004. Prior to this, Phil had a variety of international sales and marketing positions with companies such as BMC Software, Cable & Wireless, Sun Microsystems, and Lotus Development Corporation.

Phil holds a Bachelors of Science, Honors, in Business Studies from City University, London.

Robert Stearns
Vice President of Sales

Robert Stearns leads Tom Sawyer Software’s global sales team to strengthen revenue growth and value creation with new and existing customers. Robert brings more than twenty years of extensive sales and business development experience to Tom Sawyer Software. Since joining in 2005, he has been a key contributor to developing and managing the Company’s sales practice and infrastructure. Robert is responsible for overseeing new business development, sales operations, services, and customer support.

Prior to joining Tom Sawyer Software, Robert held senior positions for seventeen years including Senior Vice President and Managing Director at Marsh and McLennan Companies in New York City. In these positions, Robert was personally involved in developing a book of business with a new market, growing it to $50 million in premiums annually within eighteen months. In addition, Robert managed a team of brokers that placed $350 million of premiums annually into the worldwide insurance marketplace. Robert spoke regularly at many industry conferences and seminars and served on client and insurance company panels.

Robert graduated from Ithaca College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management and a minor in Computer Science.

Uli Foessmeier
Managing Director, Germany

Uli Foessmeier joined Tom Sawyer Software in 1997 as one of the world’s leading Graph Layout experts. For several years, he worked as a Senior Research Staff Member where his key contribution was defining and developing a new product, Tom Sawyer Analysis. Later, as the Vice President of Engineering, Uli oversaw software development and focused on automating recurring processes such as quality assurance. In 2007, Uli started Tom Sawyer Software GmbH in Munich, Germany and is the Managing Director there. He also acts as the Vice President of Services in the EMEA region.

Earlier in his career, Uli was one of the most highly regarded research members of the Graph Drawing community. In his publication, Drawing High Degree Graphs with Low Bend Numbers, Uli defined a new model for drawing graphs that is still one of the standards today. He was also a key contributor to the Steiner Tree community, briefly holding the world record for solving this exceptionally difficult problem as described in his publication, Solving Rectilinear Steiner Tree Problems Exactly in Theory and Practice. Uli published over a dozen research papers and has also taught Parallel Algorithms and Computational Geometry at the University of Tuebingen in Germany.

Uli received his award-winning PhD in Computer Science and a Minor in Mathematics from the University of Tuebingen in Germany. Additionally, Uli holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Passau in Germany.

Pavel Hardak
Managing Director, Israel

Pavel Hardak brings more than fifteen years of technical and management experience to Tom Sawyer Software from leading Israeli and international companies. Pavel played a key role in strategically establishing Tom Sawyer Software Israel Ltd. to build and enhance relationships with local businesses. His main focus is to deliver Tom Sawyer Software’s award-winning technology to Israel’s robust high-tech community and is responsible for overseeing new business development, sales, services, and customer support.

Prior to joining Tom Sawyer Software, Pavel was the Director of Technology and Director of Product Management at TTI Telecom. He represented the company in the TM Forum, managed the full product life cycle of the Service Assurance product line, and was responsible for technical aspects of major telecom tenders. Previously, Pavel led several research and development projects at Atrica, later acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks, where he created a number of state-of-the-art products including Atrica ASPEN and CES modules in the A-2100 series. Before that, Pavel was a Principal Engineer with Sheer Networks and Software Team Leader with 3Com. Pavel has also spoken at industry shows such as TM World and OSS/BSS Forum in France, Russia and the United States and holds several US patents.

Pavel holds an Executive Master of Business Administration from Tel-Aviv University in Israel and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Sciences from Technion in Israel.

Peter Eades
Member

Peter Eades is the Chairman of Software Technologies at the University of Sydney. His interest in graph visualization began in the early 1980s, and since then, he has centered his research on graph drawing. Over the past 25 years, Peter has written over a hundred papers and co-authored the book "Graph Drawing: Algorithms for the Visualization of Graphs". In addition, he has performed consulting projects for the Australian Government and a number of other industries, including Bioinformatics, Defense, Financial Services, and Software Engineering.

Tom Sawyer Software has a long-standing relationship with Peter and has collaborated with him on many advisory projects. Peter was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Tom Sawyer Software User Conference, where he gave a presentation on how visualization methods can help users cope with large data sets. He is currently working on visualization of dynamic data sets, visualization of uncertainty, and algorithms for increasing the crossing angles in graph drawings. Peter's recent major projects also include topological approaches for three-dimensional graph drawing and new methods for interactive visualization of large microarray data sets. He has been awarded the title of "Distinguished Researcher" by National ICT Australia. When asked why he joined Tom Sawyer Software's Technical Advisory Board, Peter states, "I believe that Tom Sawyer Software is the leader in graph visualization and has a group of very intelligent and innovative people".

Peter holds a PhD and Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Australian National University.