Leadership Team
Francine Geist
Francine Geist
Francine serves as the CEO of LiveAction. Francine brings more than 25 years of proven financial strategy and operations leadership experience delivering outstanding results for B2B software and data companies. Francine previously served as Deputy CFO and VP, Finance at INTTRA (a private-equity backed software and network business servicing the ocean shipping industry), where she helped lead the company through a successful exit and sale to E2Open. Prior to that, Francine held various roles of increasing responsibility in both finance and operations. She served as Vice President of Global Sales Operations and Finance at TravelClick, a private-equity sponsored global provider of cloud-based data-driven solutions for maximizing hotel revenue and spent 10 years with Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE: DNB), a leading source of B2B commercial information & insight. Francine began her career as an Auditor at Deloitte & Touche, growing and developing the foundation of her immense skillset. Francine earned her B.S. in Accounting from Fairfield University and her M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
John Smith
John Smith
John Smith is the founder of LiveAction and previously served as VP of Engineering at Spirent where he was responsible for $150M revenue per year product line with over 140 engineers. John has been in networking and software development for over 25 years with companies such as Boeing, Phoenix Technologies and Referentia. John holds 6 patents developed under LiveAction in the areas of network management and visualizations. John holds a MS in computer science and research towards his PhD in machine learning using genetic algorithms for autonomous navigation.
Andrew Kupersmith
Andrew Kupersmith
Andrew serves as SVP & General Manager, North America for LiveAction. Andrew brings over 10 years of experience in enterprise sales delivering consistently, overachieving results as an individual contributor at LiveAction and DoD contractor Artemis. Prior to a career in sales, Andrew taught integrated science at Louisville Collegiate School. Andrew attended the University of Kansas with a B.A. in Economics, and graduate school at Columbia University’s Teachers College earning an M.A. and an MBA from the University of Louisville.
John McSherry
John McSherry
John McSherry is Live Action’s LiveAction’s Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel, overseeing the legal and compliance, human resources and information security functions.Before joining Live Action, he served as the chief legal officer at Cloud9 Technologies, a leading voice communication and analytics cloud-based platform designed for the financial markets, and he led the legal effort in its successful sale to Symphony Communications. Prior to Cloud9, John served as the General Counsel at Ipreo and IPC Systems, both private equity-backed financial technology companies. He also served at the Enforcement Division of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and as a commercial litigation associate at the New York law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel. John holds a BA from Fordham University, a JD from Fordham University School of Law, and is a member of the NY State Bar.
Paul Gray
Paul Gray
Paul is LiveAction’s Chief Product Officer managing engineering and product. Paul brings over 20 years of experience in networking industry having held executive leadership positions at SolarWinds, Aruba Networks, and AirWave Wireless leading both engineering and product teams. He is an agent of change helping companies transition to SaaS. Most recently at SolarWinds he delivered their new Observability platform and prior to that delivered Aruba’s first Cloud Network services. Paul has an entrepreneurial spirit having started and worked with many startup ventures. He holds BS in computer science from Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
Carlos Ferro
Carlos Ferro
Executive with over 25 years experiences in IT industry leading cross-functional teams and setting up operations and driving business in Europe, Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
Carlos brings experience developing high performing teams and a proven track record adding value to customers and partners, and achieving consistent year-over-year sales growth.
He leads the company’s go-to-market strategy and execution for the International Region. Before joining LiveAction, he worked in different leadership positions in Delinea (Thycotic), Symantec, Novell, Altiris, where he led sales & channel organizations, professional services and field operations.
Board of Directors
Michael Triplett
Michael Triplett
Michael Triplett is a managing partner of Insight Partners. Mike focuses on investments in Infrastructure and Application Software companies and has been instrumental in investments in more than twenty companies, many of which have achieved fast growth and realized significant value for shareholders and employees. Notable among these are the IPOs of Click Commerce, Solarwinds Inc. (NYSE: SWI), and Quest Software, and the acquisitions of Aelita Software (acquired by Quest Software), Authorize.net (acquired by Go2Net), Astaro (acquired by Sophos), BeyondTrust (acquired by Veritas Capital), Imceda Software (acquired by Quest Software), eEye Digital Security (acquired by BeyondTrust), Folhamatic (acquired by Sage plc), GFI’s TeamViewer (acquired by Permira), Kabum! (purchased by founders), Metalogix (acquired by Permira), and ScriptLogic (acquired by Quest Software).
Philine Huizing
Philine Huizing
Philine is a vice president at Insight Partners. She focuses on both high growth and mature software businesses, particularly in cybersecurity and infrastructure software.
Previously, she spent time on Insight’s Onsite team, working closely with portfolio executives on GTM strategy, product strategy, and M&A. Prior to Insight, she worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company’s New York Office. Her work at McKinsey focused largely on growth and transaction strategy, advising clients across a variety of industries including financial services and financial technology, pharmaceuticals, and industrials.
Ghia Griarte
Ghia Griarte
Ms. Griarte is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ponte Partners, a secondary fund focused on the acquisition of direct private companies, PE/Growth/VC portfolios, and LP interests. Ponte invests technology (security, fintech, enterprise software, SaaS, mobility, AR/VR, infrastructure), digital health, consumer and industrial sectors.
She serves on several private company boards and most recently served as Board of Trustee for the City of San Jose Police and Fire Retirement Plan, a $4.7 billion public pension fund where she chaired both the investment and governance committees and served on the joint personnel and audit committees, and San Jose Mayor Liccardo’s Retirement Stakeholders Working Group.
Ms. Griarte has been in private equity and venture capital for 20 years. Previously she was a Managing Director at Saints Capital, a secondary firm with $1B of assets under management with 200 global portfolio of companies across US, Europe and Asia. Prior to joining Saints in 2003, Ms. Griarte was at Centennial Ventures, a technology-focused early-stage venture capital firm with investments in broadband access, cable, networking, satellite, wireless and digital media. Previously, Ms. Griarte was a strategy consultant at Gemini Consulting in the Telecom, Media and Networks practice focused on wireline and wireless telecommunications companies across Europe, US and Middle East. Ms. Griarte began her career as an electrical systems engineer at Lockheed Martin and chaired the Corporate Avionics Taskforce.
Ms. Griarte received an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, an MEM from the Robert L. McCormick School of Engineering, and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Francine Geist
Francine Geist
Francine serves as the CEO of LiveAction. Francine brings more than 25 years of proven financial strategy and operations leadership experience delivering outstanding results for B2B software and data companies. Francine previously served as Deputy CFO and VP, Finance at INTTRA (a private-equity backed software and network business servicing the ocean shipping industry), where she helped lead the company through a successful exit and sale to E2Open. Prior to that, Francine held various roles of increasing responsibility in both finance and operations. She served as Vice President of Global Sales Operations and Finance at TravelClick, a private-equity sponsored global provider of cloud-based data-driven solutions for maximizing hotel revenue and spent 10 years with Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE: DNB), a leading source of B2B commercial information & insight. Francine began her career as an Auditor at Deloitte & Touche, growing and developing the foundation of her immense skillset. Francine earned her B.S. in Accounting from Fairfield University and her M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
Suku Krishnaraj
Suku Krishnaraj
Suku Krishnaraj is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Sumo Logic, a SaaS Log analytics company. He is responsible for creating and accelerating the company’s marketing and growth strategy and brand recognition across the globe.
Suku brings over 25 years of experience building products and marketing to B2B enterprises within data analytics, developer technologies, IT management, cybersecurity, and IaaS/PaaS markets. Prior to Sumo Logic, Suku headed the cloud business unit at CenturyLink as their vice president and general manager leading a $700m cloud business. Prior to CenturyLink, Suku was the chief marketing officer at AppFog, where he built a fast-growing and vibrant developer community, and was senior vice president, of product strategy, at SolarWinds, at which he built a bottom-up high-velocity GTM and demand generation engine. Suku also led product management and product marketing functions for various IT Operations management products at Mercury, Hewlett Packard, and Precise.
Suku started his career as a developer building large-scale distributed systems. Suku has a B.E. in Computer Science & Engineering from Mysore University, India, and an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University. He serves on the advisory board of several startups. In his spare time, Suku enjoys playing chess with his sons, golf with his friends, and traveling with family.