Rod Johnson, Chief Executive Officer

Rod Johnson has served as the President and CEO of SpringSource since inception and has over 12 years of technology and management experience.

Rod conceived of and initiated the development of Spring. The Spring Porfolio of open source projects was based on the code published with Rod's best-selling Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development (2002).  This book was one of the most influential books ever published on J2EE and the sequel, J2EE without EJB (July 2004, with Juergen Hoeller), has proven almost equally significant, establishing a comprehensive vision for lightweight, post-EJB J2EE development.

Rod is one of the world's leading authorities on Java and J2EE development. He is a best-selling author and open source thought leader, as well as a popular conference speaker.  Rod founded SpringSource and has been its CEO since inception.

Rod has specialized in server-side Java since 1996 across a wide range of industries. Rod’s hands-on experience has led him to see problems from a client's perspective as well as a technology perspective, and has driven his influential criticism of bloated, inefficient, orthodox approaches to J2EE architecture.
Rod regularly speaks at conferences internationally and continues to be actively involved in guiding the direction of Spring.

Rod holds a BA with Honors in Computer Science, Mathematics and Musicology as well as a Phd from the University of Sydney.

Neelan Choksi, Chief Operating Officer

Neelan Choksi is the COO of SpringSource.  Neelan has extensive technology management experience, having served most recently as the founder and CEO at SolarMetric, a leading object relational mapping provider, which was acquired by BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS) in 2005. At BEA, Choksi was instrumental in the open sourcing of the acclaimed object/relational mapping tool Kodo as OpenJPA.

Prior to SolarMetric, Neelan worked for Andersen Consulting Strategic Services (NYSE: ACN) and Exxon Research & Engineering (NYSE: XOM). 

Neelan is a graduate of MIT (and was part of the often-publicized MIT Blackjack team) and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Adrian Colyer, Chief Technology Officer

Adrian Colyer is the CTO of SpringSource and has over a dozen years of experience leading teams in Java and enterprise middleware.

Adrian Colyer is the leader of the AspectJ open source project and a well-known industry expert on the topic of aspect-oriented programming (AOP). He is a co-author of the book "Eclipse AspectJ : Aspect-Oriented Programming in Eclipse with AspectJ and AJDT," and has also published numerous book chapters, articles and published papers. His short essay, "AOP without the buzzwords" has been described as "the best explanation of AOP, ever."

In 2004, Adrian was recognised as one of the top 100 young innovators in the world by MIT Technology Review for his contributions to the development and adoption of aspect-oriented programming in industry.

Adrian founded the AspectJ Development Tools project (AJDT) on Eclipse.org in 2003, a project that continues to lead the world in providing IDE support for AOP. As leader of the AspectJ project, Adrian has overseen several releases of the compiler and designed and implemented many of the AspectJ 5 language extensions to support Java 5 features.

Prior to joining SpringSource, Adrian gained over a decade of experience in building enterprise middleware at IBM. Whilst there he oversaw the introduction of aspect-oriented programming to many IBM development teams.

Adrian holds a BSc, Computer Science from University of Southampton.

Nick White, Chief Financial Officer

Nick White is the SpringSource CFO.  Nick has over 25 years of experience managing finance for high-growth technology companies.

Nick has a strong track record of commercial success in multi-national companies. Prior to joining SpringSource, Nick was Chief Financial Officer at Transitive, best known for providing Rosetta to Apple.  Nick joined Transitive in 2002 and led the company through its subsequent financing rounds and legal negotiations for its OEM relationships with Apple, IBM, Intel, Fujitsu-Siemens, and Red Hat.

Previously, Nick was also Chief Financial Officer at Pulse Entertainment, a start up providing 3D animation software for the web, and Law Cypress, a $100M high technology distribution company. He also served in financial management roles at NeXT Computer and California Energy. Earlier in his career, he was a senior audit manager at Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers) serving high technology clients in Silicon Valley, California.

Phil Bradley, Vice President of Sales

Phil Bradley serves as the worldwide Vice President of Sales at SpringSource. Phil has over 25 years of sales experience with a successful track record of developing global sales teams and establishing channels with record results.
 
With over 20 years of establishing early stage companies as leaders in their markets, Phil brings a strong track record in selling and management having led the sales organizations for several software companies including Intktomi, OpenText, nCircle and Documentum. 

Prior to SpringSource Phil led Worldwide Sales at GroundWork, an Open Source IT Management systems provider.  While at GroundWork he successfully transformed the company from a consulting vendor to an IT Management Systems provider with over 300 subscription customers, established a worldwide channels network and raised two successful rounds of financing.  Phil joined Documentum in1993 and built the sales organization from startup to a successful IPO.  Before his start-up career he spent over 10 years at Wang Laboratories developing worldwide sales organizations, channels and subsidiaries.  

Phil holds a BS from the University of Massachusetts.

Mark Brewer, Vice President and GM, Covalent Division

Mitch Ferguson, Vice President of Business Development

Mitch Ferguson serves as Vice President of Business Development for SpringSource and has over 20 years of sales and business development management experience. 

Mitch has helped establish and execute global business development and channel strategies with enterprise software companies from early-stage through IPO, including Arbor Software and Vitria Technology.  Mitch served as Vice President, Asia Pacific Operations, and Global Alliances at Vitria Technology and Director, Channels and Asia Pacific Business Development at Arbor Software.  Previously, Mitch held executive sales and business development positions with 3VR Security, Composite Software, and Wang Laboratories. 

Mitch holds an MBA from the University of Maryland, and a BS from the University of South Carolina.

Greg Schott, Vice President of Marketing

Greg Schott serves as Vice President of Marketing at SpringSource and has over 20 years of technology management experience.  Greg is a software industry veteran who has helped lead companies from early, rapid growth stages through IPO. 

Greg served as Senior Vice President of Marketing at Agile Software (acquired by Oracle) as well as Vice President of Corporate Development at Agile.  He also served as Vice President of Marketing and Vice President of Operations at DG Systems (NASDAQ: DGIT) where he helped lead the company from a startup to a profitable public company.  Previously, Greg held positions at The Boston Consulting Group, Westinghouse and IBM.
Greg has served on two public company boards (Sonus Corp and VerticalNet).

Greg holds an MBA from Stanford University and a B.S., summa cum laude, in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Steven Schuurman, EVP, Global Operations & Services

Steven Schuurman serves as Executive Vice President, Global Operations & Services for SpringSource. In this capacity Steven provides leadership to SpringSource's Regional Directors as they manage their divisions and support the corporate departments in regional execution. Steven is responsible for developing the company's Services portfolio, consisting of Training and Professional Services. Furthermore, he is also actively involved in expanding SpringSource's global reach.

Steven is a Java industry veteran, with nearly 10 years of consulting, management and entrepreneurial experience in the Enterprise Java space alone. Before co-founding SpringSource with the Spring core team, Steven served as a Director of internationally renowned Dutch Enterprise Java software-house JTeam, where he is still a board member and owner, and he also served as a managing partner in a leading Dutch software development and consulting company.