Meet our team

Rob began his software career in an artificial intelligence laboratory in Tokyo, writing natural language translation systems in Lisp. His early interest in languages, both natural and artificial, led him to follow the evolution of software engineering into object orientated systems and databases, Smalltalk development, and Agile methodologies. Rob co-founded Pivotal with the goal of providing clients a combination of hard core software engineering techniques and flexible methods as an integrated, disciplined approach to software development. As Pivotal's CEO, Rob has grown the company into a major provider of agile enablement services for software development organizations. He also provides the vision for Pivotal's rapidly expanding product development and start-up bootstrapping practice. Rob graduated from the University of California at Berkeley.

Sherry began her career in environmental science at the U.S. Geological Survey. Her experience with geographic information systems evolved into a broader professional interest in software, systems analysis, project management and new or unconventional forms of software delivery. As co-founder of Pivotal, Sherry worked with Rob to ensure that the company's consulting services maintained a sharp focus on the customer, applying the emerging discipline of Agile methodologies to provide clients with greater predictability and transparency in the development process. As Pivotal has evolved, Sherry has taken on the roles of CFO and COO, working with Rob and the company's principals to guide the firm through a period of rapid growth. Sherry earned her degrees from Stanford University.

Edward has coached teams in a wide variety of business and technical domains, including complex enterprise software and some of the world's largest auction and search websites. Edward has deep experience with object-orientated techniques and is highly proficient in the modeling and design of large-scale business systems. Using his extensive web development knowledge and relentless focus on developer testing practices, he enjoys working with teams to deliver quality software for high-volume websites. Edward is the author of JsUnit, the popular open-source unit testing tool for JavaScript. He has made numerous contributions to agile and Extreme Programming literature. Edward holds a degree in Mathematics from Oxford University, England.

Ian is one of the true old hands of Java development. He has been working with Java since version 1.0a2, and actually wrote the first client-server Java application ever: a demo seating reservation system used for the Java product announcement at SunWorld in 1995. He is the author of Mastering Tomcat Development, published by J. Wiley and Sons, and has written articles for Java Developer's Journal, Developer.com, and the Java Developer Connection. He served as Java Evangelist for Symantec Visual Cafe, and led the engineering team at Friendster as it grew from 120,000 users to 3 Million users in 6 months. At Pivotal Labs, Ian has displayed his versatility as an architect, project lead, engagement manager, and web technology expert. He is a frequent trainer and speaker on agile practices.

Dan has been building complex, large-scale applications using object-oriented technologies for over twelve years, and has been a practitioner and proponent of Agile methods since the earliest days of Extreme Programming. He has led projects and engagements in a broad range of industries including logistics, finance, and investment banking, and has been instrumental in the successful adoption of agile methods at some of the world's largest e-commerce companies. Dan manages the development effort of Pivotal Tracker, and leads Pivotal Labs' New York City practice.

Christian was Vice President of Engineering of Nominum, a leading provider of industry-leading network naming and addressing solutions, from 2003-2005. Before joining Nominum, Christian was co-founder of the GaiaCom Corporation, a New York based consulting and software development firm. He has worked in a diverse set of industries, from finance to fashion, on both commercial software and internal IT applications. Christian holds a degree in Computer Science from Harvard University.