Mindjet Management Team
Scott Raskin
CEO
A strategic and dynamic business executive with more than 20 years of high-tech industry experience, Scott Raskin continues to build upon his record of successful leadership.
Scott’s strategic vision has transformed Mindjet from a developer of mind mapping software to a cross platform provider of information mapping, collaboration and cloud-based business productivity solutions. The results of this vision have fueled the growth of a passionate customer base to 1.8 million paid users worldwide. Global customers range from SMBs to iconic brands like Bayer®, BMW®, Coca-Cola®, Credit Suisse®, Dow Corning®, Microsoft®, Procter & Gamble® and Rolex®. Forty-five of BusinessWeek's® 50 "World's Most Innovative Companies” use Mindjet solutions to clarify thinking, dramatically boost productivity and increase team effectiveness.
Scott came to Mindjet after 5 years at Telelogic, where he served as President & Chief Operating Officer. At Telelogic, Scott guided the company through strategic acquisitions and extensive organic growth building a team of more than 1,200 employees in 30 countries. His efforts culminated when International Business Machines (IBM) acquired the company for $845 million.
Scott also served as vice president of sales and corporate development at Nexgenix, a pioneer and leading provider of internet and e-commerce solutions. At Nexgenix he built a revenue and sales engine from the ground up and grew revenues to over $55 million per year. Under his direct leadership the company counted 25 consecutive quarters of profitable growth. In his career, Scott has also held senior management positions at Bachman Information Systems and MAI Basic Four.
Scott currently serves as president of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), a peer network of 17,000 company presidents and CEO’s in more than 100 countries and has earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin.
Blaine Mathieu
Chief Products Officer
Blaine Mathieu combines his years of software product and marketing acumen in his role as Chief Products Officer at Mindjet. In his role Mathieu drives all product strategy and execution to address the needs of the evolving global mainstream market.
A seasoned software veteran, Mathieu most recently was CMO at Lyris, an email marketing and marketing automation provider, where he led product, business development, marketing, and corporate communications. At Lyris, Mathieu launched their initial SaaS offering and helped create the newly emerging integrated digital marketing space.
In his career, Mathieu has also served as General Manager and Vice President of Products and Marketing at Corel Corporation, a diversified software company where he drove product and market development across a wide range of personal and office productivity solutions targeting enterprise and consumers. Mathieu has also held senior management positions at Adobe Systems Incorporated and Gartner Group.
Mathieu is a sought after thought leader and speaker having contributed to numerous conferences, webinars and articles relating to high technology and software markets.
Valerie Burman
Vice President, Strategy, Corporate Development & Alliances
Valerie Burman, vice president of Strategy, Corporate Development & Alliances, is a seasoned business development executive and M&A specialist and will draw upon her impressive experience as she expands Mindjet’s strategic relationships and business partnerships to accelerate growth.
Previously, Valerie was vice president of technology partner management at SAP where she managed a portfolio of key partnerships that drove significant co-innovation and revenue for the company. Previous roles at SAP included vice president of business development and vice president of business user strategy. At Business Objects (acquired by SAP in 2007), Valerie led strategic corporate development initiatives and spearheaded corporate third-party licensing.
Before SAP, Valerie spent eight years at Lehman Brothers with increasing responsibility culminating in her role as senior vice president of technology mergers and acquisitions. During her tenure at Lehman Brothers, Valerie led a wide range of transactions including debt and equity capital raising, acquisitions and divestitures.
Valerie holds a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Mike Duensing
Vice President, Engineering
Mike Duensing leads Mindjet’s engineering and development teams. Duensing brings 24 years of experience building highly effective software and systems development organizations to Mindjet. As a SaaS expert, he has broken new ground in building large-scale, cloud-based computing systems that effectively handle reams of complex data and information in dynamic ways. Duensing joins Mindjet from EMC Corporation, where he served as Vice President of Development Operations for the company’s content management and archiving business. While at EMC, he increased product quality and enhanced company efficiencies while constructing engineering teams with hundreds of members working on more than 70 products in 21 distributed development centers.
Duensing led teams that contributed product architecture to scale to billions of objects and hundreds of millions of transactions per day at EMC, and also at Documentum before it was acquired by EMC in 2003. Prior to his tenure at Documentum he was Vice President of Engineering and co-founder of Synteleos, an Internet-based software company where Duensing pioneered the first generally available and most widely used SaaS collaboration and transaction management system for the North American real estate market. Earlier, at Standard & Poor’s, he led the way on development of the company’s first SaaS products, which were commercial successes in the financial, oil and gas, and real estate markets. Duensing earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ray Polanco
Vice President, Customer Success and Services
As VP of Customer Success and Services, Ray is Responsible for all aspects of Customer Lifecycle Management including On-boarding, Professional Services, Customer Success, Consulting, Customer Service & Support.
Ray brings over 15 years of professional services management and customer development experience to his current role. Ray has extensive experience in working with both early stage and fortune 500 companies to develop and build partnerships and trusting customer relationships. Previously, Ray worked at Lyris, Inc, a marketing SaaS provider, as VP, Global Services and Support, a role in which he strategically managed highly-visible opportunities and was involved in solution architectures, as well as communicating customer needs and coordinating efforts across departments and business units.
Ray has also held senior level positions at Avid Technology, Zhone Technologies and Lucent Technologies where he was instrumental in re-engineering of services and support operations to increase customer satisfaction and revenues and improve profitability.
Uwe Richter
Vice President & General Manager, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa)
Uwe Richter brings 19 years of experience in sales and management functions from leading business intelligence and performance management companies to Mindjet. Prior to Mindjet, he managed the CPM Business Unit in EMEA at Infor Global Solutions with a total of 250 employees. From 1989 to mid 2006, he was instrumental in establishing Cognos in Germany, where he drove growth in his last five years as Area VP for Central and Eastern Europe. Uwe graduated in 1988 with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universities of Dortmund and Bochum.
Abe Smith
Vice President & GM, Americas & APAC
Abe Smith, Vice President & GM, Americas & APAC, brings over 15 years of sales and business development success to his role at Mindjet. A leading thinker on Sales 2.0 solutions and new technologies Abe is leveraging his knowledge to increase the speed and efficiency of Mindjet’s sales and customer support processes.
Previously, Abe held both domestic and international leadership roles at SaaS pioneer, WebEx Communications (acquired by Cisco). At WebEx he was part of the core management team that innovated SaaS-based selling to grow revenues from sub-$50M to more than $500M in revenue culminating in the $3.2B acquisition by Cisco. During his tenure Abe was chartered with growing business in the Americas and leading international expansion into the emerging markets, increasing revenues from $5M to nearly $50M in just three years.
Starting in the field Abe, was an accomplished outside rep and has developed highly productive relationships across the Enterprise, Mid-Market and SMB segments. His Fortune 500 work experience includes EMC Corporation, American Express and Shearson Lehman in addition to his tenure at Cisco.
Abe graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Tom Spence
Vice President, Finance
Tom Spence leads the finance, accounting and operations teams to help ensure Mindjet’s continued profitable growth. A 20-year industry veteran, Tom brings a wealth of financial expertise and global experience which will be leveraged as Mindjet grows its business across the EMEA, Americas and Asia Pacific regions.
Before landing at Mindjet Tom established a record of success as the Corporate Controller at Electronics for Imaging (EFI), a leader in digital imaging software with 23 world-wide offices. At EFI he led the financial close process and consolidation of world-wide operations including the consolidation of US and foreign subsidiaries while managing international accounting teams in Europe and India. Previously, Tom has also held a number of senior finance roles at Autodesk where he oversaw corporate financial planning and analysis, accounting, and the media and entertainment division sales and service finance teams in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to Autodesk, he worked at SGI and Visa International in finance management. Tom started his career at KPMG, in the high technology audit services group, and earned Bachelor of Science in Business Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Felicity Wohltman
Vice President, Product Marketing
Felicity Wohltman brings 18 years of product marketing expertise to Mindjet. Prior to Mindjet, Wohltman served as vice president of marketing for Genius.com, where she was responsible for the development and execution of the go-to-market strategy and leading product marketing, corporate communications, sales enablement and customer acquisition programs. Previously, she was director of product marketing with Macromedia (acquired by Adobe) for its Breeze Solutions (later Adobe Connect) and oversaw the development and execution of several product launches. Wohltman also spent two years at WebEx Communications (now part of Cisco) as strategic director of marketing and communications and director of product marketing.
