President and Chief Executive Officer
Antonio Pietri is President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AspenTech, and also serves on the company’s Board of Directors. Prior to his appointment to President and CEO, he served as Executive Vice President, Worldwide Field Operations, where he led global Sales, Sales Operations, Professional Services, and Customer Support & Training. He previously served as Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Regional Operations, Asia Pacific, based in Singapore and Beijing, China.
Mr. Pietri joined AspenTech through the company’s acquisition of Setpoint, Inc. in 1996. At Setpoint, he held a range of sales, services implementation, and consulting roles, where he oversaw integration of AspenTech solutions at European refinery and process manufacturing sites. In 2002, he relocated to Singapore as Vice President, Business Consulting, and was subsequently promoted to Managing Director of the Asia Pacific region.
Mr. Pietri began his career at ABB Simcon as an applications engineer focused on advanced control and multi-variable controllers for refining. He holds an MBA from the University of Houston and a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tulsa.
Board Chair
Robert M. Whelan, Jr. brings over 35 years of corporate finance and investment banking experience to AspenTech’s board of directors. Since 2001, he has been President of Whelan & Company, LLC, providing financial consulting, valuation and strategic services to public and private companies in the technology, healthcare and alternative energy industries.
From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Whelan served as Vice Chairman, Prudential Volpe Technology Group, the technology investment banking and research division of Prudential Securities formed when Prudential acquired Volpe Brown Whelan & Company in 1999. Prior to that, he was a senior executive with Volpe Brown Whelan, a private investment banking, brokerage and asset management firm for technology and healthcare companies. Previously, he was Managing Director, New York Regional and High Technology Groups at Prudential Securities, and Managing Director and Head of Corporate Finance at Hambrecht & Quist, Inc.
Mr. Whelan received a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College and a M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Patrick M. Antkowiak is president of CEM Technology Advisors, LLC, a strategy and technology consulting business. He spent over 38 years in increasingly senior roles at Northrop Grumman Corporation, including as the company’s Chief Technology Officer from 2014 to 2018, and retired in 2019 as the company’s Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, having led the company’s technology development strategy and execution, focusing the company on competitive differentiation in emerging technology areas across the space, airborne, maritime, ground and cyber domains.
Mr. Antkowiak currently serves on the board of directors for the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, a non-profit organization focused on accelerating the development and adoption of innovative robotics technologies and workforce strategies for the nation. He is also a member of The Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering Dean’s advisory board.
Mr. Antkowiak received his bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from The Johns Hopkins University, his master’s degree from the University of Maryland and completed the General Manager’s Program at the Harvard Business School.
Thomas F. Bogan served as Vice Chairman at Workday, Inc. from February 2020 to January 2022, and previously served as Executive Vice President of Workday’s Planning business unit. Mr. Bogan joined Workday from Adaptive Insights, where he was Chief Executive Officer and a director from January 2015 until its acquisition by Workday in August 2018.
From 2007 until January 2019, he was a director of Apptio, Inc., including its Chair from 2012 to January 2019. He was a director of Citrix Systems, Inc. from 2003 to June 2016, including its Chair from 2004 to 2015, a director of PTC, Inc. from 2011 to June 2015 and a director of Rally Software Development Corp. from 2009 to July 2015.
Mr. Bogan has also served as a director and executive officer of various public and privately-held companies, including Greylock Partners, Rational Software, Avatar Technologies and Pacific Data. He received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Stonehill College.
Karen Golz is a retired partner of Ernst & Young (EY), where she held various senior leadership positions during her 40-year tenure, including most recently, Global Vice Chair, Japan (2016-2017). In addition to accounting, financial reporting and audit expertise, she brings considerable experience in international and regulatory matters. As Global Vice Chair of Professional Practice (2010-2016), she oversaw accounting, auditing, regulatory, tools and methodologies and supported innovation within EY’s Global Assurance practice. Prior to that, she held the Americas and Global Vice-Chair of Professional Ethics/Independence.
Ms. Golz is a board and audit committee member of Analog Devices, Inc. and Osteon Holdings/Exactech. She is senior advisor to The Boston Consulting Group’s Audit and Risk Committee and is a National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Board Leadership Fellow and sits on the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Foundation. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Accountancy, summa cum laude, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and is a certified public accountant.
David Henshall served as President & CEO of Citrix Systems, a leading multinational provider of cloud computing and virtualization technology, where he held executive roles for nearly twenty years. Prior to his role as President, CEO and Director of Citrix, Mr. Henshall served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer, overseeing the company’s worldwide finance, operations and administration organizations.
Before joining Citrix, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Rational Software Corporation, a software company acquired by IBM Corporation, and also held various finance positions at Cypress Semiconductor and Samsung. He currently also serves as a member of the board of directors at Everbridge, Inc., Feedzai, Inc. and HashiCorp, Inc.
Mr. Henshall holds a B.S. in Business Administration from University of Arizona and a M.B.A. from Santa Clara University.
Ram R. Krishnan has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Emerson since February 2021. Mr. Krishnan has extensive experience across Emerson’s Automation Solutions and Commercial & Residential Solutions businesses.
Mr. Krishnan joined Emerson in 1994 as a project engineer and held several management roles of increasing responsibility. He was named President of Climate Technologies in Asia in 2011, serving in Hong Kong. He returned to the United States as Vice President of Profit Planning and Perfect Execution in 2015, a role he held until 2016, when he became Group President of Flow Solutions. He was named Chief Operating Officer of Final Control in January 2017 and became the Group President of Final Control in November 2017 following the successful $3.15 billion acquisition of Pentair’s valves and controls business.
As Chief Operating Officer of Emerson, Mr. Krishnan oversees global supply chain operations, information technology and mergers and acquisitions. He has a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree in business administration from Xavier University.
Arlen R. Shenkman is a global technology executive with more than 25 years of experience leading high-growth businesses and transforming companies. He is currently President and CFO at Boomi, a global provider of cloud integration and automation technology with more than 20,000 customers in 30 countries. At Boomi, Arlen is responsible for all financial and operational management functions across the business.
Prior to this role, he served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Citrix from 2019 through 2022, where he was responsible for the company’s financial and capital management strategies, ESG, budgeting and planning, accounting, tax and treasury, investor relations, strategic alliances and M&A. From 2015 to 2017, Mr. Shenkman served as Chief Financial Officer of SAP’s largest business unit, responsible for all finance functions in North America, including forecasting and planning, identifying efficiencies and ensuring the region’s overall financial health. He previously served as SAP’s Global Head of Corporate Development from 2012 to 2015 and was a principal architect of SAP’s rapid transformation into a cloud company.
Mr. Shenkman has a J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law, an M.B.A. from the Fox School of Business at Temple University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from George Washington University. He has also completed the London Business School’s Corporate Finance Program and is the Chair of the Operating Committee and member of the Audit Committee and Board of Directors of Commvault Systems Inc., a data protection and information management software company.