Leadership Team

Michael Woelk

President and CEO

Michael Woelk is a proven leader with a consistent record of building new business for both startups and leading companies in the scientific instrument industry. Prior to joining Picarro, Michael was vice president of marketing for Varian Inc.'s world-wide scientific instrument business, where he was responsible for all enterprise-wide in-bound and out-bound marketing processes. Previously, he was vice president of sales and marketing for Ansys Technologies, Inc., a leading supplier of sample preparation products for bio-pharmaceutical applications and kits for clinical toxicology screening. Before joining Ansys, Michael was a co-founder of MetaChem Technologies, Inc., an emerging leader in liquid chromatography consumables for life science and environmental markets. MetaChem was acquired by Ansys in 2000. Michael has a B.S. in microbiology from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Eric Crosson

Chief Technical Officer

Prior to joining Picarro in 1999, Eric held research positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate at the High Energy Physics Laboratory (HEPL), where he directed research in the areas of medical applications, accelerator science, solid-state/surface science, molecular materials/chemistry, biophysics, and free electron laser science. At Stanford, Eric developed a number of key cavity ring-down spectroscopy techniques. Eric has been a project manager at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory at Duke University, where he helped lead the design and construction of an atomic beam polarized ion source. Eric received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Laura Perrone

Chief Financial Officer

Laura Perrone has extensive experience leading technology companies across multiple industries through rapid growth and expansion. Prior to joining Picarro in November 2011 as Chief Financial Officer, Laura was Senior Vice President and CFO of Omneon, a maker of technology products for digital media distribution, management and storage acquired by Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) in 2010. Prior to Omneon, Perrone held CFO roles at SaaS software and chip design companies Icarian (acquired by Workstream, NASDAQ:WSTM) and Rendition (acquired by Micron Technologies, NASDAQ: MU), respectively and held senior management positions in computer systems-related companies. Laura has a B.S. in applied economics from the University of San Francisco.

Mark Davis

Vice President of Sales, Americas

Mark Davis has been involved in sales and executive level sales management for analytical instrumentation in trace gas analysis and environmental monitoring since 1989. Before joining Picarro, he served as director of sales for the Hach Company, a division of Danaher Corporation. This group manufactures and distributes analytical instruments and reagents used to test the quality of water in municipal and industrial markets. Prior to that, he was vice president of North American operations for Orbisphere Laboratories, a division of the environmental water and waste management firm the Pennon Group. Davis received his B.S. in biological sciences from the University of Georgia and his M.S. in management of technology from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Jeff Heer

Vice President of Manufacturing

Jeff brings over 16 years of senior management experience in operations, sales and marketing. Prior to Picarro, Jeff was vice president of operations and administration at CardioDx, where he brought up manufacturing and the company infrastructure and meanwhile launched a gene expression test for cardiovascular disease. Before that Jeff was vice president of operations at Peak Surgical, where he developed manufacturing and commercialized the Pulsar RF Surgery line. Jeff also ran worldwide manufacturing for Siemens Ultrasound and Stryker Endoscopy. Jeff began his career at Stryker in sales and then ran a marketing group. Jeff graduated from the United States Military Academy, West Point, with a B.S. in general engineering. Upon graduation Jeff served as an officer and helicopter pilot in the US Army.

Jan Willem Poelmann

Vice President of International, EMEA and APAC

Jan Willem Poelmann joined Picarro to lead the company's European sales and operations. Jan Willem previously was with Juniper Networks, where he was responsible for their Service Provider Alliance business in EMEA from 2005-2010. Prior to Juniper, Jan Willem held various executive sales and marketing positions at Dell, Corvis Corporation, and Nortel Networks. Jan Willem received his B.A. and M.B.A. from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Tim Clark

Vice President of Business Development, Energy

Tim’s expertise in the energy sector has been honed from 17 years in both the petroleum and natural gas industries, where he held leadership roles in operations, engineering, and construction. Most recently, Tim was the special project manager for Pacific Gas and Electric with The Spear Group, Inc. Prior to his role at Spear, Tim was the director of project management and entitlements at a real estate investment trust in New York City. Tim also served as the vice president of construction at FC Development Group LLC. Tim graduated from the University of Delaware with his B.S. in mechanical engineering. He also holds an executive master's of engineering in management of technology from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Suresh Pisharody

Vice President of Marketing

Suresh Pisharody brings to Picarro a unique combination of proven marketing leadership experience in the technology industry and broad engineering expertise honed in multiple industries. Suresh was most recently the director of product marketing at Illumina Inc., the market leader in genetic analysis instrumentation, and one of the fastest growing technology companies in the U.S. At Illumina, Suresh played a leadership role in growing the company’s genome sequencing business from virtually no presence at all in the multi-billion dollar sequencing industry to its becoming a market leader within five years. While at Illumina, Suresh launched some of the most commercially successful genetic analysis instruments in the history of the life sciences industry. Prior to Illumina, Suresh held marketing roles of increasing responsibility at Applied Biosystems (now Life Technologies), engineering positions at NASA’s Ames Research Center and management positions in the chemicals industry. Suresh has a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and an M.B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Subra Sankar

Vice President of Engineering

Subra brings to Picarro more than two decades of engineering and R&D expertise from the life sciences, semiconductor and high technology instrumentation markets. Before joining Picarro, he was at Artium Technologies Inc., which he co-founded and where he served as vice president of engineering, with responsibilities ranging from the development of advanced particle characterization instrumentation to business strategy. Prior to Artium, he was the senior director of engineering at Illumina Inc., where he led the instrument development and consumable engineering activities related to next generation DNA sequencers. Subra’s work at Illumina enabled the company to dominate the high-throughput sequencing market and revolutionize genomics research and clinical diagnostics. Subra also held senior operations and engineering positions at KLA-Tencor and Schlumberger, Ltd. He has a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley.

Alan Cherry

Vice President of Human Resources

Alan brings to Picarro over 25 years of professional experience gained in Asia, Europe and North America. Before joining Picarro, he was the senior director of human resources at Tesla Motors, where he served during a period of explosive growth at the company, hiring over 1,000 new employees during a two-year period and building Tesla’s human resources programs and facilities from the ground up. Prior to Tesla, Alan was the vice president of human resources at Symyx Technologies, a scientific R&D integration partner to companies in the life sciences, chemicals, energy, electronics and consumer products industries. Alan also held senior management positions at Hewlett Packard, Nortel, Autodesk and Network Appliance. Alan received his post-graduate diploma in human resources from Middlesex University and his graduate degree in business from Dorset University.