The Artisan Executive Team
Brian Hierholzer
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Recognized internationally by his peers in the IT and cloud computing communities as an innovator, Brian has the foresight to create and execute on industry leading trends and business models. Prior to founding Artisan Infrastructure, he founded two leading edge telecom companies. He is featured in numerous trade publications and media interviews for his guidance and insight into the future of both the cloud and IT industries. Additionally, Brian is listed as one of the top cloud influencers in the world.
Mark Almeida-Cardy
Chief Technical Officer
Born from a engineering background, Mark can be often found in the technology trenches with his team. Over the last 20 years Mark has been a part of Datacenter technology from, polishing fibers, to mass consolidation of Infrastructure to the emergence of Software Defined Data Centers (SDDC). “Technology teams have a lot to be excited about right now. With the emergence of SDDC and the growing demand for MicroServices any one individual working in the industry has a huge opportunity for growth and success.”
Stuart Clark
Chief Information Security Officer
Stuart is a proven security leader with 20 years of experience in removing roadblocks and aligning security to enable organizational excellence. Prior to working with Artisan Infrastructure, he was Director of Security at SocialWare. Earlier, he was Information Security Officer at Solis Security. Prior to Solis, he was a Chief Security Officer and Crime Prevention Officer at American Bank of Texas and West Lake Hills, TX Police Department, respectively.
Dave Hierholzer
Chief Financial Officer
Dave Hierholzer is a graduate of Kansas State University where he studied Finance and Management. He has worked professionally in finance and accounting for 20 years. Before venturing into the Tech industry with Artisan, he spent 17 years in resort real estate development. He lives in Golden, Colorado and considers himself very lucky to be married to his best friend, Leigh. Together, they are the proud parents of two sons.
Larry Heafner
Executive VP of Engineering
Driven by innovation and experience, Larry Heafner has over 20 years of technology expertise in product development and enterprise architecture. Prior to joining Artisan Larry served as -Director at CSC in the emerging business group focused on development of next-generation cloud solutions. Before the acquisition by CSC, he led engineering teams developing an enterprise cloud management platform at ServiceMesh. In addition, he previously held data management and technology security leadership roles at Comcast and JPMorgan Chase.
Chin Kuo
SVP, Product Development
Highly experienced technical project manager with 25+ years of leadership and management of technical projects, products, processes, budgets, and development teams with extensive storage industry knowledge. Chin specializes in data reduction technologies for cloud storage, previously founding the Just One Data enterprise storage software solution.
Larry Hart
Chief Marketing Officer
Larry brings nearly 20 years of experience in growing global technology companies at various stages of development ranging from startups to Global 50 companies. In his previous roles, he led teams responsible for business development, alliances, marketing, product management and strategy. Larry was most recently with Cumulus Networks where he built the Dell alliance into the company’s largest partner. Additionally, Larry was at Dell, Inc. for 12 years where he developed and launched data center storage and networking solutions. Larry currently holds two US patents.
Chris Wiser
MSP Channel Chief
Chris Wiser was the former CEO and Founder of TechSquad IT, a Milwaukee-based company, which provides managed technology services to small businesses. Since joining Artisan in 2015, Chris and his team have set the industry standard by bringing practical and pertinent expertise to the MSP Channel. It is through his 10-plus years of experience in cloud computing that Chris and his team have been able to consistently surpass the unique business needs of today’s Managed Service Providers.
Ivan Kuhn
SVP, Carrier and Government Sales
Ivan has over 27 years in the Communications industry and brings various different leadership roles to Artisan. Prior to joining Artisan Infrastructure, Ivan served as Chief Business Development Officer with Nex-Tech Inc., where he lead the sales, marketing, advertising and strategic direction towards revenue growth of the company. Prior to Nex-Tech, Ivan held the position as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for IdeaTek Communications and before that, he held several sales leadership positions for Cox Communications. Ivan brings his Telco industry knowledge to Artisan to assist Carriers in providing enhanced cloud based services to their clients across the globe.