Sway AI Team

Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder

Hassan Ahmed, Ph.D.

Hassan is a successful serial entrepreneur. Dr. Ahmed most recently served as Chairman of the Board and CEO of Affirmed Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft in April 2020. Before founding Affirmed Networks in 2010, he was a senior advisor at Charles River Ventures. From 1998 to 2008, Dr. Ahmed served as Chairman and CEO of Sonus Networks. Prior to that time, he served in various executive roles at Ascend Communications, Cascade Communications and Analog Devices. Dr. Ahmed previously served as Associate Professor of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering and Associate Professor of Finance at Boston University. He also serves as a Director of Ciena.

Dr. Ahmed holds a BSEE and MSAE from Carleton University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

VP of BD & Solutions, Co-Founder

Amir Atai, Ph.D.

Amir is an entrepreneur and innovator. He has been an executive member of three successful and market-changing startups: Telica (acquired by Nokia), Affirmed Networks (acquired by Microsoft), and Parallel Wireless. Amir is passionate about improving customers’ performance and effectiveness by questioning the status-quo assumptions, bringing together, and leading an expert team of diverse backgrounds toward innovative and needle-moving solutions. Amir also has executive experience working for large companies. He was Chief Scientist at Bellcore and later at Alcatel/Nokia. He was also CTO at Ericsson, where he led the first nationwide LTE network rollout in the world. Amir is an expert in complex modeling techniques, math, and statistics, where he has developed cutting-edge modeling tools.

He holds a BS and MS from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University in Computer and Electrical Engineering.

Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder

Jitender Arora

Jitender is an entrepreneur and product leader with over 20 years of experience in building large-scale B2B and B2C products. Prior to co-founding Sway AI, he successfully led the product management of Amazon Alexa AI/ML Platform. He had founded Korrent Corporation, a disruptive Connected Health business. He was engineering and product leader at Acme Packet since nearly the company’s inception, he built and launched multiple market-leading products, Oracle acquired Acme Packet for $2.1 B. He also held senior roles at Oracle and Parallel Wireless. He has 20+ US patents pending and issued.

Jitender holds a BS in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Delhi Institute of Technology and an MBA from Boston University.

Vice President of Sales

Austin True

As the Vice President of Sales, Austin brings an impressive track record of building and leading highly successful sales teams in the data technology space. Before joining Sway AI, he was most recently focused on establishing the North American Enterprise Sales team at Ably. Prior to that, he spent 7 years at Tableau; beginning his tenure as an Account Executive and departing as a Regional Vice President of Sales for the East & Central Mid-Market regions.

Austin believes that in order for go-to-market teams to be the most successful, they should not default to the classic role of “advisors.” but rather take co-ownership of their customers’ business problems and partner with them in the pursuit of solving for them.

Austin holds a BA in Business Administration from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington.

Director of Marketing

Catherine Hansen

As the Director of Marketing, Catherine Hansen comes with a wealth of experience working across complex industries providing marketing, sales, and program management. She has worked for over a decade shaping brand messaging and marketing across multiple industries and brings her passion and her eye for design to Sway AI. ​She believes that creativity is intelligence having fun, and has used that belief to develop innovative marketing and sales solutions for non-profits, start-ups and both large and small enterprises. She also comes to Sway AI with a strong technical background in due diligence and supply chain management which aligns to her passion for social equity. As a returned Peace Corp volunteer, Catherine has witnessed firsthand the importance of community and brings her international community development experience to Sway AI in order to create an open and collaborative ecosystem of model developers for AI/ML. In addition to providing creative business solutions, Catherine is invested in the belief that AI/ML should benefit both the society and the environment.

Catherine holds a BS in Business and Finance and a MS in Design and Merchandising as well as Sustainability.

CPA, MBA CFO

Vivek Kulkarni

Vivek has a comprehensive background leading the cross-functional teams to ensure success and achieve goals toward improving the enterprise value in pre, or post revenue start-up and mid-size high technology companies. He brings his extensive experience in building the financial and business infrastructure from grounds up and seamlessly executing compliance matters. At Sway AI, Vivek is responsible for the oversight of all financial activities, payroll, human resources including benefits administration, contract reviews, audit, tax, technical accounting matters, and liaison with third party service providers.