Management Team

The InQuira management team offers a balance of seasoned business specialists and technology innovators with experience from companies including Oracle, Cambridge Technology Partners, Hewlett-Packard, Parametric Technologies, Informatica, Razorfish, Brightware, and Inference.

Michael Murphy, Chief Executive Officer
Mike Murphy brings over 20 years of technology management and sales experience to his role as CEO of InQuira, Inc. Mike started InQuira in 2002 with a goal of developing a solution that would set new standards of functionality and commercial viability for Web-based customer search and navigation. Prior to InQuira, Mike served as one of four key executives at Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP), where he grew the Western Region from revenue of $8M in 1995 to $80M in 1998. Mike then oversaw CTP's sales, marketing, alliances, and partner programs, areas totaling more than $400M in revenue. Prior to his tenure at CTP, Mike spent 13 years at Hewlett Packard. He holds a BA in Management from Loyola Marymount University.

Edwin Cooper, Founder, Chief Scientist
Edwin Cooper has been actively involved in natural language search for over ten years. While a PhD student, Edwin conceived of and led the OnPoint project, a Web-based information retrieval system with a natural language interface. He left graduate school to start a search engine company, which continues today as InQuira. He has a BA in History and BS in Cognitive Science from the University of California San Diego, an MA in the History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University, and may someday return to the University of Chicago to complete his PhD in Computer Science.

Christopher Krook, Chief Financial Officer
Chris Krook manages finance, human resources, legal, IT, and operations at InQuira. Prior to InQuira, Chris was the CFO of Comergent Technologies, Inc., a global leader of e-business software that was acquired by Sterling Commerce, an AT&T company.  Chris has also held executive management positions with Connectify, Inc., NetGravity, Inc., and mFactory.  His background includes positions at Arthur Andersen & Co. and he was a leader in two successful IPO's, secondary offerings, multiple acquisitions, and many private placements. Chris is a CPA and a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Santi Pierini, Chief Marketing Officer
Santi Pierini is the Chief Marketing Officer responsible for global marketing and outbound strategy for the company. Santi joined InQuira with over 20 years of experience in brand management and marketing to Global 2000 companies. Previously, he held the position of Senior Vice President of Marketing at Day Software. He also served as Vice President of Product Strategy at Vignette Corporation. Pierini joined Vignette via the company’s acquisition of OnDisplay, where he was an officer and Senior Vice President of Marketing and Global Product Management. Prior to this, he was in sales and marketing with Dun & Bradstreet Software, a systems engineer with Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a senior management consultant for Andersen Consulting (Accenture). Santi holds a degree in computer science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

Tom Aitchison, EVP, Worldwide Sales
Tom Aitchison has over 20 years of sales and sales management experience in the high tech industry. Tom has an outstanding track record of delivering strong revenue growth in the areas of software licensing, consulting, support services, and training. Prior to joining InQuira, Tom was Senior Vice President, North American Field Operations, at Sterling Commerce ATT, where he was responsible for revenue and sales operations for the Americas. Previously, Tom held senior sales and sales management positions at Comergent, webMethods, McAfee, Legent Corporation, and Computer Associates. Tom earned a bachelor's degree in finance from Arizona State University.

Bryan Sivak, Founder, General Manager, Europe
Bryan Sivak was a chief engineer and architect of the WebSeer project. Along with Ed Cooper, InQuira's Chief Scientist, he worked at IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory on natural language text retrieval-related projects and for Starfish Software (sold to Motorola in 1998), where he helped develop and launch Starfish's Internet Sidekick Product. Bryan holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.

Tim Eager, Chief Technology Officer
Tim Eager was previously one of the early executives at Answerfriend, a leading customer self-service software vendor. He was also the CTO of International Integration Inc. (i-Cube), and prior to that spent 11 years at Hewlett Packard as a technical account manager. Tim received his BA in Mathematics from Westmont College and his MS in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Brent Hayward, Vice President, Worldwide Partner Development
As VP of Worldwide Partner Development, Brent Hayward is responsible for creating and implementing InQuira's global channel and alliances strategy. Prior to InQuira, Brent worked at Accenture selling, architecting and implementing large-scale global application solutions in the Communications and High Tech Industry. He has significant account management and leadership experience driving multi-year transformational programs with global geographic scope and staffing, in addition to a holding an operations role for the $200M North American Media and Entertainment Segment. He holds a BS in Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Terry LeClair, Vice President, Engineering
Terry LeClair joins InQuira with over 25 years of engineering and management experience, and will play an integral role in leading the continued development of InQuira's award-winning software. Terry brings a strong record of innovation to InQuira's engineering team. As Intuit's Vice President Product Development, he was responsible initially for the Quicken product and then for the Innovation/Internal Startups within the Quicken Organization, which also served as the principal internal incubator for the company. Terry previously worked with SpinCircuit/Cadence/Reconsant, Cogit, Broadbase Information Systems, Fourth Shift, Consilium and Scicon in a product development or engineering capacity. He holds an MBA from University of California-Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science degree in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Christopher Hall, Vice President, Product Marketing
Chris brings over twenty years of business experience as a senior marketing and product strategy professional in the enterprise software industry. Prior to joining InQuira, Chris was the Vice President in charge of the global product strategy initiatives at KANA Software. Chris has been Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for Chordiant where he pioneered the company’s customer experience (Cx) branding and was Senior Director of Product Management for Silknet Software which launched a successful IPO in 1999. Chris has a BA in Engineering from the University of Maine and resides in Amherst, New Hampshire.

Scott Brown, Vice President, Professional Services
Scott Brown is the VP of Professional Services for North America, with executive responsibility for new and existing customer account delivery, professional services sales and operations, and implementation methodology.  Scott is also responsible for InQuira’s Post Implementation InQuira Customer Experience Services (ICES) and InQuira Education Services Divisions.  Scott came to InQuira with over 15 years of client delivery and sales experience.   Scott has played key client and program management roles at KPMG Peat Marwick, Cambridge Technology Partners, Syncata, and Parinbus.  Scott holds a BA in Finance from Loyola Marymount University and a MBA in Finance from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

Stephen Raye, Vice President, Customer Experience Strategies
Stephen Raye has over 15 years of experience delivering strategic service, sales, and marketing solutions to Global 2000 companies. With a track record of success as an entrepreneur, executive, and consultant, Steve brings extensive expertise in customer service and knowledge management to his role at InQuira. He was a founding member of eVergance, a management and technology consulting firm acquired by Kana Software. Prior to eVergance, he was senior director of information technology at Sprint. Steve began his career at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), and has a BA in Philosophy and an MBA in Information Systems from the University of Missouri, Kansas City.