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, 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.

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.

Martin Savitt, Vice President, Sales 
Martin Savitt brings over 17 years of technology, sales and sales management experience to his role as Vice President of Sales at InQuira, Inc. Prior to joining InQuira, Martin was Vice President of Sales at APAC Customer Services, where he led the company's successful expansion into the competitive telecommunications market. As North American Director of Sales at Clear Communications, Martin re-engineered sales processes to increase average deal size and shorten sales cycles, growing revenue even during a recessionary downturn. Martin earned his sales stripes a top performer at Clarify, a leading CRM vendor, and ARDIS, an IBM-Motorola joint venture that developed wireless data solutions for Fortune 500 field service and public safety organizations. Early in his career,Martin held various engineering positions within the aerospace and automotive industries. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA in Marketing and International Finance and Economics from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business.

Tim Shetler, Vice President, Operations
Tim Shetler brings over 20 years of experience in software marketing, product management and software development. Prior to joining InQuira, he was VP of Marketing at TimesTen, Inc. where he built and ran the function until the company was acquired by Oracle Corporation, where he served most recently as VP of Product Marketing. At TimesTen, he was responsible for corporate, industry and product marketing, and product management. Prior to TimesTen, Shetler headed Product Management for database software vendor Informix Software, including functions for competitive benchmarking, technology acquisition and customer acceptance testing. He also worked as a product manager at Hewlett-Packard and designed and developed applications software as a consultant for Andersen Consulting (Accenture) earlier in his career. Tim has a BS in marketing from Drake University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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.

Brent Hayward, Vice President, Worldwide Support and Professional Services
As VP of Worldwide Support and Professional Services, Brent Hayward is responsible for InQuira’s new and existing customer support and services delivery, sales, and operations management. 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.

Jason Hekl , Vice President, Corporate Marketing
Jason Hekl joined InQuira in February 2004 with more than ten years of enterprise software experience in both startup and large company environments. As InQuira's Vice-President of Corporate Marketing, Jason is responsible for all corporate marketing initiatives, including demand generation, messaging, and marketing communications. Before joining InQuira, Jason held positions in product management, alliances and sales at Siebel Systems and InSystems Technologies. He is a frequent speaker and author on marketing, customer service and knowledge management topics and has published articles in DMNews, KMWorld, CRMGuru.com and Customer Inter@ction Solutions. Jason holds a BA in International Relations and Economics from the University of Delaware, and an MBA in Marketing from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He resides in Menlo Park, California.

Nav Chakravarti , Vice President, Product Marketing
Nav Chakravarti joined InQuira in April 2000, as a member of the founding team. As Vice President of Product Marketing, he is responsible for InQuira’s product messaging and positioning. During his seven year tenure at InQuira, he has had extensive experience in consulting with InQuira’s customers to present InQuira’s value proposition, guiding solution architecture and implementing search and knowledge management solutions. Prior to joining InQuira, Nav spent seven years at Cambridge Technology Partners where he was a Director of Internet Solutions. Nav’s education includes a BS and an MS in Computer Engineering from Michigan State University and an MBA in Marketing from the Anderson School at UCLA.

Albrecht Gass, Chief Architect
Albrecht Gass joined InQuira as Director of Engineering and has since been promoted to Chief Architect. Prior to joining InQuira, he worked at International Integration, Inc. (i-Cube) since 1994, where he managed the Research and Development Group as a Technical Director. Albrecht holds a Masters degree in Technical Cybernetics from the University of Stuttgart, Germany.

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.