Howard Fischer Finds New Marketing Officer for Apstra

October 4, 2018 – Philadelphia-headquartered executive search firm Howard Fischer Associates recently recruited Michael Wood as the new chief marketing officer of Apstra Inc. in Menlo Park, CA.

Mr. Wood is a seasoned strategic leader who brings nearly 30 years of experience to Apstra at a time when the company is expected to change the competitive landscape as a pioneer in intent-based networking.

“We are thrilled to welcome Michael to our growing team,” said Mansour Karam, founder and CEO of Apstra. “Michael has a great depth and understanding of what it takes to scale product management, product marketing and deliver results in a fast-paced startup environment which was really important for us to consider in this critical hire. He is a proven marketing executive with the ability to effectively lead our talented global marketing team.”

Mr. Wood brings extensive experience in the areas of product management, product marketing, scaling businesses, driving revenue, incorporating process and outbound marketing to create lead and demand generation. He has experience scaling organizations within high growth startup environments and extensive hands-on experience in networking as a service, virtualization and the cloud and security sectors.

Previously, Mr. Wood was VP of worldwide marketing at VeloCloud (acquired by VMware) for three years. Before that, he held product leadership and engineering roles positions at Akamai, Cisco and Stratacom (acquired by Cisco).


Howard Fischer Associates Places CMO at Entercom
Howard Fischer placed Ruth Gaviria as CMO of Entercom Communications. Ms. Gaviria was previously EVP of corporate marketing at Univision. “Ruth has an outstanding business acumen and marketing leadership to Entercom,” said the company’s CEO, David Field. “


“It’s an exciting time at Apstra and I am looking forward to helping to leverage our deep expertise in intent-based networking to transform data center operations,” said Mr. Wood. “Apstra has an incredible amount of traction and I look forward to working with this passionate team to help enterprise, service provider and cloud customers realize massive TCO savings through data center network automation solutions.”

Related: Caldwell Partners Lands Chief Marketing Officer for ADP

Apstra is the developer of the vendor-agnostic Intent-based networking system known as the Apstra Operating System (AOS), and was founded to pioneer and enable the Self-Operating Network, a network that configures itself, fixes itself and defends itself.

Seasoned Search Consultants

Howard Fischer Associates, named again this year to the top 50 search firm ranking in the Americas by Hunt Scanlon Media, specializes in placing key executives in functional areas, including sales, marketing, engineering, research & development, operations, information technology, human resources, business development and finance. The firm has completed a number of senior-level searches for clients that include: BNY Mellon, Tyco InternationalComcast, Google, Facebook, Juniper Networks, Eastman Kodak Company, Rovi Corp., Netflix, Penn Mutual, Ticketmaster Entertainment and Yahoo.


As CMO Post Evolves, Role of Recruiters Seen As Pivotal
As companies become more global and complex, marketing — and the chief marketing officer position in particular — has taken on an increasingly crucial and strategic role in moving businesses forward. Clearly, the CMO role is in the midst of change.


The firm is led by founder and president Howard Fischer. It has additional offices in Silicon Valley and Boston. For 35 years, Mr. Fischer has consulted with CEOs, boards of directors and senior executives on the process of identifying, evaluating and attracting leaders.

Chief Marketing Officers

As business becomes more global and complex, and power shifts from producers of goods and services to consumers, the chief marketing officer’s job of planning and coordinating marketing activities has become more challenging, recruiters say. Yet executive search firms are seeing no shortage of assignments for this important C-level position.

Related: Buffkin / Baker Leads Chief Marketing Officer Search for University of Missouri

In addition, current business landscape demands have increased the contribution from CMOs, according to the latest research report from both Forrester and Heidrick & Struggles. The survey found that CMOs are building strong relationships with the head of product and research & development to prepare the organization for digital disruption.

“We see CMOs moving beyond functional expertise to assume responsibility for driving overall growth within their organizations,” said Sheryl Pattek, VP, CMO executive partner at Forrester. “They are evolving into key strategic partners on the executive team, and know that collaboration with the rest of the C-suite will be instrumental to their success.”

Related: McDermott & Bull Recruits Marketing Officers at San Manuel Casino and Evangelical Christian Credit Union

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor; and Andrew W. Mitchell, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media

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