B. KEVIN TURNER

President & Chief Executive Officer

Kevin Turner joined Core Scientific with over 30 years of successful business experience. He served as Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer from 2005 – 2016, where he led the company’s global sales, marketing and services and support organization of 55,000+ employees in more than 190 countries. Under his leadership, the sales and marketing group grew the company from $35 billion to over $91.9 billion in revenue in fiscal 2016. Kevin oversaw worldwide sales, field marketing, services, customer support and partner channels as well as the creation of the Microsoft Stores omni channel division. He also led the corporate support functions including Information Technology, Worldwide Licensing & Pricing and Operations. As Microsoft’s COO, Kevin drove a strong track record of results, execution excellence and improved efficiency while transitioning the company’s business model to the cloud and driving the customer satisfaction scores to the highest in company history. After Microsoft, Kevin served for a short term at Citadel where he was the Vice Chairman and CEO of Citadel Securities, the largest market maker in the world.

Prior to Microsoft, Kevin spent nearly 20 years at Wal-Mart Stores, where he rose through the ranks and was named the youngest corporate officer ever at Wal-Mart at age 29. He held various leadership positions at Wal-Mart including becoming the EVP & Chief Information Officer for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and as his last assignment he served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of SAM'S CLUB, a $37 billion division of Wal-Mart Stores which had over 125,000 employees. Sam’s Club delivered record earnings under his tenure. Kevin Turner currently serves on the Board of Albertsons Companies.

ABER WHITCOMB

Director

Aber Whitcomb has been regularly listed amongst the top CTO’s in the United States for the past 10 years. His first large success was as the CTO and Co-Founder of MySpace.com, which sold to News Corporation in 2005 for $580 million. Since MySpace, he has started many other successful ventures including i/o ventures, a San Francisco, CA, based Venture Capital & Private Equity firm, Jam City and others. Aber is a well-known expert in large scale computing, networking and storage and frequently speaks on these topics at industry events. He has been featured in publications such as VentureBeat, The New York Times and SoCalTech.

BILL HUMES

Chief Financial Officer

Bill Humes has over 27 years’ experience building and leading finance teams in global companies with significant operating scale and complexity. Bill served as the Chief Financial Officer at Ingram Micro, a publicly traded Fortune 100 global technology and supply chain services company, from 2005 – 2016 where he helped grow revenue from $25 billion to $43 billion. During his eighteen year tenure at Ingram Micro, Bill was a key leader who helped Ingram Micro successfully acquire and integrate more than 40 companies throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. As Ingram Micro’s CFO, he consistently helped drive operational efficiencies, improved profitability and created shareholder value in a highly competitive, low margin business.  In addition to his CFO role, Bill also served as the Chief Operating Officer at Ingram Micro from April 2012 to September 2013 and was responsible for global information systems, logistics operations, and global business processes.  Bill was instrumental in the sale of Ingram Micro to the HNA Group, a Hainan, China-based global leader in aviation and logistics, for an equity value of $6 billion. 

Prior to Ingram Micro, Bill spent nine years at PricewaterhouseCoopers.  As a Senior Audit Manager, he managed all aspects of professional service engagements, including audit services, IPOs and secondary offerings for a broad spectrum of large multi-national and middle market companies. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of California with a B.A. in Economics-Business.   Bill also currently serves on the Board of 3D Systems Corporation.

JEFF TAYLOR

Chief Information Officer

Jeff Taylor joined Core Scientific from People Connect, where he served as Director of Site Reliability and Dev Ops. Jeff started his career with Amazon and spent 14 years, expanding the fulfillment center network, operating and engineering upon the global retail sites and designing and launching many Amazon Web Services. He joined AWS as employee #20 and helped to grow the organization to several thousand. Jeff received many honors at Amazon, including the Amazon Inventor Award for his work on AWS and S3, as well as the Fire Extinguisher Award, for operational excellence in process and services. After Amazon, Jeff spent four years at CDK Global, leading Strategic Platform Engineering during a divestiture event and migrating mission critical aspect to the cloud. Jeff received his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

IAN FERREIRA

Chief Product Officer AI

Ian Ferreira has over 20 years’ experience in engineering in large companies and tech start-ups. He has expertise in software, engineering, UI/UX, systems architecture, product development, machine learning/artificial intelligence, and leading successful teams. Ian has a healthy obsession with end user experience, high performance computing and massive parallel systems. He joined Microsoft in 2004 as a Senior Software Design Engineer Lead and received five promotions in ten years. His last role was Group Program Manager. During his tenure he developed the architecture and implementation of Bing Ads, created the world’s first real-time bidding exchange, successfully launched the Windows 8 Ads-in-Apps, and launched the largest cloud deployment at the time.

Ian left Microsoft to join a tech start-up, Context Relevance. He and his engineering team focused on a machine learning platform based on early versions of Apache Spark, automated parts of the data science pipeline, and became deeply involved with predictive analytics. Most recently, Ian was the Executive Vice President at WideOrbit, the world’s leading premium advertising management company. While at WideOrbit, Ian and his team launched an innovative programmatic advertising media exchange.

Ian graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa with a bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering.

GANESH BALAKRISHNAN

Chief Product Officer, Blockchain

Ganesh Balakrishnan has over 14 years’ experience in engineering, product, and strategy experience at Amazon. He led product and strategy for two of Amazon’s acquisitions, Twitch Prime and Woot. He expanded the global footprint of Twitch Prime from 11 countries to over 200 countries and territories.

Ganesh graduated with an MBA from the University of Washington. He also has his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Masters of Biological Science from Birla Institute of Technology and Science.

RUSSELL CANN

Chief Customer Success Officer

Russell Cann has 20 years of experience designing, building, and growing large scale technology infrastructure companies. Prior to CoreScientific, Russell grew and developed a blockchain and cryptocurrency mining business as well as several other network infrastructure concerns. Previously he worked for Accenture in the areas of fintech and risk management on projects in Europe and the Americas.

An active Philanthropist, Russell is a Trustee for the National Foundation of the Boy Scouts of America and Alston Wilkes Society. Further he volunteers with Sue Kuhlen Camp for Kids and Lion’s Club. He is an active member of YPO and graduated cum laude from the South Carolina Honors College and the Moore School of Business.

GARRY FIFE

Chief Construction & Facilities Officer

Garry Fife has 25 years of experience in the construction industry, building fast paced, large scale projects. As an industry leading designer for complex projects including Casinos and Data Centers, Garry has extensive expertise in every facet of Vertical Construction, including mechanical, electrical and plumbing. Prior to joining Core Scientific, Garry served as President of Sun City Electric in Las Vegas.

JIM CLEVELAND

Chief Power Officer

Jim Cleveland’s experience spans more than 35 years in all aspects of hands–on hardware and software solution sales, including recruiting, team building, business development, technical marketing and operations.  He has a track record of building strong businesses by leading and developing high performing teams that have transformed businesses into profitable enterprises.  Accomplished in field sales and marketing management, solution selling, relationship building in both “1 to 1” and “1 to many” environments, Jim consistently delivers business results and is widely recognized as a leader in the computer and data capture technology communities.

Jim is Founder and CEO of e-Waste, LLC an R2:2013, ISO 14001:2004, OHSAS 18001:2007- certified nationwide IT Asset Disposition company. E-Waste, LLC serves the Fortune 500, in solving financial, regulatory, and data security issues related to their IT asset portfolio.

Previously, Jim was a Business Unit Executive at IBM, Executive Vice President of Telxon Corporation, where they grew the mobile and wireless handheld business from $210m in revenues to $565m in 6 years by developing new markets and providing solutions to new industries outside their core market of retail. At the same time Jim developed new markets for Telxon’s wireless subsidiary Aironet which later turned from a $10M dollar investment to an $800M dollar sale to Cisco in 7 years. Jim has received several achievement awards from IBM, Telxon and PSC and attended the IBM Presidents MBA program at Harvard University after graduating from Bowling Green State University with a Bachelor’s of Science degree.

SHARON ORLOPP

Chief Human Resources Officer

Sharon Orlopp has over 35 years’ experience in Fortune 500 companies in operations, human resources, diversity and inclusion. Most recently, Sharon was the Global Chief Diversity Officer and Senior Vice President of Corporate H.R. for Walmart. She spent 12 years at Walmart in senior leadership roles, including Senior Vice President of H.R. at Sam’s Club. Prior to joining Walmart, Sharon was Vice President of H.R. for Sports Authority and she spent 17 years with Foot Locker where she held various leadership positions in operations and human resources.

Sharon is the co-author of a Vietnamese memoir, Standing Up After Saigon: The Triumphant Story of Hope, Determination, and Reinvention. This incredible odyssey follows Thuhang Tran and her challenges with polio, war, poverty, family separation, and immigration to the United States. Sharon believes in the power of story to touch the heart and change behaviors.

A lifelong advocate for inclusion, education and opportunity, Sharon considers it a privilege to serve as a Board member for The Harwood Institute and for the University of Denver’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. She has held previous Board positions with Women’s Foodservice Forum, Enactus, Highlands Oncology Group, and the Center for Entrepreneurship at Fayetteville State University.

Sharon graduated magna cum laude from the University of Denver with a BA and received her Master’s Degree in educational technology from the University of Arkansas.

TODD DUCHENE

General Counsel

Todd DuChene brings over 25 years’ experience as a General Counsel in private and public companies. His expertise spans intellectual property, patents, IPOs, and strategic transactions. Todd was 29 years old when he became VP, General Counsel for Office Max. He was instrumental with the IPO at OfficeMax, which was one of the largest IPOs in retail history. Todd joined Fisher Scientific and helped grow the business from $500M to $6B. Todd worked on 100+ deals while at Fisher Scientific until it merged with Thermo Electron. He served as GC at several other technology companies that ranged from $2B to $12B: Solectron, National Semiconductor, Nuance, and FLIR Systems. 

Todd received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science at The College of Wooster and received his JD from the University of Michigan.

AARON MCCREERY

Senior Vice President, Dev Ops

Aaron McCreery spent 17 years at Microsoft in a variety of engineering and operational leadership roles and was instrumental in the development of Product Activation for Office and Windows, as well several other externally facing properties. After Microsoft, Aaron joined IBM, where he helped with both public and private cloud optimization and implementation. Aaron joined Core Scientific from Tumblr, where he served as Senior Director of Site Reliability Engineering. Aaron graduated from Washington State University with a B.A. in Management Information Services.

LARRY KOM

Senior Vice President, Technology

Larry Kom, PhD, MPA, CFE is a lead software engineer and manager with over 20 years of full life-cycle development experience. His areas of expertise include security, auditing, forensics, scaling, real-time data, crypto-currency, and high-risk financial systems. Larry is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) and holds a doctorate in Criminal Justice, focusing on internal controls and digital investigative techniques. He previously served as Chief Information Officer for MGT Capital Investments, Inc. (NYSE: MKT) until 2015, following the sale of his auditing startup in 2013.

JEFF PRATT

Controller

Jeff Pratt has over 25 years of financial, accounting, and operational experience in the technology industry. Jeff held a variety of roles in his 26 years with Microsoft, including Corporate Accounting, Financial Analysis, and Controller. He has developed and operationalized sales incentive plans for employees from front line to leadership teams in over 100 countries. Jeff built and managed finance and accounting teams in South America. As Controller of an Engineering division at Microsoft, he managed a multibillion-dollar budget with teams spread across Israel, India, and China. Most recently Jeff lead the Enterprise Risk Management practice as part of Microsoft’s Internal Audit team. He was on the advisory board of the COSO Enterprise Risk Management update. Jeff holds CPA and CMA certificates and is a graduate of the University of Kansas.

TARAS KULYK

Senior Vice President, Blockchain Business Development

Taras Kulyk, JD, MBA is Core Scientific's Senior Vice President of Blockchain Business Development, bringing extensive experience in digital asset mining, fintech and investment banking. Most recently, Taras led Corporate Development at Horizon Trust Company and served as Chief Operating Officer of Alt 5 Sigma. Preceding those roles, Taras was CEO of Squire Mining (“Squire”), a publicly listed company engaged in operating and developing digital asset mining infrastructure and respective digital asset mining system technology. His role with Squire included managing relationships with key global technology leaders including Samsung and Ennoconn (a subsidiary of Foxconn). Prior to his appointment to Squire, Taras was CEO of a family office’s subsidiary engaged in digital asset mining, where he led the growth of one of the largest crypto mining fleets globally, deploying over US$200 million in capital during his tenure. Post graduate school and before his career began in the digital asset sector, Taras was an investment banker at BMO Capital Markets covering the traditional mining sector, followed by two years with TD Securities in the Communications, Media and Technology team, where his coverage included technology and media companies.
 
Taras is a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School where he earned a Juris Doctor degree with a focus in Corporate, Tax, and Securities Law, and earned his MBA, with distinction, with a specialization in Finance from the Schulich School of Business.