Leadership Team

Francine Geist

Francine Geist
Francine serves as the CEO of LiveAction. Francine brings more than 25 years of proven financial strategy and operations leadership experience delivering outstanding results for B2B software and data companies. Francine previously served as Deputy CFO and VP, Finance at INTTRA (a private-equity backed software and network business servicing the ocean shipping industry), where she helped lead the company through a successful exit and sale to E2Open. Prior to that, Francine held various roles of increasing responsibility in both finance and operations. She served as Vice President of Global Sales Operations and Finance at TravelClick, a private-equity sponsored global provider of cloud-based data-driven solutions for maximizing hotel revenue and spent 10 years with Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE: DNB), a leading source of B2B commercial information & insight. Francine began her career as an Auditor at Deloitte & Touche, growing and developing the foundation of her immense skillset. Francine earned her B.S. in Accounting from Fairfield University and her M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

John Smith

John Smith
John Smith is CTO, EVP and founder of LiveAction and previously served as VP of Engineering at Spirent where he was responsible for $150M+ revenue per year product line with over 140 engineers. John has been in networking and software development for over 25 years with companies such as Boeing, Phoenix Technologies and Referentia. John holds 6 patents developed under LiveAction in the areas of network management and visualizations. John holds a MS in computer science and research towards his PhD in machine learning using genetic algorithms for autonomous navigation.

Andrew Kupersmith

Andrew Kupersmith
Andrew serves as VP of North America Sales for LiveAction. Andrew brings over 10 years of experience in enterprise sales delivering consistently, overachieving results as an individual contributor at LiveAction and DoD contractor Artemis. Prior to a career in sales, Andrew taught integrated science at Louisville Collegiate School. Andrew attended the University of Kansas with a B.A. in Economics, and graduate school at Columbia University’s Teachers College earning an M.A. and an MBA from the University of Louisville.

John McSherry

John McSherry
John McSherry is Live Action’s LiveAction’s Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel, overseeing the legal and compliance, human resources and information security functions.Before joining Live Action, he served as the chief legal officer at Cloud9 Technologies, a leading voice communication and analytics cloud-based platform designed for the financial markets, and he led the legal effort in its successful sale to Symphony Communications. Prior to Cloud9, John served as the General Counsel at Ipreo and IPC Systems, both private equity-backed financial technology companies. He also served at the Enforcement Division of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and as a commercial litigation associate at the New York law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel. John holds a BA from Fordham University, a JD from Fordham University School of Law, and is a member of the NY State Bar.

Tom Laurin

Tom Laurin
Tom has 29 years of experience in financial management and operations. Recently he was the CFO of Hobsons, Inc. a SAAS provider of education software. Before that he was the CFO of Genscape, Inc. a fundamental data provider to the energy markets. For much of the last year he has been managing US Projects for the Daily Mail General Trust. Prior to that, he served in various financial leadership positions over 21 years at Thomson Reuters. All these roles have provided him with broad experience across corporate strategy, mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, corporate finance, product management and operations.

Carlos Ferro

Carlos Ferro
Executive with over 25 years experiences in IT industry leading cross-functional teams and setting up operations and driving business in Europe, Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
Carlos brings experience developing high performing teams and a proven track record adding value to customers and partners, and achieving consistent year-over-year sales growth.
He leads the company’s go-to-market strategy and execution for the International Region. Before joining LiveAction, he worked in different leadership positions in Delinea (Thycotic), Symantec, Novell, Altiris, where he led sales & channel organizations, professional services and field operations.

Niru Raghavan

Niru Raghavan
Niru Raghavan joined LiveAction in April 2022. As the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at LiveAction, her responsibilities include LiveAction’s global marketing strategy, corporate marketing and communications, product marketing, digital marketing, demand generation, business development, marketing operations, and channel marketing.
She has over 20 years of experience building and scaling performance marketing teams for high growth technology companies. Prior to LiveAction, Raghavan held the position of Global Head of Demand Generation for Datto. Her previous roles include leadership positions at Cengage, Digital Guardian and Veracode. She has earned an MBA from Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies, India.

Chris Braden

Chris Braden
Chris Braden brings to us a wealth of Channel and alliance experience in the network and security space, having previously developed channel programs at Akamai, eSentire, and Keepit. He has wide-reaching relationships with numerous channel eco-systems and has built and managed both direct and indirect sales teams. His extensive experience in defining and executing channel strategy, developing channel programs, and building successful channel teams will help us as we continue to grow our business. Chris is based just outside of Boston in Westborough, MA.
Board of Directors

Michael Triplett

Michael Triplett
Michael Triplett is a managing partner of Insight Partners. Mike focuses on investments in Infrastructure and Application Software companies and has been instrumental in investments in more than twenty companies, many of which have achieved fast growth and realized significant value for shareholders and employees. Notable among these are the IPOs of Click Commerce, Solarwinds Inc. (NYSE: SWI), and Quest Software, and the acquisitions of Aelita Software (acquired by Quest Software), Authorize.net (acquired by Go2Net), Astaro (acquired by Sophos), BeyondTrust (acquired by Veritas Capital), Imceda Software (acquired by Quest Software), eEye Digital Security (acquired by BeyondTrust), Folhamatic (acquired by Sage plc), GFI’s TeamViewer (acquired by Permira), Kabum! (purchased by founders), Metalogix (acquired by Permira), and ScriptLogic (acquired by Quest Software).

Philine Huizing

Philine Huizing
Philine is a vice president at Insight Partners. She focuses on both high growth and mature software businesses, particularly in cybersecurity and infrastructure software.
Previously, she spent time on Insight’s Onsite team, working closely with portfolio executives on GTM strategy, product strategy, and M&A. Prior to Insight, she worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company’s New York Office. Her work at McKinsey focused largely on growth and transaction strategy, advising clients across a variety of industries including financial services and financial technology, pharmaceuticals, and industrials.

Steve Stuut

Steve Stuut
Prior to LiveAction, he served four years as CEO of the digital identity company Jumio, during which time ARR grew sevenfold while becoming cashflow positive in 2 ½ years; he is currently Jumio’s Chairman of the Board. Previously Mr. Stuut served as CEO of TruePosition, a leader in location-based services technology, which was spun off into Liberty Broadband Corp. and was the CEO of Broadband Innovations, delivering digital interactivity services to cable TV providers, which was sold to Motorola.
Mr. Stuut managed the Telecommunications Practice at McKinsey & Company and did business strategy consulting for Booz-Allen & Hamilton in Germany and Braxton Associates (now Deloitte & Touche) in the United Kingdom. He also worked for Northrup Grumman and Raytheon as an electro-optical systems engineer.
Mr. Stuut holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from the School of Arts & Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania, a BS with honors in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and an MS from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona.

Ghia Griarte

Ghia Griarte
Ms. Griarte is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ponte Partners, a secondary fund focused on the acquisition of direct private companies, PE/Growth/VC portfolios, and LP interests. Ponte invests technology (security, fintech, enterprise software, SaaS, mobility, AR/VR, infrastructure), digital health, consumer and industrial sectors.
She serves on several private company boards and most recently served as Board of Trustee for the City of San Jose Police and Fire Retirement Plan, a $4.7 billion public pension fund where she chaired both the investment and governance committees and served on the joint personnel and audit committees, and San Jose Mayor Liccardo’s Retirement Stakeholders Working Group.
Ms. Griarte has been in private equity and venture capital for 20+ years. Previously she was a Managing Director at Saints Capital, a secondary firm with $1B+ of assets under management with 200+ global portfolio of companies across US, Europe and Asia. Prior to joining Saints in 2003, Ms. Griarte was at Centennial Ventures, a technology-focused early-stage venture capital firm with investments in broadband access, cable, networking, satellite, wireless and digital media. Previously, Ms. Griarte was a strategy consultant at Gemini Consulting in the Telecom, Media and Networks practice focused on wireline and wireless telecommunications companies across Europe, US and Middle East. Ms. Griarte began her career as an electrical systems engineer at Lockheed Martin and chaired the Corporate Avionics Taskforce.
Ms. Griarte received an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, an MEM from the Robert L. McCormick School of Engineering, and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Francine Geist

Francine Geist
Francine serves as the CEO of LiveAction. Francine brings more than 25 years of proven financial strategy and operations leadership experience delivering outstanding results for B2B software and data companies. Francine previously served as Deputy CFO and VP, Finance at INTTRA (a private-equity backed software and network business servicing the ocean shipping industry), where she helped lead the company through a successful exit and sale to E2Open. Prior to that, Francine held various roles of increasing responsibility in both finance and operations. She served as Vice President of Global Sales Operations and Finance at TravelClick, a private-equity sponsored global provider of cloud-based data-driven solutions for maximizing hotel revenue and spent 10 years with Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE: DNB), a leading source of B2B commercial information & insight. Francine began her career as an Auditor at Deloitte & Touche, growing and developing the foundation of her immense skillset. Francine earned her B.S. in Accounting from Fairfield University and her M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

James Legg

James Legg
James Legg has over 25 years of experience in the technology industry. Most recently he was the CEO and President of Thycotic. The company emerged as a widely recognized industry leader. Under Legg’s leadership, Thycotic grew from 40 to 600 employees and emerged as the leader in the cloud-based PAM space. Thycotic’s revenues grew twentyfold. In 2020 alone, the company had close to 50 percent year-over-year growth with a total of 1,040 new customers. In 2021 TPG Capital announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to purchase Thycotic for approximately $1.4 Bil.
Prior to Thycotic Legg served as the Executive Vice President of Unitrends after serving as the CEO and President of PHD Virtual, acquired by Unitrends in 2013. Previously, he served as Vice President of worldwide sales for Idera Corporation, and was Vice President of sales at NetIQ Corporation, having come there via the acquisition of PentaSafe Security Technologies