SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ayla Networks, a global Internet of Things (IoT) platform for manufacturers, has named experienced executives to two newly created positions. Tom Clark is chief financial officer (CFO) and Jessica Zhou is general counsel for the fast-growing IoT industry-leading company.
“Adding Tom and Jessica to our executive staff signals another phase of growth for Ayla as a company,” said David Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Ayla Networks. “Attracting two such experienced and high-quality individuals to fill the important CFO and General Counsel positions will help further enhance Ayla’s global IoT market leadership.”
Tom Clark Brings Financial Savvy to Ayla
In more than 20 years as a financial executive, Tom Clark has successfully steered the financial strategies of companies across a variety of industries. Prior to joining Ayla, he was CFO at Openwave Messaging Inc., the market leader in white-label email solutions. Clark orchestrated financial strategies that increased profitability by $30 million in less than 18 months and negotiated the sale of Openwave to Synchronos Technologies.
Before Openwave, he was director of finance operations for Marlin Equity Partners, a private equity firm, where he focused on acquiring enterprise software companies and managing a portfolio of Marlin-owned companies. Earlier, he served as CFO and managed the worldwide finance operations of CollabNet, a leading provider of enterprise cloud development and agile application life management (ALM) products and services. Before CollabNet, he worked for seven years at ProBusiness Services, now Automatic Data Processing (NYSE:ADP), where he was instrumental in identifying new market opportunities to accelerate top-line financial growth.
Clark began his career with KPMG LLP, a leading U.S. audit, tax and advisory firm. He is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in California, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration, with an emphasis in accounting, from Saint Mary’s College of California.
Jessica Zhou Adds Deep Legal, Compliance and International Expansion Expertise
Jessica Zhou brings to Ayla more than 15 years of experience in legal counsel, compliance and helping fast-growing technology companies scale and expand internationally. Prior to joining Ayla, she was general counsel of Weebly Inc., a global SaaS company and leading platform for website creation and management, e-commerce, integrated marketing and data analytics. While there, she drove the company’s worldwide legal and compliance strategy, grew the intellectual property (IP) portfolio, defined the government and regulatory practice, and helped the company expand into new markets.
Before that, Jessica served as general counsel and chief compliance officer for Canadian Solar Inc. (Nasdaq:CSIQ), one of the world’s largest solar companies, and for Ubiquiti Networks Inc. (Nasdaq:UBNT), a leader in wireless networking and telecommunications. At Canadian Solar, she helped the company successfully scale its worldwide operations, establish multiple new international subsidiaries, raise capital in excess of $500 million from public capital markets, and grow the company’s revenue from $600 million to over $2 billion during her tenure.
Earlier in her career, Jessica was an attorney at Latham & Watkins LLP, a leading global law firm. She has done a significant number of mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings (IPOs), follow-on offerings and other capital markets transactions, advised public companies in corporate governance and SEC reporting, and represented private companies in venture financings and matters relating to their operations.
Jessica received her JD degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School and bachelor’s degree from Beijing University.
About Ayla Networks
Ayla Networks empowers leading manufacturers by simplifying the inherent complexity of the Internet of Things (IoT), enabling them to turn their products into smart connected systems and transform their businesses to compete in the game-changing world of connectivity. Delivered as a cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS), Ayla’s IoT platform provides the flexibility and modularity to enable rapid changes to practically any type of device, cloud or app environment. Ayla Networks was named a 2015 Cool Vendor in the Internet of Things by Gartner, Inc. Ayla’s investors include Cisco Investments, the International Finance Corporation, Mitsui, SAIF Partners, Crosslink Capital, Voyager Capital, Ants Capital, 3NOD, Linear Venture, SJF Ventures and Acorn Pacific Ventures. For more information, visit www.aylanetworks.com.
