Who we are. What we do.

CEO

Mike Juran is the CEO and co-founder of Altia. He sets the vision and is involved in key strategic decisions driving the company’s growth, market position and product development.

Since its founding, Mike worked with Altia’s key customers and partners and has a deep understanding of their business issues, technical challenges and opportunities. He was involved in the development of some of Altia’s finest Human Machine Interfaces and embedded device GUIs for automotive instrument clusters, HUDs, audio and infotainment systems. In addition to his automotive experience, Mike’s history includes medical device products, consumer electronics, industrial equipment and many of the products that are on the front lines of the Internet of Things. Mike leads Altia’s business and development efforts from the company’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Prior to co-founding Altia, Mike was a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, then later at AT&T Microelectronics Europe in Munich, Germany. In both positions Mike contributed as a microprocessor and computer hardware designer, then as a product marketing manager. He continued his career as a software developer and user interface design expert for electronic design automation products at Hewlett Packard in Colorado.

Mike earned a B.S. in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Mike has been awarded three U.S. patents related to graphics, user interface design and electronic design automation tool architecture:  5,164,911; 5,883,639; and 6,957,418.

VP of Finance

Jenny Laughlin leads the Finance and Accounting functions for Altia in her role as VP of Finance. She is passionate about well-designed process and execution and has worked with teams in large and small companies to re-engineer policies, procedures, systems and control environments. Jenny and her team continually strive to support Altia’s growth: managing cash flow and costs and improving the business support infrastructure.

Prior to joining Altia, Jenny served as CFO of an educational software provider and spent several years with a private equity company. She has held several roles at First Data Corporation, including a key role driving the accounting and reporting related to First Data’s $29 billion private equity LBO. Additionally, Jenny spent five years with First Data’s global technical accounting team, focusing on financial instruments, revenue recognition and software capitalization. She has also worked at Ernst & Young, managed SEC reporting teams and served as Controller of an early stage operation overseas where the business grew from $6 million in revenue to $30 million during her tenure.

Jenny has two B.S. degrees – one in Marketing from Colorado State University and another in Accounting from Metropolitan State University of Denver — and is a licensed CPA in the State of Colorado. She is a member of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), the Colorado Chapter of Financial Executives International (FEI) and serves on the Board of Directors for Denver’s Early Childhood Council.

VP of Global Automotive Business Development

As Vice President of Global Automotive Business Development, Amrit Vivekanand leads Altia’s growth within the automotive business market. Amrit is responsible for driving Altia’s automotive business strategy by building and strengthening engagements with Automotive OEMs around the world, by understanding their challenges and goals in a rapidly changing and interconnected automotive landscape. Towards this end, he works closely with Altia’s engineering, sales, marketing, product development and management teams.

With over twenty years within Renesas’ automotive business, Amrit brings a wealth of expertise to the Altia team. As Vice President of the Automotive Systems Business Division, Amrit reported directly to the company’s Automotive SVP/CTO in Tokyo and led the creation of a global systems-focused software, hardware, services, technology and marketing initiative for the company. In his prior roles as Vice President, Director, Marketing Manager, Application Engineer and Chip Designer at Renesas America, Amrit gained a wealth of experience in automotive marketing, sales, engineering and business development. In his early career, Amrit held internship roles in the MCU Design Group at Mitsubishi Semiconductor America, Durham North Carolina and the Network Performance Department at AT&T Bell Labs at Holmdel, New Jersey.

Amrit earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science and Engineering from University of Madras in India and a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Duke University, North Carolina. He also completed a minor in Operations Research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Additionally, Amrit is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, having completed their General Management Program, plus several certificate courses from Harvard Business School covering topics including disruptive strategy, finance, negotiation, management and accounting.

VP of Global Sales

As Vice President of Sales, Dennis Robinson leads Altia’s global sales and field applications engineering teams. He comes to Altia with vast experience and demonstrated sales leadership at technology companies from all over the world, particularly with companies in Altia’s key areas of interest including software and embedded applications, as well as automotive, medical, consumer electronics and IoT.

Before joining Altia, Dennis served as the Senior Vice President of Sales for Thundersoft. He made impressive contributions to the company’s growth – including securing North America’s largest IoT OEM. At HARMAN Connected Services Dennis held two titles including Senior Director of Sales, Consumer Electronics and Vice President of Automotive Sales Americas. Dennis has gained further sales leadership and management experience at Bsquare, Intel/Wind River, Applied Data Systems and Motorola.

Dennis has a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Sales Director, Altia Korea

As Sales Director for Altia Korea, Wangsu Kim is dedicated to automotive OEM and Tier 1 suppliers in Korea – helping them to achieve best-in-class user interfaces for their production vehicle programs. Wangsu is focused on understanding his customers’ business needs and helping them deliver rich, high-performance automotive displays with Altia’s software and engineering services.

Wangsu brings to Altia his extensive experience with automotive production in a variety of roles supporting OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers with projects related to infotainment, body, ADAS and chassis. He has served in leadership and technical roles at NXP, Microchip, SMSC (acquired by Microchip) and Korea Electric Terminal.

Wangsu has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyonggi University in Suwon, South Korea.

Managing Director APAC, Altia Japan KK

Since joining Altia in 2011, Makoto Okubo has worked directly with an impressive list of embedded device manufacturers, Tier 1 suppliers and engineering services companies who are developing and deploying market-winning HMIs for production. He works tirelessly to create and expand relationships with silicon companies and embedded tool providers. In addition to serving the needs of Altia customers across Asia and the Pacific Rim, Makoto collaborates with Altia’s distribution network in China, Japan and Korea to help companies in automotive, medical, consumer and industrial get first class user interfaces onto the lowest cost hardware in the shortest time.

Makoto has a wealth of sales direction and management experience with companies including Kana Software and SumTotal Systems, where he provided strategic software solutions to companies of all sizes.

Makoto earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Musashi University in Tokyo, Japan.

Executive Director of Sales

Mark Taylor, Executive Director of Sales, is dedicated to the success of our comprehensive list of North American automotive OEM and Tier 1 suppliers, as well as key non-automotive clients, through the planning, procurement and execution of Altia HMI software development and code generation software and services. Based in the suburbs of Detroit, Mark is perfectly situated to engage directly with companies who are developing and deploying embedded user interfaces for production. Mark collaborates not only with Altia’s engineering and services teams but also Altia’s key silicon partners to deliver low cost and industry-leading HMI solutions to its customers. He has helped a vast array of teams get their embedded displays to production – with products ranging from instrument clusters, HUDs, infotainment systems and driver displays to home appliances, thermostats, medical devices and more.

Before joining Altia in 2009, Mark held key positions in executive leadership, sales, project management and product delivery at companies including General Motors, Citation Global Manufacturing Solutions, Indicon Corporation and EPLAN Software and Services. This strength of experience makes Mark perfectly suited to support complex HMI development programs like those in automotive, from concept to successful production.

Mark earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan.