Corda Executive Team

Neal Williams - President and CEO, Founder, Chairman

Neal Williams formed Corda shortly after leaving WordPerfect where he spent many years researching and developing advanced data visualization techniques and solutions. Neal has instigated major product expansion and directed significant company growth at Corda. In 2001, the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum named Neal Williams the Utah Entrepreneur of the Year.

Under Neal's leadership, Corda has experienced many industry firsts, including: the first non-Macromedia company to develop a solution supporting Flash technology; the first company to support Scalable Vector Graphing (SVG) technology for graphing and charting; the first company to provide interactive charts, graphs and maps that include descriptive text, thus enabling the visually impaired to "see" the graphical data with the use of a screen reader; and the first company to automatically deliver the highest quality image a browser can accept, utilizing best image auto-detection functionality.

Mardell Cheney - Vice President of Marketing

Mardell Cheney joined Corda after establishing himself among the top software industry leaders while at PowerQuest Corporation, where he served as a key participant in the development of PartitionMagic and DriveImage. Mr. Cheney also worked at Intel, managing a strategic component of the development for LANDesk, and at Digital Harbor, where he developed and implemented the text and layout engine for WAV. Mr. Cheney's background also includes nine years at WordPerfect and Novell. Prior to WordPerfect, he worked for IBM and Icon Systems and Software.

Alan Hansen - Vice President, OEM Programs

Mr. Hansen joined Corda in 2000 and has responsibility for Corda's OEM partner programs. Since 2006 Mr. Hansen has overseen the development of Corda's OEM business and manages Corda's OEM partner development work that is driving the expansion of Corda's growing OEM business. Prior to joining Corda, he served as chief financial officer at Caldera Systems, during which time Caldera completed an $80 million initial public offering (IPO). Mr. Hansen brings to Corda extensive experience in the software industry and in the finance and securities industries in the San Francisco Bay area and Utah. Mr. Hansen holds both a bachelor's degree in Accounting and an MBA in Finance from California State University at Hayward.

Mark Christensen, Vice President, Worldwide Sales

Mark Christensen joined Corda Technologies in 2005. He has over 12 years experience in enterprise application software companies, and holds a BS degree in Computer Science.

Prior to joining Corda, Christensen held senior level positions in sales and marketing, product management, and engineering for leading high-tech companies such as LANDesk Software and Intel Corporation. In his most recent position, Christensen was responsible for developing product strategies and roadmaps and taking products and solutions to market in desktop, server, mobile, and network and security IT management.

Nate Rhodes - Vice President, Partner Programs

Nate joined Corda Technologies in April of 2006 as Vice President of Corda Solutions. He studied Computer Science at The University of South Carolina, and is passionate about his career and enjoys people from all over the world. Nate grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, has lived in Singapore, Pennsylvania, Florida, California, and London. He values his relationships, friends, and memories of those he's worked with. He brings a great value to Corda.

Nate has held a wide range of positions in Support and Services Business Operations at numerous companies. While at Unisys, he managed a startup technical support group in Singapore and grew a sales program from $8M to $107M in 3 years in Latin America. At Oracle, he was responsible for Global Support Field Marketing for the support business, which was $3B annually. Nate was VP of Service Business Operations at Openwave, responsible for $90M in support and $80M in professional services. He also spent time at Encover, where he was instrumental in starting the Sales Center in Utah, and managed Encover’s largest account – Kodak – growing organic revenues as well as expanding Encover’s role to manage all of Kodak Health Group’s business during his tenure.

Derrick Shadel - Vice President of Engineering

Derrick joined Corda Technologies with over 20 years of industry experience. He developed software for the operating system at Data General, for embedded systems for aircraft, and later worked on the first version of WordPerfect for DOS. During his nine years at WordPerfect Corporation, now part of Corel, he moved up the ranks and became VP of Software Development for the WordPerfect product. Derrick founded a company and authored magazine articles for a period of time. Later he became VP of Software Development at Pinnacle Multimedia, now LearnFrame, where he helped write the first version of the Pinnacle Learning Management System. At PowerQuest Corporation, now part of Symantec, Derrick initially lead the development efforts of an updated version of Partition Magic and went on to become the VP of Software Development.

Julie Anderson - Managing Director of Human Capital

Julie Anderson has over 10 years of progressive Human Resource experience relating to employee communications, employee training, recruitment and retention strategies, employee benefits, financial management, compensation, and policy/procedure development. Julie has spent time as both an HR Generalist and Specialist. Her experience spans several industries, including publishing, public relations and technology.

Prior to joining Corda Technologies, she was employed by WordPerfect, Novell, IVY Publishing, MWS and SNG Agencies.