Team

Paul Vallée, Founder and Chief Executive Officer – Paul Vallée is the founder and CEO of Tehama and a serial entrepreneur who has spent his career at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies that enable the exchange of work over the internet. When founding Pythian in 1997, Paul envisioned a future that allows anyone to work from anywhere. Perceiving an opportunity for the Internet and related technologies to unlock human potential, he set out to apply and invent technology that could securely connect global workforces to enterprise IT systems.

Paul was a pioneer in remote connectivity technology and lays claim to the first application of IPSEC VPN technology to enable enterprises to consume services over the internet. Paul founded Pythian as a data-centric services business with a focus on remote work, and under his leadership, the company developed groundbreaking tools that enable teams to work and interact seamlessly and securely even when dispersed across multiple continents. It is at Pythian that Tehama was born, then launched to the public in 2018, and now spun out to develop its opportunity to help global enterprises seeking to secure their services supply chain.

With Tehama now independent, Paul has redoubled his commitment to the future of work. Tehama’s Virtual Office as a Service technology makes it easy for enterprises to manage, onboard and audit third-party vendors, remote teams, and freelancers by providing compliant, secure, cloud-based virtual desktops available on-demand globally.

Paul is a sought-after speaker who was named 2016’s Diversity Champion by Canada’s Women in Communications and Technology, is active in the Council of Canadian Innovators, the CIO Strategy Council, and serves on the board of the Basic Income Canada Network.

Gene Villeneuve, Chief Revenue Officer – Gene Villeneuve is a seasoned IT leader with more than two decades of experience. He is passionate about helping customers and partners adopt technology for better business outcomes. At Tehama, he directs the strategy, market growth and customer success of the cloud-based platform. Before Tehama, Gene held several executive positions at IBM, most recently as Worldwide Director of Lab Services for Financial Crimes Insight Solutions in the Watson Financial Services Solutions division. He has also held European and Global executive roles at IBM, Cognos, SAP (Business Objects) and [email protected] Gene is recognized as a visionary thought leader and is a sought-after speaker for both client and industry events. Gene has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Ottawa.

Rob White, Chief Financial Officer – In addition to his role as CFO at Tehama, Rob is an adviser to and investor in start-up technology firms, with over 20 years of experience in software industry finance, operations and M&A. Previously, he led M&A for IBM’s analytics business after having led the post-merger integration of Cognos into IBM. Rob started his software career with Object Technology International where he served as CFO and COO. He has accreditations as a CPA, CA and CMA and has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa

Jacopo Toccacieli, Vice President of Engineering – Jacopo currently oversees both technical planning and development of the Tehama platform. Under his leadership, the team self-organizes for consistent delivery of the project milestones.

Over the last six years, Jacopo held a variety of Engineering positions in several high-tech startups. In Ottawa based FarmLead, the Engineering team he assembled was critical to raising $8.5M Series A financing in 2017. In addition to his professional accomplishments, Jacopo also worked as a Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks researcher for the University of Ottawa. He holds an MSc in Computer Engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy.