Leadership Team and Board Members

Jean Ferré

CEO

Jean co-founded Sinequa with Alexandre Bilger and served as CEO and President from 2005-2010 when he left for Microsoft. In his role as co-CEO and acting CMO, Jean drives worldwide business operations, global marketing activities, and partnerships. His passion is to work with scientists and engineers building game changing products.and bringing them to market

Jean brings over 25 years of international business management expertise and product leadership to his role as CEO. Jean rejoined Sinequa in 2023, coming from Vantiva, where he served as Chief Innovation, Marketing and Strategy Officer. Prior to that, he was Executive Vice-President SBU Digital Services & CDO with IN Groupe overseeing Nexus Technologies, a global leader in Public Key Infrastructure. Preceding that, Jean served as General Manager of Airspace Mobility Solution Business Line at Thales, overseeing a 500M+ P&L across China, India, the US, Australia, and Europe. Previously Jean held Partner & Director positions at The Boston Consulting Group and Microsoft where his last role included the global design of ISV co-sell programs for Azure.

Jean grew up in the U.S. and in France, he graduated from Ecole Polytechnique with a Degree in Engineering, he also holds a Master of Science from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. He created his first company, Arisem in 1998. Arisem was a pioneer in artificial intelligence and semantics applied to search and was later bought by Thales.

Alexandre Bilger

Chief Architect Officer

With over twenty years of experience as a top executive within enterprise software, Alexandre has a proven ability to build and lead high performing organizations. In addition to being a thought leader, he is passionate about cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive computing and natural language processing.

Alexandre co-founded and was Chief Technology Officer of eFront, a data-processing software vendor specializing in the financial industries. He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines. Alexandre is a champagne and travel enthusiast with a genuine passion for Japan.

Laurent Fanichet

Vice President, Corporate Communications

Laurent drives our overall communications strategy, inclusive of public relations, media relations, internal communications, and analyst relationships.

Prior to this role, Laurent was the Vice President of Marketing. He built the U.S. Marketing team from scratch early on and contributed to start and grow Sinequa’s momentum in North America. He also contributed to establishing Sinequa as a leader repeatedly with analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester.

Laurent brings over 20 years of marketing experience in the software industry where he has worked in a variety of roles, in Europe, San Francisco and New York City. These roles include deep specialization in the areas of product marketing, field marketing/communications, and business development.

Prior to joining Sinequa, Laurent held various management positions at Quantum Corporation, Atempo (Acquired by ASG Software Solutions) and ILOG (acquired by IBM. He is a travel enthusiast and a wine connoisseur.

Jeff Evernham

Vice President, Product Strategy

As VP of Product Strategy, Jeff Evernham sets the strategy for Sinequa’s software offerings and also leads Product Marketing. Jeff is a thought leader in the realm of applying technology to business problems, and guides the product roadmap so that Sinequa’s technical innovations lead to thrilled customers. As the Product Marketing lead, he defines the go-to-market strategy and communicates Sinequa’s value proposition. Prior to assuming this role, Jeff spent four years as VP of Customer Solutions, where he led the consulting team that brought Sinequa’s technical expertise to customers, partners, and prospects. Jeff’s 20+ year career spans a variety of firms and includes data analytics consulting, professional services, sales, and engineering.

Jeff holds a Master of Engineering degree from MIT.

Philippe Motet

Vice President, Engineering

Philippe brings over 25 years of software engineering and development management experience to Sinequa, having previously led engineering teams for leading software companies. Philippe oversees the development and evolution of the company’s AI-powered Search & Analytics Platform. As such, he is managing the research and development, including the machine learning, the natural language processing and the quality assurance departments.

Previously Philippe was at Oodrive, a European-based leading independent software company for sensitive data management, where he was chief technology officer in charge of accelerating development, offering customers a high level of quality and security. Prior to joining Oodrive, Philippe held various software engineering management positions at Atempo and Active Circle, which was acquired by Oodrive. Motet holds a Master of Science degree from Supélec. Besides developing software, Philippe loves to ski in the snowy mountains around the world.

Adrien Gabeur

Vice President, Cloud and Saas

Adrien leads Sinequa’s Cloud & SaaS department where his team is responsible to design and take to market next gen [cloud native/SaaS] products on top of Sinequa’s technology.

Adrien joined Sinequa in 2016 as one of the first Senior Sales Engineer in New York where he brought in some key customers and greatly contributed to Sinequa’s expansion in North America. In 2018, he moved to Sinequa’s headquarters in Paris and headed the development of Sinequa’s AI business solutions, connecting the dots between all the different stakeholders in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning technologies.

Prior to joining Sinequa, Adrien started his career in the Energy Efficiency & Smart Grid space where he developed one of the first investment fund dedicated to the financing of energy reduction assets.

Adrien graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and received a Master of Science in Management Science & Engineering from Columbia University.

Luc Manigot

Vice President, Center of Excellence

Luc manages Sinequa’s Center of Excellence that he created in 2018. Under this role, Luc oversees today critical activities like the Sinequa University platform, a dedicated team of Subject Matter Experts, and both the Customer Support and Training departments.

Luc collaborated in the development and production of the very first version of Sinequa Search Engine, which has become today one of the leading platforms on the market of Insight Engines. Luc also served as Scientific Director before being promoted VP Global Operations in 2009.

Prior to joining Sinequa and the Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence space in 1997, Luc conducted three years of research in Combinatorics and Graph Theory at the EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris).

Luc holds a Master of Theoretical Mathematics and Master II of Theoretical Computer Science from Paris VI University. Luc is a member of the Data Intelligence Cluster of the GICAT representing Sinequa. Luc loves jazz music and plays saxophone.

Stephane Kirchacker

Vice President, Europe Middle East & Africa

As Vice President, Sales EMEA, Stephane is responsible for driving sales and expanding channels to accelerate Sinequa’s regional growth. With 20 years of sales, project management and business development experience gained in the U.S and Europe, Stephane joins Sinequa from ASG Software Solutions where he was Senior Vice President, Business Development Infrastructure Software. While at ASG Software Solutions, he was responsible for accelerating worldwide growth of infrastructure products through an innovative approach to sales and go-to-market strategy. Prior to ASG Software Solutions, Stephane was Vice President Sales Worldwide for Active Circle and the Managing Director, Northern/Southern Europe for Atempo.

Stephane holds an executive MBA from ESCP Europe as well as a Master degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Paris 6. Stéphane likes books being both a reader and a writer with several short stories published.

Xavier Pornain

Senior Vice President of Sales, North America - Sinequa Search Cloud

Xavier is in charge of Corporate Development, driving Strategic Alliance, mergers and acquisitions as well geographic expansions.

Prior to this role, Xavier was the senior vice president of Sales for North America where he established and led Sinequa’s U.S. operations and its successful expansion in the region.

Xavier started his career at IBM and worked over 20 years in various sales and leadership positions in the enterprise software space. Xavier has a strong track record to build high-performance sales teams and develop key relationships with F500 clients and partners.

Xavier is an avid runner with multiple marathons under his belt.

Alexandre Bilger

Chief Architect Officer

With over twenty years of experience as a top executive within enterprise software, Alexandre has a proven ability to build and lead high performing organizations. In addition to being a thought leader, he is passionate about cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive computing and natural language processing.

Alexandre co-founded and was Chief Technology Officer of eFront, a data-processing software vendor specializing in the financial industries. He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines. Alexandre is a champagne and travel enthusiast with a genuine passion for Japan.

Jean Schmitt - Jolt

As founder & Managing Partner, Jean has driven Jolt’s vision and led its development since 2012. The impetus behind the founding of Jolt was Jean’s realization that the best risk-adjusted returns typically come from late stage & growth rounds in companies that no longer face technology risk.

Prior to founding Jolt Capital, Jean was Managing Partner at Sofinnova Partners, running the IT practice with a focus on telecom and wireless markets. Preceding his career as an investor, Jean was the CEO and founder of 4 companies with successful exits, including SLP InfoWare, which he sold to Gemplus in 2000 for $60m and then became VP Telecom Solutions & Applications for the larger group.

Jean graduated from Telecom ParisTech and has a post-graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence. He is senior lecturer at Telecom ParisTech and HEC Paris, a former Chairman of the International Venture Club and a Member of Henkel’s Henkel X mentorship program.

Jean is currently a board member of Sinequa, NIL Technology, Interel, Blackwood Seven, and Verimatrix (EURONEXT:VMX). Previously, Jean was a board member of; Esmertec/Myriad (SIX:MYRN), Authentec (NASDAQ:AUTH) before its acquisition by Apple in 2012 for $356m, Heptagon before its acquisition by AMS (SIX:AMS) in 2016 for close to $1b, FOGALE Sensation before its sale to a consumer electronics giant, and most recently Skill & You before its sale to Andera Partners.

Léon Seynave - Troismer

Léon serves as an Independent Member at Troismer. He serves as a Board Member at Sinequa. Mr. Seynave serves as Chairman, Board of Directors at Stanhope Capital. He is a Co-Founder of Mitiska, a holding company listed in Brussels with stakes in several leading specialized retail companies such as Brantano, AS Adventure and Fun. In addition, he holds directorships in De Persgroep (B), ASK (F), Audley Capital (UK) and Stanhope Capital (UK). Previously, he worked as an investment banker at White, Weld & Co., New York and Crédit Suisse First Boston in London.

He also founded Vente-Exclusive.com in 2007 – the Belgian leader in online flash sales – merged in 2015 into Veepee.com, the European leader, of which he is now a Board member. He is also a Board member of Tikehau Capital (Paris).

Léon has over 30 years of experience in the specialty retail sector. He holds a degree in Commercial Engineering from the University of Leuven, Belgium and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Commerce and Finance of the University of Pennsylvania.

Philippe Laval

A renowned expert in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Philippe’s extensive entrepreneurial career has centered around intelligent systems and software. Prior to joining Jolt Capital, Philippe was the CEO & co-founder of Evercontact, the service that keeps your address book and CRM automatically up-to-date. Before Evercontact, he founded and led Sinequa as CEO. Philippe remains a board member of Sinequa, and is also currently a Director of both Ooreka and Predictice.

Philippe holds a PhD in AI/Natural Language Processing (NLP) from Paris-Diderot University and a Software Engineering degree from Telecom ParisTech. In addition, Philippe holds 2 US Patents in NLP (i & ii). A keen kitesurfer in his spare time, Philippe has also written a book on Management within the context of Game of Thrones, “Winter is NOT coming“. (First Edition, 2016)