Our Leadership

Anjali Arora joined Rocket in 2017 as the company’s Chief Product Officer, responsible for driving Rocket’s R&D product strategy. Prior to Rocket, she spent 3 years at Oracle as Global Vice President of Software Engineering. While at Oracle, Anjali managed R&D for the company’s Health Sciences Global Business Unit (HSGBU), with responsibility for a portfolio of 40+ products and 600+ people in locations around the world. She led a transformation of the organization by bringing new talent focused on end user experience, simplified interactive design, native cloud and micro-services based architecture, modern open source technology uptake, agile and quality and performance at all levels.

Prior to Oracle, Anjali was Vice President of R&D at Allscripts, a top-5 healthcare IT company, where she led R&D for all Administrative and Financial Solutions (AFS). Earlier in her career, she spent over 12 years at CA in roles ranging from software engineer to Vice President of Software Engineering, as well as working at companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation and EMC.

Anjali was recognized by the Boston Business Journal in their 2009 40 under 40 list, and was also a 2015 India New England Woman of the Year Finalist. She served for multiple years as the Cultural Chair on the executive board of the India Society of Worcester (ISW), and organizes various cultural, social, educational and charitable events for the society throughout the year.

Anjali holds a Bachelor of Arts and Mathematics degree from St. Stephen’s College in India, and a Masters in Computer Applications from the University of Delhi.

Justin Colson joined Rocket in 2019 as Senior Vice President of Business Transformation. He brings over 15 years of growth strategy and transformation experience with leading industrial sector players. Justin was previously General Manager of the Electric Propulsion Business Unit and strategy leader for electrified and autonomous vehicles at Sensata Technologies.

Justin was formerly a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company, where he led a number of growth strategy and operational programs for large aerospace, automotive, and industrial companies. The majority of his work focused on helping companies grow or pivot for growth in rapidly evolving or disrupting industries. Prior to consulting, Justin was an aerospace engineer at MIT – Lincoln Laboratory, driving and leading several Department of Defense research and development programs.

Justin has a B.S. in Engineering Physics from Cornell University, an M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, and an M.B.A. from MIT – Sloan School of Management.

Matt Deres joined Rocket in 2019 as Chief Information Officer. He brings over 15 years of senior-level transformational IT experience and was previously the Senior Vice President of Information Technology at ACI Worldwide and the Vice President of Global Infrastructure & Operations at PTC. Matt was also the NA Regional Infrastructure Head at Computershare and the Global Hosting Services Manager for Thermo Electron (Thermo Fisher Scientific).

Matt studied in the B.S. of Technical Operations Management program at Northeastern University and also studied in a Registered Nursing program.

Jay Leader joined Rocket in 2014 as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. Most recently he was Vice President of IT and Chief Information Officer at Rapid7. Over his 34 year career Jay has served in a variety of IT and consulting positions including management roles in Network/Telecommunications, Business Systems, and Project Management at companies such as iRobot, Nypro Inc., Data General Corp., and Coopers & Lybrand.

He is the former Chairman of the Boston Society for Information Management CIO Roundtable, and was named the 2010 Massachusetts CIO of the Year by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. He was also named one of Computerworld’s 2011 Premier 100 Leaders in IT. Jay is a graduate of Clark University, Worcester, MA, where he earned a BA in International Relations and an MBA.

Tracey Leahy joined Rocket Software in August 2018 as SVP of HR and Chief Human Resources Officer, bringing with her more than 20 years of experience in human resources and organizational development. Prior to Rocket, she was the Global Senior Director of Human Resources at PAREXEL International, where she supported senior leaders and implemented the global people strategy.

Before that, she worked for four years as an Associate Director of HR and Organizational Development for the UK’s National Health Service.

Tracey is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), a member of the Society for Human Resource Management, and an alumnus of both the Dearne Valley Business School and the University of Bedfordshire in the UK.

David Reibel joined Rocket Software in 2013 as Vice President and General Counsel. David was previously Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at Aspect Software. He held similar positions at Way Systems, Aprisma Management Technologies, and two companies in Europe.

David has international corporate and commercial transaction experience with public and private companies, as well as capital markets, M&A, licensing and strategic relationships, intellectual property portfolio management, litigation, employment law and risk management experience. He serves on the boards of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, North Shore Technology Council, and North Shore InnoVentures. David holds a BA from the University of Michigan and a JD from Stanford Law School.

Kevin Thimble has over 25 years of experience in finance and accounting. Kevin joined Rocket in 2010 and has responsibilities over the world-wide accounting, revenue recognition, financial planning and analysis, treasury and order management areas.

Prior to joining Rocket, Kevin served as Vice President and Corporate Controller at various public software companies including Phase Forward Incorporated, Unica Corporation and SeaChange International. Kevin holds a B.S. in Accounting and Economics from the College of the Holy Cross and is a certified public accountant.

Joe Devlin has been with Rocket Software since 2001, and was named one of Rocket’s first two distinguished engineers in 2015. In his role as Chief Technology Officer, he is responsible for driving strategic technology decisions for products across the Rocket portfolio. Joe is an enterprise software veteran, having previously served as Chief Software Architect for Gensym Corporation and software engineer at Cognitive Systems.

His expertise ranges from natural language processing, business intelligence, graphics, network protocols, compilers, rule systems, systems and database management, and artificial intelligence.

Shantanu Ghosh joined Rocket in 2018 as Managing Director and VP of the Centers of Rocket Excellence in China and India. Before joining Rocket, Shantanu spent two years working in the consumer tech space through a startup he founded, [email protected] Technologies. Earlier, Shantanu was country head of product operations for Symantec Corp., spanning three cities and a staff of 4,000. He was also the Global VP for Symantec’s Data Center Security business.

Shantanu has over 25 years of R&D leadership and general management experience in global tech companies where he helped build and grow highly effective & globally distributed R&D organizations. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Allahabad in India. He is a frequent contributor to industry and media publications, and is an avid reader with interests in food, culture, and travel.

Gary Gregory joined Rocket Software in 2012 and leads Rocket's Database Servers and Tools Business Unit. He graduated with one of the first computer science degrees awarded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gary spent 10 years as the Chief Computer Scientist at Computer Corporation of America, which developed the Model 204 database, and was later acquired by Rocket Software. He was a charter member of the ANSI X3H2 committee, which standardized database languages.

In 1984 Gary joined Progress Software and two years later founded Sirius Software, where he remained as president until joining Rocket.

Patricia Harasta joined Rocket in 2018 as VP of R&D Operations, with a focus on project management, globalization strategy, and governance. She has 19 years of enterprise software experience, with expertise in delivering high-quality software, creating efficiencies, and ensuring predictability. Prior to Rocket, Patricia was Director of Software Engineering at CA, responsible for multiple agile teams within CA’s performance management portfolio.

Patricia holds Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from SUNY Geneseo along with an MBA from Bentley McCallum Graduate School of Business. Outside of Rocket, she is actively involved in the community and leads a STEM team for middle school girls, which helps to develop innovation and collaboration skills.

Puneet Kohli joined Rocket in 2018 as Vice President of Quality and Devops. Prior to joining Rocket, he spent seven years at Dell EMC as Director of Engineering & Quality, where he was responsible for innovation and delivery of Dell EMC's Hyper Converged software product portfolio for the VCE business unit. He helped transform engineering teams globally to follow extreme programming and dev-ops practices.

Prior to joining Dell EMC, Puneet was Director of Engineering at RSA, where he led multiple product teams across a vast portfolio of identity management, compliance, and end-point protection products. He also spent 10 years at CA in the security business, and was responsible for setting up the India office for CA’s security business unit.

Puneet serves as Vice President on the board of Boston-area non-profit ISW. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Northeastern University and a and Bachelor’s of Commerce from Delhi University in India.

Toshi Takahashi joined Rocket Software in 2015 and is the director of software engineering in the Center of Rocket Excellence Japan. Before joining Rocket, he led multiple product development teams in IBM’s Tokyo software development lab. Toshi has nearly three decades of experience in enterprise software development, with expertise in delivering data management tools software. He enjoys alpine skiing and relaxing at hot springs.

Toshi graduated from Tohoku University in 1989 with a Master’s degree in theoretical nuclear physics.

Database Architect and Strategist Tim Willging joined the Rocket Software team in 2005 and was named a distinguished engineer in 2015. With over 25 years developing enterprise software tools, Tim has architected and authored several database products focusing on backup and recovery, cloning, administration, monitoring and change management. He has recently been focusing on solutions for advanced analytics on z/OS.

He is currently based in Chicago, and is an alumnus of Northern Illinois University with an emphasis in theoretical computing.