LEADERSHIP

Meet the Team

Our company has a shared passion and a simple mission: to unlock the power of quantum computing to help solve the world's most challenging problems. To do so, we've brought together a leadership team with unparalleled experience in business, science, and technology. The team comprises seasoned technology leaders and distinguished domain experts with decades of experience in their respective fields.

Alan Baratz

Chief Executive Officer

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Alan Baratz 2023

Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Alan Baratz became the CEO of D-Wave in 2020. Previously, as Executive Vice President of R&D and Chief Product Officer, he drove the development, delivery, and support of all of D-Wave’s products, technologies, and applications. He has over 25 years of experience in product development and bringing new products to market at leading technology companies and software startups. As the first president of JavaSoft at Sun Microsystems, Alan oversaw the growth and adoption of the Java platform from its infancy to a robust platform supporting mission-critical applications in nearly 80 percent of Fortune 1000 companies. He has also held executive positions at Symphony, Avaya, Cisco, and IBM. He served as CEO and president of Versata, Zaplet, and NeoPath Networks, and as a managing director at Warburg Pincus LLC. Alan holds a doctorate in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Linked In   Twitter/X 

John Markovich

Chief Financial Officer

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John Markovich

Chief Financial Officer

John Markovich is a strategic financial leader with over three decades of experience working with rapidly growing private and public technology companies across all stages of development. He has directed the finance, accounting, tax, treasury, M&A, legal, operations, customer service, IR, HR, and IT functions for companies ranging from privately held pre-revenue startups to a NYSE-listed Fortune 500 multi-national company with over $1.2 billion in annual revenue. During his career, he has negotiated and closed over 150 debt, equity, M&A, and joint venture transactions exceeding $2.5 billion in value; over a dozen private placements; nearly a dozen M&A transactions; and several international joint ventures. John holds a BS in Business from Miami University and an MBA from the Michigan State Graduate School of Business. Linked In

Lorenzo Martinelli

Chief Revenue Officer

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Lorenzo Martinelli

Chief Revenue Officer

Lorenzo Martinelli spearheads D-Wave’s commercial expansion, overseeing sales, marketing, professional services, and customer success. A seasoned cloud enterprise software entrepreneur, he specializes in innovative go-to-market strategies for optimization applications in manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, government, and healthcare. With a record of guiding startups from inception to IPO, Lorenzo excels in delivering market-leading, high-ROI solutions that generate strong revenue growth. His experience spans leadership roles at QAD DynaSys, E2open, AristaSoft, Baan (now Infor), Digital Equipment (now HPE), and IBM. He earned a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, specializing in Operations Research and Organizational Behavior. LinkedIn

Trevor Lanting

Chief Development Officer

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Trevor

Chief Development Officer

Trevor Lanting is a senior R&D executive with over 15 years of experience in technology development. He leads D-Wave’s product development organization, which includes teams responsible for software, systems, and cloud services. Trevor, who joined D-Wave in 2008, has previously served as Senior Vice President of Software, Algorithms, and Cloud Services and Vice President of Science. He has helped drive the development and deployment of five generations of annealing quantum computing systems and specializes in connecting fundamental research results and insights with real-world applications, focusing on harnessing quantum mechanics to produce fundamentally new computational capabilities. He holds a BSc in physics and astronomy from the University of British Columbia and a PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. His graduate work involved pioneering the development of superconducting technology for emerging astrophysics platforms. LinkedIn

Sophie Ames

Chief Human Resources Officer

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Sophie Ames Leadership Page

Chief Human Resources Officer

Sophie Ames leads the global human capital innovation strategy essential to D-Wave’s growth. This includes talent acquisition, learning and development, organizational effectiveness, compensation and benefits, and HR operations. Sophie brings 25 years of global HR experience working at leading public and private international technology and services companies where she established a strong track record for building agile, high performance HR teams and scaling organizations for growth and SaaS business model transformation. In her approach to creating value for all stakeholders, she focuses on the connection between the company’s performance, people and processes while providing strategic and operational leadership in fast-paced and evolving business environments. Prior to D-Wave, Sophie held roles at Mitel, ServiceMax, Veritas Technologies LLC, and Avaya. She has a bachelor's degree in business and applied foreign languages from Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier, France.

Diane Nguyen

General Counsel

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Diane N

General Counsel

Diane Nguyen joined D-Wave in 2018. She brings over 10 years of broad-based legal experience to D‑Wave, including experience in negotiating commercial agreements, corporate governance, business financing, intellectual property, and risk assessment.  

Currently the General Counsel, she plays a central role in the identification and resolution of legal issues related to all aspects of D-Wave’s day-to-day operations with a focus on customer and reseller agreements. She also works with the executive team on certain strategic business decisions, oversees the proper governance of the company and leads the Intellectual Property team in the development and protection of D-Wave’s world-class patent portfolio. 

Prior to joining D-Wave, Diane was an attorney and trademark agent for a mid-size law firm in Quebec where she has negotiated numerous corporate finance transactions ranging from $250,000 to $50,000,000 and complex commercial agreements in a wide variety of industries.

Diane is a member of the bars of British Columbia and Quebec and is a registered trademark agent. She also holds a Master’s degree in Business Law from the University of Montreal. Linked In

Allison Schwartz

Vice President of Global Government Relations & Public Affairs

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Allison Schwartz

Vice President of Global Government Relations & Public Affairs

Allison Schwartz leads global government relations and public affairs for D-Wave and has more than 25+ years of experience as a public policy strategist. She has expertise in a variety of technology issues including quantum, privacy, fintech, and more. Allison’s approach is to build comprehensive external engagement to address strategic issues facing the industry. She is a frequent speaker at policy, technology, and quantum events.

Prior to D-Wave, Allison held leadership roles at a variety of different technology companies, including Global Government Relations Leader for Dun & Bradstreet and Vice President of Government Relations and Public Affairs for Intuit. Over her career, she also served as a strategic consultant for companies, trade associations and non-profits on public policy and social impact initiatives and was a policy staffer in the U.S. Congress. Linked In

 

Eric Ladizinsky

Co-Founder & Chief Scientist

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Eric Ladizinsky (2)

Co-Founder & Chief Scientist

Board of Directors

Steven West

Chair of the Board, D‐Wave Quantum Inc. Managing Partner of Emerging Company Partners

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Chair of the Board, D‐Wave Quantum Inc. Managing Partner of Emerging Company Partners

Steven is a 30-year veteran of the information technology marketplace and currently the founder and a partner in Emerging Company Partners LLC, a technology consulting firm. Over the course of his career, he has held many executive positions, including president and CEO of Entera, an Internet content delivery firm (acquired by Blue Coat Systems, Inc.); CEO of Hitachi Data Systems; and Group Executive of EDS. Steven is a former board director at Cisco, where he served for 23 years, and Autodesk where he served for nine years. He also served on the boards of Delta-Q Technologies and Bycast Inc.

Dr. Alan Baratz

Chief Executive Officer, D‐Wave Quantum Inc.

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Chief Executive Officer, D‐Wave Quantum Inc.

Alan became the CEO of D-Wave in 2020. Previously, as Executive Vice President of R&D and Chief Product Officer, he drove the development, delivery, and support of all of D-Wave’s products, technologies, and applications. He has over 25 years of experience in product development and bringing new products to market at leading technology companies and software startups. As the first president of JavaSoft at Sun Microsystems, Alan oversaw the growth and adoption of the Java platform from its infancy to a robust platform supporting mission-critical applications in nearly 80 percent of Fortune 1000 companies. He has also held executive positions at Symphony, Avaya, Cisco, and IBM. Alan served as CEO and president of Versata, Zaplet, and NeoPath Networks, and as a managing director at Warburg Pincus LLC.

Roger Biscay

Senior Vice President and Corporate Treasurer, and Corporate Security of Cisco Systems Inc.

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Senior Vice President and Corporate Treasurer, and Corporate Security of Cisco Systems Inc.

Roger holds over 20 years of experience driving financial management, strategy, organizational planning, and compliance across high-tech public and private companies. He has served as Senior Vice President and Treasurer of Cisco Systems since April 2017, where his responsibilities include corporate finance, investments, cash management, foreign exchange, risk transfer, safety, security and business resiliency. He has served on the board of directors of Wasabi Technologies since August 2021, including as a member of the audit committee and governance committee, and has held senior financial markets positions in the areas of fixed income, equity capital markets and foreign exchange with the Royal Bank of Canada, Banque Paribas and Lehman Brothers.

Amy Cappellanti‐Wolf

Chief Human Resources Officer and Real Estate Leader of Cohesity

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Chief Human Resources Officer and Real Estate Leader of Cohesity

Amy is an accomplished senior human resources professional, business transformer and executive coach with expertise ranging from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. Her management roles span high-tech (Symantec, Silver Spring Networks, Cisco, Sun Microsystems), entertainment (The Walt Disney Company), and consumer goods (Frito-Lay). Since May 2022 she has served as Chief Human Resources Officer and Real Estate Leader of Cohesity. From January 2014 to February 2020, Amy was the Chief Human Resources Officer and Real Estate Leader for Symantec. She also serves on the board of Softchoice, a provider of technology solutions and managed services; Betterworks, a continuous performance management platform company; and Pivotal, a non-profit that focuses on foster youth education and employment.

Kirstjen Nielsen

Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security

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Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security

Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is an internationally recognized speaker, author and thought leader who addresses critical global security issues, including emerging threats, resilience, and cybersecurity. She is the founder of Lighthouse Strategies, a global advisory services firm, where she counsels investors and technology companies on risk management, artificial intelligence, government mission requirements, new technology use cases, and the mitigation of potential threats or vulnerabilities posed by new technologies. Secretary Nielsen most recently served as the sixth U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and has held various positions in government, including White House Principal Deputy Chief of Staff, DHS Chief of Staff, and Senior Director on the Homeland Security Council. Secretary Nielsen is a member of the Board of Advisors for the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida and a Board Member of the Global Resilience Federation. She also sits on the Advisory Boards of emerging tech companies focused on cybersecurity, digital identity, drug and biothreat detection, decentralized finance, and emergency communications.

Emil Michael

Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of DPCM Capital, Inc.

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Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of DPCM Capital, Inc.

Emil is one of Silicon Valley’s most highly regarded executives having built three successful companies including Tellme Networks (sold to Microsoft in 2007), Klout (sold to Lithium Technologies in 2014) and Uber. Emil has extensive experience identifying high-growth, tech-enabled businesses with his investments spanning a range of companies including Brex, GoPuff, Revolut, SpaceX and Stripe. He has been the Chairman and CEO of M8 Enterprises LLC since January 2018. Prior to that, he served as Chief Business Officer of Uber, Chief Operating Officer of Klout, and as a White House Fellow working for the Secretary of Defense. Emil also was part of the founding team of Tellme Networks, a pioneer in speech recognition technology and systems, helping the company raise over $250 million in venture capital and leading it through an $800 million sale to Microsoft.

Ziv Ehrenfeld

Managing Director, PSP Investments USA

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Managing Director, PSP Investments USA

Ziv is a Managing Director in the Private Equity team in New York, heading Strategy and Active Management globally as well as overseeing various sponsor relationships. Ziv serves on the boards of several of Private Equity’s portfolio companies.

Ziv joined PSP Investments USA in August 2015 to develop Private Debt as a new asset class. His primary focus included business development, tax planning, building the team and overseeing operations, as well as leading commitments in over $5 billion of direct and fund investments. Ziv also served as a member of the firm’s global investment committee.

Prior to joining PSP Investments USA, Ziv was a Director in Leveraged Finance at Barclays, where he arranged leveraged loan and high-yield bond financings for sponsor and corporate clients. He had previously been a member of the Equity Capital Markets team at Lehman Brothers and then Barclays. Ziv started his career practicing law at the law firm of Fischer Behar Chen Well Orion & Co. He holds an LL.B. Bachelor of Laws and a BA in Economics from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from Wharton.