SCIENCE

Panasas announced it has reinforced its executive leadership infrastructure in preparation for continued growth by naming Toya Rico to the newly created position of vice president of human resources. The company also appointed two new sales executives: Wayne Webster as vice president of sales for the Americas and Joel Norton as vice president of sales for the Asia Pacific region.

Building on 40 percent year-over-year revenue growth in 2010, Panasas announced in February its plans to aggressively ramp employee headcount by more than 50 percent across several key functions including engineering, sales, and marketing in 2011. The addition of Rico will allow the company to seamlessly manage this anticipated growth.

Rico brings to her role at Panasas more than 20 years of human resources experience in large, mid-sized and startup technology companies such as Kana Communications, Adaptec and 3Com Corporation. In past executive management roles, Rico was responsible for building worldwide HR organizations, creating effective recruiting strategies, streamlining compensation and benefits, strengthening employee relations, developing top talent and leadership, and shaping organizational effectiveness.

Webster brings a strong track record of success in the federal market, previously overseeing channel organizations and leading highly effective sales teams. Most recently, Webster was vice president of federal sales for CommVault Systems, and previously served at Veritas, NetApp and Ingres. He is based in the Washington, D.C. area.

Norton comes to Panasas from DataDirect Networks, where he oversaw the company's Southern Asia region and achieved significant results in both the high-performance computing and media markets. He has spent most of his career in Southern Asia and Australia, finding success with Sun, Hitachi, FalconStor and 3Par. In his role at Panasas, Norton will be responsible for building out the company's Asia Pacific team and leveraging the explosive growth opportunities in the region. He is currently based in Sydney, Australia.

"We are fortunate to have secured such a talented and proven group of industry leaders in this latest round of executive hires," said Faye Pairman, president and chief executive officer of Panasas. "Their experience and meaningful accomplishments will help Panasas to effectively grow the team, deliver compelling products, and win new customers as we work to increase our market share through 2011 and beyond."