Engineous Picks Experienced Female Executive as Its New CEO

CARY — Engineous Software is bringing in a seasoned veteran with a wide range of experiences at both large and small companies to take over as its chief executive officer and president.

Janet C. Wylie, who spent more than 20 years with Fortune 100 companies, replaces interim Chief Executive Officer and President Ed Masi, who will continue to serve on Engineous' board of directors. Masi, who is quasi-retired and never intended on keeping the job fulltime, stepped in when Dennis Nagy, formerly of MSC Software, left the company last September for personal reasons after some 15 months of service.

"Simply put, it's a situation where we're choosing to let that be a private matter," Mike Lemmons, vice president of human resources and operations support for Engineous, says of Nagy's departure. "And he's made the same decision...that's the simple truth. It was not negative, just private."

Lemmons added that while Masi, a former executive at Intel and IBM, did great things for the engineering software producer, the board found what he calls the "perfect fit" in Wylie, who's held executive level and management positions with Xerox, Computer Sciences Corporation, Boeing and Martin Marietta (Lockheed).

"She's got that big-company training, knowledge and experience, but she also has entrepreneurial experience," Lemmons says of Wylie, who most recently served as CEO and president of e-business provider Intelicent before it was sold. "We got the best of both worlds with the big-company pedigree and a very successful entrepreneur who has small-company, CEO experience, as well. She is an engineer, but a proven sales and marketing executive, too."

A Georgia Tech engineer

Engineous' new leader has a degree in civil engineering from Georgia Tech, where she has also has performed graduate work in engineering and is a member of the President's Board of Advisors. Wylie also performed graduate work in marketing at the University of Chicago.

"As an engineer, I'm impressed with Engineous' ability to provide breakthrough solutions through its products and services," said Wylie, who was at the Datatech Summit 2002 conference in New York Tuesday, in a statement. "As a business person, I am keenly aware of the cost savings and the time-to-market acceleration companies have realized through the use of iSIGHT (design automation software). It's both the unique engineering aspects and the very compelling business aspects, that made me excited about joining the Engineous team."

With Wylie's background in both large and small businesses, at some point, she had to choose her path...one that led her to Engineous.

"She made the decision to change directions and do CEO executive work with entrepreneurial technology companies, which at this point, is where she wants to be," Lemmons says. "We're certainly consistent with what she's been doing in recent years."

He adds that the Engineous board conversed with Wylie toward the latter part of 2001, and shortly after, reached a unanimous decision to hire her. Wylie joined the board in January.

"Janet (Wylie) has proven her ability to take organizations to the next level, whether at the ground floor of a start-up company, or managing a division of 4000 employees," said Dr. Siu Tong, founder and chairman of the board for Engineous, in a statement. "Janet has consistently shown the leadership and vision to define a successful business strategy, resulting in increased revenues and profits."

What's so 'Engineous' about it?

Engineous officially opened its doors in 1996 after General Electric gave Tong its blessing to market the design optimization technology he had spent more than 15 years and $12 million in corporate and government funding developing in his Ph.D. thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in house at GE. Engineous' software, called iSIGHT, automates the entire design process.

"You can tie all your design software packages together, then drive the software process, changing the data automatically according to the predefined or adaptive strategies you set," Tong said in a case study on Engineous by Intel, one of its financial backers. "All this leads to much quicker, much better product design results."

In addition to Intel, Engineous has been funded by GE Investments, Wachovia Capital Associates, Atlanta-based Noro-Moseley Partners and California-based Idanta Partners. The latest round of funding came in the amount of $15 million in July 2001 and was led by Idanta, who invested $11 million.

"We are very impressed by the unique nature of the iSIGHT product, and the compelling benefits it has provided to a large number of blue-chip customers," said Mahesh Krishnamurthy, general partner at Idanta, in a statement at the time. "We look forward to Engineous becoming the dominant player in the computer aided exploration and optimization space that it has pioneered."

And the 80-person company with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, intends on doing so. With sales of $3.6 million in 2000, and continued growth since then, Engineous already has Fortune 100 companies as customers such as Black & Decker, Ford, Kodak and Sony.

"We've had exponential growth concerning our revenues, to the extent of being recognized for several years as one of the fastest growing technology companies," says Lemmons. "We've had good growth, although we're still a young company."

But when asked about new CEO Wylie possibly taking Engineous public, Lemmons replies, "There are not any kind of immediate plans to that end."