Our Team

Joe is responsible for making certain that SmartBear wows its customers and that every one of the 17 million developers on the planet has a SmartBear experience by trying our products. It’s a big and audacious goal, but with Joe’s track record of building software companies, and his infantry officer experience in the US Army, there is no doubt that he’ll accomplish it.

For the past decade, he’s been a CEO or President at publicly traded software companies such as Bluestone Software (NASDAQ: BLSW), Segue Software (NASDAQ: SEGU), and FAST (Oslo BORS: FAST). And on any given day you’ll find Joe involved in all aspects of SmartBear’s operations and helping to mentor the company’s emerging leaders.

Joe’s passion for leadership and teaching extends to his active involvement as the Chairman and Founder of the Gordon College Center for Nonprofit Studies and Philanthropy, and as Co-founder of the Lithuanian Rural Development Fund that serves 3,500 economically disadvantaged youth in that country.

Rip is responsible for all aspects of the company’s finances and for providing guidance to the rest of the leadership team – something he’s done for over 25 years. Previously, as the CFO of EqualLogic, he led the IPO process and road show development just prior to an acquisition by Dell, Inc. for $1.375 billion. Rip was also the CFO of Enterasys Networks (NYSE: ETS), a $350 million enterprise network infrastructure provider. Rip was also the CFO of Advantage Schools and held executive finance positions at PictureTel and Wheelabrator Technologies.

He also devotes his “free time” to being an active board member of Family Service, Inc., a 157 year–old social service agency focused on Youth Mentoring, Family Development, and Mental Health, and serves on the Finance Committee of Bellesini Academy, a private middle school in Lawrence providing quality scholarship education for boys.

Ian is responsible for building the wow factor into all of our products, getting them into the market, and frequently poking the competition. If Ian has his way, SmartBear will be the #1 company to ensure software success – and given his prior positions as SVP, Products at Segue Software, VP, Products at Borland software, and Director, Engineering at Rational Software, Ian has the background to make that happen.

He’s passionate about software product development and building high performance tools for developers, testers and operations people from their point-of-view. 

Ian started his career in the Edison Engineering Program at GE, home of just about every important innovation in quality control, management and technology team development.

Hopkins comes to SmartBear from HubSpot, a marketing software leader and pioneer in inbound marketing, where she was vice president of marketing. Her marketing leadership helped HubSpot become the second-fastest growing software company in the Inc. 500 by generating 45,000 new leads each month. Hopkins previously was CMO of MEC Labs, owner of MarketingSherpa, MarketingExperiments, and InTouch, and senior director, marketing programs & communications, for Symmetricon, a leader in precision time and frequency technologies.

Hopkins, a firm believer in the top-of-the-funnel lead-generation capabilities of inbound marketing, is coauthor of the book Go Mobile, a step-by-step introductory look at starting mobile marketing efforts that has been the #1 best-selling mobile marketing book on Amazon.com. She is also one of the top 10 Sales Lead Management professionals for 2011.

“It’s thrilling to join a company as well positioned as SmartBear because it provides a tremendous opportunity to apply cutting-edge inbound marketing techniques to drive demand for our broad portfolio of products that serve the fast-growing software development and deployment market,” said Hopkins. “Our lead-generation programs will leverage the blogosphere, the social mediasphere and search engines to introduce SmartBear to more potential customers in the natural course of the way they shop and learn, and then we will nurture those leads and turn prospects into customers.”

Diane’s impressive academic and professional credentials span more than 30 years. She has led numerous high performance sales teams at every level, including Deltek Inc., SoundBite Communications, Workscape Inc., Fast (a subsidiary of Microsoft), Progress Software, Thomson NETG, Aspen Technology and Genuity. She spent 17 years at Digital Equipment Corporation as a top sales performer, managing key, global accounts. When she started working in high tech sales in the late-1970’s, there were few women in the industry so she looked to her passion of helping others – her customers – for motivation. As a result, she has won the hearts and minds of many customers throughout her career. Diane has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts and attended the Harvard Business School Program for Management Development.

Donna is responsible for making SmartBear one of the best places to work and helping the company assemble the best talent to make it so. She wears many hats – human resources, cultural attaché, coach, talent scout, and self-styled student of the world.

Donna has a degree in accounting from the University of Massachusetts, completed an Executive Leadership Program at Babson College, studied at MIT and Harvard Law School, and became certified as a Co-Active Coach through the Coaches Training Institute. If that wasn’t enough, Donna has held positions as an Executive Director at Omgeo LLC, a Vice President at State Street Corporation and a senior manager at Digital Equipment Corporation.

When she isn’t coaching, collaborating or culturalizing, Donna can be found careening down the nearest black diamond trail on her snowboard.

A member of the all-cool SmartBear Management Group (SMG), David is focused on strategic alliances and key business initiatives, which are part and parcel of the plans to grow SmartBear's revenue and value.

While at Innovation Advisors, David successfully advised many organizations on transaction sales, including the high profile sales of BeyondTrust Corporation to Symark International, Wavemaker Software to VMware and Sigaba to Proofpoint. Prior to IA, David was an M&A Analyst with Broadview International, a global mergers and acquisitions investment bank focused on the IT, media and communications sectors. During his career, he has developed a particular expertise in IT infrastructure software, cloud computing and IT services. David has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

“Joining SmartBear at such an important point in the company’s and market growth plans is a tremendous opportunity,” said David Yaches. “With my background and expertise in enterprise and infrastructure software and IT services, I am excited to focus on forging critical partnerships and alliances to ensure SmartBear is the leader in key development communities.”