Agility Welcomes Robotics Pioneer Melonee Wise as New CTO, Establishes New Chief Robot Officer Role, and Celebrates Year of Outstanding Leadership Growth — Agility Robotics

Appropriate over a year ago in April of 2022, Agility announced a $150M Sequence B funding round. That funding propelled us to more than double our crew size, land contemporary multinational Fortune 100 clients, and successfully commence essentially the most restful version of Digit, the field’s first human-centric, multi-goal robotic made for logistics work, at Promat in March 2023.

But of the total highlights, most definitely essentially the fundamental is the strategic growth of our leadership crew and the addition of game changing expertise that can rob Agility during the subsequent part of our dash and situation us up for lengthy speed success.

Within the past year, we’ve added a CCO, CFO, and COO, and created the thrilling contemporary Chief Robot Officer (CRO) group, led by Agility co-founder Jonathan Hurst. As of late, we’re overjoyed to cap off this wonderful year of leadership growth by welcoming change luminary and well-identified roboticist Melonee Wise to the crew as our contemporary CTO.

Increasing the leadership crew

Melonee Wise, Chief Abilities Officer

Our most most restful addition to the Agility executive crew, Melonee brings as grand (or more) journey in building and deploying fleets of robots than just appropriate about anybody in the field. Among many assorted accomplishments, Melonee is the recipient of the 2022 Engelberger Robotics Award, the field’s most prestigious robotics honor. Earlier than becoming a member of Agility, Melonee turned into as soon as Vice President and General Manager of Robotics Automation for Zebra Applied sciences. In 2021, Zebra received Procure Robotics, which Melonee co-essentially based, and for whom she served as CEO from the firm’s formation in 2015.

As CEO of Procure Robotics, Melonee moved the robotic automation change forward, in many methods blazing the mosey for the work we are able to be doing at Agility over the subsequent few years. Melonee will most likely be a catalyst for our broader tool and know-how systems for deploying fleets of Digits in warehouses in every single place the country. She additionally brings a wealth of regulatory journey and would per chance well most likely help attach security insurance policies for the coolest thing referring to the total robotics change.

Aindrea Campbell, Chief Operations Officer

With more than 20+ years as a senior operations chief at corporations including Ford and Apple, Aindrea’s resume elegant grand speaks for itself.  Aindrea brings deep journey in transformation–including co-leading the transition from metal to aluminum on the F150 and with out word scaling capability as head of iPad operations at some stage in COVID.  Aindrea joined Agility in January of 2023 and hit the ground running, aligning and bettering our serious operations. Aindrea brings an professional imaginative and prescient for product growth and manufacturing. With Aindrea’s steerage, we are able to continue with out word scaling our manufacturing and corporate operations to meet the expansive commercial demand for Digit.

Renuka Ayer, Chief Financial Officer

Focus on a obtain! Renuka joined our crew in September of 2022. She has had a lengthy and storied occupation as CFO, CEO, and Finance and Strategic leadership positions at public and non-public corporations love Glowforge, Pulse Electronics, Dover, Ford just appropriate to title about a, and a resounding word file of taking corporations from startup to growth stage and past. She straight transformed Agility into a more sturdy and vulnerable firm, ensuring that we make the supreme financial choices to stable a lengthy and winning future. Nothing love navigating a historical banking crumple and adjusting to a with out word changing financial landscape at some stage in your first six months on the job!

Neatly off Bohne, Chief Business Officer

Neatly off joined Agility in June of 2022 bringing 30 years of gross sales, leadership, and commercial growth journey, most lately as Chief Revenue Officer at Procure Robotics where he led the worldwide gross sales crew forward of the successful acquisition by Zebra Applied sciences. Neatly off is the champion of our commercial partnerships and with his expertise, we maintain already launched the Agility Partner Program and attracted multiple contemporary Fortune 100 clients.

Guaranteeing Rapid Innovation Whereas Maturing the Product

Any other fundamental replace to Agility’s organizational structure is the reach of the contemporary Chief Robot Officer (CRO) group led by co-founder Jonathan Hurst, whose groundbreaking bipedal locomotion analysis is the premise on which the firm turned into as soon as created.

Jonathan’s ardour has continuously been in analysis, innovation, and surroundings the imaginative and prescient for how our robots would per chance well most likely restful detect, transfer, feature, and work along with the field. As such, in April 2023, he transitioned his title from CTO to CRO, to more closely match with his day-to-day work: surroundings Agility’s analysis & growth roadmap, cultivating the innovation pipeline, shepherding Digit’s industrial invent, and nurturing our total ticket identity. This alteration additionally allowed Agility to originate a brand contemporary CTO position fascinated about system-of-robotic, the broader tool product, and immediate deployment technologies, in the kill paving the manner for Melonee Wise to affix.

If there turned into as soon as ever any individual with the title of Chief Robot Officer,
how would per chance well most likely it be anybody else?

With the creation of the CRO org comes the solidification of two departments: the contemporary Innovation Division and the expanded Communications, Mark, and Advertising and marketing and marketing Division, and two more thrilling additions to Agility’s leadership crew:

Pras Velagapudi, VP of Innovation and Current Engineer

The contemporary Innovation Division will most likely be home to Agility’s tech components and R&D work. In quite loads of methods, this highlights a brand contemporary generation for Agility. As an early-stage robotics startup, the total firm turned into as soon as successfully the innovation division. Closing in on simply about a decade later, we are scaling out of startup land and that manner deliberately dividing our innovation pipeline from our core manufacturing and engineering activities.

Pras joined Agility earlier in Would per chance maybe most likely 2023, and is form of uniquely qualified for this position, with decades of journey in robotics planning & administration, growing and deploying robots into home, industrial, and outdoor environments across the field. He most lately turned into as soon as a VP of Engineering and Chief Architect at Berkshire Gray, applying fleets of hundreds of robots to logistics applications. In a landscape continuously disrupted by contemporary know-how, Pras will preserve us fascinated about pragmatic product-relevant enhancements, driven by the imaginative and prescient and components for Digit, operationalizing our R&D efforts and regularly exploring what’s contemporary.

Liz Clinkenbeard, VP of Communications

Since becoming a member of the firm in December 2022, Liz owns Agility’s public image, storytelling, and ticket, working closely with Jonathan to attach Digit’s persona and invent, and to half Agility’s imaginative and prescient of enabling folks to be more human with the field. She has a lengthy and infamous occupation in tech, leading comms at GitHub, managing about a of the finest manufacturers in tech at The OutCast Company, and most lately co-founding and successfully growing Chatterbug, an on-line language-studying startup. Liz has the artistic imaginative and prescient and expertise to place Agility as indubitably one of the most field’s most well-identified, revolutionary, and respected robotics manufacturers.

The Future is Shimmering and Filled with Robots

With Neatly off, Renuka, Liz, Aindrea, Pras, and Melonee becoming a member of Jonathan, CEO and co-founder Damion Shelton, VP of Application and co-founder Mikhail Jones, VP of Customer Operations Mike Norrell, and VP of Hardware Brian Lange on the chief leadership crew, we maintain the supreme folks in put to lead Agility through its next part of growth: producing the field’s first commercially accessible bipedal robotic at scale and deploying fleets of Digits into logistics and warehouse operations in every single place the country and the field. We couldn’t be more pondering what’s to come relieve!