AI POWERHOUSE THISWAY GLOBAL DRIVES UNPRECEDENTED EFFICIENCY, IGNITES GROWTH WITH TOP-TIER ELITE HIRES

Industry-Leader Names New Chief Technology Officer And Chief Innovation Officer

AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- ThisWay Global, a pioneering AI software innovator with R&D roots from the University of Cambridge ideaSpace, is expanding its leadership team to meet the growing demand in the AI, LLM, and High-Performance Computing (HPC) sectors. The company is announcing AI and computer security expert Chris Kennedy as its new Chief Technology Officer along with the promotion of Alex Shmelev to Chief Innovation Officer.  Their appointments will further strengthen the company's key differentiator — an advanced software layer that seamlessly integrates with any silicon architecture, whether on-premise, hybrid, or cloud, across industries such as research, public sector, university, defense, healthcare, and technology.

ThisWay Global's groundbreaking advancement maximizes AI performance without hardware constraints, optimizes compute resource allocation, reduces inference and training latency, and enhances workload scalability. As a result, enterprises and investors benefit from significant cost savings, higher throughput, accelerated AI adoption, improved ROI, and a competitive edge with scalable, future-proof AI solutions.

"We're excited to leverage Chris and Alex's deep expertise in AI and high-performance computing to propel ThisWay Global's mission of making HPC more accessible, empowering researchers and businesses to accelerate innovation," said Angela Hood, CEO of ThisWay Global. "With less than 5% of the market currently having access to HPC, our cloud-based solutions will democratize computing power, ensuring that HPC capacity is readily available to those who need it most."  

Chris Kennedy
Chris Kennedy has joined ThisWay Global as CTO to focus on leading the company's expansion into the HPC market overseeing the integration and development of AI technologies with a strong emphasis on ethical and responsible use.

Kennedy is a seasoned technology leader with over four decades of experience architecting and implementing advanced software systems across industries including intelligence, FinTech, agriculture, utilities, and biotech. Known for his expertise in trusted systems and regulatory frameworks such as GDPR, CCPA, and ISO standards, he has driven business process reengineering in both startups and large enterprises. His pioneering work includes developing the first distributed operating system to undergo B2-level evaluation, leveraging AI for image analysis, and advancing eventual consistency and agent-based systems. A passionate mentor and hands-on leader, Chris is committed to fostering high-performance teams and delivering innovative, secure, and sustainable solutions.  

Chris most recently served as Fractional CTO and Executive Vice President for Nevasoft Inc., an international consultancy he founded with former colleagues focusing on startup activations for new founders. Before that, he spent two years at Nutrien Ag Solutions as a Computational Science Fellow, providing technical leadership and AI insight to computer scientists and data engineers in areas of plant nutrition conversion efficiency and soil metagenomic analysis. Among his many notable accomplishments are creating the first distributed operating system to undergo developmental evaluation at the B2 level, the first commercial RDBMS to undergo assessment at the B1 level, early use of AI models for imagery analysis, and adoption of eventual consistency, agents and service-oriented models dating back to the early 1980s.

"My entire career has been focused on high-performance computer systems in support of AI, and I look forward to bringing my decades of insight to the team at ThisWay Global," said Chris Kennedy. "I am proud to have served at the forefront of AI with pioneering work in software safety, privacy, and security. AI will eventually be embedded into everything, and I'm thrilled to be on board with a company trailblazing reliable, safe, and ethical use of this technology."

Alex Shmelev  
Alex Shmelev has now been named Chief Innovation Officer of ThisWay Global, where he leads the development of transformative technologies focused on AI, machine learning, and data integration. His work aims to reduce barriers to adoption for small and medium-sized enterprises across diverse industries.

Since 2017, Alex has played a pivotal role in advancing AI and NLP technologies to power ThisWay's unbiased job and candidate matching solutions, including AI4Jobs and Sully's Sandbox. He has also fostered a strategic partnership with IBM, integrating ThisWay's core to be part of WatsonX and Orchestrate platforms. Previously, as ThisWay Global's Chief Technology Officer, Alex spearheaded the development of AI-powered platforms that leverage natural language processing for real-time matching. 

Before joining ThisWay, Alex held influential roles such as Enterprise Architect at NerdWallet, where he designed an enterprise-wide asynchronous messaging platform for data integration, and Enterprise Architect at CORT/Berkshire Hathaway, where he developed serverless IoT systems for real-time data capture and reporting.  With extensive experience in enterprise solutions, Alex has contributed to projects for global leaders like KPMG, Disney, WellsFargo, Wellpoint, and drugstore.com. His innovations include distributed analytics systems, real-time mobile messaging platforms, and gaming back-end services supporting over 50 million daily users. As Vice President of Pharmacy Systems at drugstore.com, he led the development of the technology infrastructure enabling the first online pharmacy retailer to provide nationwide prescription delivery.

A seasoned technologist with over four decades of experience, Alex's work has earned numerous patents, including those for secure data transmission, big data analytics, and customer experience optimization. His contributions to the field have been recognized with prestigious awards, including the Smithsonian Software Technology Award and SHRM's Innovative Technology Award.

"I'm a builder at heart, driven by a passion for crafting scalable, high-performance systems and look forward to continuing to make an impact at ThisWay Global," said Alex Shmelev. "From spearheading early-stage technical development and setting industry best practices, to designing AI-powered search algorithms and cloud-based architectures, I thrive on turning innovative ideas into reality to create impactful solutions."

ThisWay Global is a VC-backed, Google accelerated AI industry leader, with four major areas of focus to facilitate growth. The company was born through the build of a proprietary AI platform that matches candidate skills to the jobs being promoted by business and the skills needed for success in the role. This technology helps to remove bias and increase efficiency of talent teams. Using proprietary artificial intelligence, TWG's network has performed over 15.5 trillion + matching events, providing hundreds of companies and governments with technology to transform organizations in the modern computing era.

From this foundation, ThisWay has expanded to the High Performance Computing (HPC) space in partnership with NVIDIA. They are designing and building technology in the IBM watsonx and Orchestrate platforms to use AI to drive efficiently for business and government. ThisWay is currently developing two new technology solutions.  AI technology for web developers to leverage AI and LLM solutions in their website to drive user experience and software to enable to deliver 10X greater efficiency and better utilization of valuable computing power.

Based in the thriving tech hub of Austin, Texas, with offices in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, ThisWay Global was founded by Angela Hood, an alumna/founder incubated at the University of Cambridge's ideaSpace in England. Driven by innovation, ThisWay Global's visionary team is continuously developing and deploying groundbreaking technologies that are transforming the market.

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SOURCE ThisWay Global