30 Notable IT Executive Moves: February 2021

Phillippe Courtot

Qualys appointed President and Chief Product Officer Sumedh Thakar to serve as interim CEO and a director on the company’s board as the company’s longtime leader, Phillippe Courtot, stepped aside temporarily to address non-COVID health issues.

Courtot, 75, became Qualys’ chairman and CEO in March 2001, just two years after the company was founded, and also served as the company’s president for most of the past decade until Thakar was promoted to that role. Prior to joining Qualys, Courtot was a serial entrepreneur, serving as chairman and CEO of electronic payment startup Signio, which was acquired by VeriSign in 2000 for $1.3 billion.

Thakar, 44, joined Qualys in February 2003 as a principal engineer and has worked his way up the ranks since then, becoming vice president of engineering in December 2010, chief product officer in June 2014 and adding the president role to his responsibilities in October 2019. Thakar holds a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from the University of Pune, India.

Jeremy Prince

IoT network provider Sigfox appointed Jeremy Prince as its new CEO, taking over from founding leader Ludovic Le Moan.

Prince was most recently president of Sigfox USA and had been on the company’s executive committee since joining as chief strategy officer in 2018.

“Jeremy’s success and experience in leading companies through the evolution of their business models was a deciding factor in our highly selective process that included several external candidates,” said Anne Lauvergeon, chairman of Sigfox, in a statement. “The board is confident that Prince with Franck Siegel as Deputy CEO will efficiently carry out Sigfox’s mission of digitizing the physical world while remaining fully committed to delivering the benefits of IoT in a manner that respects and sustains our environment.”