Leadership
Senior Executives
Atanas Kiryakov
Chief Executive Officer
Atanas Kiryakov
Chief Executive Officer
Atanas Kiryakov is the founder and CEO of Ontotext and a member of the board of the Linked Data Benchmarking Council – a standardization body who’s members include the major graph database vendors.
Kiryakov obtained his M.Sc. degree in AI from Sofia University, Bulgaria, in 1995. Today he is a top expert in semantic graph databases, reasoning, knowledge graphs, text mining, semantic tagging, linking and search. He’s also an author of signature academic publications with more than 2500 citations.
Atanas is a partner and a board member in Sirma Group Holding – one of the biggest Bulgarian IT businesses listed on the Sofia Stock Exchange. Atanas started in Sirma as a software engineer in 1993 and became a partner in 1997. In the 90s, he led projects in the areas of CASE, CSCW and b2b for big corporations and government organizations in the US and Canada.
In 2000 Atanas dropped off his Ph.D. to start Ontotext as an R&D lab within the Sirma Group. In 2004 Kiryakov masterminded Ontotext GraphDB (initially named OWLIM) and was its product manager until 2010. In 2008 he led the process of acquiring VC funding for Ontotext and spinning it off as a worldwide leader in semantic technology.
In 2016 Atanas was included in the ‘New Europe 100 — changemakers in central and eastern Europe’ list compiled by Res Publica, Google, Visegrad Fund and the Financial Times.
Todd Blaschka
CCO
Todd Blaschka
CCO
Veska Davidova
Chief Operations Officer
Veska Davidova
Chief Operations Officer
Veska Davidova joined Ontotext as COO in 2014 and now takes care of sales, finance and delivery. Veska is an established business leader, a Master of Science in Engineering and Process Automation, a golf and tennis aficionado and a mother of two sons.
Before joining Ontotext, she was CEO of Atos IT Solution & Services. Under Veska’s skillful command, the company went through a complete transformation after the global M&A between Atos Origin and Siemens.
Veska has also been a management board member at Siemens Bulgaria in her role of CTO, and was in charge of the Healthcare and IT businesses within the regional Siemens company.
She has held various positions at Hewlett Packard, with core responsibilities of providing consultation in the financial services industry across the EMEA, localizing and formalizing core IT based concepts for the public sector, manufacturing and FSI.
Doug Kimball
Chief Marketing Officer
Doug Kimball
Chief Marketing Officer
Doug Kimball is a business and technology evangelist focusing on advancements that can be applied to e-commerce, customer centricity and insights development in the data management space.
With more than 20 years of full-cycle B2B marketing experience at data, retail and supply chain providers across various industries and regions, he has developed a passion for enabling digital business.
As Chief Marketing Officer, Doug is leading the Global Marketing team at Ontotext, responsible for driving brand awareness, product & revenue marketing on a global scale.
Vassil Momtchev
Chief Technology Officer
Vassil Momtchev
Chief Technology Officer
Vassil Momtchev’s specialty at Ontotext is the development of solutions in the life sciences, pharmaceutical, and healthcare domains. An explorer by heart, Vassil possesses remarkable enthusiasm that knows no borders. He feels equally comfortable in product development, software architecture, text analytics, linked data, knowledge management, reasoning and large-scale databases.
Vassil has been involved in developing innovative information systems for Pharma and adopting the latest trends from applied research for more than 15 years now – and counting.
For the past ten years at Ontotext, he has managed multiple teams, coordinated several EU funded research projects and has a few years as a board member behind his back. Besides being a skillful team leader, Vassil is in love with off-the-beaten-path travel destinations, where he can delight his growing family with new experiences.
Business Units Heads
Ivaylo Kabakov
Solutions
Ivaylo Kabakov
Semantic Analytics Solutions
Todor Primov
Life Sciences and Healthcare Solutions
Todor Primov
Life Sciences and Healthcare Solutions
Todor Primov has experience as a business analyst, solution architect, project manager and product owner in the life science and healthcare IT.He has 18+ years long track record of development and delivery of large scale semantic data integration, information extraction and semantic search solutions in various domains such as bioinformatics, clinical, pharmaceuticals, agro-bio and health care.
Todor has excellent understanding of the business value of data and semantic technologies with primary focus on addressing the problems end-to-end (from vision definition to the implementation and deployment) of in large-scale information discovery and analytical solutions.
Panayot Panayotov
Product Development
Panayot Panayotov
Product Development
Miroslav Chervenski
Technology Services
Miroslav Chervenski
Knowledge Graph Solutions
Zlatina Marinova
Research
Zlatina Marinova
Research Unit
Sales & Marketing Management
Peio Popov
Sales Director – Financial Services Industry
Peio Popov
Sales Director – Financial Services Industry
Ilian Uzunov
Sales Director – Life Sciences and Healthcare
Ilian Uzunov
Sales Director – Life Sciences and Healthcare
Ilian Uzunov joined us to strengthen Ontotext’s key position in the mainstream publishing industry, develop strategic partnerships and pursue business opportunities in EMEA.
With a Master’s degree in Contemporary Methodologies for Teaching and Learning English Language with Strong Use of ICT from Sofia University, later Ilian jumped in the deep end with an MBA programme in Executive Management from BEIED.
Prior to Ontotext, Ilian founded Sirma Media in 2002 and in 2008 spun it off as an independent company. He positioned Sirma Media among the major players in the fields of e-learning and modern presentation of cultural heritage in Bulgaria, accomplishing some of the most innovative and challenging nation-wide projects in these two domains.
Ilian is truly fond of finding new ways in which semantic technology can be harnessed for the sake of better and more efficient learning and teaching. After working for more than 15 years in the fields of publishing, education, e-learning, contemporary ways for management and presentation of cultural heritage, his enthusiasm is only understandable.
When Ilian is not supporting publishers in their digital transformation journey, he’s constantly looking for the road to his inner self with the help of his family and their constant pursuit of new sports and travel adventures.
Nikolay Krustev
Sales Director – Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Energy
Nikolay Krustev
Sales Director – Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Energy
Brandon Richards
General Manager for APAC
Brandon Richards
General Manager – APAC
Ivan Antrov
Partner Manager for EMEA
Ivan Antrov
Partner Manager for EMEA
Sachin Khungar
Global Alliance Director
Sachin Khungar
Global Alliance Director
Milen Yankulov
Marketing Director
Milen Yankulov
Marketing Manager
Milen Yankulov joined the Marketing Team to strengthen its digital marketing presence and lead generation capabilities. Milen holds MA of Marketing and Commerce and gained vast experience in both traditional and digital marketing communications.
Milen has broad marketing experience working as head of digital at International marketing agencies and Enterprises in the media publishing industry. He believes that the content is fundamental tool of providing marketing value and business specifics understanding.