The Saba Board of Directors shares its expertise and experience with the management team as Saba strives to attain our vision of making continuous, personalized learning a reality for business professionals in every extended enterprise around the world.
Bobby Yazdani
Bobby Yazdani is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Saba. He was an industry pioneer in creating the Human Capital Management category in 1997, and has grown Saba into a $100 million+ profitable enterprise software business providing premier software and service solutions for people management and collaboration.
Saba's people platform enables enterprise learning, performance and compensation management, succession planning, and workforce planning that align, engage, develop, mobilize, and foster collaboration across employees, customers, and partners. The company has been recognized by leading industry analysts for excellence and innovation in unified people management, collaboration, and social networking, and serves a roster of over 1,400 customers with more than 19 million users across 150 countries. Saba's solutions are available on-premise or on-demand.
Saba's customers are global leaders across a broad range of industries and public sector organizations, and include BMW, Daimler AG, IBM, The American Red Cross, Procter and Gamble, Medtronic, U.S. Army, and U.S. Navy, among many others. Bobby is a frequent spokesperson at industry events held by organizations such as the United Nations and The Economist. Prior to founding Saba, Bobby held various senior R&D management positions at Oracle Corporation.
Bobby has a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Michael Abbott
Michael Abbott is currently Vice President of Engineering at Twitter. Previously Abbott led Palm’s webOS application platform and services development. Before joining Palm, Abbott was the general manager for .NET Online Services at Microsoft where he was responsible for delivering a services platform that facilitated the development of large-scale Internet-based services.
Nora Denzel
Nora Denzel has been on Saba’s Board of Directors since September, 2011. Ms. Denzel is currently Senior Vice President Marketing of Intuit Inc., a provider of Cloud financial management software. In this role she is leading the company's big data and social design initiatives, and the central marketing organization. Previously, Ms. Denzel served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intuit’s Employee Management Solutions Business which includes cloud Payroll Services. Prior to her experience at Intuit, Denzel served as the Senior Vice President of Software at HP, Senior Vice President of Operations at Legato Systems (now EMC), and held several engineering, marketing and executive positions at IBM.
Mike Fawkes
Mike Fawkes brings more than 30 years of experience to the Saba Board. Currently, he is Operating Partner at VantagePoint Capital Partners. He previously served in various executive roles in Operations and Finance at HP, including Senior Vice President of Operations for HP’s Imaging and Printing Group (IPG). He was also responsible for leading HP’s worldwide consumer support, environmental responsibility, strategic supply chain, and global logistics.
Joe Kiani
Joe Kiani has been a Director of Saba since July 1997. Mr. Kiani is the Founder of Masimo Corporation, a provider of signal processing and sensor technology to the medical device industry, and has served as its Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board since Masimo's inception in 1989. Mr. Kiani holds a B.S. and M.S. from San Diego State University. Mr. Kiani serves on the Board of Director's Compensation and Corporate Governance and Nominating Committees.
William Klein
William M. Klein has been a Director of Saba since September 9, 2009. He served as Vice President of Corporate Development of BEA Systems, Inc. from February 2005 until its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in April 2009. Mr. Klein served as Chief Financial Officer of BEA Systems from January 2000 to February 2005. Prior to joining BEA Systems, he held senior management positions with Hewlett-Packard Company from 1986 to 2000, most recently as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Inkjet Imaging business. Prior to Hewlett-Packard, he was a Senior Manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Mr. Klein holds a B.S. from California State University, Chico and is a Certified Public Accountant. He is a member of the Audit and Compensation Committees of Saba’s Board of Directors.
William N. MacGowan
William N. MacGowan has been a Director of Saba since September 22, 2009 Mr. MacGowan has served as the Chief Human Resources Officer and Executive Vice President of People and Places of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (“Sun”) since April 2006. He joined Sun in May 2000 and, prior to his appointment to his current position, he served in various executive and senior management human resources positions, including Senior Vice President, Human Resources, from April 2004 to April 2006, Vice President, Human Resources, Global Centers of Expertise, from May 2003 to April 2004, Vice President, Human Resources, Systems, Storage and Operations, from May 2002 to May 2003 and Vice President, Human Resources, Enterprise Services, from May 2000 to May 2002. Prior to joining Sun, Mr. MacGowan held executive and senior management human resources positions at Quest Diagnostics Incorporated, Allergan, Inc. and Northrop Grumman Corporation. He holds a bachelor's degree from Claremont McKenna College. Mr. MacGowan serves on the Compensation and Corporate Governance and Nominating Committees of Saba’s Board of Directors.
Bill Russell
Bill Russell brings more than 30 years in enterprise technology experience and expertise to the Saba Board. He has held several prestigious board positions at both public and private companies over the last nine years including Cognos, webMethods, and other Global 2000 organizations. He has also served in a number of executive management roles in a 23-year career at Hewlett-Packard, including the leadership of HP’s multi-billion dollar Enterprise Systems Group, its Software Solutions Group, and its Global Alliances Organization.
Dow R. Wilson
Dow R. Wilson has been a Director of Saba since August 2006. Mr. Wilson is Executive Vice President of Varian Medical Systems, a company that designs and manufactures advanced equipment and software products for treating cancer with radiation, and President of its Oncology Systems division. Mr. Wilson joined Varian in 2005, following a 19-year career with General Electric, a diversified industrial corporation, in a variety of senior management positions in both the United States and Europe. Most recently, Mr. Wilson served as CEO for GE Healthcare-Information and Patient Monitoring Technologies. Prior to that, he served as Global General Manager for a number of GE's imaging businesses, including, X-ray, Functional Imaging and Computed Tomography. He also ran GE's Lexan Sheet business in Europe. Mr. Wilson holds a B.A. from Brigham Young University and an M.B.A. from the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
