Luminar Welcomes Four Auto-Tech Industry Leaders to Executive Team
August 19 2021 - 02:00PM
Business Wire
With Prior Leadership Experience from Waymo,
Aptiv, Stellantis and GCA
Luminar Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: LAZR), the global leader in
automotive lidar hardware and software technology, today announced
the addition of four industry leaders to help enable its next phase
of growth and execution. They bring a combined century of
professional experience in the automotive and technology
industries.
“We’re hyper focused on taking Luminar to the next level in this
new phase of growth and execution. Each of our new leaders are at
the top of their respective fields in the industry, and will be
relentlessly driving Luminar towards series production as the new
automotive safety and autonomy standard,” said Luminar Founder and
CEO, Austin Russell.
Sardar Gautham joined Luminar to lead business operations and
alignment, having most recently served as VP of Strategy and
Execution at Waymo. Munir Hafez joins Luminar as Chief Information
Officer (CIO), after serving as CIO at Aptiv for their autonomous
mobility group. Cheryl Zula joined Luminar to lead sourcing and
supply chain after serving as a global supply chain and purchasing
executive at Stellantis. Alex Vitale joined Luminar to lead
corporate development and strategy, having previously served as a
managing director and head of San Francisco for GCA, a boutique
investment banking firm.
Sardar Gautham, Vice President of Business Operations and
Alignment: In this role, Sardar will help Luminar scale by
driving cross-functional alignment and execution at velocity while
also furthering a growth culture. Prior to Luminar, he served as
head of hardware strategy & execution at Waymo, Google’s
autonomous driving technology company. He has successfully scaled
three startup companies, and brings two decades of experience in
the technical, program and functional management of breakthrough
technology products. Before Waymo, he was the vice president of the
program management office at Verb Surgical Inc., a medical device
joint venture between J&J and Google. Before that, he served in
executive roles at GE Healthcare. Gautham holds a B.E. in
Electrical Engineering from the University of Madras and an M.S. in
Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of
Iowa.
Munir Hafez, Chief Information Officer: Munir was
appointed Luminar’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) after serving
as CIO for the autonomous mobility group at Aptiv, a global
automotive technology company. Prior to that, he served two years
as vice president of strategy and architecture at Aptiv, helping
drive data analytics, enterprise architecture, innovation, vendor
management and M&A globally. Before Aptiv, he held IT strategy
roles at EY, Deloitte and PwC. Munir holds an M.S. in Engineering
Management and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Florida
Institute of Technology.
Cheryl Zula, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing and
Materials: Cheryl joins Luminar from Stellantis where she
served as vice president of electronics, global purchasing
overseeing billions of dollars and hundreds of supplier
relationships for the global automaker. She brings three decades of
automotive profit and loss experience in purchasing, supply chain,
materials management, program management and manufacturing at OEM
and tier one companies. Prior to Stellantis, she served in
executive supply chain roles at ZF Friedrichshafen AG, a global
supplier of systems for passenger cars and commercial vehicles. She
began her career at Ford Motor Company. She holds an M.B.A. in
Operations Management from Lawrence Technical University and a B.S.
in Business Administration with an Industrial Engineering Focus
from Wayne State University.
Alex Vitale, Head of Corporate Development &
Strategy: Alex joins Luminar to lead corporate development and
corporate strategy for the business. In this role, Vitale will
focus on shaping and advancing Luminar’s long-term roadmap and
growth through M&A and other strategic initiatives. Prior to
joining Luminar, he spent eight years at global investment bank GCA
Advisors where he served as a Managing Director and as a member of
the Executive Committee, providing strategic and financing advice
to clients in the auto-tech and electronics sectors on a broad
range of transactions. He was an advisor to Luminar for three years
while at GCA. Prior to GCA, he served as a managing director at
Deutsche Bank Securities. Alex holds an M.B.A. in Finance from the
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and a B.A.
in Economics from Williams College.
About Luminar: Luminar Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: LAZR)
is transforming automotive safety and autonomy by delivering lidar
and associated software that meets the industry’s stringent
performance, safety, and economic requirements. Luminar has rapidly
gained over 50 industry partners, including the majority of the
global automotive OEMs. In 2020, Luminar signed the industry’s
first production deal for autonomous consumer vehicles with Volvo
Cars, which now expects to make Luminar’s technology part of the
standard safety package on their next generation electric SUV.
Additional customer wins include SAIC, Daimler Truck AG, Intel’s
Mobileye, Pony.ai and Airbus UpNext. Founded in 2012, Luminar
employs approximately 400 with offices in Palo Alto, Orlando,
Colorado Springs, Detroit, and Munich. For more information please
visit www.luminartech.com.
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Media Relations: Press@luminartech.com
Investor Relations: Trey Campbell Investors@luminartech.com
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