Meet Our Founders

We are a passionate team dedicated to innovation, excellence, and delivering tangible business outcomes, led by our visionary founders and supported by talented contributors.

Our Leadership

Meet our co-founders driving the Helikai vision, technical innovation, and operational excellence in our company. They embrace a "customer first" mentality that has been the foundation of their beliefs in launching and servicing products/solutions to the Fortune 500 (enterprise) customers, SMB companies, and global Service Providers over the last three decades.

Ross Fujii
Jamie Lerner

Jamie has over 30 years of experience leading technology businesses, including engineering, sales, data center/cloud operations, AI/ML infrastructure, and high growth/large scale company management. He has been both the founder/CEO of startup companies as well as Chairman and CEO of Nasdaq and NYSE publicly traded companies. Jamie has driven the development and sales of award-winning software, hardware, and cloud services, and managed large businesses at public companies, including Cisco, Seagate, and Quantum. Ross and Jamie have worked side by side for over 30 years and their friendship forms the foundation of Helikai's culture and direction.

Ross has over 30 years of experience developing and servicing technology solutions deployed across hybrid environments and guiding enterprise customers through market transitions, now targeting Generative AI. He has held C-level and key leadership positions at both Bay Area startups and public corporations, including Quantum, SolarWinds, Cisco, and EDS (HP / DXC). His breadth of experience spans strategy, product, engineering, architecture, service delivery, managed services, and project management. "Fuj" is native to Honolulu, Hawaii and shares a deep love of the ocean/Kai with Jamie along with a passion for building heart-centered businesses with vibrant work cultures.

Dan began working with Jamie and Ross nearly 25 years ago and since then has held executive positions at Verizon and National Grid. His career has spanned leadership and direct ownership of operations, account management, professional services, forward deployed engineering, business process management, mergers & acquisitions, product management, sales engineering, platform engineering, and enterrpise digital transformation.

Based in Boston, Dan is an avid and competitive rower and technology enthusiast. Dan belives, as a business professional and leader that lasting success and growth comes from the powerful combination open, unbiased dialogue, diversity or perspective, constant communication, and inherent individual accountability.

Dan Jablonski
Sean Naughton

Sean brings over 25 years of experience in enterprise sales, financial services, and life sciences. Sean runs Helikai's sales operations, customer service, and partner programs across APAC. Sean has rooted his career on building and maintaining lifelong personal relationships. Sean is based in New South Wales, Australia.

Karl Ko

Karl is an experienced AI and software architect, leading our most advanced projects with our largest customers. Karl has over 25 years of experience working on application software and firmware with Micron, Seagate, Koxia, and Applied Signal Technology. Karl is also a professional photographer and contributes to our advanced image processing AI projects and capabilities.

Mark Ogden

Mark Ogden brings more than 25 years of enterprise technology sales experience across 10 industry verticals. Mark’s focus is building North America go-to-market, channel partnerships, and client growth at Helikai.

Having held senior roles at Oracle, HCL Technologies, and several high-growth software ventures, Mark has invested his career at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, data center innovation, and emerging AI platforms. Mark is based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Ed Miller

Ed Miller joined Helikai in 2026 as a Strategic Advisor, bringing more than three decades of experience in leadership roles at technology companies ranging from early-stage start-ups to publicly traded enterprises. He currently serves as Chief Revenue Officer at Class Technologies, a leading virtual classroom platform designed to foster interactive learning, collaboration, and student engagement. Previously, Ed was CEO of NovoEd, a corporate learning and development company, and President at Blackboard Inc. (BBBB), which he joined following its acquisition of Xythos, where he had served as CEO.

Ed began is career as a sales executive at Oracle and later co-founded SQL Software, which was acquired by Platinum Technology (PLAT).

Mark Maisano

Mark Maisano is a seasoned technology and channel executive with extensive experience driving global channel strategy, distribution growth, partner ecosystems, and go-to-market execution across the IT industry.

Over the course of his career, Mark has held senior leadership roles with leading technology organizations, including Pivot3, Acronis, Seagate Technology, VMware, evoila GSI, and Ingram Micro. He is widely recognized for building high-performing channel programs, developing strategic alliances, and accelerating revenue growth through partner-led business models within transformational technologies.

Known for his channel-first philosophy, Mark has built a reputation for aligning vendor strategy with partner profitability, operational scalability, and long-term ecosystem growth.

Christian Edwards spent 20 years as a lawyer across international M&A and project finance, working in London, Sydney, and the Middle East and North Africa. He has sold oil to Kuwaitis, negotiated with an armed Yemeni warlord, and helped double the GDP of Papua New Guinea.

After moving to Byron Bay, he pivoted to creative and tech — working in the music industry before joining LexisNexis, where he concluded that the future of law was AI and that he wanted to build it rather than sell it.

He now leads legal product development at Helikai, bringing two decades of hard-won legal pattern recognition to the problem of making institutional knowledge actually useful.

Christian Edwards
Scott Johnson

Scott joined Helikai in 2026 as a Sales Executive, bringing more than 20 years of enterprise sales leadership as both a founder and a builder of go-to-market organizations.

He founded ClosePlan, a platform designed to codify the complex institutional knowledge embedded in enterprise sales processes, which was acquired by People.ai and became the foundation for their first AI-driven sales tool, SalesAI. Having built the manual-era solution to a problem AI would later automate, Scott brings a first-hand perspective on enterprise AI transformation. Scott is based in San Francisco, California.

April Alarcon

April Alarcon has a degree in Business Administration and joined Helikai as Program Manager, specializing in process optimization and turning organizational chaos into structured efficiency. Over a 15-year career spanning the fast-paced technology sector and dynamic construction startup environments, where she served as an Office Manager, she has built a diverse background across project management, operational leadership, and executive support.

At Helikai, April is incredibly proud to collaborate with such an amazing team. She looks forward to driving impactful results and delivering outstanding value to Helikai's customers and partners. She approaches every professional challenge with strict integrity, a strong work ethic, and exceptionally thick skin.

Outside of work, when she's not talking to her plants or trying to adopt every animal she sees, you can find her outside, probably gardening, hiking, camping, or attempting to look graceful on a paddle board with her kids.

Sebastian Lerner

Sebastian is a part of Helikai's Student Internship Program and supports Helikai's sales and operations, contributing across business development, marketing, and back-office workflows. He prepares sales materials and prospecting strategy, designs branded product decks, and manages operational systems spanning business communications and bookkeeping. Currently studying Economics at UC Santa Barbara, Sebastian brings an entrepreneurial background, having co-founded a manufacturing startup and working as a student product consultant for tech startups.

Keilani Fujii

Keilani Fujii is a part of Helikai's Student Internship Program, where she supports the company's marketing, digital strategy, and emerging AI initiatives. She contributes to website development, content creation, and brand storytelling while also supporting the design and development of AI-powered solutions for business automation and transformation.

As a Computer Science student at The University of Texas at Austin, Keilani brings a next-generation technology perspective to the Helikai team. Prior to joining Helikai, she gained experience as a Product Management Intern at IBM, where she worked at the intersection of technology, customer needs, and product strategy. Her interests span artificial intelligence, software development, and user experience design, with a focus on making complex technologies accessible and impactful for customers. She contributes to the development of AI agents and automation workflows across a variety of business use cases, helping organizations leverage AI to improve operations, decision-making, and customer engagement.