Executive Team

Lois Melbourne, GPHR
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder

Lois is Aquire’s market and product “co-visionary,” along with her husband and co-founder, Ross Melbourne.

Since the genesis of Aquire in 1994, Lois’ industry expertise and strategic direction have helped transform the company from a fledgling innovator in basic org charts into the leader in workforce planning and management solutions – all without ever seeking or accepting VC funding. Currently, more than 2,500 organizations in 125 countries rely on Aquire solutions to manage data for 10 million working professionals worldwide.

Today, Lois’ dedicated focus is furthering the Aquire vision of supporting customers with HR solutions in the areas of: Mergers and Acquisitions; workforce integration; succession planning and replacement; organization planning; workforce structure management; and workforce analysis.

To this end, she is continually broadening her knowledge of the HR industry and expanding her own personal and professional network of HR professionals. She is, for instance, one of an elite group of HR professionals from around the world who are GPHR (Global Professional in Human Resources) certified by The Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI), the leading independent, internationally recognized certifying body for the HR profession.

Lois also maintains a strong personal commitment to career education and small business development, as well as a dedication to corporate responsibility as the owner of Aquire. She is a member of the National Association of Women Business Owners, the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and the International Association of Human Resource Information Management. She also serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Dallas as part of the pioneering PRAXIS program.

She is a regular blogger on industry issues, frequently speaks at industry and professional events, and has authored articles related to trends in corporate governance, strategic organizational management, and many other issues concerning human resource data integrity and management.


	Ross Melbourne Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder

Ross is the technological driving force behind Aquire’s industry-leading workforce planning and management solutions, OrgPublisher™ and Unifi™.

Since founding the company in 1994 with his wife and “co-visionary,” Lois Melbourne, Ross’ technical knowledge and workforce expertise have led the evolution of Aquire from a fledgling innovator in basic org charts into the leader in workforce planning and management solutions. Today, more than 2,500 organizations in 125 countries rely on Aquire solutions to manage data for 10 million working professionals worldwide.

Although Ross is a software industry veteran and is continually working to advance the technological capabilities of Aquire solutions, he is far from a remote technical innovator. Rather, he nurtures and is motivated by a strong personal understanding of the needs of Aquire customers and a desire to help them overcome their toughest workforce management challenges on a daily basis.

Ross speaks at industry events, conducts annual Aquire technical workshops, and has been published in several leading technology and business publications.

A native of England, Ross has lived in the United States since 1988.


	Tom McKeown President and Chief Operating Officer

Tom is a 25-year veteran of the software and technology industry. He has been with Aquire since 2005 serving as Executive Vice President of Global Sales. Under his direction, the company achieved record revenues.

Prior to joining Aquire, Tom was the Central Region Sales Director for Citrix Systems where he helped grow the web-based collaboration and support business to $100 million in 2005. Before that, Tom served as Vice President of Sales for Quantum Corporation managing their network attached storage business. He has also held management positions at WebEx, Adobe Systems, and 3Com.

Tom is a graduate of Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.


	Wes Kranz Vice President of Product Strategy & Marketing

Wes joined Aquire in 2005 and is responsible for the strategic direction, delivery and marketing of all Aquire products.

Prior to joining Aquire, Wes held senior management positions at 3 venture-backed enterprise software companies where he focused on taking new ideas from concept-to-reality. He also spent 5 years leading engagements for the management consulting division of Arthur Andersen and began his career performing human factors research for companies such as Dell, Apple and Microsoft.

Wes graduated cum laude from Texas A&M University with a bachelor’s degree in Business focusing on Management Information Systems.


	Andrew Simmons Vice President of Global Partners

Andy is a 20-year veteran of international sales and marketing in computer software, hardware and enterprise networking industries.

Before joining Aquire, Andy was director, business partner development, for Best Software’s CRM Solutions Division, where he built a global network of more than 300 trained business partners in more than 60 countries.

Prior to that, Andy was international sales and marketing team leader for MountainGate, a Lockheed Martin Company. There he established and implemented a global Business Alliance Program to select, authorize and support high-caliber systems integrators and partners worldwide. While with Business Alliances, he also increased revenue in the Pacific Rim, Latin American and European/African/Middle Eastern regions from $100K to more than $6 Million. Revenue from these regions grew from less than 1% of Business Alliances’ total sales to more than 45%.

Andy has strong experience in team management, channel partner development and training. He is fluent in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.