Jesus Cardenes

Senior Vice President, Product Architecture

Jesus is responsible for the technical roadmap, architectural design, and integration for all of VIA’s products. He provides oversight on technical development at VIA to ensure high quality product delivery for customers. In addition, he led the architectural design of VIA’s Web3 platform.

Before joining VIA, Jesus was with TandemLaunch, a venture capital firm specializing in the commercialization of early-stage technologies. He held several roles there: a technologist in residence and later a software architect and founding member of Sensaura, an emotion tracking technology. Jesus created a strategy for the architecture of Sensaura’s platform, taking into account the adaptability of devices to the system and use cases. He also developed applications to demo Sensaura’s technology at events including CES Las Vegas. In addition, he developed the real-time emotion recognition API. 

Jesus earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial electronics and automatic engineering and his master’s degree in automatic and robotic from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid.

K Cheung

Vice President, Cybersecurity

K Cheung brings more than twenty years of experience in managing large project teams to his role. His primary focus at VIA is on the development and growth of the Montreal-based technical team.

Using his expertise in algorithmics, cryptocurrencies, and machine learning, Cheung works alongside the team to create the design and roadmap for VIA’s Web3 technologies.

Cheung is a seasoned practitioner in cryptography (including encryption, cryptocurrency, and blockchain), cybersecurity, and application development. Throughout his career, his projects successfully delivered Fortune 100 companies shrink-wrapped software development products, telecommunications server solutions, content-management systems, machine-to-machine communication network, and secured data communication software.

Cheung graduated from University of Waterloo with a degree in computer science.

Ashley DaSilva, Ph.D.

Vice President, Applications

Ashley is focused on application development at VIA, where she helps teams build on VIA’s core platform to create secure data analytics applications. She led the architectural design and initial development of the GDAC™ pilot program, SWEET™, and JARVIS™ applications.

Prior to VIA, Ashley worked as a researcher in theoretical physics, building models and simulations to describe physical phenomena, where she gained experience with data analytics and high performance computation. She also volunteered leading initiatives to support individuals from underrepresented groups in physics and technology, including the initiation of a grant program for professional networking and mentoring programs.

Ashley has a Ph.D. in physics from the Pennsylvania State University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a minor in Mathematics.

Jackie Finn

Vice President, Marketing

Jackie is focused on VIA’s overall marketing strategy which aims to make VIA’s complex technologies accessible to a range of audiences. She oversees all marketing efforts including outbound communication, product marketing, and content creation. Jackie joined VIA in 2016 to build the foundation for its marketing program.

Prior to joining VIA, Jackie worked at a legal services firm where she developed and implemented the strategic marketing plan for their largest global business unit. This included introducing new service lines, building awareness through public relations, and build sales collateral.

Prior to Integreon, Jackie worked at FIBA Technologies, a Massachusetts-based manufacturing company that provides gas containment and equipment services. She helped manage multiple functions, including quality and compliance, analytics and reporting, and event planning.

Jackie graduated from Northeastern University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing.

Kristen Merrill

Vice President, Client Delivery

Kristen brings nearly twenty years of client management experience to her role, and has led several high-stakes projects since joining in 2017 including predictive maintenance on 10,000 miles of transmission line data and contingency planning to restore power after multiple simultaneous switch failures.

Before VIA, Kristen was co-founder and head of client services at Fuld Omniscope where she led an array of projects, including leading a workshop focused on the utilities sector alongside one of their largest clients. Prior to Fuld, Kristen was with Grail Research where she was responsible for business development, account planning, and project delivery for some of their most important accounts. She was a senior consultant at the Monitor Group and a member of the leadership team within the Monitor Software business unit, where she specialized in data visualization and analytics, decision support models, dashboards, and forecasting tools.

Kristen graduated from Cornell University with a degree in chemical engineering.