The RISC-V Foundation Appoints Calista Redmond As Chief Executive Officer

Redmond joins the RISC-V Foundation from IBM to continue to grow RISC-V membership, community engagement and market adoption

March 13, 2019 -- The RISC-V Foundation, a non-profit corporation controlled by its members to drive the adoption and implementation of the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA), today announced that the RISC-V Foundation Board of Directors has appointed Ms. Calista Redmond as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately. Redmond will succeed Interim CEO, Martin Fink, and will report to Krste Asanović, Chairman of the RISC-V Foundation Board of Directors. In her role, Redmond will be responsible for executing the Board of Directors’ 2020 evolution plan and driving market growth and adoption of the RISC-V ecosystem around the world.

Redmond brings more than 20 years of senior-level management and alliance experience, with significant open source community experience, to the role. Prior to joining the RISC-V Foundation, Redmond was the Vice President of IBM Z Ecosystem, where she was instrumental in growing the IBM Z Ecosystem. During her 12 years at IBM, she led strategic relationships with chip, hardware, and software providers, system integrators, business partners, clients, and developers, as well as fostered broader industry visibility and engagement. Executing commercialization strategies, technical and business support for partners, Redmond was a dynamic matchmaker for opportunities across the IBM Systems community. Prior to IBM, she was CEO and Co-Founder of Affinity Lab and Co-Founder and CMO of Articulated Impact.

Redmond was instrumental in the strategic formation of OpenPOWER as the IBM Director of OpenPOWER Global Alliances as well as elected President of the OpenPOWER Foundation in 2016. Collaborating with key stakeholders, she drove Foundation growth from zero to more than 300 members and launched the first open community for open architecture engaging hardware providers, software developers, and end users.

“The RISC-V Foundation Board of Directors is delighted with the appointment of Calista Redmond as our new CEO,” said Martin Fink, interim RISC-V Foundation CEO. “We envision a seamless transition as Calista leverages her wealth of expertise and experience leading IBM Systems’ strategic business models and open source initiatives. Calista’s accomplishments in advancing IBM Systems, specifically the IBM Z Ecosystem, will be indispensable as the RISC-V Foundation is laser-focused on momentum and growth for 2019 and beyond.”

“I’ve always understood the potential short- and long-term impact of the RISC-V license-free ISA on the open source community. Having spent a lot of my career working in the open source ecosystem, I’m excited to help RISC-V grow and deliver on the Foundation’s mission of paving the way for the next 50 years of computing design and innovation,” said Redmond, CEO of the RISC-V Foundation. “From its inception in 2015 until now, the RISC-V Foundation has grown tremendously. I’m ready to leverage that momentum to expand the already impressive RISC-V ecosystem.”

Her experience with building and leading strategic business models for IBM Systems included working with open source initiatives, such as the Open Mainframe Project, OpenPOWER and OpenDaylight, each contributing to open source models for infrastructure which will be a vital part of the RISC-V Foundation’s future.

About RISC-V Foundation

RISC-V (pronounced “risk-five”) is a free and open ISA enabling a new era of processor innovation through open standard collaboration. Founded in 2015, the RISC-V Foundation comprises more than 235 members building the first open, collaborative community of software and hardware innovators powering a new era of processor innovation. Born in academia and research, RISC-V ISA delivers a new level of free, extensible software and hardware freedom on architecture, paving the way for the next 50 years of computing design and innovation.

The RISC-V Foundation, a non-profit corporation controlled by its members, directs the future development and drives the adoption of the RISC-V ISA. Members of the RISC-V Foundation have access to and participate in the development of the RISC-V ISA specifications and related HW / SW ecosystem.