LEADERSHIP

Gerrard Schmid currently serves as president and chief executive officer. In this role, he is responsible for driving the organization's global strategies and performance to enable secure, software-defined connected commerce and related services across the financial and retail industries.

Schmid has more than 20 years of leadership experience in banking, payments, and financial technology. Most recently, he was a senior advisor with The Boston Consulting Group. From 2012 to 2017 he served as chief executive officer of D+H Corporation, a $1.7 billion global fintech company that was publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:DH) prior to being merged with Misys. Under his leadership, the company evolved from a Canadian leader in payments to a global leader in real-time payments and lending software. He joined D+H in 2007 as president and CEO of the company’s Filogix business unit.

Prior to D+H, he managed a $3 billion retail banking business at Lloyds TSB in the United Kingdom. From 2001 to 2005, he was executive vice president and chief operating officer for retail banking at CIBC, one of the “Big Five” Canadian banks. In 1997 he joined McKinsey and Company, Inc., where he advanced through positions of increasing responsibility, working across financial services, e-commerce and technology before joining CIBC. He began his career in finance at Citibank in 1995 as a developer in derivatives supporting trade reconciliations.

Originally from South Africa, Schmid earned a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and started his career as an aerospace engineer. He also holds a Master of Applied Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Jeffrey Rutherford currently serves Diebold Nixdorf as senior vice president and chief financial officer. In this role, he is responsible for optimizing the organization’s global financial systems and driving the alignment of the company’s strategy to its financial performance.

Rutherford has a 35-year career in corporate finance and accounting, with over 20 years in senior leadership roles.  He joined the company from Edgewater Technology, a leading technology consulting firm, where he continues to serve as chairman through Edgewater's previously announced merger.  Before Edgewater, he held the chief financial officer position at a number of companies, including Ferro Corporation, Park-Ohio Holdings Corp, UAP Holding, LESCO and Office Max.  Prior to his career in senior corporate leadership, he was an accountant at Arthur Andersen. 

Rutherford obtained a Business Administration / Accounting degree from Baldwin Wallace University in 1983.

Octavio Marquez currently serves as the senior vice president and managing director, Banking Americas. In this role, he is responsible for leading the organization's Banking operations throughout North and South America. His span of accountability includes sales, service, manufacturing and distribution, professional services, project management, finance and HR.

Most recently, Marquez led the Latin American region for Diebold, Incorporated, beginning in January 2014. He successfully repositioned the business, most notably in Brazil and Mexico, to better align with the economic environment and drive growth. 

Prior to that, Marquez served as managing director for the Mexico operations for EMC, a global leader in IT management and cloud computing. In this role, he developed turnaround strategies that exceeded revenue and profitability goals while improving customer satisfaction. Marquez also held several leadership roles at Hewlett Packard in the areas of manufacturing, marketing, sales, and outsourcing. As President of HP Mexico he transformed the company into the largest IT company in the market and in 2011 Frost & Sullivan named CEO of the Year in Mexico for the IT and telecommunications industry. He has also held several leadership positions with IBM and NCR.

Marquez holds a bachelor's degree in business and finance from the Universidad Iberoamericana, in Mexico City and has certificate on Corporate Strategy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as completing the Business Program at Dartmouth College.

Neil Emerson currently serves as the senior vice president and managing director, Banking Eurasia. In this role, he is responsible for leading the organization's Banking operations throughout Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific regions.

Most recently, Emerson led the Asia Pacific region for Diebold, Incorporated, beginning in February 2014. Prior to that, Emerson served as chief executive officer in Asia Pacific and East Africa for TMF Group, a worldwide professional services organization that aids companies in global investments and expansion. In this role, he significantly increased business growth and profitability of the region across all lines of business, improved delivery performance and enhanced client satisfaction.

Emerson also held several leadership and regional positions with Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) Asia Pacific, and IBM Australia and Asia Pacific. While at HP, he served three years as vice president and managing director for Enterprise Services in Asia. In addition, Emerson held senior leadership roles within the banking sector, where he was responsible for planning and managing activities related to technological development.

Emerson holds a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Hermann Wimmer currently serves as senior vice president, Global Retail. In this role he is responsible for leading the company’s retail industry strategy and operations, including business development, customer relationship management and global sales; focusing on delivering significant opportunities for our retail industry customers and software-driven services and solutions that exceed consumer demands.

Prior to coming to Diebold Nixdorf, Wimmer served as chief revenue officer at ForgeRock, a digital identity and access management company, where he lead all revenue growth operations. Wimmer has more than 20 years of experience in leadership roles in the IT and data analytics industries.

Previously, at NCR Corp., and Teradata Corp., he held roles of increasing senior leadership responsibility within EMEA and Asia-Pacific. In those regions, he led efforts to define growth strategies, operational, revenue and profit goals for those companies' data analytics and big data businesses. He also managed the global business for Teradata with responsibility for the United States market. Wimmer began his career with Bull Technologies, where he held various management positions in sales and marketing.
 
Wimmer received his master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Applied Science Rosenheim, Germany.

Ulrich Näher currently serves as the senior vice president, products. In this role, he is responsible for all hardware and platform software in the organization’s banking and retail portfolios.

Most recently, Näher served as the executive vice president for the systems business unit and as a member of the board of directors for Wincor Nixdorf AG. In this role, he was responsible for the systems line of business and leading the global research and development organization of the company.

Previously, Näher held various global leadership roles in operations and technology for McKinsey and Company, a worldwide management and consulting firm. Most recently, he served as senior partner at the Tokyo and Munich offices. In this role, he was responsible for advising clients from the electronics and automotive industries in Europe and Asia. Prior to that, Näher held various positions at Siemens Corporate Technology.

Näher studied physics and mathematics at the Technical University of Munich and received a PhD in solid state physics from the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. 

Manish Choudhary currently serves as the senior vice president, software. In this role, Choudhary leads the organization's global software business for our banking and retail customers while driving sustainable growth around innovative connected commerce solutions.

With 20 years of experience in technology, innovation and business services, Choudhary has extensive knowledge of transforming complex organizations in both physical and digital technologies.

Most recently, Choudhary served as senior vice president and general manager of Sending Technology Solutions at Pitney Bowes, Inc., where he developed strong customer and partner relationships to drive portfolio modernization and new value offerings with capabilities in SaaS, Internet of Things, cloud, data and analytics, and artificial intelligence. He also led and built global centers as Chairman of Pitney Bowes India operations, in addition to the other businesses he built and scaled to a global capacity. Choudhary has held senior leadership roles in global, multi-billion dollar companies and has focused on digital transformation leveraging analytics, innovation, customer insight and financial rigor.

Choudhary earned an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School of Management, an MBA from the National University of Singapore (NUS), a master's degree from the University of Akron and a bachelor's degree in architecture, along with executive education, from the Harvard Business School.

Olaf Heyden currently serves as senior vice president, chief operating officer. He is responsible for leading the company’s Operations organization with leadership for products, services, information technology, manufacturing, R&D, quality and processes. His team’s focus is sustainable process improvement across and within the company’s services and product offerings.

 

Heyden most recently served the company as senior vice president, services, responsible for the organization’s global service business, encompassing product-related maintenance, managed services and outsourcing. Before this role, he served as executive vice president for the software and services business units for Wincor Nixdorf AG, where he was also a member of the board of directors, beginning in May 2013.

 

With more than 29 years of experience, Heyden has held a number of senior leadership positions at various global information technology and telecommunications companies. Prior to joining Wincor Nixdorf in 2013, Heyden served as the chief executive officer for Freudenberg IT KG, an international provider of information technology services in Germany. In that role, he was responsible for the company's successful turnaround and strategic realignment. Prior to that, Heyden spent twelve years in various senior leadership positions at Deutsche Telekom, a German telecommunications company.

 

Heyden has also served as vice president of the operational business process outsourcing business at EDS in Europe, and successfully managed its IT organization as the chief information officer during the start-up phase of its mobile provider, E-Plus.

 

Heyden studied business administration at the Ravensburg University of Cooperative Education in Germany, and received a degree in business computing from the University of Applied Sciences in Rendsburg, Germany. He currently lives with his family in Bonn, Germany.

David Caldwell currently serves as the senior vice president, strategy and corporate development. He joined Diebold Nixdorf in April 2018. In his role, he is responsible for driving the organization’s strategy and leading the corporate business development team. Partnering with leaders across the company, Caldwell links vision with delivery, while defining achievable objectives aligned with the company’s core competencies, and executing tactics to maximize profitability, gain market share and drive future sustainability and growth.

He has more than 30 years experience within the Financial Technology and Financial Services sectors providing expertise in strategic transformation of businesses. Before joining Diebold Nixdorf, Caldwell served as Chief Strategy Officer of Finastra, a global FinTech company. 

Prior to Finastra, David worked at D+H Corporation where he was responsible for strategic planning and merger and acquisition initiatives.  David joined D+H in 2010 and played a key role in the development and execution of its strategy in its transition to a global Financial Technology company. Prior to joining D+H, he was Managing Director, Corporate Development at CIBC World Markets, and previously held roles in strategy, corporate development and M&A advisory functions in corporate, investment banking and consulting organizations.

David received his MBA from the University of Toronto and holds a B.A. (Hons.) in Political Science from Carleton University.

Jonathan Leiken currently serves as senior vice president, chief legal officer and corporate secretary.  He oversees the organization’s global legal function and global corporate compliance program, and serves as corporate secretary to the Board of Directors.

Before joining Diebold, Leiken worked as a partner at global law firm Jones Day, where he represented public and private companies, boards of directors, special committees and individuals in complex civil lawsuits, significant government investigations and at trial. Leiken represented numerous public and private companies in the Fortune 500 in industries ranging from technology to manufacturing to retail and financial institutions. While at Jones Day, Leiken served as one of Diebold’s leading external counsel on various litigation and investigative matters.

Prior to joining Jones Day, Leiken served as a federal prosecutor, working as an assistant United States attorney in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in the United States Department of Justice. As a federal prosecutor, Leiken successfully tried numerous criminal cases to jury verdict in New York federal court and represented the United States on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  Leiken received commendations from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of State and numerous other federal agencies for his work in the Justice Department.

A Cleveland native, Leiken is an active contributor to the community in Northeast Ohio and is a past president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, which advances justice and represents the interests of Northeast Ohio’s approximately 10,000 practicing lawyers and judges. For more than ten years, Leiken has served as an adjunct professor of law at Case Western Reserve University Law School where he teaches a course on prosecuting and defending white collar crime. Additionally, Leiken co-founded the CMBA's Criminal Law Section and created Criminal Justice Day for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, teaching students about our criminal justice system. Leiken is a trustee of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Foundation, whose nationally recognized public outreach programs focus on improving the lives of youth and other vulnerable members of the community in Northeast Ohio, and he is an active contributor to Cleveland’s Legal Aid Society, which provides pro bono legal representation to underprivileged members of the community. Leiken was honored as public company General Counsel of the year by Crain’s Cleveland Business (2017) and is a past recipient of the ORT America Jurisprudence Award for professional contributions and community leadership (2016).

Leiken earned a juris doctorate degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a bachelor's degree in political science from Brandeis University, both with honors. 

Patrick has more than 30 years of extensive experience in global talent management, organizational design, human resources data and analytics, compensation and benefits, succession planning and labor relations.

Prior to joining Diebold Nixdorf, Patrick served as senior vice president and chief human resources officer for Veritiv Corporation in Atlanta, where she played a key role in launching the company into its Fortune 300 status within its first full year of operation as a merged organization. Patrick led all areas of human resources and communications for Veritiv, including the creation and development of key employee programs and change management strategies.

Before Patrick’s career at Veritiv, she worked at International Paper/xpedx and TE Connectivity where she spearheaded profit and loss accountability, reorganization, leadership and diversity hiring and employee engagement efforts. Her background spans a number of industries, including packaging, automotive, logistics and supply chain and power and data solutions.

Patrick obtained her bachelor’s degree in finance and international business from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., and her master’s in business administration from Wayne State University in Detroit.

Julian Sparkes currently serves as Diebold Nixdorf’s chief digital officer. He joined the company in December 2018. In this role, Sparkes is responsible for simplifying, streamlining and further digitizing Diebold Nixdorf's IT infrastructure to enhance both customer and employee experiences, as well as refining the company’s long-term digitally-enabled strategy.

Sparkes has more than 35 years of digital transformation and global IT experience, as well as more than a decade in senior leadership positions. During his career, he worked at IBM and Accenture with multinational companies to modernize their business applications for the cloud, deploy new mobile, Internet of Things and big data applications, consolidate data centers and automate supply chain functions. Prior to joining Diebold Nixdorf, Sparkes led global alliances and channels business for PRGX Global, Inc., a leader in big-data analytics.

Sparkes obtained a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Engineering, from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England.

Elizabeth (Lisa) Radigan currently serves as the vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer. In this role, she oversees the development, implementation and management of the organization’s global ethics and compliance program.
 
Most recently, Radigan was the chief ethics and compliance officer at Diebold, Incorporated where she led the global ethics and compliance program, beginning in November 2014. Prior to that, Radigan was an attorney at global law firm, Jones Day, where she represented public companies in U.S. Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, and company internal investigations. She conducted global investigations arising out of conduct related to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as well as other global anti-corruption laws, anti-trust laws, financial and accounting fraud and other areas of corporate governance. She has represented clients in state and federal courts around the United States and has argued before the Ohio Supreme Court.
 
In addition, Radigan has extensive experience designing and implementing policies, protocols, training materials, risk assessment materials and full compliance programs for Fortune 500 companies. While at Jones Day, she conducted training and provided guidance to numerous public companies regarding anti-corruption and other compliance risks and has provided advice to companies operating in all regions around the world. She has significant experience in implementing compliance programs in the U.S., China, Russia, India, Brazil, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and South East Asia.
 
Radigan earned her law degree, with honors, from American University, Washington College of Law, and obtained her bachelor’s degree in history, with honors, from Ohio State University. She is a member of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association.

Devon R. Watson currently serves as the vice president and chief marketing officer for Diebold Nixdorf. In this role, he is responsible for leading the company’s global marketing operations and strategy, focusing on driving growth through industry thought leadership and effective customer-facing campaigns.

Watson joined Diebold in 2012 as a senior director leading product management and innovation. In this role, he was responsible for product strategy and proactively bringing new solutions and collaborative innovation to clients around the world. Most recently, he served as vice president, software strategy and operations, through the acquisitions of Phoenix Software and Wincor Nixdorf.

Prior to joining Diebold, Watson was an early team member at Apprenda, a leading cloud software and services company, where he focused on business development and go-to-market. He also previously served as a vice president at Primary Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, where he focused on investments in the software and technology-enabled services sectors. Prior to entering the venture capital industry, Watson co-founded a software-as-a-service (SaaS) analytics start-up and worked in technology consulting.

Watson holds a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.