MEET THE TEAM
From entertainment industry veterans to SaaS gurus, we all bring something unique to Conductor, while sharing a common love for discovering and employing the latest in cloud and media and entertainment technologies
Mac Moore
CEO / PRESIDENT
Mac brings over 20 years of Enterprise Software expertise to Conductor and has a passion for transformative technology.
He sees cloud completely altering how we think and execute in the digital content creation ecosystem and is passionate about leading its direction.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University, and is based in Raleigh-Durham, NC.
Pat Skaarup
CFO
Prior to joining Conductor in 2018, Pat was with HSBC for nearly 20 years, where he directed multiple Operational Risk functions within the North American Retail and Wealth Management group.
A proven track record of building teams through customer centricity, people development, and process creation plays a key leadership role for Conductor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of West Georgia, and is based in Raleigh-Durham, NC.
Francois Lebel
DIRECTOR. OF ENGINEERING
With his 15 years of experience developing web products, Francois brings his proficiency building high-performance systems in the cloud to Conductor to build the world's largest, and most cost-efficient rendering farm.
Prior to joining Conductor, he spent time at various Silicon Valley B2B and B2C companies where he built social, analytical, and Internet of Things platforms.
When away from the keyboard, you can find Francois road cycling, running, hiking with his family, or simply dozing off on a hammock in the temperate Seattle area.
Lawrence Schlosser
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Lawrence is the keystone to our Conductor team, coming over with the spinoff from Atomic Fiction.
He has a wide breadth of experience in VFX, animation and games workflows, having also worked at studios like ImageMovers Digital, Dr. D and Electronic Arts.
His focus is specifically on how VFX workflow needs translate into cloud computing resources, and making the cloud rendering experience amazing for our customers.
Jonathan Cross
LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Jonathan has worked in many fields: security, compliance, finance and aerospace as an Software Engineer and DevOps Engineer.
Enjoys building and scaling out platforms from the infrastructure level up and in his spare time can be found playing soccer, ping pong and tennis.
Carlos Robles
SENIOR DEVOPS ENGINEER
Carlos started his career in academia and has since worked with a number of startups in data science, e-commerce, and online food delivery.
A dedicated engineer, husband, and father, Carlos specializes in multi-cloud multi-region implementations of distributed systems and enjoys board games, video games, and observational astronomy with his family.
Carlos lives in Chicago, IL and holds a BA in Economics and MS in Information Systems from Northwestern University.
Julian Mann
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Julian's VFX career started in commercials at MPC in London, making shampoo science shots and talking pigs.
He was the first artist working at Double Negative, and supervised CG for their first movie, Pitch Black. Later he helped MPC's film division get started, where he built their R&D department and wrote pipeline and VFX tools.
Julian loves making tools for artists and his other interests include painting, robotics, music, and office design. He has traveled for work, living in Mumbai and Montreal, and now lives with his family in Panama.
Jesse Lehrman
SENIOR PIPELINE DEVELOPER
Jesse’s adventures in CG started when he was hired to wrangle some renders at a Montreal VFX studio instead of backpacking to Tanzania to find some Chimps. He now finds himself back in Montreal.
Along the way he’s worked in Berlin, Jerusalem and Sydney on Animation and VFX projects big and small, improving pipelines so that artists have more time to watch YouTube.
Projects of note include The Lego Movie, The Little Prince and Game of Thrones. And he did eventually get to see those Chimps.
Matias Insaurralde
PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER
As a software engineer, Matias brings almost two decades of experience in the field, especially in the open-source world.
He’s passionate about software interoperability, computer security and new technologies.
Prior to joining Conductor he spent many years working on a leading product in the API security space.
In his free time Matias enjoys travel and improvising music.
Daniel Cross
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Daniel has over half a decade of software engineering experience, working in the world of fast paced tech startups. He has worked in fields including: e-commerce, shipping logistics, and now cloud rendering.
His front end focus is bolstered by his B.A. in Visual Media Arts from Emerson College, and powered by his passion for programming.
When he’s not glued to his monitor, he can be found on his drum kit, working on his chops.
Becks O’Byrne
HEAD OF MARKETING
A familiar face on the VFX circuit, Becks loves to tell a story. She’s held marketing and operations positions at Foundry, discreet, Autodesk (M&E) and Escape Technology, she’s even helped the Chartered Accountancy profession look exciting.
Becks played a key role in Foundry’s phenomenal growth and helped them to break into new markets. She’s created launch pads for up-and-coming talent within the vfx/animation community.
As a young girl, Becks wanted to be either an air hostess or an astronomer. She didn’t quite make it, though did get to interview a Canadian singing astronaut on a tiny green sofa in the heart of Soho, London.
Thomas Phariss
VP GLOBAL SALES
Thomas has over 20 years of experience in high-performance computing and render management technology. As Conductor VP of Sales, he helps creative studios quickly leverage cloud-based compute resources.
He came to Conductor from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which he joined following its acquisition of Thinkbox Software. Thomas started at Thinkbox in 2012 and remained an instrumental part of the team following its acquisition by AWS in 2017. His role expanded to extend cloud-based solutions across the entire production cycle, including for high-profile studios.
Phariss began his career in creative technology with AMD and held sales and technical roles at PipelineFX and BOXX Technologies. He is based in Austin, TX.
