Lee M. Shavel — Chief Executive Officer
Lee M. Shavel is Verisk’s chief executive officer (CEO), driving long-term sustainable value for shareholders, customers, and employees. He brings nearly 30 years of experience advising and leading publicly traded companies to Verisk—determining strategies and policies, overseeing financial performance, and furthering company culture.
Lee joined Verisk in 2017 as chief financial officer (CFO). As CFO, he modernized Verisk’s corporate financial operations, including treasury, investor relations, and procurement, and grew the company’s relationships with debt and equity investment communities, including buy-side institutional investors and sell-side research analysts. He implemented an enhanced capital discipline process for internal and external capital deployment, extending that philosophy to the company’s operating focus as CEO.
In 2021, Lee also became group president of the company’s energy and financial services groups. In that role, he integrated the business for improved strategic and operating coordination and accelerated investment in the company’s energy data analytics platform.
Before joining Verisk, Lee was Nasdaq, Inc.’s executive vice president and chief financial officer from 2011 to 2016. From 1993 to 2011, he served as managing director, Americas head of Financial Institutions Investment Banking, and other roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Lee holds a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in economics from the Wharton School.
As CEO of Verisk, Lee’s been elected to the company’s board of directors and is on the executive committee. He also serves on the board of directors of FactSet Research Systems and chairs its audit committee. He previously served as a director and chair of the audit committee of Investment Technology Group and served on the board of NJ SEEDS, an educational nonprofit.
Guy Seeley — President, AER
Dr. Guy Seeley is president of Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), where he’s responsible for the company’s performance and execution of science and technology projects, ranging from basic research to mission-critical system development for government, insurance, financial, and energy sector clients.
Guy served in other leadership positions at AER and ISO/Verisk before becoming AER’s president in 2015. During his more than 30-year career, he has led many state-of-the-art weather and remote sensing programs, products, and services reaching government and commercial markets.
Earlier in his career, Guy worked extensively with military pilots and research laboratories to produce infrared mission planning decision aid tools to reduce risk and improve mission performance. He was responsible for the development, validation, and rapid transition to combat operations of highly effective new mission planning technologies for the F-117 and other aircraft.
Guy holds a PhD and a BA, both in chemistry, from Boston University.
Ned Snell — Executive Vice President and Senior Vice President, Advanced Science and Technology Division
Dr. Ned Snell is AER’s executive vice president and leads the Advanced Science and Technology division. He’s an expert in all aspects of theoretical and experimental remote sensing, including extensive infrared and ultraviolet radiative transfer model and retrieval algorithm development.
Ned oversees many company-wide initiatives, providing executive support to major programs and projects and business development support across the company, and representing AER in Verisk-wide initiatives. He also makes direct contact with major clients for large projects and helps coordinate staffing and resources across AER.
From 2012 to 2020, Ned served as the program manager for AER’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites – R Series (GOES-R) effort, the U.S.’s next-generation geosynchronous weather and environment satellite. Previously he led the development of the infrared ozone retrieval algorithm for the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite (OMPS) and algorithm development for the Cross-Track Infrared and Microwave Sounder Suite (CrIMSS).
Ned has been named Employee of the Year and Citizen of the Year at AER, and his team has been named Team of Year.
Ned holds a PhD in atmospheric and space sciences from the University of Michigan and an AB in geophysics from the University of Chicago.
He’s a member of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). From 2012 to 2019, he volunteered with a local middle and high school basketball team for the Special Olympics, serving as head coach from 2016 to 2019.
Matthew Alvarado — Principal Scientist and Vice President, Research and Development Division
Dr. Matthew Alvarado leads an international team of scientists applying novel remote sensing strategies to the grand challenges of Earth science, including clouds/convection, greenhouse gases, oceans/cryosphere, and fire/smoke. This research guides the climate change, environmental protection, and severe weather decisions of regulators, industry, and the public.
As vice president, Matt ensures that the division’s individual research projects align with the pressing needs of the scientific community, policymakers, and industry. He also leads several research projects on atmospheric chemistry, air quality, and radiative transfer modeling, with a focus on the chemistry of wildfire smoke.
After joining AER in 2010, Matt performed a comprehensive evaluation of AER’s line-by-line radiative transfer model. In 2014 he started a new group focused on air quality and quickly obtained research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the World Bank. His research has resulted in dozens of articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Matt holds a PhD in climate physics and chemistry and BS in chemical engineering from MIT. Before joining AER, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Atmospheric Chemistry at Harvard University.
Matt was the lead author of the smoke chemistry chapter of the 2021 US Forest Service and EPA assessment of research needs for wildland fire smoke in the US. He was recognized in 2013 by the Journal of Geophysical Research for excellence in peer reviews.
Matt has led two teams that received AER’s Outstanding Team Service Award and supports other leaders at AER’s parent company as a Verisk Leadership Institute Steward.
Cordula Robinson — Vice President, Space Weather Division
Dr. Cordula A. Robinson is a space scientist who oversees the division’s Next-generation Space Environment Technology (NSET) contract with the AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate, a contract that supports 15 active research projects and 5 subcontractors. She further manages the development of AER's Space Environment and Effects Toolkit (SEET) for the AGI/ANSYS commercial Systems Tool Kit (STK) software.
Cordula has continuously delivered value in management roles as a scientist, researcher, analytical problem-solver, and team leader. As a collaborative leader, she consistently accomplishes goals and objectives by setting a tone of accountability and positive energy while formulating and prioritizing strategies. She enjoys both customer-facing roles and being an institute intrapreneur and helping to establish new strategies and synergies that integrate software development with science.
Her scientific background includes: a Ph.D. in Physics & Astronomy from University College London; postdoctoral studies at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; and a stint at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin.
Cordula has worked with NASA, analyzing Magellan data from Venus; NSF, and Ministries of Water Resources, mapping new groundwater resources via space-based observations across the Middle East and North Africa. She has also worked with a number of DoD and IC communities (AFRL, USACE, IARPA, NGA) to solve complex problems in machine learning (leading to two patents). Cordula has an asteroid named after her, Cordie (2942).
Charles Sarkisian — Chief Product Strategy Officer and Vice President, Target Recognition and Advanced Exploitation Division
Charles Sarkisian manages the Target Recognition and Advanced Exploitation (TRAX) division at AER and serves as chief product strategy officer. He established the division and is responsible for its strategic vision, commitment to AER customers, and overall operation.
Under Charles’s leadership, the division has seen healthy growth since its establishment by addressing customers’ near-term needs, using innovation to envision customers’ emerging needs, and continually advancing the science behind the company’s work.
Charles has more than 35 years of remote sensing industry experience in atmospheric, oceanographic, and terrestrial environments. Prior to establishing the TRAX group at AER, he led the Object and Target Recognition section at BAE Systems, where he managed all the section’s programs, including those with AFRL, DARPA, and the intelligence community.
Before that, he served as a program manager at Goodrich Corporation Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems, within the U-2 Business Unit managing programs with the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) and the 330th C2ISR Sustainment Group in support of the SYERS-2 airborne sensor.
Charles was named AER’s 2002 Employee of the Year for his leadership on the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRDA) with the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA). His team at BAE received the 2014 Chairman’s Award for innovation in combat identification systems.
Charles holds a BA in geography/atmospheric science with a minor in physics from the University of Rhode Island.
Dave Hogan — Senior Vice President, Strategic Business Development
As AER’s senior vice president for strategic business development, Dave Hogan identifies and captures business opportunities in the areas of remote sensing systems and environmental monitoring/modeling for commercial, civilian, international, and Department of Defense customers. He also helps AER customers understand and explore solutions to their business problems using remote sensing systems and environmental modeling and manages AER’s contracts for developing remote sensing algorithms, satellite ground processing systems, and environmental models.
Dave led the transition of AER’s business into large remote sensing system development, significantly expanding the company’s technical capabilities and employment opportunities. He also captured and managed the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites – R Series (GOES-R) Ground Segment contract, AER’s largest-ever contract that lasted more than a decade.
With over 35 years of advanced science and system design and development experience, Dave has focused his career on developing advanced solutions to challenging environmental and remote sensing problems. His projects have included the Electro-Optical Infrared Weather System (EWS); satellite remote sensing instruments and algorithms for cloud monitoring, forecasting, and characterization and theater weather imagery; and supporting remote sensing solutions to monitor greenhouse gases and other atmospherics.
He holds an MS in meteorology and a BS in physical sciences, both from the University of Maryland. Dave is also certified in Earned Value Management.
An avid bridge payer, Dave volunteers for the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) and is achieving Life Master status.
Scott Zaccheo — Senior Corporate Fellow, Engineering and Development
Dr. Scott Zaccheo fulfills many roles at AER: chief software engineer for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites – R Series (GOES-R); principal architect, implementer, and customer liaison for the GreenLITE™ program; and corporate advisor and mentor for developing other software applications for government and private sector customers.
As a senior corporate fellow, he provides technically based architectures and solutions for customer-driven ideas or challenges and internal technical oversight for ongoing company efforts, while helping foster the growth of technical design and problem-solving skills at AER.
An expert in image processing and systems engineering, Scott’s spent 25 years applying engineering principles to the acquisition and analysis of scientific data. He co-developed the GreenLITE™ system for real-time measuring and monitoring greenhouse gases (GHGs) over complex open-air environments. He’s also been the primary architect of many AER systems, including interactive analysis tools to assess the performance of retrieval algorithms for earth-observing environmental sensors.
Before joining AER, Scott worked at Lincoln Laboratory on characterizing infrared clutter and assessing its impact on detection and estimation techniques. He’s been a contributing member of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) algorithm teams.
He’s authored or co-authored more than a dozen scientific papers on measuring GHGs, stochastic image processing, and remote sensing instrument/system design.
Scott holds a PhD and MS in electrical engineering from Tufts University and a BS in electrical engineering from Lehigh University.
He’s been a reviewer for the NASA grant process and a member of a NASA Science team.
Jenny Zhu — Controller and Senior Vice President, Finance & Contracts Division
As controller and senior vice president, Jenny Zhu leads the Finance and Contracts division at AER. She works closely with senior management and the Finance and Contracts team to ensure that AER’s financial accounting and reporting comply with the rules and regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), AER’s filed Cost Accounting Standards Board Disclosure Statement, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and other established policies and procedures.
Jenny is responsible for AER’s government contract accounting compliance and accounting operations. Knowing and complying with federal civilian and Department of Defense contracting procedures is the fundamental requirement of doing business with the federal government.
Since joining AER in 1997, Jenny held various finance positions, including staff accountant, financial analyst, and contract administrator, before becoming controller and contracts manager in 2003.
Jenny holds an MS in accounting from Johnson & Wales University. She’s a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants (MSCPA) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).