Contact us
(+1) 949-567-7000
sales@birchstreet.net
Meet the team that is striving for excellence and dedicated to our customer success and driving measurable results.
Meet the BirchStreet leaders who made BirchStreet possible. BirchStreet’s leadership team has a wide breadth of experience, industry knowledge and technical expertise.
Chief Executive Officer
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Steve Markle is the CEO at BirchStreet. Steve brings over 20 years of technology and business leadership. Steve’s responsibilities include direct responsibility for leading and managing BirchStreet’s Customer Success operational units including Project Management, Technical Service, Customer Support, Training, Account Management as well as Product Management.
In addition to Markle’s new role at BirchStreet, he will continue as an Independent Director on the Board of MarginPoint, a leading Inventory Management SaaS company. Prior to BirchStreet, he was Vice President and General Manager, CLM and SRM for Apttus, the category-defining Quote-to-Cash software provider. Markle was founder and CEO of BuildBeam, job management software designed specifically for specialty trade contractors (acquired by DaftLabs). From 2001 until 2013, Steve was an executive at Ariba (acquired by SAP), a pioneer in Sourcing, Procurement and Business Network space where he ultimately served as Vice President of Solutions Management. Markle grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California ever since earning his BSE in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.
Founder and Chairman of the Board
Sushil Garg is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of BirchStreet. As a hands-on entrepreneur, over the past 40 years Sushil has founded, run and sold a number of successful software businesses. Throughout his career, he has been regarded as a leader and visionary whose ideas, products and expertise have been on the cutting edge of the software industry. Today, Sushil is fully engaged in guiding BirchStreet forward, while maintaining close relationships with our major customers.
From an early age, Sushil’s innovative ambition led him to develop and grow numerous businesses. In 1982, he founded Pro Computer Sciences (PCS), where he created the PRO IV development language. PRO IV was the first object-oriented, fourth-generation language to bring open architecture and real-time programming to business application development. PCS was sold to a leading technology company in the mid-1980’s. Starting In 1987, Sushil built a successful consulting services firm, GDI, that focused on PRO IV development projects and was ultimately sold to one of the “big four” advertising and marketing services companies in 1999. On the heels of his GDI success, Sushil founded Sagence Systems to convert his J4 language into an application development platform for the newly emerging multi-tenant, cloud-based market, also known as SaaS, focusing on the accounting and supply chain market.
Seeing an opportunity to play a major role in significantly improving the procure-to-pay (P2P) business processes in the hospitality industry, Sushil founded BirchStreet Systems in 2002. As with many of his former ventures, BirchStreet has grown into the global leader for the enterprise application suite used to manage his targeted vertical. His strong entrepreneurial drive, technological insights and customer intimacy are key elements of BirchStreet’s culture and its success.
Chief Financial Officer
Jeremy Grosgebauer is the Chief Financial Officer at BirchStreet. Jeremy has a deep understanding of finance and operations in business to business software companies. He has provided financial leadership in multiple successful hyper growth companies. His areas of expertise include corporate finance, treasury, accounting, budgeting, and financial planning.
Prior to joining BirchStreet, Jeremy worked as Vice President of Finance at Workiva, a category leader in the financial reporting software space. Jeremy’s leadership over the finance department helped the company through an initial public offering and many successful quarters operating as a public company. Prior to Workiva, Jeremy worked in various financial capacities both domestically and abroad. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from North Dakota State University and an MBA in Management from California State University.
Chief Information Officer
Thron Havens is the Chief Information Officer at BirchStreet. He is responsible for all customer facing systems and networks infrastructure. Thron’s group is primarily responsible for maintaining the reliability of the Company’s network which provides 24/7 enterprise-wide access to the mission critical applications provided by BirchStreet to its global customers.
Since joining BirchStreet in 2012, Thron has focused on improving the customer’s experience by implementing several new technologies as well as overseeing a full infrastructure upgrade of BirchStreet’s development and production environment. Under Thron’s leadership, the BirchStreet IT organization is continuously improving the strength and reliability of its services and incorporating new technologies to help BirchStreet maintain its leadership in procure-to-pay (P2P) for the Hospitality industry.
Thron brings over 20 years of expertise in the IT field with extensive experience growing networks from the ground up. Prior to BirchStreet, Thron spent 11 years expanding and maintaining the enterprise network needs at Minka Lighting, one of the world’s leading Decorative Lighting Manufacturers. His responsibilities included the enterprise-wide network environment which interconnected 5 remote facilities, globally.
Chief Commercial Officer
Paul serves as Chief Commercial and leads BirchStreet’s, sales, marketing and go-to-market strategy. With more than 25 years of hospitality technology experience, Paul has an extensive track record of leading customer focused sales, marketing and account management teams to exceptional performance.
Prior to joiningBirchStreet Systems, Paul spent the previous four years as the Executive Vice President of Global Sales for Amadeus Hospitality. Paul led the company’s global sales and account management team through strong growth and several acquisitions. Prior to Amadeus, Paul spent 12 years as Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Passkey (now part of Cvent), where he led sales and was instrumental in shaping Passkey’s market, product and service direction. He began his career with Newmarket International in 1994, holding several positions including Managing Director, Asia Pacific and Director of Sales.
Paul received his degree in Business Administration from the University of New Hampshire.
Vice President, Customer Success
Kim leads Customer Success at BirchStreet and is responsible for the success of our valued customers and their ability to streamline overall processes maximizing the many benefits of the BirchStreet solution. Kim’s goal is promoting a lifetime of customer advocacy and satisfaction through relationship building and being intimately familiar with their key business objectives and technical needs. In addition to Customer Success, Kim also oversees our Global Training Team ensuring that training and onsite implementation services are provided worldwide with excellence, for a growing globally diverse and multi-lingual customer base.
Kim has been with BirchStreet for more than 11 years with stints in almost every department . As the company continued to grow, Kim founded BirchStreet’s highly regarded Product Management and Global Training teams. Prior to that, she focused on standardizing global implementation as Client Services Director, and automating support processes as Customer Support Manager.
Kim has over 20 years of IT experience within the healthcare and hospitality industries. Prior to joining BirchStreet, among many other projects, she successfully managed the Boyd Gaming Corporate Project Plan for the Stardust Resort & Casino Deconstruction and Corporate Relocation. With her deep experience and tireless dedication to customer service, Kim has been a key player in BirchStreet’s growth and continuous drive for customer satisfaction and overall solutions success.
VP Global Solutions Delivery
As Vice President of Global Solutions Delivery at BirchStreet, Karla Kannan leads the PMO and Consulting teams. With a global perspective she developed process improvements for global enterprise clients, allowing for deployment standardization and replicable outcomes across all projects. Her career at BirchStreet has focused on customers with a portfolio that extends over a multi vertical or multi regional model that look for opportunities to standardize processes. After spending a decade working in hospitality and procurement Karla utilizes her experience in the field to translate customer requests into strategies that build value propositions. She leads her team to connect with customers and build tailored solutions that fit their business model. In January of 2018 Karla opened the BirchStreet Mexico City office where she serves as General Manager.
Before joining BirchStreet, Karla was with Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts in the procurement field as an SME for P2P implementations. She graduated with a MA in Training and Development from Roosevelt University, Summa Cum Laude.
Vice President, Technical Services
Jon Castillo is BirchStreet’s Vice President of Technical Services. In his role, Jon oversees the Technical Services team that manages the configurations, interfaces, supplier services, project management and technical support for BirchStreet. During Jon’s tenure at BirchStreet, he has been immersed himself in all aspects of the technical work required to on-board the Company’s customers and support their technical requirements over the long-term. Over the past five years, he has been an essential, hands-on player in every department responsible for servicing the technical needs of BirchStreet’s customers and their suppliers; Customer Support, Supplier Adoption, Project Management, Development & Implementation and Integrations.
Before taking on his current management position, Jon was the Project Manager for many of the company’s high profile customers. That experience has given Jon deep insight into the all facets of BirchStreet’s technology. Moreover, it has provided him with an innate understanding of customer value and best practices in procure-to-pay (P2P) processes. Prior to joining BirchStreet, he provided technical support in the telecommunications industry.
Managing Director- EMEA
Dan Hiza is the Managing Director for Europe, Middle East, Africa & India (EMEAI). Dan’s responsibilities include the overall management of BirchStreet’s EMEAI market, collaborating with our existing customers to ensure they are gaining full advantage of our platform and services, as well as growing the business through extending partnerships with new hospitality companies, GPOs, suppliers and consultants.
With 30 years of hands-on operations, sales and business development experience, Dan brings a deep background in delivering enterprise-level hospitality software and services around the world. Prior to BirchStreet, Dan started his hospitality technology career when he joined Newmarket International (creators of Delphi) in 1989 as the company was in ‘start-up’ mode. Dan then opened and managed the London office for Newmarket in 1999 as Managing Director EMEAI, where he and his team “put Delphi onto the EMEAI map.” Newmarket was acquired by Amadeus in 2014 and Dan continued as Vice President Business Development EMEAI & AsiaPac for Amadeus Hospitality. Dan grew up in Connecticut and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Hotel Management from the University of New Hampshire.
Managing Director- APAC
Zhang Han is the Managing Director of Birch Street Asia Pacific. He oversees all aspects of operations from project management, training, technical services, support and sales in Asia Pac. The Asia team led by Han is highly recognized by Birch Street customers as one that provides efficient and quality services.
Han has over 20 years of experiences in providing IT solutions in hospitality industry. Prior to Birch Street, he had worked in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore as project manager, Major Accounts Manager and Operations Director in several IT companies such as Infrasys and Micros-Fidelio which are the leading hospitality solution providers in the world.
Han also took on the role of General Manager for 2 years in a F&B management company which has multiple outlets and a central production center. His knowledge and understanding of Asia customers’ needs and cultures contributes to making BirchStreet system the best P2P solution globally especially in Asia Pac.