Meet the Binary Tree Management Team
Combining business acumen with technical savvy, Binary Tree’s executives inspire thousands of customers to have confidence in our abilities. The management team brings decades of diverse experience and a history of success.
Executive Management
Steven Pivnik
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Mr. Pivnik is the co-founder and CEO of Binary Tree, a leader in the messaging and collaboration migration and coexistence market. With a broad innovative background in corporate vision and strategic planning that spans 20 years, Mr. Pivnik is a proven entrepreneur, delivering technology solutions to Fortune 500 clients and small businesses alike. To date, Binary Tree has accumulated over 6,000 customers and has achieved global expansion and recognition under Mr. Pivnik’s leadership.
In late 1999, as part of a services asset sale to a venture-backed cloud services provider, Steven joined the acquiring company as Vice President of Customer Implementations and integrated the next 6 acquisitions into his national practice. Upon his return to Binary Tree in 2001, Steven changed the direction and focus of the company to fully embrace and support Microsoft Exchange migrations. Steven and his team revolutionized the way customers migrate to the cloud with the advent of hosted migrations.
Mr. Pivnik has built a distinguished executive management career and in recognition, has been featured as a finalist for several awards including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the INC Entrepreneur of the Year. Binary Tree’s steady growth has secured a spot on the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies 6 years in a row.
Don Cohen
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
Don Cohen is Binary Tree's Chief Operating Officer (COO) and is responsible for leading the development of Binary Tree's products, including product management, development, quality assurance and support, as well overseeing the company's infrastructure. Don has over 30 years experience bringing industry-leading products to market, as an architect and CTO. Don has held senior technical leadership roles at ADP, Princeton Softech (which he co-founded), Voxware and Archive Systems, as well as serving as a director on multiple boards. Don has a BS in Computer Science from SUNY Albany, and an MS in Computer Science from Rutgers University.
James Scott
Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Mr. Scott has over 20 years of experience as a senior level financial manager. He joined Binary Tree in January 2008 after serving as Interim CFO for V12Group and for 7 years prior as CFO for ExpertPlan. Prior to that Mr. Scott was Managing Director of theCFO.com LLC, providing CFO services to numerous companies. Mr. Scott was also CFO of VLearn International and VP of Finance and Administration for TAS (Spirent Communications Wireless Division). He has a BA in Economics from Rutgers College and an MBA in Finance from Rutgers Business School. He is a Certified Management Accountant and a member of the Institute of Management Accountants.
Vadim Gringolts
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Vadim Gringolts is Binary Tree’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and is responsible for defining, developing and delivering Binary Tree’s messaging & migration products strategy, overseeing product development and implementation services. Vadim has over 20 years of experience working in the messaging industry and 10 years of involvement with Lotus Notes and Domino and virtually every other messaging system and protocol. Having begun his career developing gateways to connect dissimilar mail systems, Mr. Gringolts transitioned to product implementation, system architecture and high level messaging and migration consulting for a wide variety of customers from Fortune 500 companies to small organizations. Mr. Gringolts is an author of many articles in the migration & messaging arena and over the years has been a frequent speaker at industry-related conferences such as EMA and Lotusphere.
Carl Baumann
Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Carl Baumann, VP of Sales and Marketing, joined Binary Tree in 1998. Carl’s efforts have been instrumental in driving continuous year-over-year sales growth throughout his tenure at Binary Tree. The results of his impact are evidenced most recently by Binary Tree’s recognition in the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies for the last six years in a row. Working with the Microsoft Premier Deployment (MPD) team, Carl developed a scalable sales model for migrating customers to Microsoft Exchange Online in BPOS and Microsoft Office 365. This effort resulted in the migration of over 2 million users to the Microsoft cloud via a remote hosted migration process invented by Binary Tree. Carl has successfully spearheaded the marketing launches and go-to-market strategies of Binary Tree’s migration software products, as well as serve as the catalyst for the growth of the Binary Tree sales team and partner channel, throughout North America as well as into Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific. Also known as a well-versed technologist, Carl has contributed to multiple technical papers including an IBM Redbook on Microsoft Exchange migration as well as to the publication "Internet Security: A Jumpstart for Systems Administrators and IT Managers" by authors Tim Speed and Juanita Ellis. Carl holds a Bachelor of Science from LaSalle University in Philadelphia majoring in Marketing and minoring in both International Business and Spanish. In addition, Carl holds a Masters degree in E-Commerce and Technology Management from the Stevens Institute of Technology.
Senior Management
Stefan af Bjur
General Manager, EMEA
In his most recent role before joining Binary Tree, Stefan was part of the Microsoft’s worldwide IBM-, Google- and Open Office Compete team based out of corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington, where his main responsibility was to help Microsoft win deals but also to educate and influence customers, partners and sales resources around the world. Stefan joined Microsoft in June 2005 as part of an acquisition and his previous Microsoft role was mainly focused on mail and collaboration security. His working career spans over a multitude of roles including programming, support, project management, sales, marketing and management but they all have one common denominator: Notes/Domino. In this area, Stefan was the first certified Notes consultant in Sweden (1991), co-founded two companies and most recently - before joining Microsoft - held the role as EMEA Manager for Lotus Products for Sybari.
Pete Caldecourt
Director of Sales Engineering
Pete Caldecourt has over 20 years of experience working in the messaging industry and over 15 years experience in migration and coexistence. Having starting his career as an IT Administrator, Pete found an interest in email systems starting with OpenMail, cc:Mail and All-In-One then moved into migrations of users from one platform to another and working with various coexistence solutions. Mr. Caldecourt has been an integral part in many migration and coexistence initiatives, including migrations of up to 150,000 users, for some of the largest organizations around the world. Pete is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) for Windows 2000 and 2003 based on security and design and has contributed to various white papers in the migration and coexistence arenas.
John Alumbaugh
Director of Services
John Alumbaugh is responsible for successfully delivering Binary Tree’s services, building partner relationships and managing traditional and cloud migration service offerings. He is a senior technology specialist with over two decades of infrastructure experience across business of all sizes. Alumbaugh possesses detailed and expert knowledge of Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory and Microsoft Office 365. Prior to joining Binary Tree, Alumbaugh was Director of Consulting at Cloud Strategies LLC, a Binary Tree partner that focuses on customer migration to Microsoft Office 365. Earlier, he was a Business Strategy Consultant and Practice Principal with HP, where he managed teams ranging from 35 to 50 messaging consultants across a large, multi-state state region and had P&L responsibilities for a $21 million practice. He has also been a Sales Engineer and Consultant at a number of technology consulting organizations. Alumbaugh served for a decade in the U.S. Navy where he gained many of his strong leadership skills. He earned an AAS degree from Thomas Nelson Community College, Virginia. Alumbaugh enjoys a number of interests, including bicycling, traveling, photography, and gadgetry.