Topia Leadership
Topia’s leadership team brings extensive experience building and scaling enterprise SaaS companies. With over 30 nationalities from six continents represented on our team, Topians reflect the global mindset and diversity we champion.
Shawn Farshchi
Chief Executive Officer
Shawn Farshchi is Chief Executive Officer at Topia, the leading Global Talent Mobility company. With more than 35 years of enterprise tech experience, Shawn has a proven track record for leading, driving and managing innovative, high-tech companies in highly dynamic environments.
Before joining Topia, Shawn co-founded Flype.ai, an innovative customer enablement solution. Prior to Flype, Shawn was President and CEO of Aryaka Networks, where he led the company to quadruple its revenue and customer base in less than 3 years to become one of the largest players in the SD-WAN space. Before joining Aryaka, Shawn was the President and CEO of Saba Software, where he guided Saba from its legacy as a pioneer and leader in learning management software to a key market player in the broader talent management space. During his 4 years at Saba, Shawn played a pivotal role in building out the Saba Cloud suite, a market-leading global customer base and a world-class team.
In his four years as chief operating officer at Coremetrics, Shawn re-engineered the company for accelerated growth with innovative AI-based technology, driving impressive company KPIs, which ultimately led to its acquisition by IBM. He’s also held key executive roles at WebEx Communications (acquired by Cisco), Oracle, BroadVision and DHL. Shawn holds five U.S. patents, along with a BS in Electrical Engineering from San Francisco State University and an MBA from Golden Gate University.
Bill Mastin
Chief Revenue Officer
Bill is the Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for global sales of Topia solutions and the teams that deliver services to Topia customers.
Prior to Topia, Bill was the EVP of Sales, Account Management and Alliances at PeopleFluent, a SaaS provider that global enterprises use for their talent acquisition, talent management, and learning platforms. Additionally, Bill has held several leadership positions over 20+ years in the talent & learning space that includes NetDimensions, Saba, and IBM Global Services.
Anupam Singhal
Chief Strategic Partner Officer
Anupam is the Chief Strategic Partner Officer at Topia, responsible for building and managing Topia’s strategic partner ecosystem, driving strategic top-line growth initiatives, and executing targeted M&A and corporate strategy. Anupam joined Topia upon its acquisition of Monaeo, an industry-leading, cloud-based, distributed workforce compliance management tech company that he co-founded and led for several years.
Prior to founding Monaeo, Anupam was a Principal at Silver Lake Partners, the world’s largest tech-focused investment firm. He also worked at General Atlantic as a growth investor and in M&A at Morgan Stanley. Anupam holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and BS from Carnegie Mellon and London School of Economics.
Over his nearly 20 years investing in and helping build world-class global technology companies, he has been both an active business traveler and an expat having worked in or traveled to over 30 countries. It was this experience that inspired him to start Monaeo, and together, help Topia become the preeminent tech company in this $100B+ market.
Jacky Turnbull
Chief People Officer
Jacky leads People and Culture, overseeing the employee experience and people operations from the moment a candidate applies and throughout their journey as a Topia employee. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jacky has spent her career in the technology industry and enjoys bringing creative people-centric programs to innovative companies. She is passionate about embedding the People function into the organization as a key business driver and building a values-driven culture.
Prior to joining Topia, Jacky led teams and scaled the People functions at both Lyft and Pandora. She was the fourth HR hire at Pandora and played a key role in growing the company to over 2,000 employees while relocating across the US to expand the company’s regional HR function. At Lyft, she led and grew the business & operations HRBP team as the company scaled from 600 employees to over 2,500 within 18 months. Jacky holds an MBA from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of California, Davis.
Chantel Rowe
Vice President, Product
Nothing makes Chantel more impassioned than the ability to explore the world and other cultures, and empowering others to do the same through the solutions she can build and barriers she can break down with our technology as our VP of Product.
Chantel’s career has always found itself at the intersection of Global Talent Mobility and technology. She firstly spent 8 years at EY specializing and qualifying in US, UK, French and International taxation of globally mobile employees and managing key customer accounts on a global basis. Wanting to experience challenges from another perspective, she managed EMEA Mobility, Tax and Payroll for Société Générale, and eventually became a customer of Topia herself! Seeing the opportunity to be part of transforming the world of global work through technology, she joined the Topia family in 2015 – firstly building our amazing solutions consulting team of industry experts, and then transitioning to lead our Product organization and bring her years of mobility expertise to designing, building and delivering our technology solutions.
Proudly claiming to be an ‘international mutt’, Chantel is Australian by birth, British by birthright, American by accent, with a heart still residing in Paris and a current base in Tallinn, Estonia. She’s experienced living in 6 countries herself through Global Talent Mobility and cherishes how transformational this has been to her both professionally and personally, as well as the value this allowed her to deliver for her employers. Chantel cannot wait for the ongoing transformation of the world of global work over the coming years, both from the perspective of experiencing this herself, but the amazing solutions she and the team can’t wait to bring to the market.
Nishant Mittal
Senior Vice President & GM, Business Travel
Nishant is the SVP and GM of Topia’s Business Travel solution responsible for strategy and growth. Nishant joined Topia as part of its acquisition of Monaeo, a technology company he co-founded and led. Nishant brings extensive experience in Business Travel Analytics and extensive change management experience working with Fortune 500 companies during his tenure at McKinsey & Co. and General Atlantic.
Prior to founding Monaeo, Nishant was a Vice President at General Atlantic where he led the Financial Services sector in India and was subsequently a part of the U.S. technology team.
Before General Atlantic, he worked in McKinsey & Company’s New Jersey office advising Fortune 500 companies in the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, Nishant held a variety of engineering and technical roles including at Mayo Clinic, where he developed algorithms for early detection of heart disease, and Lucent Technologies, where he helped develop a new IP product.
Nishant is a published author with publications in machine learning and image processing in leading peer-reviewed journals. Nishant has a BS in Computer Engineering, an MS in Biomedical Engineering, and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
Celso Meira
Vice President, Engineering
Celso is the Vice President of Engineering at Topia where he brings extensive business, product and technology experience. In his role, Celso is responsible for engineering strategy, execution, QA, operations, infrastructure and security of the company’s suite of Global Mobility solutions and across the company’s engineering teams.
Prior to joining Topia, Celso was Head of Integrations at Derivco(Microgaming) where he led teams focused on the integration and delivery of all game content. Celso was instrumental in scaling these team’s capability to more than double their content integration and delivery year on year.
Additionally, Celso brings over 20 years of global leadership experience spanning Europe and Africa, with companies that include IBM Global Services, Standard Bank and Vodacom (Vodafone).
Amy Waters
Vice President, Customer Success
Amy leads Customer Success and is responsible for implementing strategies that maximize customer engagement, retention and overall satisfaction.
Prior to Topia, Amy held senior Customer Success leadership roles at Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG), a SaaS provider of HRIS software that provides solutions for enterprise businesses to manage their employees’ HR experience. At UKG, she was responsible for building new Customer Success programs and operations for newly created market offerings. Amy also held prior customer-facing leadership roles in the startup telecommunication space. Her specialties include customer-focused leadership, building Customer Success teams at rapid scale, and identifying key moments of truth and value realization in the customer experience journey.
Amy is based in Florida and holds a BA in Journalism and an MBA from The University of Georgia.
Sameer Prabhavalkar
Vice President, Finance
Sameer is the Vice President of Finance at Topia. During his career, Sameer has mostly worked for start-up high-tech companies. In addition, he also worked as a Director of Internal Audit for VeriFone, a half-billion-dollar company.
Prior to joining Topia, Sameer held leadership positions at Ayasdi, YuMe, VeriFone, and Mediaplex. He has been a part of three Initial Public Offerings, and an acquisition. As a seasoned financial professional, with a Big 4 background, he has a deep experience in all aspects of financial & SEC reporting, financial system implementation, Initial Public Offerings, and M&A.
Sameer is the Vice President of Finance at Topia. During his career, Sameer has mostly worked for start-up high-tech companies. In addition, he also worked as a Director of Internal Audit for VeriFone, a half-billion-dollar company.
Prior to joining Topia, Sameer held leadership positions at Ayasdi, YuMe, VeriFone, and Mediaplex. He has been a part of three Initial Public Offerings, and an acquisition. As a seasoned financial professional, with a Big 4 background, he has a deep experience in all aspects of financial & SEC reporting, financial system implementation, Initial Public Offerings, and M&A.
Chris is the Vice President of Professional Services at Topia responsible for managing the Services Delivery, Payroll Operations, and Expense Management teams. In this role, Chris is responsible for overall Services strategy and delivering a best in class, customer-focused implementation experience
aligning Topia’s mobility technology with our customer’s goals and outcomes.
Prior to joining Topia, Chris served as Director of Implementations for Arena Analytics and spent 8 years in a series of positions with Kronos, Inc (now UKG) where he led the Services Technology team as part of
the company’s global SaaS transformation.
Additionally, Chris is also a PROSCI certified change management professional specializing in guiding customers through the internal processes necessary to maximize their Topia solution.
Chris Catino
Vice President, Professional Services
Shawn Farshchi
Chief Executive Officer
Shawn Farshchi is Chief Executive Officer at Topia, the leading Global Talent Mobility company. With more than 35 years of enterprise tech experience, Shawn has a proven track record for leading, driving and managing innovative, high-tech companies in highly dynamic environments.
Before joining Topia, Shawn co-founded Flype.ai, an innovative customer enablement solution. Prior to Flype, Shawn was President and CEO of Aryaka Networks, where he led the company to quadruple its revenue and customer base in less than 3 years to become one of the largest players in the SD-WAN space. Before joining Aryaka, Shawn was the President and CEO of Saba Software, where he guided Saba from its legacy as a pioneer and leader in learning management software to a key market player in the broader talent management space. During his 4 years at Saba, Shawn played a pivotal role in building out the Saba Cloud suite, a market-leading global customer base and a world-class team.
In his four years as chief operating officer at Coremetrics, Shawn re-engineered the company for accelerated growth with innovative AI-based technology, driving impressive company KPIs, which ultimately led to its acquisition by IBM. He’s also held key executive roles at WebEx Communications (acquired by Cisco), Oracle, BroadVision and DHL. Shawn holds five U.S. patents, along with a BS in Electrical Engineering from San Francisco State University and an MBA from Golden Gate University.