Practice Delivers Acceleration Path for Solving Complexity in $7 Trillion AI Market Based on 200+ Combined Years of Silicon-to-Services Experience
TechArena announced the formation of a new Advisory practice , adding former c-suite and executive operators from Intel, AWS, Microsoft, Micron, Flex, and Altera to TechArena’s leadership. Advisors bring deep expertise across cloud, AI, data center, and edge computing, with a track record of defining foundational technology, scaling routes to market, and driving business growth through leadership positions across silicon, infrastructure and cloud service leaders. Collectively, they have built $10+ billion businesses, navigated complex value chains, and ushered in major technology inflections including cloud computing, 5G networks, and AI data center services.
This announcement, made during the Xcelerated Compute Show in New York, comes as a response to the existential challenges businesses face in navigating today’s accelerated technology landscape as operators race to deploy trillions of dollars of capital equipment to fuel AI’s advancement. Organizations are moving faster through more uncertainty than at any point in history. Traditional consulting models weren’t designed for this. Outside-in frameworks with no clear integration path simply don’t hold up under that kind of pressure. The Advisory practice brings operator experience from the world’s largest technology companies to help solve the most pressing challenges facing industry leaders today.
The Advisory joins TechArena’s existing practices focused on marketing collaboration and media publications. Launched in 2022 under Allyson Klein’s leadership, TechArena has featured and collaborated with over 100 leading technology companies as they seek to claim market advantage in the fast-paced AI landscape.
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“Every element of technology innovation is under pressure to accelerate, from silicon design cycles to standards definition and data center buildouts. In this landscape, traditional consultancy models cannot keep pace with business challenges,” said Allyson Klein, founder and CEO of TechArena. “The Advisors aren’t prognosticating on the industry, their leadership helped build it. I’m thrilled to collaborate with this world class team to bring disruptive value to our clients.”
“Having a trusted advisor who can step in immediately, assess the situation, and turn potential into real business value is critical,” said Jeni Barovian, co-founder Advisor of TechArena. “TechArena Advisory is exactly the kind of capability I wish I’d had in earlier executive roles—someone who’s been in your seat, understands the challenges, and can quickly add value and drive results.”
The Advisory practice will engage across the full range of challenges facing tech leaders today in achieving disproportionate value in this historic era. The Advisory leverages its collective depth, knowledge, and experience on challenges extending across product and portfolio strategy, market positioning and ecosystem and architecture bets to go to market and revenue acceleration, competitive narrative development, and financial, governance and investor confidence management. Given advisor experience in leading world class organizations, TechArena also expects clients to leverage the team’s talent to help improve organizational readiness and inject best practices for leadership development.
Together, these focus areas will serve as a catalyst for business growth and resilience in today’s competitive landscape. That impact is already resonating with early clients.
“TechArena Advisory’s collaboration with my organization demonstrated the unique value of deep operating experience, combined with a commitment to understanding our specific challenges,” said Alexis Crowell, Global CMO & GM of the Americas, Axelera AI. “They took time to research more about my company, our position in the market and helped us frame a key market opportunity and also delivered an action plan and supported execution to drive it forward.”
Founding Advisors include:
Raejeanne Skillern: Raejeanne brings silicon-to-service expertise to the Advisory practice, including having led the cloud computing transformation at Intel, growing the business unit to over $10 billion in revenue for the company, re-positioning the Cloud, Enterprise, and Communications business at Flex becoming the leading growth driver for the firm, and most recently served as Chief Marketing Officer of Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud service provider. Raejeanne’s practice areas extend from market strategy to portfolio position and routes to market. She has led large scale organizations including driving culture and change management as well as being an advocate for leadership development. In addition to her Advisory work, Raejeanne currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Jabil and previously served on the board of directors of Lattice Semiconductor.
Lakecia Gunter: Lakecia brings a distinctive combination of enterprise growth leadership, ecosystem strategy, and board governance expertise to the Advisory practice. As former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft’s Global Partner Solutions organization, she operated at the center of one of the world’s largest partner ecosystems—driving multi-billion-dollar revenue growth, scaling global routes-to-market, and enabling partners to monetize AI-powered solutions. Her experience spans technology and commercial leadership, with a track record of connecting product innovation to revenue acceleration across global markets. She has led transformations at Microsoft and Intel, aligning platform strategy, partner ecosystems, and go-to-market execution to unlock growth in cloud, AI, and data center environments. Lakecia serves as an independent director at IDEX Corporation, board advisor to Responsive.io, contributes to the Georgia Tech Advisory Board, and hosts the ROAR with Lakecia Gunter podcast.
Jeni Barovian: Jeni’s deep technology expertise was built through roles across product P&L leadership of Intel’s network and edge products, product management and strategy of Intel’s data center and AI silicon and software group. She most recently oversaw Altera’s business development across cloud, communications, and embedded markets, navigating the foundation of Altera as an independent entity and closure of private equity investment. She has served on the boards of directors of the Open Compute Project Foundation and Telecommunications Industry Association. In addition to her Advisory practice, Jeni is an advocate for education and serves on the Boards of Directors of the Case Alumni Foundation and Arizona Academic Decathlon Association.
Dana Bos: Dana’s experience navigating organizational transformation across a dynamic industry portfolio includes a decade of leading an independent consultancy practice at Bos Solutions. Her deep expertise across sectors including technology, healthcare, biotechnology, and non-profit organizations provides a unique perspective on the changing organizational landscape created by AI integration into the enterprise. In addition to her Advisory practice, Dana is the co-host of the Maestro Mindset podcast with Rose Schooler, where they share their perspectives on leading and managing high-performance organizations from two complementary vantage points, the business leader and the organizational effectiveness expert.
Laura St. John: Laura’s deep finance and strategic leadership experience has created disproportionate growth for startups and Fortune 500 companies. At Intel, she was instrumental in driving financial strategy for $25 billion in transformative strategic transactions with Apollo, UMC, and Brookfield, serving in board and leadership roles supporting execution and value creation. Her expertise spans corporate development, P&L management, FP&A, and post-merger integration, providing technology leaders with strategic and operational insight as they scale, pursue partnerships, and navigate complex transactions. Laura is also Co-Founder of MisaLabs.ai, simplifying AI inference deployment with modular building blocks and enjoying wearing the many hats required by her nascent startup.
Allyson Klein: Allyson’s vast industry marketing acumen was built leading marketing and communications for Micron and data center and edge marketing for Intel. Her skill with mapping strategy to actionable impact has been the foundation of TechArena’s collaboration with tech sector clients since its foundation in 2022. Her work has been recognized by multiple Stevie, dotcomm, and WomenTech awards. Earlier this year, she was named Tech Female Founder of the Year by the Global Business Tech Awards. Allyson has served as a professor at Portland State University’s business school, teaching undergraduate students the joys of entrepreneurism. In addition to her Advisory practice, Allyson is founder and CEO of TechArena and the host of the In the Arena podcast.
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