At CloudMine, a leadership shift is telling of what’s to come

Turns out the “exciting news” CloudMine cofounder Brendan McCorkle teased us about last month involved him.

Today the Center City health IT company has announced a new CEO in executive Stephen Wray, who comes to the company with a career spanning 30 years in the life sciences space, most notably, as CEO of Malvern, Pa.-based marketing agency Cadient, a Cognizant Company, where he focused heavily on the healthcare sector.

He was at the Cadient Group for a decade, ultimately leading the company to a 2014 acquisition by Cognizant, a global professional services company headquartered in Teaneck, N.J. Most recently, he was CEO of Bensalem, Pa.-based MNG Direct, another company in the life sciences space.

(A note on Wray before you keep reading: don’t confuse him with long-time Economy League of Greater Philadelphia director advisor Steve Wray. Full disclosure: this reporter did for a second.)

As for McCorkle, he has stepped down from the top chair to take the dual role of President and Chief Innovation Officer.

Wray told Technical.ly his move to CloudMine comes at a time when “momentum behind the organization is unique” but that he looked forward to taking things to the next level.

“In order to expand our impact, we’ll continue to actively seek capital to fuel our most important initiative,” said Wray, a California transplant with deep roots in the Philly area. “We’ll likely also value partnership and acquisition opportunities.”

The new exec had nothing but praises to say of McCorkle, 36, who up to now had steered the company through some marquee partnerships and several, multimillion-dollar funding rounds.

“I’ve already had the good fortune of collaborating with Brendan,” said Wray. “His expertise and guidance is something that I salute.”

In the short-term, McCorkle’s role will be more client-facing, with an emphasis on market development for the company’s HIPAA-compliant data storage offering for the health care sector, namely, the Connected Health Cloud.

“I got a lot to learn from this guy,” McCorkle said of Wray. “He’s been the buyer and the builder of technology like this.

As part of Wray’s hire as CEO, he’ll be joining the company’s board of directors, while investor Varghese Thomas is expected to exit.

So let’s check the boardroom math real quick: Safeguard Scientifics holds two seats thanks to its 28 percent stake in the company, occupied by David Luk and Mark Mitchell. Investor Brett Topche sits in as part of MentorTech’s investments. Also on the board is Ben Franklin Technology Partners’ Omar Mencin. Finally, McCorkle occupies a seat.

CloudMine CEO Brendan McCorkle with the cool elevator in his Center City office, April 2015. (Photo by Juliana Reyes)

In this context, the news reminds us of the RevZilla shake-up late last year, if only because it involves a founding member stepping down from the CEO chair while remaining an active collaborator as the company seeks a different leadership style. In this case, though, there seems to be way less tension, if any at all. Unlike the RevZilla case, it’s more of a mutual agreement than a boardroom toss-up.

As for the team at CloudMine, currently just shy of 25 employees, McCorkle says the move was met with mostly positive reactions. “Cautiously optimistic, at the least,” he said.

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The big question here is: What’s the next stage look like? How do the next few years of the young firm shape up?

Wray likes to point to his experience at Cadient as a primer on his brand of leadership. In 2014, the global firm snatched up the 100-person company whole, while maintaining the main focus of the company alive as part of the larger firm. Combine the influx of venture cash and the focus on the enterprise spectrum with this leadership shift and you’ll see that a similar scenario is what CloudMine is gunning for. More cash is also likely to come, Wray said.

“The capital raise will be fairly aggressive,” said Wray, who also foresees the company following an “a road map that is aggressive and that is constantly responding to customer insights.”

For McCorkle, the new leadership puts CloudMine “in a better place now than it ever has.”

“In Steve we found someone who checked all of the boxes: local, super experienced, with the right background, available and interested in being an operator,” he said. “The convo switched from him being an advisor to how to get more of him, and it couldn’t be better than that.”