OCT 2019 – APR 2026 · CRNC · CIK 1768267 · FY ends Sept 30
Cerence Leadership
Cerence is the only AI pure-play on this roster that originated as a spin-off — the October 1, 2019 separation from Nuance Communications — and that lineage continues to shape its leadership story. Three CEOs in six years (Sanjay Dhawan → Stefan Ortmanns → Brian Krzanich), an executive cohort almost entirely refreshed in 2024, and an eight-director board reducing to six at the February 12, 2026 Annual Meeting. Sourced from the January 2, 2026 DEF 14A proxy statement and the FY2025 10-K filed November 20, 2025.
Sibling pages: Cerence Financials · Roster row: Cerence on /orgs/ · AI pure-plays: /ai/orgs/.
Spin-off origin — the only AI pure-play that started this way
Cerence Inc. was incorporated in Delaware on February 28, 2019 and listed on Nasdaq as CRNC on October 2, 2019, the day after Nuance Communications, Inc. distributed all of Cerence's outstanding common stock to Nuance shareholders on a 1:8 ratio. The October 1, 2019 distribution carved out the entire Nuance Automotive business unit — the in-cabin voice + assistant licensing business that Nuance had built around its Dragon-derived speech stack and the Mercedes MBUX, BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant, and Audi MMI Voice OEM partnerships — into a standalone public company. Every named executive officer at the moment of the spin-off had transferred over from Nuance Automotive; the company has been on its own corporate axis ever since.
Unlike every other AI pure-play on /ai/orgs/ — Palantir's five co-founders, Tempus AI's Eric Lefkofsky, Arrive AI's Dan O'Toole, C3.ai's Tom Siebel, SoundHound AI's Keyvan Mohajer, and so on — Cerence has no founder in the venture-backed-startup sense. Its founding lineage is institutional: the engineering, product, and OEM-account teams that Nuance had assembled over two decades across the ScanSoft (2005), Tegic (2007), Loquendo (2011), and Vlingo (2012) acquisitions, finally separated from the broader healthcare-and-enterprise Nuance company at the 2019 spin-off.
Microsoft completed its $19.7B acquisition of Nuance Communications on March 4, 2022. By that date Cerence had been an independent public company for two and a half years; the Nuance-Microsoft deal had no governance impact on Cerence beyond the indirect signal it sent about the value of the speech-AI category. Microsoft's acquisition history records the Nuance close; Cerence's leadership history starts independently in October 2019 and is not a Microsoft narrative.
Spin-off documentation: Form 10 registration statement filed by Cerence with the SEC ahead of the October 1, 2019 distribution; the “Information Statement” exhibit to the Form 10 is the canonical primary-source record of the original officer + director cohort.
CEO transition timeline — three CEOs in six years
The most distinctive feature of Cerence's leadership history is the speed at which the chief-executive seat has rotated since the spin-off. Three CEOs in six years — including a turn-around hiring of former Intel CEO Brian Krzanich in October 2024 — against the backdrop of the strategic pivot from licensing-the-installed-base to the xUI / CaLLM AI-native automotive cabin platform that the financials page anchors on.
Source: PEO (Principal Executive Officer) footnote in the Pay Versus Performance table of the 2026 DEF 14A: “Mr. Krzanich succeeded Dr. Ortmanns as PEO in fiscal year 2025 (on October 7, 2024). Dr. Ortmanns succeeded Sanjay Dhawan as PEO in fiscal year 2022 (on December 15, 2021).”
Current executive officers
The executive cohort named in the January 2, 2026 DEF 14A. Every officer except returning-CRO Christian Mentz joined in 2024, reflecting the late-Ortmanns-era restructuring and the Krzanich-era rebuild that followed. The mix — an Intel/CDK-fluent CEO, an Adient-trained CFO, a Mercedes-Benz product chief, an Idaho-Nat-Lab-and-Lenovo-trained GC, and an Amazon-Smart-Vehicles CRO — is purpose-built for OEM-direct selling of the xUI platform. Click any row for the bio detail.
Brian Krzanich
Active · President, Chief Executive Officer, Director
October 7, 2024
President and Chief Executive Officer of Cerence since October 7, 2024; also a director (Board member since October 2024). Age 65. Best known for his tenure as CEO of Intel Corporation from May 2013 to June 2018, where he led the shift from PC-centric to data-centric computing, expanded Intel's reach into AI, autonomous driving, and IoT, and acquired Mobileye. Joined Intel in 1982 as a process engineer; rose through manufacturing operations and the COO role. From 2019 to 2022, served as CEO of CDK Global, Inc., the automotive-dealer software company; led CDK's sale to Brookfield Business Partners in 2022. B.S. in chemistry from San Jose State University.
Tony Rodriquez
New, Nov 2024 · Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
November 2024
EVP and Chief Financial Officer since November 2024. Joined Cerence after senior financial-leadership roles at Adient plc (NYSE:ADNT, the automotive-seating spin-off from Johnson Controls) and earlier at Johnson Controls itself. The Cerence FY2025 10-K identifies him as principal financial officer and principal accounting officer; he succeeded the interim-CFO arrangement put in place during the gap that opened when prior CFO Mark Gallenberger departed in mid-2024.
Nils Schanz
New, Aug 2024 · Executive Vice President, Product and Technology
August 2024
EVP, Product and Technology since August 2024. Joined from Mercedes-Benz Group AG, where he led the development of MBUX (the Mercedes-Benz User Experience) — the in-cabin voice-and-display platform that has historically been one of Cerence's flagship reference deployments. Schanz's hire is the most direct OEM-customer-to-product-leader move in Cerence's history: the engineer who specified MBUX from the buyer side now leads the platform-engineering team that supplies it. The xUI / CaLLM product line and the Geely Galaxy M9 design win are both within Schanz's remit.
Jennifer Salinas
New, Jun 2024 · Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel
June 2024
EVP, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel since June 2024. Pre-Cerence: senior legal-and-administrative roles at Lenovo Group, including SVP and Chief Legal Officer of Lenovo's North America business; earlier in-house counsel at Idaho National Laboratory and the Battelle-managed federal-research operations that surround it. Salinas oversees the Cerence legal function (including the Samsung patent-infringement matter that resolved into the Q1 FY26 $49.5M cross-license payment), HR, and corporate communications.
Christian Mentz
Executive Vice President, Chief Revenue Officer
2023 (returning)
EVP, Chief Revenue Officer. Earlier in his career, led the automotive sales organization for the Nuance Automotive business unit prior to its 2019 spin-off into Cerence; left after the spin-off to lead automotive sales at Amazon Smart Vehicles (the Alexa Auto / Alexa Custom Assistant initiative) before returning to Cerence to run the OEM-direct sales motion. Mentz is the longest-tenured executive officer relative to the Nuance Automotive lineage; the others all post-date the 2019 spin-off by years.
Positions and joining dates as listed in the 2026 DEF 14A and the FY2025 10-K Item 10. Each executive officer serves at the discretion of the Board. Cerence does not disclose officer ages in the proxy at the cohort-wide level applied by Tempus AI / Palantir; ages omitted here for that reason.
Board of directors — reducing from eight to six at the 2026 Annual Meeting
Eight directors as of the proxy filing date; two are not standing for re-election at the February 12, 2026 Annual Meeting (Arun Sarin and Alfred Nietzel), and the Board has approved a reduction in size from eight (8) to six (6) effective at the close of the meeting. All six nominees stand for one-year terms expiring at the 2027 Annual Meeting; Cerence does not have a classified board (every director stands every year). The board operates with an independent Chairperson structure separate from the CEO seat — a governance posture more conservative than Tempus AI's combined Founder-CEO-Chair model. Seven of eight current directors are independent under Nasdaq listing standards (only Krzanich is not); after the 2026 Annual Meeting that becomes five of six.
Kristi Ann Matus
57
Independent Chairperson · Independent · Audit Committee Member (Audit Chair until Aug 19, 2025; will be Compensation Chair after 2026 Annual Meeting)
September 2019
Independent Chairperson of the Board. Joined the Cerence board at the September 2019 spin-off slate. Career: CFO and COO of Buckle Agency LLC from 2020 to July 2022; executive advisor to Thomas H. Lee Partners from 2014 to 2020; EVP, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer at athenahealth, Inc. (2014–2016); EVP and Head of Governmental Services at Aetna (2012–2013); EVP and CFO at USAA (2008–2012); began her career at Thrivent. Concurrent boards: Ambac Financial Group (since 2023); previously Alliance Bernstein Holding L.P. (2019–2023) and Equitable Holdings (2015–2023). B.S. from University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Stepped down as Audit Chair on August 19, 2025 (Marion Harris took over); will become Compensation Chair following the 2026 Annual Meeting.
Brian Krzanich
65
President & CEO · Director (management; not independent)
October 2024
Management director (not independent). Appointed to the Board concurrent with the October 7, 2024 CEO appointment; the only management director on the Board. See the executive-officer row for the operating-role bio (Intel CEO 2013–2018, CDK Global CEO 2019–2022).
Marianne Budnik
57
Independent · Chair, Nominating & Governance
October 2019
Independent director and Chair of the Nominating & Governance Committee. Joined the Cerence board at the spin-off. Career: serial-CMO across cybersecurity and infrastructure software — CMO of VAST Data since September 2023; previously CMO of Talon Cyber Security (March 2022–August 2023), CrowdStrike Holdings (December 2020–March 2022), CyberArk Software (2017–2020), SimpliVity Corporation (acquired by HPE; 2014–2017), Acme Packet (acquired by Oracle), and CA Technologies. Concurrent: F5, Inc. director since October 2022. Previously Schibsted Media Group (2016–2020). M.B.A. from Boston University Questrom School of Business; B.A. from Babson College.
Douglas Davis
64
Independent · Compensation & Audit Committee Member
May 2022
Independent director. Career: 35 years at Intel Corporation (1984–2019), most recently Senior Vice President of Intel's Automated Driving Group (2017–2019), where he formed the autonomous-driving business and led Intel's acquisition of Mobileye. Earlier: SVP and General Manager of Intel's Internet of Things group (2015–2017). Concurrent boards: Oshkosh Corporation (since 2021) and Verra Mobility (since 2019). M.B.A. from Arizona State University W.P. Carey School of Business; B.S. Electrical Engineering from New Mexico State University. The Intel-veteran-Chair pairing on the Cerence board (Davis + Krzanich, both Intel alumni in the autonomous-driving / IoT lineage) is a structural feature of the post-2024 Cerence governance.
Marion Harris
56
Independent · Chair, Audit Committee · Newest, Apr 2025
April 2025
Newest director (joined April 2025); succeeded Kristi Ann Matus as Audit Chair on August 19, 2025. Designated audit-committee financial expert. Career: President and CEO of AgFirst Farm Credit Bank since July 2025; previously 25+ years at Ford Motor Company, including Chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Credit Company (2019–2024) where he led the digital-transformation program that produced the highest consumer-satisfaction scores in the auto-finance industry. Earlier: Vice President of Ford Mobility, with operational responsibility for Ford's startup digital-and-mobility businesses; director of Ford Direct (July 2016–July 2023). B.S. and M.A. in math from Mississippi State University.
Marcy Klevorn
66
Independent · Compensation & Nominating & Governance Committee Member
June 2023
Independent director. Career: 35 years at Ford Motor Company across IT, mobility, and corporate transformation — global Chief Information Officer; CIO of Ford Motor Company in Europe; EVP and President of Ford Mobility (where she oversaw Ford Smart Mobility LLC, chaired the board of Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC, and led Ford's investments in emerging mobility services); most recently Ford's Chief Transformation Officer. Concurrent boards: Northern Trust Corporation (since January 2019) and Humana, Inc. (since February 2021). Bachelor's in business from the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business. The Ford-alumna pairing with Marion Harris — the former Ford CIO and the former Ford Motor Credit CEO — gives Cerence's board unusually deep direct experience with one of its largest OEM customer accounts.
Alfred Nietzel
—
Independent · Chair, Compensation Committee · Audit member · Not standing for re-election
2019 (spin-off)
Joined the Cerence Board at the October 2019 spin-off; not standing for re-election at the 2026 Annual Meeting. Currently Chair of the Compensation Committee and member of the Audit Committee. Career: former CFO of CDK Global, Inc. — the same automotive-dealer software company Brian Krzanich subsequently led as CEO; finance-and-accounting expertise spanning the automotive-supplier market. The Compensation-Committee chair seat passes to Kristi Ann Matus following the 2026 Annual Meeting.
Arun Sarin
—
Independent · Nominating & Governance Committee member · Not standing for re-election
2019 (spin-off)
Joined the Cerence Board at the October 2019 spin-off; not standing for re-election at the 2026 Annual Meeting. Currently a member of the Nominating & Governance Committee. Career: former CEO of Vodafone Group plc (2003–2008); senior global telecom and technology executive whose multi-decade public-company governance experience anchored the spin-off-era Cerence board.
Committee composition after the 2026 Annual Meeting
- Audit Committee: Marion Harris (Chair), Douglas Davis, Kristi Ann Matus.
- Compensation Committee: Kristi Ann Matus (Chair), Douglas Davis, Marcy Klevorn.
- Nominating & Governance Committee: Marianne Budnik (Chair), Marcy Klevorn, Kristi Ann Matus.
Ages, committee assignments, and director-since dates as listed in the 2026 DEF 14A. Sarin and Nietzel ages are not surfaced in the proxy at the per-director-bio level (consistent with their non-standing-for-reelection status). Independence determinations: Nasdaq listing standards and Rule 10A-3 under the Exchange Act.
Voting structure — single class, no super-vote
Cerence has a single class of common stock, one vote per share. There is no dual-class super-voting structure of the kind Tempus AI uses (Class B carrying 30 votes per share) or that Palantir uses (Class F co-founder concentration). The proxy's beneficial-ownership table does not surface any single beneficial owner above the 10% concentration threshold. Combined with the independent-Chairperson governance posture, this places Cerence at the most diffuse end of the AI-pure-play voting-rights spectrum. There is no classified board: every director stands for election every year.
Source: 2026 DEF 14A, “Voting and Quorum Requirements” and “Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management” sections.
Notable departures
The 2024 executive-team turnover and the 2026-Annual-Meeting board reduction together produced an unusually concentrated set of departures. Pre-2024 officer history is sparser in the public record because Cerence was still a recently-spun-off company with rapid early-CEO turnover.
Officer-departure dates approximate to the proxy or 8-K disclosure that recorded them. CFO transitions during the Ortmanns era are reconstructed from the FY 10-K Item 10 sequence and 8-K Item 5.02 filings. The 2026-Annual-Meeting board reduction is recorded in the “Election of Directors” section of the 2026 DEF 14A: “the size of the Board be decreased from eight (8) to six (6) directors.”
Read these primary sources
Most of the page's content is paraphrased from the URLs below. They are the authoritative places to read what Cerence has said in its own SEC filings.
Cerence SEC filings
The 2026 DEF 14A is the canonical source for the current officer + director rosters, the 2026-Annual-Meeting board reduction, the independent-Chairperson governance posture, and the three-CEO PEO footnote. The FY2025 10-K supplements with Item 10 (Directors and Executive Officers); the original Form 10 supplies the spin-off-era founding officer + director cohort.
# 2026 DEF 14A — canonical source for governance
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1768267/000162828026000012/crnc-20260102.htm
# FY2025 10-K — Item 10 (Directors and Executive Officers)
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1768267/000162828025053372/crnc-20250930.htm
# Cerence on EDGAR — full filing history
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001768267
# EDGAR submissions JSON — full filing index for Cerence
https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0001768267.jsonCerence's own pages
The company's IR site is the company-side framing reference for the leadership team and corporate governance.
# Cerence corporate site
https://www.cerence.com/
# Cerence IR — Governance landing
https://investors.cerence.com/governance
# Cerence IR — Investor Relations landing
https://investors.cerence.com/Sources: Cerence's own SEC filings — specifically the January 2, 2026 DEF 14A proxy statement for the current officer + director rosters, the 2026-Annual-Meeting board reduction, and the three-CEO PEO timeline footnote; the FY2025 10-K filed November 20, 2025 for Item 10 (Directors and Executive Officers). Last updated April 2026.
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