Team

Mike Levitt is the co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Core Scientific, Inc. From 2016 – 2021, Mike was the CEO of Kayne Anderson Capital. He served as a vice chairman and partner of Apollo Global Management, LP (Apollo) from 2012 – 2016. Mike was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Stone Tower Capital LLC, an investment firm that he sold to Apollo in 2012. Before founding Stone Tower, Mike was a partner with the private equity firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Incorporated. Mike has been an active investor in the Technology, Media, and Telecom (TMT) industries for almost three decades. Earlier in his career, Mike was an investment banker with Smith Barney Inc. and Morgan Stanley & Co.

Mike has a B.B.A. and J. D. from the University of Michigan, and serves on the University’s Investment Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Visiting Committee of the Ross School of Business and Trustee of the Law School’s Cook Trust. Over the years, Mike has worked with numerous philanthropic organizations, including the Make-A-Wish Foundations of America and New York, and the New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund.

Todd DuChene brings over 26 years’ experience as a General Counsel in private and public companies. His expertise spans intellectual property, patents, IPOs, and strategic transactions. Todd was 29 years old when he became VP, General Counsel for Office Max. He was instrumental with the IPO at OfficeMax, which was one of the largest IPOs in retail history. Todd joined Fisher Scientific and helped grow the business from $500M to $6B. Todd worked on 100+ deals while at Fisher Scientific until it merged with Thermo Electron. He served as GC at several other technology companies that ranged from $2B to $12B: Solectron, National Semiconductor, Nuance, and FLIR Systems.

Todd received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science at The College of Wooster and received his JD from the University of Michigan.

Matt has over 15 years experience working in operations and engineering management. He has a strong background in infrastructure strategy and management, site engineering and data center operations.

Previously Matt was at Equinix, where he was the Senior Director – Americas IBX Operations. While at Equinix, he was responsible for 200 data centers, 380,000 cabinets and 1,000MW of critical infrastructure. Prior to Equinix, Matt spent 12 years at Hewlett Packard where he was responsible for end-to-end data center infrastructure services. Matt started his career at with the US Army as a Tactical Node Center Switch Supervisor. Matt holds a BS in Organizational Leadership from Texas A&M – Commerce and an AAS in Information Technology from Central Texas College.

Lynn Burgener joined Core Scientific as Chief Tax & Trade Officer with over 31 years of international and domestic tax expertise. Lynn is responsible for establishing tax strategy, communicating tax objectives, compliance, tax provision, financial statement reporting and related disclosures. Previously, Lynn spent 10 years as the Vice President – Global Tax for Univar, a $9.0B Fortune 500 global chemical distribution company. Lynn and her team of 20+ tax professionals led the global tax function through years of private equity ownership, pre-IPO readiness, global asset securitizations, global debt refinancing, and the Company’s 2015 initial public offering.

Prior to joining Univar, Lynn was the Director of North America Tax for Heidelberg Cement AG’s North American operations, and Global Tax Director for Exide Technologies. Early in her career, Lynn worked for KPMG LLP as a Tax Manager.

Lynn received her BS in Accounting from Arizona State University and her Masters in Taxation from Villanova University. She holds an active California CPA license.

Russell Cann has 21 years of experience designing, building, and growing large scale technology infrastructure companies. Prior to Core Scientific, Russell grew and developed a blockchain and cryptocurrency mining business as well as several other network infrastructure concerns. Previously he worked for Accenture in the areas of fintech and risk management on projects in Europe and the Americas.

An active Philanthropist, Russell is a Trustee for the National Foundation of the Boy Scouts of America and Alston Wilkes Society. Further he volunteers with Sue Kuhlen Camp for Kids and Lion’s Club. He is an active member of YPO and graduated cum laude from the South Carolina Honors College and the Moore School of Business.

Steve Gitlin brings more than 20 years of experience guiding the adoption of disruptive technologies and creating new market opportunities to Core Scientific. As Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Investor Relations at AeroVironment, Inc., a multi-billion dollar market capitalization technology solutions provider, Steve was at the forefront of driving the adoption of innovative unmanned aircraft, robotics and efficient power solutions. At AeroVironment, Steve served on its IPO core team, led its corporate rebranding, its strategic planning process, solutions marketing program, User Experience initiative, internal and external communications, public relations and created and led its investor relations program. Steve previously developed and executed marketing programs for ePolicy, one of the first online commercial insurance solutions.

Steve earned a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School and a Master of International Management from the Joseph H. Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. Steve earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Carol has nearly 20 years of experience working in the energy industry, with a strong background in energy infrastructure, deregulated markets, site selection, and economic development.

Carol was previously at FirstEnergy Corp, where she was the Director of Economic Development. She has also served as Director at FirstEnergy Solutions where she launched and led two sales and marketing teams, including four managers and a staff of 35 associates. She developed teams who consistently achieved revenue and new client acquisition targets. Carol holds a BS in Business Administration from Drexel University. She currently serves as the Chairman of the Board for two nonprofit organizations including the Autism Society of Greater Akron and Keep Akron Beautiful. She also serves on the Ohio Market Leadership Advisory Board for USGBC Ohio.

Jeff Pratt has over 26 years of financial, accounting, and operational experience in the technology industry. Jeff held a variety of roles in his 26 years with Microsoft, including Corporate Accounting, Financial Analysis, and Controller. He has developed and operationalized sales incentive plans for employees from front line to leadership teams in over 100 countries. Jeff built and managed finance and accounting teams in South America. As Controller of an Engineering division at Microsoft, he managed a multibillion-dollar budget with teams spread across Israel, India, and China. Most recently Jeff lead the Enterprise Risk Management practice as part of Microsoft’s Internal Audit team. He was on the advisory board of the COSO Enterprise Risk Management update. Jeff holds CPA and CMA certificates and is a graduate of the University of Kansas.

Jeff Taylor joined Core Scientific from People Connect, where he served as Director of Site Reliability and Dev Ops. Jeff started his career with Amazon and spent 14 years, expanding the fulfillment center network, operating and engineering upon the global retail sites and designing and launching many Amazon Web Services. He joined AWS as employee #20 and helped to grow the organization to several thousand. Jeff received many honors at Amazon, including the Amazon Inventor Award for his work on AWS and S3, as well as the Fire Extinguisher Award, for operational excellence in process and services. After Amazon, Jeff spent four years at CDK Global, leading Strategic Platform Engineering during a divestiture event and migrating mission critical aspect to the cloud. Jeff received his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

Denise has over 25 years of experience in senior leadership positions in Finance. She has a strong background in leading corporate finance, including FP&A, finance business partners, accounting, financial reporting, financial systems, and building a strong control environment.

Prior to joining Core Scientific, Denise was at Oportun, Inc. where she was Senior Vice President, Finance, and FP&A, and, among her other responsibilities, she helped to take them public. Her experience includes 23 years with Visa, Inc. where she began her career as the Vice President of Global Tax. She held several roles during her tenure, including, Senior Vice President of FP&A, where she was involved in Visa’s initial public offering in 2008, Senior Vice President, Visa Europe Liaison, responsible for managing the relationship with Visa Europe ensuring interoperability for both the brand and technology, and finally, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Risk Management. Prior to joining Visa, Denise worked in public accounting.

Denise holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from San Francisco State University and a master’s degree in tax from Golden Gate University. She is a Certified Public Accountant.