Ron Weissman was vice president of strategy and corporate marketing for Verity, a global leader in corporate information retrieval and knowledge management. During his tenure at Verity, the executive team earned the large company "turnaround of the year" award (1999) from the Turnaround Management Association; Verity gained dominant market share and saw its market capitalization grow from $50 million to more than $1.5 billion. Prior to Verity, Ron spent more than five years at NeXT Computer, where he managed European and corporate marketing. In addition to his work in Silicon Valley, he ran academic computing at Brown University and at the University of Maryland, where he was Associate Professor of History. He is the author of two books on the history of Florence during the Renaissance.