Leadership Team

Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Founder/CEO Catalyst, Litigation Partner

John Tredennick

John Tredennick is the founder and CEO of Merlin Search Technologies, which develops AI-powered search software for investigations, discovery and regulatory compliance. Prior to that he was founder and CEO of Catalyst Repository Systems, which he sold to OpenText in early 2019. For the first 20 years of his career, he was a trial lawyer and litigation partner at Holland & Hart, a national law firm based in the Rocky Mountains. 

John is a prolific speaker and writer. Over the past 30 years, he has written eight books and countless articles on legal technology topics, including “TAR for Smart People” (3rd Ed.),  two ABA bestsellers “Winning with Computers” (Vols. One and Two), “How to Prepare For, Take and Use a Deposition at Trial (James Publishing), and several editions of “The Lawyer’s Guide to Spreadsheets.” John has served as a Chair of the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section and Editor in Chief of its flagship magazine. John is currently active with the Sedona Conference as co-drafting team leader for the new Sedona Guidelines on Legal Holds and as a member of the drafting team for the International Legal Hold Primer. 

John’s legal and technology acumen has earned him numerous awards, including being named one of the top six “E-Discovery Trailblazers,” by the American Lawyer, recognized as a legal visionary to the FastCase 50 and named one of the “Top 100 Global Technology Leaders” by London CityTech magazine. John was also recognized as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Technology in the Rocky Mountain Region and Top Technology Entrepreneur by the Colorado Software and Internet Association.  While at Holland & Hart in the nineties, John became one of the first CTOs of a major law firm and saw his firm inducted into the Computerworld-Smithsonian Institute Innovators Archive (1999) for their pioneering work using PDFs rather that TIFF images for ediscovery software.

Vice President, Software Development
Former Dev Leader Catalyst Repository Systems

Maheswaran Muthu

Maheshwaran Muthu is the Vice President of Software Development for Merlin Search Technologies, responsible for leading all software development activities across the organization. He has a Bachelors in Computer Science from PSG College Of Technology, adding a Masters in Computer Science in 2000. For several years he served as Director of Technology Services at Marlabs, Inc., a leading international software development and outsourcing company.

In 2004 Mahesh moved to the U.S. where he led the Indian development team that helped design and build Catalyst’s award-winning search platforms. In 2019, after Catalyst was acquired, Mahesh took the role as a senior developer for the company that bought Catalyst. After leaving his employment with Catalyst’s successor, Mahesh joined the Merlin Search team, taking the position of Vice President of Software Development.

Mahesh brings his experience as an e-discovery veteran who has spent close to two decades in building award winning innovative products from concept to delivery. He currently leads a team of over 16 technology professionals at Merlin. 

Chief Client Officer
Former V.P. Legal Operations Fiserv

Kathy Hogy

Kathy Hogy has been in the legal industry for over 40 years, focusing on Legal Operations, Support and Technology. She spent the first 20 years of her career as a Senior Paralegal specializing in e-discovery, client support and legal technology at a national law firm. From there, Kathy moved into the role of Vice President of Legal Operations for First Data Corporation which later became Fiserv, a Fortune 200 FinTech Company. She spent 16 years in her role at Fiserv, managing a team of eighteen legal professionals.

Kathy’s work with Merlin focuses on Client and Partner relationships.  She works closely with Merlin’s business and financial operations while leading Merlin’s Support and Client Services Teams. She will also consult with legal departments and law firms on various legal operations issues, focusing on helping legal departments become more efficient and effective in their use of technology. 

Kathy brings to Merlin a broad understanding of client requests and user needs. She has been responsible for legal operations and people management for decades, including vendor management. This unique perspective will allow her to move seamlessly into supporting the needs of Merlin as a Company and each client we have the opportunity to work with. 

Chief Data Scientist
Post Doc work on AI at UMD.

Dr. William Webber

Dr. William Webber completed his PhD in Measurement in Information Retrieval Evaluation at the University of Melbourne under Professors Alistair Moffat and Justin Zobel, and his post-doctoral research at the E-Discovery Lab of the University of Maryland under Professor Doug Oard. 

With over 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications in the areas of information retrieval, statistical evaluation, and machine learning, he is a world expert in AI and statistical measurement for information retrieval and e-discovery.  He has almost a decade of industrial experience as a consulting data scientist to ediscovery software vendors, service providers, and law firms. 

Prior to his research career, he was an experienced software engineer and developer of research information retrieval systems, culminating in a Masters by Research degree on architecting and developing high-throughput distributed indexing and retrieval systems for large volumes of textual data.

Chief Revenue Officer
Former VP Sales Nuix, Former VP Sales Epiq/DTI

Jim Bocchino

Jim brings nearly 30 years of experience in global sales strategy and management, most recently serving in executive sales leadership roles at Nuix and Epiq. In the role of Chief Revenue Officer, Jim will oversee global client growth in the U.S. , EMEA, Asia Pacific and Australia for DiscoveryPartner, Merlin Search Technologies’ GenAI and advanced cloud technology platform for ediscovery and large-scale investigations. 

Prior to joining Merlin, Jim served as Vice President, Corporate Sales at Nuix, where he provided strategic sales leadership for a team of enterprise sales executives, strategic account managers and solution consultants in enterprise ediscovery software, cyber security and forensic investigations.

Prior to Nuix, Bocchino served in numerous senior leadership positions with Epiq, most recently as Regional Vice President of Sales. In that capacity, he oversaw a team of five area sales directors and 33 sales executives focused on corporate, government and AmLaw 200 markets. Bocchino joined the newly formed Epiq in 2017 following the acquisition of Epiq by DTI, where  he had originally started in 2004. At DTI, Bocchino was responsible for developing the national accounts program and leading the national accounts sales team to record growth.

Earlier in his career, Bocchino served as Managing Partner at On-Site Sourcing, a legal document services and ediscovery company, and Managing Partner at IKON Legal Document Services.

CFO and Member, Merlin Advisory Board
Former CFO Catalyst Repository Systems

Lew Visscher

Former Catalyst CFO providing financial leadership to high tech startups for over 30 years.

Lewis Visscher has over 30 years of diversified business advisory, management, operational, financial, and accounting experience. Lew most recently served as the CFO at Catalyst Repository Systems, which was acquired by a large public technology company in early 2019. After leaving Catalyst, Lew joined Merlin Search Technologies to serve as its Chief Financial Officer and to participate in its Advisory Board.

Prior to Catalyst, Lew was CFO for various early-stage technology businesses providing financial leadership through many operational aspects, contract negotiations, and merger and acquisition strategies. Before then Lew was with PricewaterhouseCoopers where he worked with many private and public companies on equity offerings, start-ups, acquisitions, divestitures and multinational, multi-location operations.

Lew is most famously known in the Colorado community for Lew’s List (www.lewslist.com), a job resource board for finance and accounting professionals. Lew is also involved in Financial Executives International (FEI) in both Colorado and Arizona and served as President of the Colorado chapter in 2015. Lew is also the founder and an active member of the Colorado chapter of the New Canaan Society, a Christian men’s organization. In 2009, Lew was honored as CFO of the Year by the Denver Business Journal.

Merlin CISO / Member, Advisory Board
Former CIA Cyber and Cloud Architect

Daniel Cybulski

Former Cyber security and cloud architect for the CIA and currently senior FinTech security consultant.

Daniel Cybulski is on the Merlin Advisory Board and also serves as Chief Information Security Officer for Merlin Search Technologies, responsible for directing and supervising information security programs for the company. Dan brings over eighteen years experience designing, supporting and leading complex computing environments, with extensive experience building, deploying, securing and supporting operational technical infrastructures including, cloud, advanced analytics and complex heterogeneous High Performance Computing systems and high performance network and storage subsystems.

Dan received an MS in Information Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He then joined the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) where he spent over ten years focusing on cyber security and big cloud architecture, ultimately in the role as Technology Director. Dan then joined Cognitio Corp as Chief Technology Officer where he focused on architecting and implementing cloud computing environments, supporting customer cloud transition and hybrid cloud projects and cyber security.

Currently, Dan is the founder and CTO of Decisive Tek Consulting, LLC where he focuses on:

• Designing and implementing cloud computing environments supporting customer cloud transition and hybrid cloud projects:
• Assessing, designing and implementing secure systems and architectures both on premise and in commercial and federal cloud environments; and
• Leading the implementation of the NIST Cyber Security Framework and Risk Management Framework to meet federal cyber security standards.

Dan advises Merlin regarding security policy and practices, supervise security implementation and serves on Merlin’s Technology Governance Committee.

Chief Operating Officer

Kendra Smith

Kendra Smith has been in the legal industry for 15 years, focusing on Document Review, Litigation Support, Technology, and Operations. She has a legal background with a BS from Notre Dame and JD from Texas A&M. After law school she focused on eDiscovery and Review, working for several law firms including a leading one in Denver and another in Washington DC. She then switched to the service provider side, growing her career from Director of eDiscovery to Chief Operating Officer at Cobra Legal Solutions.

Kendra joins Merlin Search Technologies as Chief Operating Officer. At Merlin she will help develop the company’s strategic plan and vision, oversee daily operations, and manage all aspects of Merlin’s business and financial operations while ensuring Merlin’s Support and Client Service excellence. 

Kendra brings to Merlin a deep understanding of client needs across the EDRM, team building, and efficient, cost effective business and legal operations. She has been responsible for legal and business operations, people management, and service excellence from corporate, law firm and service provider angles over her career. This unique perspective allows her to seamlessly support Merlin’s needs as a Company along with Merlin’s partners and clients.