Christa Quarles
Chief Executive Officer
Christa Quarles serves as CEO of Parallels and on the company’s Board of Directors. Since joining the company in 2020, she has led Parallels through a period of operational transformation, product expansion, and long-term strategic growth.
She also led the successful separation and sale of Corel in May 2026. With more than 20 years of experience in technology leadership, Christa is known for guiding organizations through periods of growth, operational change, and market evolution.
Before joining Parallels, Christa served as CEO of OpenTable, where she led the company’s transition toward cloud-based solutions for small businesses while driving growth across its global operations. Earlier in her career, she served as Chief Business Officer at Nextdoor and held senior leadership roles at The Walt Disney Company, including Senior Vice President of Interactive Games. She also served as CFO of Playdom prior to its acquisition by Disney. Christa began her career in equity research at Thomas Weisel Partners LLC (now Stifel Financial), covering the internet sector.
Christa currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Affirm and Kimberly-Clark. She holds a BS in Economics and German from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Connie Chen
Chief Legal Officer & Head of Partnerships
Connie Chen serves as Chief Legal Officer and Head of Partnerships at Parallels, where she oversees the company’s global legal affairs, regulatory compliance, and strategic partnership initiatives. Since joining the company in 2021, Connie has played a key role in guiding Parallels through a period of significant transformation, strengthening the company's legal and partnership functions while supporting the company’s growth, operational expansion, and cross-functional business initiatives. She is known for her operational mindset, collaborative leadership style, and ability to build strong, high-performing teams across legal and business organizations.
With experience spanning high-growth technology companies, Connie brings deep expertise in commercial transactions, product counseling, corporate governance, M&A, and regulatory strategy. Before joining Parallels, she served as General Counsel and SVP of Legal and Business Development at OpenTable, where she led the company’s global legal, compliance, risk, and business development organizations. Earlier in her career, Connie spent seven years at Latham & Watkins LLP advising public and private companies, venture capital firms, investment banks, and private equity funds on IPOs, financing transactions, M&A, intellectual property, corporate governance, and SEC compliance matters.
Connie holds a JD from Stanford Law School, as well as a BS in Symbolic Systems and a BA in Economics from Stanford University. She is conversant in Mandarin, a Boston Marathon qualifier, and was named to the San Francisco Business Times list of Influential Women in 2016.
Michelle Chiantera
Chief Revenue Officer
Michelle Chiantera serves as Chief Revenue Officer at Parallels, where she leads the company’s global go-to-market organization across sales, marketing, customer success, support, and revenue operations. Since joining the company, she has helped drive sustained double-digit growth by transforming the revenue organization, strengthening go-to-market execution, and aligning teams around a unified growth strategy. Under her leadership, Parallels has expanded enterprise and SMB growth opportunities, strengthened its partner-first approach, and implemented organizational changes that positioned the company for long-term scale and success. Michelle is known for her collaborative leadership style, operational clarity, and ability to build high-performing teams.
Before joining Parallels, Michelle spent more than 20 years at Cisco, where she held senior leadership roles across field, partner, and global marketing organizations. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Americas Growth Marketing and Global Partner, Segments and Industries, leading initiatives focused on accelerating growth, expanding market reach, and strengthening Cisco’s global partner ecosystem. Earlier roles included Vice President of Global Partner Marketing and Senior Director of Americas Partner Marketing. Over the course of her career, Michelle has led growth initiatives spanning direct sales, partner ecosystems, customer engagement, and enterprise marketing across global organizations.
Michelle holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing from Le Moyne College and is based in New York. She is also a strong advocate for diversity in the workplace and for developing future leaders in the technology industry.
Elena Koryakina
Chief Product & Technology Officer
Elena Koryakina serves as Chief Product & Technology Officer at Parallels, where she leads the company’s Product, Engineering, IT, AI, Infrastructure, and DevOps organizations. Since joining the company in 2001, Elena has played a foundational role in the evolution of Parallels’ virtualization technology and cross-platform computing strategy, leading the company through major technology transitions. She was also among the earliest engineers behind the virtualization engine that became the foundation of Parallels Desktop and was the first to successfully run Windows within the platform.
With nearly three decades of experience in software engineering and platform development, Elena has led teams developing virtualization, cloud, and infrastructure technologies used by businesses and consumers worldwide. She has also played a key role in technical due diligence and post-acquisition integration efforts involving products, teams, and technologies across major acquisitions, including 2X/RAS and Awingu. Known for her deep technical expertise and collaborative leadership style, Elena is passionate about the future of virtualization, AI, and cloud computing, particularly how intelligent technologies can improve operations, strengthen security, and create more seamless cross-platform experiences. She is also the author of 10 international patents and patent continuations.
Elena earned a Master’s degree in Computer Science with honors in 2001 and is a strong advocate for increasing representation and leadership opportunities for women in technology.
Ted Ridgeway
Interim Chief Financial Officer
Ted Ridgeway serves as Interim Chief Financial Officer at Parallels, where he leads the company’s global finance organization and supports strategic planning, operational performance, and long-term growth initiatives. With more than 30 years of experience across finance leadership, operations, investment banking, and capital markets, Ted specializes in helping organizations strengthen financial performance, improve operational efficiency, and build scalable processes that support growth and investment opportunities.
Before joining Parallels, Ted spent more than 15 years in technology investment banking, advising innovative companies on capital raising and M&A transactions. Over the course of his career, he has also led finance and operational initiatives across organizations with international operations spanning the United States, China, India, Germany, Ukraine, and Brazil. His work has focused on improving operational discipline, financial visibility, and long-term business growth across global organizations.
Ted earned an MBA in Finance from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a BA in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. He also completed graduate studies in Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University.
Michael Lyubinin
Vice President of Data & Information Systems
Michael Lyubinin serves as Vice President of Data & Information Systems at Parallels, where he leads the company’s data, business systems, marketing technology, web platforms, and enterprise applications teams. With more than 25 years of experience in software engineering and analytics infrastructure, Michael specializes in building scalable data platforms, leading large-scale technical initiatives, and helping organizations navigate complex data and systems transformations.
Since joining Parallels in 2023, Michael has led the company’s transition to a unified enterprise analytics platform, consolidating multiple legacy data environments into a scalable infrastructure designed to improve operational visibility, decision-making, and data reliability across the business. He is known for his hands-on leadership style, technical depth, and focus on building high-performing engineering teams.
Before joining Parallels, Michael held engineering leadership roles at Meta focused on data infrastructure, ads measurement, and privacy-related initiatives. Earlier in his career, he spent nearly two decades at Genesys, leading analytics engineering teams.
Michael holds an MS in Applied Mathematics from the National Technical University of Ukraine Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
Iryna Wigley
Senior Vice President of HR
Iryna Wigley serves as Senior Vice President of HR at Parallels, where she leads the company’s global People organization and human resources strategy. She brings more than a decade of experience supporting global technology organizations, with expertise spanning talent strategy, organizational development, employee engagement, leadership support, and business transformation.
Since joining the company in 2015, Iryna has held progressive leadership roles across the organization, including HR Business Partner, HR Director for the Americas, Senior Global HR Director, and Vice President of Global HR. Throughout her career at Parallels and Corel, she has partnered closely with executive and operational leaders to support organizational growth, strengthen company culture, and align people strategies with evolving business priorities.
Known for her collaborative and people-focused leadership style, Iryna is passionate about building inclusive, high-performing workplace cultures that help teams scale effectively through periods of growth and transformation. She is recognized for balancing strategic HR leadership with a strong focus on employee experience, leadership development, and organizational alignment across global teams.