Contact Info:
Our operating hours are:
8AM – 5PM USA Pacific, Monday through Friday
Email support: 24/7 – support@asteriondb.com
The AsterionDB Leadership Team

Steve Guilford
CEO/CTO, Founder Mr. Guilford has over 38 years of experience working in the software industry. He is fluent in all phases of software design and implementation. His Oracle expertise dates back to 1984. His professional specialty can best be summed up as being a system integrator and a programmer’s programmer. He has written and published many tools and application systems that are targeted for use by mid-level programmers. Mr. Guilford has invented and received patents for the following technology components:- 9,740,779 – System, Method and Program Instructions For Tying Together A Media URL and Multimedia in a Database.
- 10,089,315 – Systems, Apparatus and Methods for Accessing Data From a Database As a File.
- 10,489,467 – Apparatus and Method for Tying Together an HTTP Request and Multimedia in a Database.
- 10,496,709 – Systems, Methods and Program Instructions For Calling a Database Function with a URL.
These patented technologies are employed in the design and implementation of AsterionDB. AsterionDB is a container residing in an Oracle database that manages unstructured data. The patents cited above enable AsterionDB to stream content directly from a database and to access content stored in the database as-if it were a file. In layman’s terms, AsterionDB provides a migration path away from the legacy hierarchical file-system. AsterionDB, also the name of Mr. Guilford’s company, traces it’s history back over 30 years.

Claudia Johnson
President, Chief Revenue Officer
Over the course of her career, Claudia Johnson has been a developer, a consultant, and a senior leader of services and sales for product and consulting organizations.
Claudia was at Oracle from 1994 to 1999 as the Group Vice President for Public Sector Consulting and VP of Federal Consulting Sales from 2014 to 2019. At Oracle, her teams have sold and delivered over $1B of profitable product and services revenue. She has also held senior roles at Bearing Point (Managing Director, Media and Entertainment), Microsoft (General Manager, Oil & Gas and Healthcare), and Xerox Business Services (VP of Sales, State & Local and Higher Ed).
Claudia was also involved in several entrepreneurial and early stage technology companies acting as a COO, CEO, and investing founder for 3 start-ups.
Claudia has participated in several non-profits. From 2009 to 2011, she was the President and Board Advisor to Empowher Institute, the mission being to keep at-risk girls in school and to also introduce them to STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
She has also been a member of the Manhattan Beach Library Commission, the Manhattan Beach Sister Cities Association, as well as a Board Advisor and Managing Consultant to the Houston Technology Center. She is currently a coach and mentor to several start ups in the greater Portland area and was a mentor to AsterionDB on the Oracle for Startups team.
Claudia is a graduate of University of California, Los Angeles. She loves to travel and learn about different cultures, collect art and antique furniture, listen to country music and slack key guitar, watch Hawaiian Hula, and is always up for a new adventure.

Tim Robertson
V.P. Technology
I’ve had variety of opportunities into many aspects of technology and application development in my close to 40 years of being in the computing trade. Starting when 4KB of 6-bit memory which was enough to run a medium sized High School District on punched cards and tape. Through a decade of minicomputer software consulting in the greater Los Angeles and San Diego areas, both business software and technology solutions, helping folks move off of their mainframes.
Having been contracted to port the Oracle Product set to an obscure Mini computer, I then joined Oracle Corporation to initially support the follow on releases and then transitioned to Database Product Development.
During my 29 years at Oracle, I had a number of roles in Government, Higher Education and Healthcare solutions, from Release Management to Software Architecture. I eventually joined into a team which consolidated Demonstration Instances showing real running versions of Oracle’s various Applications and Technology products — this was an architecture without the benefits of generic Cloud Infrastructures, we had to invent and roll our own. Eventually, this culminated in the automated creation of VMs, Storage and management / monitoring of the hundreds of collections of VMs to support a try enterprise deployment of Oracle’s rich Product set.
During the last few years, I have become interested in container based virtualization.
Specialties: I have a good bit of a handle on Oracle’s technology as well as it’s Cloud offering (plus what’s needed to make Cloud deployments successful).
Latest: I have been collaborating with a start up called AsterionDB to assist with the refactoring and packaging of their flagship product moving towards a micro-services model for the pieces outside of the Database.
Latest technical hobby / interests include building micro-based (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, funky sensors) projects and fun with RGB light strings, iOS App Development, and leveraging RESTful APIs.

Paul Lesniewski
V.P. Software Development
Mr. Lesniewski has over 35 years of software development experience. His talents have been sought out by Fortune 1000 Companies both nationally and internationally.
Mr. Lesniewski is part of the maintenance team for SquirrelMail – a popular Open Source email server solution.

Rick Kahn
Channel Sales / Business Development
Rick Kahn has had over 35 years of sales, sales management, business development experience, primarily focused on solution sales to Sr. Execs within the IT, Healthcare, and Aerospace/Public Sector industry segments.
After about 20 years of successfully working in these senior, professional corporate (DEC/HP, Oracle, KPMG, BO/SAP) sales and sales management roles, Rick began to apply his sales creativity and “outside the box” problem solving skills to help strategically positioned smaller start-ups and SMEs, particularly those that had compelling IT and HC solutions and stories that needed to be shared and promoted.
In this regard, Rick has recently joined AsterionDB to help
- identify and work with targeted F500 “early adopters”
- obtain product feedback
- validate market acceptance/viability
Rick also works to identify large, select IT/Business Consulting Firms, Integrators, and Channel/Distribution Resellers. He also brings years of experience that is leveraged to better support the company’s GTM goals and objectives.

John Haff
Account Manager / Business Development
Over the course of John Haff’s career, John has worked for several start-ups in Sacramento and the Bay Area. As an account manager, John has managed relationships with Fortune 500 companies, SME, SMB, government agencies, higher education institutions, and international partner agencies.
John Haff is a graduate of Dominican University of California (Go Penguins!). He loves to spend his weekends disc golfing and going to see live music.