Dr. Soodeh Farokhi
Soodeh Farokhi, PhD. is the Founder and CEO of NexScale, an award-winning serial tech entrepreneur, and a seasoned B2B SaaS product executive with nearly two decades of experience building and scaling enterprise software products. She is a recognized leader in product innovation, AI-driven business transformation, and diversity advocacy within the technology sector.
Soodeh founded NexScale in January 2025 to make AI adoption accessible to non-technical small business owners, focusing on empowering service-based SMBs in fitness, wellness, and preventive health to scale efficiently through privacy-aware, agentic AI solutions. Read Dr. Soodeh Farokhi Joins Nakisa as VP of Product.
Between May 2023 and May 2025, Soodeh served as Chief Product Officer at Nakisa, a global B2B SaaS company serving over 1,100 enterprise clients across 135 countries. In this role, she led product and AI vision across all product lines, launched three product portfolios with cohesive market positioning, and drove the company’s product-led transformation. Her leadership resulted in launching the Platform line of business, expanding the Finance line into IWMS and Accounting for threefold TAM growth, and orchestrating the first Nakisa Product Week events. Read Nakisa Unveils Next-Gen Workforce Planning Software.
Previously, as Vice President of Product at Nakisa from October 2021 to May 2023, Soodeh revamped the HR product portfolio with a new vision expanding into Workforce Planning. She also launched the Associate Product Manager program, resulting in a 30% increase in internal hires.
In May 2016, Soodeh founded C2RO, an award-winning, VC-backed enterprise software company specializing in privacy-aware AI-powered video analytics. As Founder and Chief Technology Officer until October 2021, she scaled the company to 30 employees and achieved product-market fit with over $1.5M ARR from two SaaS products before a soft landing in 2025. She co-raised over $8M in equity and non-dilutive funding, closed strategic partnerships with SAP, IBM, and Telefónica, and secured significant tier-one deals, including Circle-K for strategic rollouts across the United States and Canada. Read C2RO closes $2.25M Series A led by Fonds Innovexport and The Rise of AI Video Analytics — Interview with Dr. Soodeh Farokhi.
C2RO was incubated at TandemLaunch, where Soodeh served as Entrepreneur in Residence from May to October 2016, securing the initial $400K investment and positioning C2RO among the top five cloud robotics companies globally. She served as a Member of the Board of Directors at C2RO from March 2018 to September 2021. Read Montreal’s TandemLaunch puts a twist on startup strategy and The Future With Robots: An Interview with Soodeh Farokhi, PhD from C2RO Cloud Robotics.
Earlier in her career, Soodeh cofounded the Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture Institute (SOEA Lab) in Tehran in December 2011, establishing the first research-industrial institute in Iran for business process automation using SOA and enterprise architecture. She led the development of an enterprise SOA adoption platform and managed the inaugural enterprise SOA readiness program for large organizations until January 2013.
From June 2008 to November 2011, she served as Product Manager at PeykAsa Messageware, a telecom-focused enterprise software company with over 200 employees, leading in Middle Eastern cellular network services. She earned recognition as the company’s best manager after two years. Between March 2021 and May 2025, Soodeh served as an Advisor at NEXT AI, a leading accelerator program that empowers entrepreneurs leveraging artificial intelligence to solve global challenges. She has also provided business advisory services to AI startups, including Castofly, Happly.Ai, Latence Technologies, and iPype.
Soodeh earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Technical Computer Science from Technische Universität Wien (Vienna University of Technology) in 2016, completing her degree in three years with a dissertation titled Quality of Service Control Mechanisms in Cloud Computing Environments, under the supervision of Dr. Ivona Brandic. She earned her Master’s Degree of Science in Software Engineering in 2011 from Shahid Beheshti University, with a thesis titled Semi-automated Model Driven Web Service Composition. and her Bachelor’s Degree of Science in Software Engineering in 2008 from the same institution. Read her TU Wien Academic Profile.
She has authored over 20 research publications with more than 325 citations and holds five patents in privacy-aware video analytics technology. Her notable publications include A Hybrid Cloud Controller for Vertical Memory Elasticity in Future Generation Computer Systems and Real-Time Cloud Robotics in Practical Smart City Applications, presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications. In 2024, she earned certifications in Financial Fluency for Product Leaders from Maven and completed the Board Dynamics for Executives Program from the Institute of Corporate Directors.
Soodeh is a recognized community builder and diversity advocate. She cofounded and co-led the Montreal Chapter of Women in Product in 2024 and cofounded the Montreal Chapter of Women of MENA in Tech in March 2019, launching the chapter to over 130 attendees. Since July 2025, she has served as a Business Advisor and Mentor in the Women in Leadership Program at ICTC-CTIC, contributing to the Advancing Women’s Leadership in Canada’s Digital Economy initiative. She serves on the Advisory Committee of the Women in Leadership Foundation. Read Bridge to Gender Equality: Power 5 Interview with Dr. Soodeh Farokhi.
Soodeh’s recognitions include the 2023 DE&I Champion Award from the Women in Leadership Foundation, the 2020 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards finalist in the Innovation Category, and the 2018 ARISTA Young Quebec Entrepreneurs Award finalist. In 2018, she was named among the Top 750 Digital IT Innovators Worldwide by DataBird journal.
She has been an invited speaker at over 30 panels, podcasts, and interviews since 2016. Listen to Sound-Up Governance – Episode 40: Governance advice for entrepreneurs and THE LAUNCH Episode 5: Soodeh’s Story. Read Meet the Founder: Dr. Soodeh Farokhi, C2RO.
She has delivered lectures at McGill Business School, University of the Fraser Valley School of Business, and TU Wien. A proud Iranian-Canadian and working mother of two, Soodeh is a longevity and wellbeing enthusiast who believes in building with intention in business, leadership, and life. She creates communities, systems, and products that elevate people and extend healthspan, guided by her philosophy that “the future is better than we think.” She is a Member of the Toronto Product Management Association and the Institute of Corporate Directors.
Listen to Soodeh Farokhi’s Interview at Immigrant Computer Scientists and Le Wagon Live Episode #47: Soodeh Farokhi, Founder & CTO, C2RO Robotics.
Visit her LinkedIn profile, Academic profile, Google Scholar page, DBLP profile, and NexScale Homepage. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and X.