New CEO for PTC

Parametric Technology (NASDAQ: [[ticker:PMTC]]), a Needham, MA-based maker of engineering and product development software that goes by PTC for short, announced that its president and chief operating officer James Heppelmann will replace C. Richard Harrison as CEO, effective October 1, 2010. Harrison will take on the role of executive chairman of PTC. Heppelmann joined the company in 1998 when PTC acquired Windchill Technology, a product lifecycle management software company that Heppelman founded. (Disclosure: the writer of this story is a former employee of PTC.)

Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.