Cohesity Leadership
Expertise that accelerates customer success.
Sanjay Poonen
Cohesity Executive Team
Our deeply experienced team has roots in leading technology companies including Google, VMware, SAP, Nutanix, Cisco, IBM, and Oracle.
Sanjay poonen
CEO and President
Sanjay poonen
CEO and President
As Chief Executive Officer and President, Sanjay Poonen leads Cohesity in its mission to radically simplify how organizations manage their data and unlock limitless value. Sanjay is a proven business executive with over 25 years of experience in scaling multi-billion-dollar businesses and building strong teams. Most recently, Sanjay was COO at VMware, where he oversaw sales, marketing, services and alliances, doubling VMware from approximately $6B to $12B in revenue. Poonen played a vital role in architecting multiple successful cloud partnerships, including AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle. He also led the company’s security and end-user computing businesses, including the acquisition of AirWatch and Carbon Black. Prior to VMware, Poonen served as President of SAP where he led SAP’s Applications, Industries and Platform teams, serving in engineering and sales roles that helped double SAP from approximately $10B to $20B in revenue.
He began his career as a software engineer at Microsoft and Apple. Sanjay has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated a Baker Scholar which designates his position in the top 5% of his graduating class, a master’s degree in management science and engineering from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science, math and engineering from Dartmouth College, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Sanjay holds two patents. Poonen serves on the Supervisory Board of Philips, and Board of Snyk.
Eric brown
CFO and COO
Eric brown
CFO and COO
As CFO and COO, Eric Brown is responsible for Cohesity’s finance, IT, operations, and M&A integration functions. With more than 25 years of technology industry experience, Brown brings extensive operational, financial and technology related expertise to Cohesity and has a track record of building and scaling high performing teams. Brown’s experience goes across various enterprise technology areas, including security, data analytics, data management, collaboration, and interactive entertainment. Prior to joining Cohesity, Brown led the successful IPO for Informatica as CFO, raising $1 billion in proceeds at a $10 billion enterprise value. Before Informatica, Brown served in various public company CFO roles at Electronic Arts, McAfee, and Polycom. He has consistently delivered growth and operating margin expansion in his roles. Brown is a technology enthusiast starting with his earliest experience as an AI/data mining company co-founder with his MIT classmates. Brown studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Bachelors of Science in Chemistry and a Masters of Management Science from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Kit beall
Chief Revenue Officer
Kit beall
Chief Revenue Officer
As Chief Revenue Officer, Kit leads Cohesity’s Worldwide Field Organization (WWFO) and is responsible for global Sales, Pre-Sales, Professional Services, Channels, Alliances, and Enablement.
Prior to that, Kit was Senior Vice President of global accounts and telcos at VMware, where he was responsible for VMware’s largest and most strategic global customers, in addition to leading some of the largest sales verticals.
Over the past three decades, Kit has held leadership roles across a range of innovative technology companies, including VMware, Uhana, and Cisco. With a focus on building high-performing, diverse teams, he brings a combination of enterprise sales expertise and technical acumen to the organization.
Kit is a patent holder in VoIP technology and received a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Computer Science from Gettysburg College.
Carol carpenter
Chief Marketing Officer
Carol carpenter
Chief Marketing Officer
As Chief Marketing Officer, Carol leads all aspects of Cohesity’s Global Marketing organization. She loves building and scaling new products and has done that at large and small companies in varying roles as CMO, GM, CEO, most recently as CMO of Unity, a real-time 3D software engine. Prior to that, Carol was CMO at VMware where her teams helped drive the transformation to a multi-cloud company. She has also held leadership roles at Google Cloud, Trend Micro, and more.
She is particularly proud of the high-performance teams she’s developed and the fact that many of her prior marketing mavens are all doing impactful work across tech companies. She continues to mentor humans via the HBS women entrepreneurship program and Monte Jade, an AAPI professional organization. Carol holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Rebecca adams
Chief People Officer
Rebecca adams
Chief People Officer
As Chief People Officer, as well as Chief of Staff to the CEO, Rebecca is responsible for leading Cohesity’s people strategy, global talent acquisition, leadership development, belonging, organizational design, employee development, total rewards, people operations, and Cohesity’s workplace strategy. In her current role, she is focused on culture and driving the impact of HR across the Company to support its business goals and strategies.
With more than 20 years of expertise and experience in business transformation, change management, organizational design and effectiveness, as well as driving a high-performance culture, Rebecca’s background informs her role as a trusted and strategic business advisor.
Prior to joining Cohesity, Rebecca held leadership and operational roles at VMware, SAP, Business Objects, and Informatica. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Communications from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, as well as certifications in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University and Human Resource Management from University of the Pacific.
Walter angerer
Chief Development Officer
Walter angerer
Chief Development Officer
In this role, Walter is responsible for leading the vision, strategy, and execution of the Cohesity product portfolio.
With over 25 years of experience in enterprise software, Walter brings deep expertise in driving complex, large-scale initiatives across Engineering, Product Management, Product Marketing, and Sales.
Before joining Cohesity, Walter served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Veritas, where he was responsible for the NetBackup product line. Prior to joining Veritas, Walter worked with Toba Capital, where he played a key role in evaluating investment opportunities and scaling portfolio companies. During his time there, he founded the VC-backed startup Parsec Labs, served as CEO of Quorum on behalf of Toba, and later launched his own self-funded AI startup, Speak2Web.
Earlier in his career, Walter held the role of Senior Vice President and General Manager at Quest Software, a Dell company.
Walter holds a master’s degree in Atomic and Nuclear Physics from the Johannes Kepler University in Austria and is the inventor of multiple patents in data compression and deduplication technologies.
Lenny alugas
Chief Customer Experience Officer
Lenny alugas
Chief Customer Experience Officer
Lenny is responsible for ensuring that Cohesity’s customers are successful in exceeding the value of their investment in Cohesity solutions. This includes customer support, renewals teams, and coordinating the company focus on the end-to-end customer relationship.
He is an accomplished operations executive with over 20 years of leadership and management experience at high-tech companies that include Western Union, Symantec, Multitude, Inc. (FireTalk), Excite@Home and Hewlett-Packard, where he successfully met the challenges of new ventures, turnaround businesses, and high-growth expansion to deliver strong and sustainable operating results.
Lenny’s strengths include identifying and developing new business opportunities, strengthening and restructuring business operations, and building strong, productive and collaborative organizations. Prior to Veritas, Lenny served as Senior Vice President of Operations at Western Union for three years. Before that, in his 12 years at Symantec, Lenny grew the company’s eCommerce business 21 percent in a highly competitive and commoditized market, growing new online customers by 10 percent annually, leveraging big data for personalization, and expanding organizational and platform capabilities.
Lenny holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University in New York City and a bachelor’s degree in applied physics from Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Tim robbins
Chief Legal Officer
Tim robbins
Chief Legal Officer
Tim heads the legal function for Cohesity, bringing 20 years of experience in problem-solving and supporting the legal and intellectual property needs of fast-paced technology companies. Tim began his legal career doing corporate and securities work for tech clients and venture capital firms at Gunderson Dettmer. He later served as the General Counsel at Good Technology and as the SVP of Licensing at Openwave. Tim holds a bachelors in economics from UCLA and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Vasu murthy
Chief Product Officer
Vasu murthy
Chief Product Officer
As Chief Product Officer at Cohesity, Vasu Murthy’s mission is to help organizations worldwide be resilient to threats against their data. Vasu is a proven product leader with over 25 years of experience building products at every scale— startup day-zero, growth, multi-product scaling, and global public companies.
Most recently, Vasu was VP of Products at Rubrik, responsible for the core product, platform, and partnerships, which grew 10x in ARR over six years, while navigating transformation across three fronts – Software to Subscription, On-prem to Cloud, and Backup to Data Security.
Previously, Vasu was VP of Products at Oracle for Analytics Platform, launching several $100M+ products while driving market-leading innovation. He came to Oracle via its acquisition of DataScaler, an in-memory database company that he co-founded.
Vasu is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur, where he was a JBNSTS scholar—a privilege given to only ten students in the state.
Srinivasan murari
Chief Technology Officer
Srinivasan murari
Chief Technology Officer
As Chief Technology Officer, Murari shapes Cohesity’s technical vision, defining and executing a strategic roadmap for the company’s future. He brings 35+ years of experience to this role having led development teams in startups and larger corporations. Most recently, Murari lead Cohesity Engineering as SVP and Chief Development Officer responsible for Cohesity’s continued innovations across AI, security, and multicloud.
Prior to that, Murari was vice president of Engineering at Google Cloud, where he was responsible for the productivity of approximately 20,000 software engineers encompassing compute, storage, networking, security, databases, analytics, AI/ML, Kubernetes, serverless, cloud console, platforms, and fleet management. He also led a team of 650 software engineers focused on improving feature velocity, product quality, and reliability across the product portfolio. Previously, he spent 12 years at VMware in several engineering leadership roles, including SVP of Engineering. Murari holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology where he was the recipient of the Siemens Prize for being the student with the best academic record in his branch, and a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Mohit aron
Founder Emeritus
Mohit aron
Founder Emeritus
Mohit has over 20 years of experience in building scalable, high- performance distributed systems, and has been attributed as the father of hyperconvergence. Mohit founded Cohesity in 2013 and has grown the company into a leading provider of next-gen data management. He also co-founded Nutanix as the CTO, now a public company and leader in hyperconverged technology, in 2009. Prior to co-founding Nutanix, Mohit was at Google as a lead developer on the Google File System, the software that manages data on Google’s large scale clusters. Aron graduated with a Ph.D. in computer science from Rice University with a focus on distributed systems. He also holds a bachelor of science in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi India. In 2018, he received the “Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award” from Rice University and also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT Delhi in 2019.
Board of Directors and Observers
Our Board of Directors oversees our executives in creating company value. Our board represents both independent and investor experts. It also includes our founder.
Gaurav garg
Chairman
Gaurav garg
Chairman
Gaurav Garg is a founding partner of Wing. He has founded five companies, including two that achieved public listings: Redback Networks (founded 1996, IPO 1999), and Ruckus Wireless (founded 2002, IPO 2012).
At Redback Networks, Gaurav was Senior Vice President of Product Management & Business Development. Prior to Redback Networks, he held various engineering positions at SynOptics and Bay Networks.
Gaurav was a partner at Sequoia Capital from 2001 to 2012. He incubated and helped build FireEye (founded 2004, IPO 2013) and Jasper (founded 2004, acquired 2016 for $1.5B) into significant businesses. He was an early stage investor and served on the boards of several successful companies such as MobileIron (founded 2007, IPO 2014) and Shape Security (founded 2012, acquired 2020 for $1B), and Netscaler (acquired 2005). He also worked extensively with, and co-sponsored early stage investments in Aruba (IPO 2007) and RingCentral (IPO 2013). Gaurav has served on a number of boards for more than 10 years each, and enjoys working side by side with founders through the evolution of their companies from inception to beyond an IPO.
Gaurav holds a BS and MS in electrical engineering and a BS in computer science, all from Washington University in St. Louis, where he serves on the Board of Trustees, and on the School of Engineering’s National Council. Gaurav has been named to the Forbes Midas List of Top Tech Investors several times. In 2014, he was named Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist of The Year at the Technology Fast 500 Awards.
Sanjay poonen
CEO and President
Sanjay poonen
CEO and President
As Chief Executive Officer and President, Sanjay Poonen leads Cohesity in its mission to radically simplify how organizations manage their data and unlock limitless value. Sanjay is a proven business executive with over 25 years of experience in scaling multi-billion-dollar businesses and building strong teams. Most recently, Sanjay was COO at VMware, where he oversaw sales, marketing, services and alliances, doubling VMware from approximately $6B to $12B in revenue. Poonen played a vital role in architecting multiple successful cloud partnerships, including AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle. He also led the company’s security and end-user computing businesses, including the acquisition of AirWatch and Carbon Black. Prior to VMware, Poonen served as President of SAP where he led SAP’s Applications, Industries and Platform teams, serving in engineering and sales roles that helped double SAP from approximately $10B to $20B in revenue.
He began his career as a software engineer at Microsoft and Apple. Sanjay has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated a Baker Scholar which designates his position in the top 5% of his graduating class, a master’s degree in management science and engineering from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science, math and engineering from Dartmouth College, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Sanjay holds two patents. Poonen serves on the Supervisory Board of Philips, and Board of Snyk.
Patrick mccarter
Independent Board Member
Patrick mccarter
Independent Board Member
Patrick McCarter is a Managing Director and Head of Global Technology. Mr. McCarter founded Carlyle’s Menlo Park, CA office in 2016 and is currently based there.
Since joining Carlyle in 2001, Mr. McCarter has led or been a key contributor to several Carlyle investments, including Hexaware, Exiger, Abrigo, NEOGOV, Jagex, Tribute Technology, Unison, HireVue, ZoomInfo, Ampere Computing, Cohesity (previously Veritas), CommScope, Open Link Financial, Open Solutions, Freescale Semiconductor, Jazz Semiconductor, Sippican, and CPU Technology.
Prior to joining Carlyle, Mr. McCarter held positions at Morgan Stanley with a focus on financial institutions in New York.
Mr. McCarter serves as a director on the boards of publicly traded CommScope as well as the private held Cohesity, Ampere Computing and Saama Technologies. He is also a member of Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering Advisory Council.
Mr. McCarter received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.S. with a double major in industrial engineering and economics from Northwestern University.
Brian sheth
Independent Board Member
Brian sheth
Independent Board Member
Brian Sheth is the Founder of Haveli Investments. Based in Austin, he created the firm in 2021. Brian has spent nearly twenty-five years investing in technology businesses. His experience includes direct involvement in hundreds of investments and dispositions valued at over $100 billion, mentoring hundreds of entrepreneurs, executives, and investors, and serving as board chairman for dozens of companies. Brian graduated from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Economics. Brian and his family manage the Sheth Sangreal Foundation to support efforts to protect and repair the natural world, mitigate the effects of poverty, and create educational opportunities in central Texas and around the world.
Janesh moorjani
Independent Board Member
Janesh moorjani
Independent Board Member
Janesh Moorjani has served as CFO and COO of Elastic NV (“Elastic”) since May 2022 and its CFO since August 2017. Prior to joining Elastic, he served as Executive Vice President and CFO of Infoblox Inc., an IT automation and security company, from January 2016 until August 2017, prior to which he held various senior leadership, finance and sales positions at VMware Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., PTC Inc., and Goldman, Sachs & Co., a global investment banking firm. Mr. Moorjani holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Mumbai and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Moorjani currently serves on the board of directors of Cohesity Inc. and PTC Inc.
Kevin mandia
Independent Board Member
Kevin mandia
Independent Board Member
Kevin is the founder of Mandiant at Google Cloud. He has served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer since June 2016, including as Chief Executive Officer of FireEye, Inc. until its corporate name change to Mandiant, Inc. in October 2021. Kevin served as a member of the company’s Board of Directors from February 2016 until September 2022, when Mandiant became a part of Google Cloud.
Kevin joined the company as Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in December 2013, when FireEye acquired Mandiant Corporation, which he founded in 2004. Mandiant Corporation was widely recognized as the leading provider of cyber security incident management products and services prior to the acquisition by FireEye and went on to become the core of FireEye’s highly successful consulting business.
Kevin began his cyber security career in the United States Air Force, serving as a computer security officer in the 7th Communications Group at the Pentagon and later as a special agent and cyber crime investigator in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. In the private sector, Kevin held senior positions in the security consulting divisions of Sytex, acquired by Lockheed Martin, and Foundstone, acquired by McAfee.
Kevin’s insight, gained from his work on the front lines of major cyber threats, is routinely requested by corporate directors, executives, and government officials who face serious cyber security challenges. He regularly provides commentary and analysis on cyber security issues for major news media and has testified in hearings before the U.S. House and Senate committees. Kevin has served as a member of the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency since December 2021.
Kevin holds a B.S. in computer science from Lafayette College and a M.S. in forensic science from The George Washington University. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management Program.
Robin matlock
Independent Board Member
Robin matlock
Independent Board Member
Robin Matlock is a seasoned board director, serving as an independent director on several public, private and non-profit boards. Prior to dedicating herself to board service, her operational career spanned over 30 years of marketing, sales, and business development experience spanning a variety of markets including enterprise software, cloud services, and security.
Ms. Matlock most recently served as chief marketing officer (CMO) at VMware, a position she held for seven years. During her tenure at VMware, she helped shape the company’s business and go-to-market strategy and played a key role in scaling the company’s revenues from $2B to $11B. Before joining VMware, Ms. Matlock was executive vice president and general manager at the data security company Imperva. Prior to that, she held various senior executive roles at McAfee, Entercept, and Symantec.
Ms. Matlock also currently serves as an independent director with information management company Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM), investment data and tools provider, MSCI (NYSE: MSCI) and several other private tech startups.
Ms. Matlock holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Music from Rice University and is a frequent keynote speaker at marketing, technology, and women in tech events.
Greg hughes
Independent Board Member
Greg hughes
Independent Board Member
Greg Hughes is the Chief Executive Officer at Veritas. Greg is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience as an executive in enterprise software.
Previously, Greg was the CEO of Serena Software, where he led the successful turnaround and sale to Micro Focus International Plc. Greg has also held executive roles in technology investment firms HGGC and Silver Lake Partners.
Greg came to Silver Lake from Symantec where he served in a variety of senior executive positions, most recently as President of the $4 Billion Enterprise Product Group.
Greg joined Symantec through the acquisition of Veritas, where he was Executive Vice President of Global Services. Prior to Veritas, Greg was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he founded and led the Software Practice.
Greg holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
Carl eschenbach
Workday (Observer)
Carl eschenbach
Workday (Observer)
Carl Eschenbach is the CEO of Workday. He was previously a general partner at Sequoia Capital and continues to stay involved in a venture partner capacity. Before Sequoia, Carl spent 14 years at VMware in various leadership roles.
Bill coughran
Sequoia Capital (Observer)
Bill coughran
Sequoia Capital (Observer)
William “Bill” Coughran is a technologist specializing in large-scale computing and networking systems with general management experience. Dr. Coughran joined Sequoia Capital in late 2011 where he works as a partner and coach to founders and help them build effective technology-centric organizations; while at Sequoia, he served as an advisor to Google until 2015. His career in computer science spans more than three decades. He began his post-graduate career starting with individual research contributions in computational science and engineering (for semiconductor and circuit simulation, Raman optical amplifiers, convective fluid flow) and computer systems. Dr. Coughran helped create and guide the development of numerous distributed systems, IP security projects, and applications of modeling and formal verification methods as well as converged (voice/data) network software, access, and switching products. More recently, he has contributed to large-scale Web service systems and products as well as client software. Now, he is an investor in and coach for developing companies.
Dr. Coughran holds a B.S.& M.S. mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and a M.S. & Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford.
Vikas j parekh
Softbank (Observer)
Vikas j parekh
Softbank (Observer)
Vikas J. Parekh is a Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers where he focuses on investing in Automation, Enterprise software, and other Emerging Technologies.
Prior to SoftBank, Vikas worked in Private Equity at KKR, and in Consulting at Boston Consulting Group. Vikas holds an MBA with highest honors from Harvard Business School, and a BS in Electrical Engineering and MS in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. He resides in San Francisco with his wife and three children.
Sandesh patnam
Premji Invest (Observer)
Sandesh patnam
Premji Invest (Observer)
Sandesh Patnam is the Managing Partner at Premji Invest, running both the private and listed equities investing practice in the US and tech investing globally. He joined PI to establish their US presence and drive their investment strategies in the US. At PI, he has led investments in Anaplan (SaaS Planning Solution, IPO, Ticker: PLAN), Zuora (SaaS Subscription Billing, IPO, Ticker: ZUO), Coupa(SaaS eProcurement, IPO, Ticker: COUP), Looker (BI Analytics, Acq. by GOOGL for$2.85B), Apttus (SaaS CPQ and CLM, Acq. by Thoma Bravo for $1.85B), ServiceMax(SaaS Field Service Automation, Acq. by GE for $1.0B), Navan (AI enabled travel platform), Outreach (SaaS Sales Enablement), Icertis (SaaS Contract Management), Heyday (E-commerce enablement), Signifyd (E-commerce Fraud), Sysdig (Container Security), DataStax (NoSQL database), Cohesity (Enterprise Data Management), Innovium (Switch Fabric Silicon, Acq by MRVL for $1.2B), Ikigai (Enterprise AI) and Cohesity(Enterprise Data Management).
Prior to Premji Invest, Sandesh was a Senior Equity Analyst and Investment Officer at the Seligman Technology Group at Ameriprise. At Seligman, Sandesh helped manage more than $15B in both long only and long/short investment vehicles while leading their software and IT infrastructure equity portfolios. Prior to Seligman, Sandesh was a General Partner at Bay Partners and led the IT Infrastructure and SaaS practices. At Bay, he led or co led investments in Akros Silicon (Power Management ICs), Code Green Networks (DLP Security Systems), Daptiv (SaaS Collaboration and Project Mgmt.), ParAccel (Data Warehousing systems, Acq. by Ingrian), LiveMedia (OOH digital advertising),Nanogram (next gen materials), and Enphase Energy (Micro-Inverters for Solar, IPO: ENPH). He was involved in the firm’s investments in Lending Club (Consumer Lending, IPO, Ticker: LC), Mulesoft (API platform, IPO, Ticker: MULE),Dynatrace (IPO, Ticker: DT), and Guidewire Software (SaaS Insurance vertical, IPO, Ticker: GWRE).
Prior to Bay Partners, he was with TeleSoft Partners where led the systems and components investment practices. He co-led investments in Aarohi Communications(Acq. by Emulex), Amberwave Systems, Sierra Design Automation (Acq. by MENT),Validity Sensors (Acq. SYNA), Xambala, and Xpedion Design Systems (Acq. by Agilent Technologies).
Before joining TeleSoft, he held both business and technical roles at Malleable Technologies, Silicon Graphics, Integrated Device Technologies, and Cirrus Logic.
Vishal bhagwati
NVIDIA (Observer)
Vishal bhagwati
NVIDIA (Observer)
Vishal is currently Head of Corporate Development at NVIDIA, responsible for leading growth strategy through acquisitions, strategic investments and partnerships globally.
Prior to NVIDIA, Vishal was SVP & Head of Corporate Development at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), responsible for acquisitions, strategic investments, divestitures and integration, as well as CFO of HPE’s High Performance Computing & AI business. Previously, Vishal was Group Vice President of Corporate Development at Oracle, leading the company’s global mergers and acquisitions team. Vishal was also co-founder and CEO of Emadison, a Sequoia Capital backed software company, and Vice President at Credit Suisse and Wasserstein Perella.
Vishal holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated as Palmer Scholar, MS and Engineer degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from MIT with a Minor in Finance from the Sloan School of Management, and a BS from the University of California, Berkeley in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science where he graduated with Highest Honors.
Vishal has been a guest lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Wharton and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.
Randy glein
DFJ Growth (Observer)
Randy glein
DFJ Growth (Observer)
Randy Glein is a founder and partner at DFJ Growth. His career spans more than 30 years as a venture capital investor, operating executive and entrepreneur. Randy has led investments in many innovative technology leaders, including Anaplan (NYSE: PLAN), Box (NYSE: BOX), Performics (Google), Ring (Amazon), SpaceX, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), Tumblr (Yahoo), Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), Yammer (Microsoft), and Yodle (Web.com). Recent investments include Boring Company, Cohesity, Innovium, Mapbox, Splice, Sumo Logic and Yellowbrick. Prior to DFJ, Randy was CFO of FeedBurner, a DFJ portfolio company acquired by Google. He also played instrumental roles in the formation and development of DIRECTV and XM Radio. Randy began his career as a systems engineer at Hughes Space & Communications. Forbes has named Randy to its annual Midas List five times, including most recently in 2019. The New York Times / CB Insights has named Randy one of the Top 100 venture capital investors four consecutive years. He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MSEE from the University of Southern California, and a BSEE with high honors from the University of Florida.
Aleem rizvon
Cisco (Observer)
Aleem rizvon
Cisco (Observer)
Aleem Rizvon leads the M&A Group for Cisco’s Networking, Cloud & Compute, and Customer Experience Business entities in the Corporate Development Organization. His team is focused on developing inorganic growth strategies and managing venture investments for these groups. Aleem’s team is also responsible for Cisco’s inorganic efforts in the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) theater.
Aleem also leads the Divestiture practice for the group and led the divestment of Cisco’s SP Video Software & Services and Mobility Self-Organizing Network (SON) Businesses.
Aleem started his career at Cisco as a Product Manager in the Service Provider Group focusing on Multiservice Switching. He went on to lead the Product Management team for Cisco’s Carrier VoIP Media Gateway platforms and drove it to #1 market share position.
Aleem took on various roles of increasing responsibility subsequently – first at the Enterprise Wireless Networking Group where his team was responsible for defining and bringing to market Advanced Mobility Services and later on as part of Services Business Development where he led the formation of the Joint venture with EMC and VMware to create VCE that helped Cisco enter the Converged Cloud Infrastructure market.
Prior to Cisco, Aleem led Product Development Organizations at NEC during which time he also spent 3+ years in Japan, helping define, develop and deploy Service Provider Core Network Products and Voice/Data Convergence Products.
Aleem holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from National Institute of Technology in India and master’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from The University of Texas at Arlington.
Ashu garg
Foundation Capital (Observer)
Ashu garg
Foundation Capital (Observer)
Ashu works with startups across the enterprise stack. He is particularly excited about how machine learning and deep learning are reinventing existing softwareopens in a new tab categories and creating new consumer experiences.
Ashu serves on the boards of Anvilogic, Arize, Coefficient, Cohesity, Conviva, Eightfold, Fortanix, Layer9, OpsMx, Skyflow, and Turing. In addition, Ashu was responsible for Foundation Capital’s investments in Aggregate Knowledge, Custora, FreeWheel, TubeMogul, and Tubi.tv.
Ashu is passionate about helping technical founders scale as CEOs. His podcast on that topic, B2B a CEOopens in a new tab, has featured Eric Yuan, Jennifer Tejada, Aaron Levie, and Tien Tzuo.
Before joining Foundation Capital in 2008, Ashu was the general manager for Microsoft’s online-advertising business and led field marketing for the software businesses. Previously, Ashu worked at McKinsey & Company, helping technology companies scale their go-to-market efforts.
Paul glaser
HPE (Observer)
Paul glaser
HPE (Observer)
Paul leads Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, HPE’s venture investment and solutions program, and is responsible for driving Pathfinder’s charter of Insights, Investments, and Solutions. He currently serves as a board observer with Barefoot Networks, Shape Security, Synack, Cohesity, Hedvig, and Fungible.
Prior to joining HPE, Paul co-founded and helped lead Xova Labs, a company focused on start-up formation and early stage incubation. At Xova, Paul helped launch and lead companies focused on leveraging the Mobile and Cloud technology disruptions, including Mist Systems and Encaenia.
Before Xova, Paul was a Director in the Corporate Development group at Cisco Systems where he focused on acquisitions, strategy, and venture investments. Paul’s areas of responsibility included Security, Small Business, SaaS, and Borderless Networking portfolios. Notable transactions include Cisco’s acquisitions of IronPort, MI Secure, and ScanSafe, and investments in ActOn, Appfolio, RingCentral, Guardium, and Mashery. Paul joined Cisco in 2001 as member of the Corporate Finance team.
Paul received both JD and MBA degrees from Indiana University and a BA from the University of Illinois. He spends his free time swinging golf clubs and baseball bats.
Karim faris
Google Ventures (Observer)
Karim faris
Google Ventures (Observer)
Karim leads GV’s investments in enterprise software, data analytics, and security. He brings over a decade of operational and investment experience to his role. He initially joined Google’s corporate development team in 2008, the group responsible for all mergers and acquisitions and has been at GV since inception.
Prior to Google, Karim was a venture capitalist at Atlas Venture, where he worked on investments in software and Internet infrastructure. Previously, he was director of New Ventures at Level 3 Communications, responsible for evaluating new business opportunities and has led product development for the company’s voice services. Earlier in his career, Karim held various product and marketing roles at Intel, initially on the i486 ™, and later as product manager for the Pentium® Processor. He started his career at Siemens as a software engineer working on the first vehicle navigation system for BMW.
Quinn li
Qualcomm Ventures (Observer)
Quinn li
Qualcomm Ventures (Observer)
Quinn Li is Vice President & Global Head of Qualcomm Ventures. In this role, Quinn oversees Qualcomm’s $1 billion strategic venture investment portfolio of over 140 investments. He currently serves as a board member or observer in AMEC, Brain Corp, Enovix, OneWeb, Placemeter, RetailNext, Streetline, Tango, and Verve Wireless. Previously Quinn has led investments in A123 Systems (AONE), Consert (acquired by Landis+Gyr), InvenSense (INVN), PowerCloud Systems (acquired by Comcast), and Siimpel (acquired by Tessera).
Prior to joining Qualcomm Ventures, Quinn held various engineering and management roles in the wireless industry. Most recently, he worked in product management and business development at IBM Systems and Technology Group. Previously, he spent several years in Broadcom and the wireless infrastructure group at Lucent Technologies.
Quinn received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, and his MBA from Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management.
Stuart peterson
Artis Ventures (Observer)
Stuart peterson
Artis Ventures (Observer)
Stuart Peterson is the Co-founder and a Senior Partner of ARTIS Ventures. Before forming ARTIS in 2001, Stuart was a Managing Director of The Cypress Funds, where he was responsible for the firm’s technology sector investments and strategy. Stuart was a Vice President and Co-Portfolio Manager with Portfolio Advisory Services, focused on growth company investment management. Stuart currently serves on the board of directors for Stem CentRx, a stem cell centric cancer therapy company. He is also a board advisor for Omicia, a genomic interpretation platform. Stuart currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the SF MOMA and is actively involved in the Tipping Point Community and MCDS.
Stuart received his B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and his M.B.A. in Analytic Finance from The University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business.
CEO Advisory Council
The Cohesity CEO Advisory Council serves as senior advisors to the CEO to advance Cohesity’s leadership position and provide strategic insights.
Indra nooyi
Indra nooyi
Former Chair and CEO of PepsiCo. Current Board Director at Amazon, Philips and the International Cricket Council. Named in the Top 10 of the Fortune Most Powerful Women List, for several years.
Jim snabe
Jim snabe
Chairman at Siemens and Northvolt. Current Board Director at C3.ai. Former Co-CEO of SAP. Member of Board of Trustees of World Economic Forum.
Ken denman
Ken denman
General Partner at Sway Ventures. Current Board Director at Costco, VMware, Motorola Solutions. Former CEO of iPass, Openwave, and Emotient.
Tami erwin
Tami erwin
Former CEO & EVP of Verizon Business. Current Board Director at John Deere and York Space Systems, a member of Aptiv’s Strategic and Technology Advisory Council, and an Operating Partner at Digital Gravity. Named in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women List.
Carl eschenbach
Workday (Observer)
Carl eschenbach
Workday (Observer)
Carl Eschenbach is the CEO of Workday. He was previously a general partner at Sequoia Capital and continues to stay involved in a venture partner capacity. Before Sequoia, Carl spent 14 years at VMware in various leadership roles.
Dev ittycheria
Dev ittycheria
Dev Ittycheria has over two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, investor, and leader specializing in high-growth software companies. Currently, he is the President & CEO of MongoDB, where he led its IPO in 2017—the first public offering of a database company in over 26 years. Under Dev’s leadership, MongoDB has released innovative products such as Atlas, its global cloud database, acquired thousands of customers, rapidly expanded operations around the world, grown its business faster and delivered better financial performance than any comparable company in its sector. Dev currently serves as lead independent director of the board of directors of Datadog, Inc., a public software company. Dev also serves on the board of directors of DataRobot, a private software company. Previously, Dev was Managing Director at OpenView Venture Partners, Venture Partner at Greylock Partners, and CEO/Co-founder of BladeLogic, which was acquired by BMC for $900 million. Following the acquisition, he served as President of BMC. Dev founded his first technology company in 1998, and his leadership and board roles have resulted in 5 IPOs and 2 significant acquisitions. Dev graduated from Rutgers University with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, was honored with the Medal of Excellence and was recognized by the School of Engineering as its 2010 Alumnus of the Year.
Security Advisory Council
The Cohesity Security Advisory Council is made up of independent experts who advise on emerging cyber security threats.
Dave de walt
Cohesity Security Advisory Council Chair
Dave de walt
Cohesity Security Advisory Council Chair
Dave DeWalt is Chair of the Cohesity Security Advisory Council and a veteran CEO, advisor, and investor who has led companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, on a transformational journey of success. Focused on technology and cybersecurity, Dave helped create more than $20 billion of shareholder value during his 15-plus years as President and CEO of three major companies. That includes driving the largest cybersecurity IPO to date as of 2013, and leading the largest all-cash deal in technology history as of 2010. Today, he serves as Managing Director of Allegis Cyber as well as investor and board member in the world’s most innovative companies such as Delta Airlines, Five9, Forescout, Phantom Cyber, Claroty, Team8, DataTribe, Illusive Networks, and Optiv.
Kevin mandia
Independent Board Member
Kevin mandia
Independent Board Member
Kevin is the founder of Mandiant at Google Cloud. He has served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer since June 2016, including as Chief Executive Officer of FireEye, Inc. until its corporate name change to Mandiant, Inc. in October 2021. Kevin served as a member of the company’s Board of Directors from February 2016 until September 2022, when Mandiant became a part of Google Cloud.
Kevin joined the company as Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in December 2013, when FireEye acquired Mandiant Corporation, which he founded in 2004. Mandiant Corporation was widely recognized as the leading provider of cyber security incident management products and services prior to the acquisition by FireEye and went on to become the core of FireEye’s highly successful consulting business.
Kevin began his cyber security career in the United States Air Force, serving as a computer security officer in the 7th Communications Group at the Pentagon and later as a special agent and cyber crime investigator in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. In the private sector, Kevin held senior positions in the security consulting divisions of Sytex, acquired by Lockheed Martin, and Foundstone, acquired by McAfee.
Kevin’s insight, gained from his work on the front lines of major cyber threats, is routinely requested by corporate directors, executives, and government officials who face serious cyber security challenges. He regularly provides commentary and analysis on cyber security issues for major news media and has testified in hearings before the U.S. House and Senate committees. Kevin has served as a member of the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency since December 2021.
Kevin holds a B.S. in computer science from Lafayette College and a M.S. in forensic science from The George Washington University. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management Program.
Marianne bailey
Marianne bailey
As a former NSA Executive and DOD CIO/CISO, Marianne brings over 35 years of experience across the Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence community, and civil government sectors. She served as Deputy National Manager for National Security Systems (NSS) and Senior Cybersecurity Executive for the National Security Agency where she was directly responsible for systems across the government containing classified and/or sensitive information. She also served as both Principal Deputy for Cybersecurity and Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (DCISO), Department of Defense, CIO. She received the Distinguished Executive Presidential Rank Award, the highest government civilian recognition, for her contributions to national security. Marianne Bailey currently leads Guidehouse’s Advanced Solutions Cybersecurity practice. Ms. Bailey earned a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Master’s degree from Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University.
Alex stamos
Alex stamos
Alex Stamos is working to improve the security and safety of the Internet through teaching and research as the Director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program studying the abuse of the internet. He also helps companies secure themselves as a Partner in the Krebs Stamos Group. He has served as Chief Security Officer at Facebook and Yahoo and was a co-founder of iSEC Partners. Alex has investigated and responded to several historical events and has been called the “Forrest Gump of InfoSec” by friends. He is a member of the Aspen Cybersecurity and Information Disorder Commissions, Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy and advises NATO’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. He has spoken on six continents, testified in Congress, served as an expert witness for the wrongly accused, earned a BSEE from UC Berkeley and holds five patents.
Kelly bissell
Kelly bissell
Kelly Bissell leads Microsoft’s Services group globally. He has more than 28 years of cybersecurity experience.
Kelly has been working with hundreds of clients for 30+ years to help them be compliant and secure. At Microsoft, the goal is to work with clients and Security Engineering to transform the cybersecurity market to make the world safer and more secure. Doing so will drive more product adoption and enhance the Microsoft brand. Work with clients, regulators, and law enforcement to reduce cyber-crime.
Before Microsoft, Kelly led Accenture Security, before that, he built and led Deloitte Cyber Risk Services and held various leadership positions with Arthur Andersen, AT&T, and others. Kelly has held the role of CIO and CTO of two different companies and CISO for a global bank.
Kelly is involved in several industry and technology groups recently authoring various articles and by-lines in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Executive, USA Today, and many others.
Currently, Kelly is working with national security for several counties in the Five Eyes and NATO.
Kelly is tightly aligned with several cyber and law enforcement agencies around the world. He is working to secure the nations of Ukraine, Albania, and a few others.
Laura mather
Laura mather
Laura is Group Chief Operating Officer and a member of the Group Executive Committee at Societe Generale.
Laura has an experience of close to 30 years within Credit Suisse, she joined in 1994. She held several senior positions in IT. In 2012, she was appointed Head of Information Technology for the EMEA zone and then Global Head of Production and Testing Group in 2013. In 2014, she became Chief Technology Officer, in charge of IT infrastructures and Chief Information Security Officer of Credit Suisse. Laura was previously Global Chief Information Officer at Credit Suisse from 2019.
Laura Mather holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.
Jason chan
Jason chan
Jason Chan has spent over twenty years in cybersecurity and is especially passionate about large-scale systems, cloud security, and improving security in modern software development practices.
Most recently, Jason built and led the information security team at Netflix for over a decade before retiring in July 2021. His team at Netflix was known for its contributions to the security community, including over 30 open-source security releases and dozens of conference presentations. He also previously led the security team at VMware and spent most of his earlier career in security consulting. Since retiring from Netflix, Jason has been advising a variety of companies on security products and strategy and is also an Operating Advisor at Bessemer Venture Partners.
Jason enjoys coaching, mentoring, and helping folks from underrepresented groups enter and advance in the cybersecurity industry. Outside of work, he enjoys reading, running ultramarathons, and volunteering in habitat restoration, trail maintenance, and wildfire management. He received a BS from the College of Charleston and his MS from Boston University.
We’ve recently witnessed an explosion of vicious ransomware attacks where cybercriminals are getting smarter, often seizing legacy backups in an effort to paralyze companies and force payouts. Data security and data management leaders must work hand-in-hand to keep bad actors in their place. I’m excited to join Cohesity’s board as the company plays a critical role in helping enterprises improve their security posture. In my mission to help organizations protect themselves from cyberattacks, Cohesity’s modern data security architecture and focus on defending data and recovering from attacks is a significant asset in the fight against cybercrime."
Other Cohesity Advisors
Strategic advisors offer marketplace insight that inform our solutions and roadmap. Some of the brightest minds and most successful technology executives are guiding Cohesity.
Sahir azam
Sahir azam
Sahir is responsible for product management, growth marketing/operations, and GTM strategy across the MongoDB portfolio. He joined MongoDB in 2016 as SVP, Cloud Products & GTM to lead MongoDB’s Cloud Products and Go-to-Market Strategy ahead of the launch of Atlas and helped grow the cloud business from zero to over $150 million annually. Sahir joined MongoDB from Sumo Logic, a SaaS machine-data analytics company, where he managed platform, pricing, packaging and technology partnerships. Before Sumo Logic, Sahir was the Director of Cloud Management Strategy & Evangelism at VMware where he launched VMware’s first organically developed SaaS management product and helped grow the management tools business to over $1B in revenue. Earlier in his career, Sahir held a variety of technical and sales-focused roles at DynamicOps, BMC Software, and BladeLogic.
Alan cohen
Alan cohen
As chief commercial officer, Alan leads Illumio’s go-to-market strategy and customer engagement life cycle organizations, including marketing, support, and talent. He is a 25-year technology veteran known for company building and new-market-creation experience. Alan’s prior two companies, Airespace (acquired by Cisco for $450 million) and Nicira (acquired by VMware for $1.26 billion), were the market leaders in centralized WLANs and network virtualization, respectively.
Prior to Nicira, Alan led the enterprise marketing organization at Cisco, a team of 300 responsible for bringing to market an associated $25 billion product portfolio. He serves as an advisor to technology companies including Highfive, Mist, Netskope, and Vera. He has a BA from SUNY Buffalo, an MA from the School of International Service at American University, and an MBA in Finance from the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Steve grewal
Steve grewal
Steve Grewal is a veteran C-level technology executive who has worked for various federal agencies including U.S. General Services Administration (Deputy CIO), Department of Education (CIO), Department of Transportation, and Health & Human Services.
Leveraging his experience as a public sector change agent that has overseen many significant IT innovation projects, Steve focuses on innovations and strategies that propel public sector organizations and solve business challenges. He was previously Vice President and CTO for Public Sector at Cohesity and now acts in an advisory role for Cohesity Federal. Steve currently serves as the Chief Strategy Officer for CTG Federal and has a BA in liberal arts and computer science from Harvard University.
Bask iyer
Bask iyer
Bask serves as an Independent Board Director and Advisor to high growth companies, including Zoom, Automation Anywhere, FSS, ThoughtSpot, TextIQ. Modern Execu Solutions.
A respected industry veteran, Bask brings more than 30 years of experience in executing and driving change in traditional Fortune 100 manufacturing companies and Silicon Valley-based high technology firms.
Recently, he served as the Chief Information and Digital transformation Officer for VMWare, managing critical technology systems and driving digital transformation. He also led M&A integration and SaaS transformation. From 2016 to 2018, he was both the CIO for VMWare and the EVP and CIO of Dell Technologies.
Bask is a leader focused on customers and growth and spends time chairing CXO councils and customer advisory boards.
Bv jagadeesh
Bv jagadeesh
BV Jagadeesh is Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures that focuses on early stage investments and mentoring. Jagadeesh has successfully invested and guided companies such as NetMagic Solutions (acqd: NTT), Ocarina Networks (acqd: Dell), Ankeena (acqd: Juniper), Nutanix, Yodlee (2014 IPO), Edurite (acqd: Pearsons) to name a few.
Before founding KAAJ Ventures, BV Jagadeesh served as a founding investor and CEO of NetScaler. NetScaler pioneered the concept of Application Delivery and was successfully sold to Citrix for $325M and served as Group VP and GM for Citrix’s Application Networking division. Prior to Netscaler, he co-founded and served as CTO of Exodus communications in 1993 that pioneered the concept of Internet data centers. Jagadeesh was instrumental in the successful IPO of Exodus in 1998.
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