Leadership
Leadership
Saryu Nayyar
Chief Executive Officer
Saryu Nayyar is an internationally recognized cybersecurity expert, author, speaker and member of the Forbes Technology Council. She has more than 15 years of experience in the information security, identity and access management, IT risk and compliance, and security risk management sectors. She was named EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women in 2017. She has held leadership roles in security products and services strategy at Oracle, Simeio, Sun Microsystems, Vaau (acquired by Sun) and Disney. Saryu also spent several years in senior positions at the technology security and risk management practice of Ernst & Young. She is passionate about building disruptive technologies and has several patents pending for behavior analytics, anomaly detection and dynamic risk scoring inventions.
Leadership
Nilesh Dherange
Chief Technology Officer
Nilesh Dherange is responsible for development and execution of Gurucul’s technology vision. Nilesh brings a wealth of experience in inventing, designing, and building software from inception to release. Nilesh has been a technologist and leader at three startups and at one of the largest software development companies in the world. Prior to founding Gurucul, Nilesh was an integral member of a company that built a Roles and Compliance product acquired by Sun Microsystems. Nilesh was also a co-founder and VP of Engineering for BON Marketing Group where he conceptualized and created BON Ticker — an innovative patented bid management system which used predictive analytics to determine advertising bids for PPC marketing campaigns on search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. Nilesh holds a B.A in Social Science, B.E in Computer Engineering from University of Mumbai and M.S in Computer Science from University of Southern California.
Leadership
Craig Cooper
Chief Operating Officer
Craig Cooper has served in several information security and risk management roles including CISO for a Fortune 500 Financial Services organization. While in this role, Craig defined and implemented an ISO standards-based Information Security program. Craig has led, developed, and delivered multiple Identity and Access Management Strategies and Roadmaps for several organizations. Craig has written for several trade magazines and has been a speaker with Burton Catalyst, Gartner, and ISSA.
Leadership
Julie Preiss
Global Head of Marketing
Julie Preiss has more than 25 years of experience in B2B high-tech marketing. For the last decade, she has led full-stack global marketing for high-growth cybersecurity companies including Secureworks, Damballa, Rsam and Appgate. As a senior marketing leader and CMO, she has managed organizations through successful acquisitions, a public stock offering, and large geographic expansions. Julie is a frequent contributor to blogs and podcasts and is passionate about mentoring the next generation of marketing leaders. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s award-winning Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communications.
Leadership
Amol Bhagwat
VP, Solutions and Field Engineering
Amol is a distinguished security professional with a strong consulting, implementation and leadership experience. As a part of the executive leadership team, he drives product strategy, marketing campaigns, solutions development, APAC technical sales and global customer success program. Amol brings over 15 years of experience in delivering security and risk management solutions for Fortune 500 customers across the globe. Prior to Gurucul, he played an important role in building security practice for one of the major global system integrator. He achieved exponential business growth as a practice lead with focus on innovative solutions and delivery excellence. Amol graduated from University of Mumbai with B.E. in Electronics.
Leadership
Jane Grafton
VP Marketing
Jane Grafton has more than 30 years of experience in domestic and international marketing, sales and business development. She came to Gurucul from Lieberman Software where she spent 9 years managing global marketing operations inclusive of marketing automation, website, events, collateral, digital marketing, email campaigns, product marketing, PR and corporate branding. Prior to that she spent 12 years at Sun Microsystems in field marketing management, supporting commercial accounts and federal systems integrators throughout the U.S. Prior to Sun, Mrs. Grafton sold and developed new markets for Locus Computing Corporation’s UNIX software services focusing on OEMs. At Computer Associates Limited in the UK, she established a new corporate function, Third Party Marketing, by developing relationships with hardware manufacturers, distributors and management consultants. Mrs. Grafton graduated from UC San Diego, CA in Applied Mathematics.
Leadership
Naveen Vijay
VP Threat Research
As VP Threat Research and Principal Architect, Naveen Utilizes his 10+ years of industry experience in Analytics and Information Security Products to drive technical enablement of Gurucul’s Award Winning Security Analytics and Operations Platform by strategizing technical pre-sales, deployment, and training programs. Naveen also plays an active role in Gurucul’s initiative for cybersecurity research and contributes to product innovation and development efforts.
Before joining Gurucul Naveen held various technology and lead positions at Sun, Oracle and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Naveen holds B.E in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Anna University, India and M.S in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech.
Leadership
Akshay Oza
VP Engineering
Akshay Oza has over 17 years of experience with product development at product companies. He manages software development teams spread across multiple locations and is responsible for Product Architecture, Solution Architecture, and Relationship Management. Akshay has experience in working with startups, small and large companies, setting the teams and processes up for growth. He is responsible for 5+ year’s engagements for small to medium size teams (10 to 35+), managing team performances and career growth. Akshay works with all stakeholders across the business: CEO, CTO, Product Owners, Project Managers, Sales, Marketing, Usability Teams, Customer Success, Customer Support and Engineering Teams for different phases of Product Life Cycle. He runs India Development Center from Operations to Engineering Teams.
Leadership
Vikram Mathu
VP Customer Success
Vikram Mathu is a technology leader with 20+ years of experience in Cyber security, Customer Success, Product delivery and management, Infrastructure management, Identity & Access Management. He is a strategic thinker and planner, skilled in the design, implementation and management of highly effective product development, security architectures. Vikram possess outstanding leadership and team building strengths that generate optimum productivity and performance excellence from organizational staff. He is committed to achieving corporate objectives with a history of successful delivery of project and services. Specialties: Customer Success, Cyber Security, Identity & Access Management, Infrastructure Management.
Leadership
Brian McElroy
VP Business and Corporate Development
Brian leads Gurucul’s worldwide business and corporate development initiatives focused on accelerating growth, including strategic partnerships, OEM, and M&A. Prior to joining Gurucul, Brian led business and corporate development at MarkMonitor, a global leader in online brand protection and anti-fraud solutions. Prior to MarkMonitor, Brian was the VP of Business and Corporate Development at Nominum, helping fuel its growth from and early stage venture backed company through its successful acquisition by Akamai Technologies. Earlier in his career, Brian led the business development teams at several industry-leading security companies, including CheckPoint Software Technologies and Trend Micro. Brian earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Leadership
Sanjay Raja
VP Product Marketing and Solutions
Sanjay brings over 20 years of experience in building, marketing and selling cyber security and networking solutions to enterprises, medium-to-small business, and managed service providers. Previously, Sanjay was VP of Marketing at Prevailion, a cyber intelligence startup. Sanjay has also several successful leadership roles in Marketing, Product Strategy, Alliances and Engineering at Digital Defense (acquired by Help Systems), Lumeta (acquired by Firemon), RSA (Netwitness), Cisco Systems, HP Enterprise Security, Crossbeam Systems, Arbor Networks, Top Layer Networks, Caw Networks (acquired by Spirent Communications), Nexsi Systems, 3Com, and Cabletron Systems. Sanjay holds a B.S.EE and an MBA from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Sanjay is also a CISSP as well as Pragmatic Marketing certified.
Leadership
Bobby Wescott
VP Sales
Bobby has spent the last 20+ years in the cyber security market. He was one of the founding members of Q1 Labs, in the early stages of the Log Management and SIEM business, and built sales and channels there before the Company was acquired by IBM. He then went on to build out enterprise sales and the federal business at LogRhythm, before their acquisition by Thoma Bravo. From there he was the first CRO at the GRC SaaS software firm, LockPath, building global sales and channels leading to a successful acquisition by Navex Global. Then, he joined RSA to run the global sales team selling advanced security operations center software, until the acquisition of RSA/EMC by Dell. He was also VP of Sales at MDR/XDR firms Cyderes and Proficio. The past 5 years he spent as a VP of Sales in the SaaS Multi-factor Authentication, Mobile Security, Privileged Access Management, Identity Governance, and CIAM space with OneSpan (publicly traded) and One Identity/OneLogin.
Leadership
Pierre Jamet
VP, SME Sales & Business Development
A cybersecurity sales veteran, Pierre takes pride in building top-performing mid-market sales organizations and leading them to extraordinary results. He has been recognized for his commitment to sales enablement and his focus on the ongoing development of sales skills within the team.
With more than 15 years in the cybersecurity industry at organizations such as Rapid7, Crowdstrike, and Qualys, Pierre has significant experience in areas such as Vulnerability Management, Cloud Security, Email Security, Container Security, as well as Endpoint Detection & Response. In addition to his involvement in several Information Security networking groups in the Los Angeles area, Pierre also helps organize sales leadership meet-ups in Southern California.
Leadership
Chris Scheels
VP Product Marketing
Chris has been aligning people, processes and technology to drive companies forward for over 20 years. He has a decade of cybersecurity experience in product marketing and product management. His passion is helping businesses succeed through the strategic use of technology. Most recently he was helping customers accelerate their Zero Trust journey at Appgate, Inc. His background also includes experience in operations, sales, and new business development.
Saryu Nayyar
Chief Executive Officer
Saryu Nayyar is an internationally recognized cybersecurity expert, author, speaker and member of the Forbes Technology Council.
Read Bio →
Nilesh Dherange
Chief Technology Officer
Nilesh Dherange is responsible for development and execution of Gurucul’s technology vision.
Read Bio →
Craig Cooper
Chief Operating Officer
Craig Cooper has served in several information security and risk management roles including CISO for a Fortune 500 Financial Services organization.
Read Bio →
Julie Preiss
Global Head of Marketing
Julie Preiss has more than 25 years of experience in B2B high-tech marketing. For the last decade, she has led full-stack global marketing for high-growth cybersecurity companies including Secureworks, Damballa, Rsam and Appgate.
Read Bio →
Brian McElroy
VP Business and Corporate Development
Brian leads Gurucul’s worldwide business and corporate development initiatives focused on accelerating growth, including strategic partnerships, OEM, and M&A.
Read Bio →
Amol Bhagwat
VP, Solutions and Field Engineering
Amol is a distinguished security professional with a strong consulting, implementation and leadership experience.
Read Bio →
Bobby Wescott
VP Sales
Bobby has spent the last 20+ years in the cyber security market. He was one of the founding members of Q1 Labs, in the early stages of the Log Management and SIEM business, and built sales and channels there before the Company was acquired by IBM.
Read Bio →
Pierre Jamet
VP, SME Sales & Business Development
A cybersecurity sales veteran, Pierre takes pride in building top-performing mid-market sales organizations and leading them to extraordinary results. He has been recognized for his commitment to sales enablement and his focus on the ongoing development of sales skills within the team.
Read Bio →
Sanjay Raja
VP Product Marketing and Solutions
Sanjay brings over 20 years of experience in building, marketing and selling cyber security and networking solutions to enterprises, medium-to-small business, and managed service providers.
Read Bio →
Chris Scheels
VP Product Marketing
Chris has been aligning people, processes and technology to drive companies forward for over 20 years. He has a decade of cybersecurity experience in product marketing and product management.
Read Bio →
Naveen Vijay
VP Threat Research
As VP Threat Research and Principal Architect, Naveen Utilizes his 10+ years of industry experience in Analytics and Information Security Products.
Read Bio →
Akshay Oza
VP Engineering
Akshay Oza has over 17 years of experience with product development at product companies. He manages software development teams spread across multiple locations and is responsible for Product Architecture, Solution Architecture, and Relationship Management.
Read Bio →
Vikram Mathu
VP Customer Success
Vikram Mathu is a technology leader with 20+ years of experience in Cyber security, Customer Success, Product delivery and management, Infrastructure management, Identity & Access Management.
Read Bio →
