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.
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.
Jasen Meece
PRESIDENT, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Jasen Meece is responsible for overseeing sales, business development, channel and partnership programs, and their respective go-to-market strategies. With over 20 years of experience in the security industry, he brings deep expertise and acumen in building high-growth sales organizations at scale, spanning both enterprise and mid-market sectors. Prior to Gurucul, Jasen served as a Managing Partner, Cloud Identity at IBM. Prior to IBM, he was a Managing Director in KPMG’s Information Protection practice, where he helped implement cyber risk mitigation programs for several global organizations. He was previously President of Qubera Solutions (acquired by KPMG) and has held executive sales positions at Oracle, Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) and Sabre Corporation.
Leslie K. Lambert
CHIEF SECURITY AND STRATEGY OFFICER
Leslie K. Lambert, former CISO for Juniper Networks and Sun Microsystems, has over 30 years of experience in information security, IT risk and compliance, security policies, standards and procedures, incident management, intrusion detection, security awareness, and threat vulnerability assessments and mitigation. She received CSO Magazine’s 2010 Compass Award for security leadership and was named one of Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders in 2009. An Anita Borg Institute Ambassador since 2006, Leslie has mentored women across the world in technology. Leslie is also serving on the board of the Bay Area CSO Council since 2005.
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 had been a speaker with Burton Catalyst, Gartner, and ISSA.
Jack Jaffe
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SALES
As Senior Vice President of Sales, Jack Jaffe leads the company’s Worldwide Sales and Partner Organizations. Jack has 30 years of sales leadership experience. and gained his market expertise by selling complex technology solutions for AT&T, Cisco Systems, and NEC Corporation. Jack has led teams that have sold at every strata including large enterprise and SMB as well as government customers at the Federal, State, and Municipal level. Prior to Gurucul, Jack was Senior Vice President, Sales at Lieberman Software Corporation where he led the company to a successful exit. Jack holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy from the Vanderbilt University, and has an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
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.
Jane Grafton
SENIOR DIRECTOR OF 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.