About

Vectra AI Leadership

Executive Leadership

Hitesh Sheth
Hitesh Sheth
President and CEO

Hitesh Sheth is the president and CEO of Vectra AI. Previously, he held the position of chief operating officer at Aruba Networks. Hitesh joined Aruba from Juniper Networks, where he was EVP/GM for its switching business and before that, SVP for the Service Layer Technologies group, which included security. Prior to Juniper, he held a number of senior management positions in the switching organization at Cisco, including running its metro Ethernet business. Before Cisco, he held executive and engineering management positions at Liberate Technologies and Oracle Corporation. He started his career as a Unix programmer at the Santa Cruz Operation. Hitesh holds a BA degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Aaron Bean
Aaron Bean
Vice President of Human Resources

Aaron Bean is the vice president of human resources at Vectra. He brings more than 20 years of HR leadership to Vectra, with experience in private and public companies. Before Vectra, Aaron was vice president of HR at Skyhigh Networks, which was acquired by McAfee, and senior vice president of HR at Aruba, where he led human resources from startup to IPO and acquisition by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Prior to Aruba, he was head of human resources for the Juniper Security Products Group and vice president of HR at Alteon WebSystems, where he built HR, facilities and IT functions from startup to IPO. Aaron holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Southern California.

Willem Hendrickx
Willem Hendrickx
Chief Revenue Officer

Seasoned sales executive Willem Hendrickx is Chief Revenue Officer at Vectra AI. Previously he served as SVP International Sales and has more than 25 years’ experience in enterprise technology. Willem brings a strong track record of delivering high-value results and developing strategic business partnerships. He will continue to be integral to the Vectra global expansion strategy. Prior to joining Vectra, Willem had a long tenure at EMC / Dell, where he was responsible for global channels and commercial business. He served as President of Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Alcatel-Lucent and as Nokia’s Senior Vice President of Europe, where he was responsible for a business worth over US$4 billion. Willem also held executive positions at Tieto and Riverbed and was the founder of GIG Technology.

Tommy Jenkins
Tommy Jenkins
Chief Marketing Officer

Tommy Jenkins is chief marketing officer of Vectra. He brings more than 20 years’ experience in technology marketing and sales. Tommy joined Vectra from Veeam, where he was acting chief marketing officer and VP of Global Demand Generation. Prior to Veeam, Tommy was with AvidXchange where he built and executed a demand generation strategy that led the company to double in revenue, setting them up for IPO. Tommy also spent almost a decade at Red Hat in roles leading digital optimization and ecommerce, global marketing operations, global lead management, and sales development. He holds a BA degree in Communications from Wake Forest University.

Jason Kehl
Jason Kehl
Senior Vice President of Engineering & Data Science

Jason Kehl is senior vice president of engineering at Vectra. He has over 15 years of experience in the security industry, including management, software development and strategic innovation. Previously, Jason was vice president at Juniper, where he led global R&D for the SRX and management product lines. Prior to Juniper, he was a director at Cisco, where he drove innovation in IPS Global Correlation and big data. Jason joined Cisco through the acquisition of IronPort Systems where he led teams that built the industry’s leading anti-spam and reputation technologies. He holds a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Greg Murphy
Greg Murphy
Senior Vice President of Operations and Strategy

Greg Murphy is Vectra’s Senior Vice President of Operations and Strategy, with more than 25 years’ experience across cybersecurity, networking and technology. Prior to Vectra, Greg served as CEO of Ordr, a leader in connected device and IoT security. Previously, he was VP Business Operations for HPE Aruba, where he led the business integration of Aruba and HP Networking following HP’s $3 billion acquisition of Aruba Networks. Greg held multiple prior senior executive positions within Aruba, including SVP Business Operations, GM of network management software and VP Marketing. Greg joined Aruba in 2008 through its acquisition of AirWave Wireless, a network management software provider that Greg founded and led. Greg received his M.A. from Stanford University and his B.A. from Amherst College.

Oliver Tavakoli
Oliver Tavakoli
Chief Technology Officer, Vectra AI

Oliver Tavakoli is chief technology officer at Vectra AI. He sets the technical strategy for the company. Oliver has overseen the adoption of technology in cybersecurity for over 25 years, the last ten of which have been at Vectra AI. Prior to Vectra, Oliver was the CTO for the security business of Juniper Networks. He joined Juniper as a result of its acquisition of Funk Software, where Oliver was the CTO. Earlier in his career, Oliver worked at IBM, Fluent Machines, and Novell Inc and founded Trilogy Inc, which was acquired by Funk Software.

Board of Directors

Bruce Armstrong
Operating Partner

Bruce Armstrong focuses on enterprise technology markets, including big data, containers, devops, security, IoT, networking, storage, and other infrastructure. At Khosla Ventures, he has served on the boards of Big Switch Networks, Cylance, Ginger.io, GitLab, MemSQL, Mesosphere, Metamarkets (acquired by Snap), Panzura, Parstream (acquired by Cisco), Scaled Inference, Theatro, and Vectra. Previously, Armstrong was president and CEO of PivotLink, chairman and CEO of Kickfire, and president and CEO of Knova Software. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Brian Dunlap
Managing Director

Brian Dunlap is a Managing Director and focuses on Software & Enterprise Technology at Blackstone Growth. Mr. Dunlap is based in San Francisco. Prior to joining Blackstone in 2019, Mr. Dunlap was a member of TPG’s Software & Enterprise Technology investment team spanning both TPG Growth and TPG Capital, leading minority growth and buyout investments in horizontal and vertical market software, EdTech, FinTech, HCIT and Cybersecurity. Additionally, Mr. Dunlap served as Head of Technology for TPG RISE, which was co-founded alongside Bono and Jeff Skoll. Prior to TPG, Mr. Dunlap worked at JMI Equity, a software specialist investment firm, where he focused exclusively on investments in SaaS and cybersecurity. Prior to JMI, Mr. Dunlap worked at General Atlantic in New York, focusing on growth equity investments in enterprise software, consumer internet, and financial technology. Half Peruvian and fluent in Portuguese, Mr. Dunlap moved from New York to São Paulo in 2010 as an early member of GA’s Latin America investment team, and executed technology investments in Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru. Prior to General Atlantic, Mr. Dunlap worked in M&A at Morgan Stanley in New York. Mr. Dunlap received a B.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University, an M.A. in International Policy Studies from the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Mr. Dunlap serves on the Impact Investing Advisory Board for Echoing Green, a leading non-profit providing seed funding to social enterprises worldwide.

Charlie Giancarlo
CEO

Charlie Giancarlo has served on the Vectra board of directors since April 2014. He is currently the CEO of Pure Storage and previously served as managing director, head of value creation and senior advisor at Silver Lake Partners. Before Silver Lake, for over a decade Giancarlo was a senior executive at Cisco, including chief technology officer and chief development officer. He led Cisco’s multiproduct growth and was at the forefront of the company’s R&D efforts for all product lines, with entry into new markets, including IP Telephony, Wi-Fi, VPNs, TelePresence, and the SMB market. Giancarlo holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Brown University where he serves on the board of trustees, a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley where he serves on the board of advisors, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Tim McAdam
General Partner

Tim McAdam joined TCV in 2010 and focuses on investments in the enterprise software, security, and tech-enabled services markets. In addition to Vectra, his current investments include Aviatrix, FinancialForce, GitLab (NASDAQ: GTLB), Legit Security, OneTrust, Oversight, Perceptyx, and Vectra. His prior investments include Alarm.com (NASDAQ: ALRM), Avalara (NYSE: AVLR), Rapid7 (NASDAQ: RPD), Silver Peak (acquired by HPE), Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK) and TOA Technologies (acquired by Oracle). He currently sits on the board at Alarm.com (NASDAQ: ALRM), Aviatrix, FinancialForce, OneTrust, Ovesight, Vectra, and Perceptyx. Tim was previously a partner at Trinity Ventures, a leading early- to mid-stage venture capital firm, where he focused on investments in the software and security sectors. Prior to Trinity, McAdam was a vice president at GTCR in Chicago. He started his career in the early 1990s at TA Associates in Boston. He received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and graduated with a BA in classical archaeology from Dartmouth College.

Jim Messina
Founder and CEO

Jim Messina is founder and CEO of the Messina Group, a full-service consulting firm with offices in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. The architect of Barack H. Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, Messina is widely recognized as one of the world's premier public affairs and communications strategists. In 2013, Messina was named the chairman of Organizing for Action, an advocacy group that promotes social policies from the community level, and co-chairman of Priorities USA Action, a progressive super PAC. His close and ongoing connections to President Obama and other key global figures add singular value and insight to the Messina Group's work.

David Reilly
Former Executive Officer

Mr. Reilly is a former executive of Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America). During his 10 years at Bank of America, he held several leadership positions within the technology area, most recently serving as Chief Information Officer, Global Banking & Markets. Prior to joining Bank of America, Mr. Reilly spent 28 years serving in various technology and network security roles with several large financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co, Inc., and HSBC Group. He currently serves on the boards of Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY), Data Dynamics, Inc. and is a member of the board of NPower, a nonprofit organization.

Hitesh Sheth
President and CEO

Hitesh Sheth is the president and CEO of Vectra AI. Previously, he held the position of chief operating officer at Aruba Networks. Hitesh joined Aruba from Juniper Networks, where he was EVP/GM for its switching business and before that, SVP for the Service Layer Technologies group, which included security. Prior to Juniper, he held a number of senior management positions in the switching organization at Cisco, including running its metro Ethernet business. Before Cisco, he held executive and engineering management positions at Liberate Technologies and Oracle Corporation. He started his career as a Unix programmer at the Santa Cruz Operation. Hitesh holds a BA degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Myrna Soto
Founder & CEO

Myrna Soto currently serves on the board of directors for CMS Energy/Consumers Energy, Spirit Airlines, TriNet, Popular Inc., Headspace Health and Delinea. She is also the founder and CEO of Apogee Executive Advisors and was most recently Chief Strategy and Trust Officer at Forcepoint, a technology provider for enterprises and the federal government. In addition, Soto has previously held executive and senior leadership positions at global companies such as Comcast, MGM Resorts International, American Express and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. She is also recognized as a Governance and Board Leadership Fellow by the National Association of Corp Directors (NACD) and was named one of SC Magazine’s Top 10 Power Players for Women in Security.

Eric Wolford
Venture Partner

Eric Wolford joined Accel in 2014 and focuses on enterprise infrastructure companies. He leverages his infrastructure and IT experience in working with founders across the enterprise stack, from next-gen analytics platforms like Jut, to emerging cloud security and threat detection companies like Netskope and Vectra. Eric also co-leads the Accel Tech Council. Prior to Accel, Eric spent years in a variety of product and management roles at FastForward Networks, Inktomi and most recently, at Riverbed where he was president of the products group. There, he oversaw the growth of Riverbed’s flagship WAN optimization and app acceleration platforms, which grew to be a $1 billion+ business. Eric is from the Bay Area, graduated from Pepperdine, and has an MBA from NYU.

Investors

AME Cloud Ventures is Jerry Yang's technology innovation investment arm. We help entrepreneurs from a very early stage by nurturing them with the resources, advice, and financial support needed to grow their companies.

Accel is a leading venture capital firm that partners with exceptional founders with unique insights, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Crowdstrike, DJI, DocuSign, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Jet, Pillpack, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, Tenable, UiPath, Venmo, and Vox Media are among the companies the firm has backed over the past 35+ years. The firm seeks to understand entrepreneurs as individuals, appreciate their originality and play to their strengths. Because greatness doesn't have a stereotype.

Atlantic Bridge is a global technology fund with over $500 million in assets under management across six funds, investing in technology companies in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and China. Atlantic Bridge has offices and staff based in London, Dublin, Silicon Valley, Beijing and Muscat.

Blackstone is one of the world’s leading investment firms. They seek to create positive economic impact and long-term value for our investors, the companies we invest in, and the communities in which we work. They do this by using extraordinary people and flexible capital to help companies solve problems. Our $649 billion in assets under management include investment vehicles focused on private equity, real estate, public debt and equity, life sciences, growth equity, opportunistic, non-investment grade credit, real assets and secondary funds, all on a global basis.

DAG Ventures leads mid-stage and growth financing rounds into promising portfolio companies of select, proven early-stage VC partnerships. Our firm is built to deliver consistent, expeditious and superior service to LPs, portfolio companies and select early-stage VC partnerships. With support from a diverse, global set of LPs, DAG Ventures manages $1.8 billion across a portfolio of over 160 companies in a wide array of technology sectors.

IA Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in companies creating competitive advantage through data. We believe that using data as a core asset will drive innovation in everything from storage and processing infrastructure to analytics to data-driven products and services. With that in mind, we focus on businesses that use cutting-edge technology to manage and extract value from today’s massive, occasionally unstructured, often real-time datasets.

Khosla Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on early stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, silicon technology and clean technology sectors. The firm was founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, a former general partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The firm is based in Menlo Park, California and manages approximately $1.3 billion of investor capital as well as earlier funds funded by Khosla himself.

Silver Lake is the global leader in technology investing, with over $43 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital and a team of approximately 100 investment and value creation professionals located around the world. Applying the strategic insights of an experienced industry participant, the operating skill of a world-class management team, and sophisticated investing and structuring capabilities, Silver Lake leverages the deep knowledge and expertise of a global team.

TCV partners with CEOs and founders of public and private growth-stage technology companies as they strive to achieve market leadership. We provide management teams with data-driven insights, sector expertise, access to world-class talent, and connections with category leaders. We take a long-term perspective, committing substantial capital, time and internal resources to support and partner with our companies on their journeys.

The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, managed and controlled by the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), is a sovereign development fund with a unique mandate. The Fund has a statutory mandate to invest on a commercial basis in a manner designed to support economic activity and employment in Ireland. Its predecessor was the National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF).

Wipro Ventures is the strategic investment arm of Wipro Ltd. and focuses on investing in early- to mid-stage startups. It is a $100 million fund that leverages Wipro’s global reach and market knowledge to accelerate the growth of our portfolio companies. Wipro’s broad customer base of Global 1,000 clients gives us a better understanding of customer needs and market trends, enabling us to provide valuable guidance to our startup partners.