The Palo Alto Networks founders, management team and board of directors have been key drivers of some of the most important network security companies and related technologies in the last 12+ years, including the invention of stateful inspection, hardware-based security, and intrusion prevention. The engineering team brings a proven track record in delivering high quality networking and security solutions at companies like Check Point, NetScreen, McAfee, Juniper Networks, Cisco and many others.
Mark D. McLaughlin
President & CEO
Mark D. McLaughlin has served as president and CEO of Palo Alto Networks since August of 2011. He is also a member of the Board of Directors at Palo Alto Networks.
Mark previously served as president and CEO and as a director of Verisign. He had also held a number of key positions at Verisign from 2000 to 2007, including serving as chief operating officer, executive vice president of products and marketing, and head of the company's Naming Services business. Prior to Verisign, he was the vice president of sales and business development for Signio, a leading Internet payment company, and was instrumental in the negotiation and acquisition of Signio by Verisign in 1999. Before joining Signio, he was the vice president of business development for Gemplus, the world's leading smart-card company. And previous to Gemplus, he also served as general counsel of Caere Corporation and practiced law as an attorney with Cooley Godward Kronish LLP.
Mark was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) in Jan. 2011. He received his J.D., Magna cum Laude, from Seattle University School of Law and his B.S. Degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served as an attack helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army and earned an Army Commendation Medal and Airborne Wings.
Nir Zuk
Founder and CTO
Nir Zuk brings a wealth of network security expertise and industry experience to Palo Alto Networks. Prior to co-founding Palo Alto Networks, Nir was CTO at NetScreen Technologies, which was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2004. Prior to NetScreen, Nir was co-founder and CTO at OneSecure, a pioneer in intrusion prevention and detection appliances. Nir was also a principal engineer at Check Point Software Technologies and was one of the developers of stateful inspection technology.
Rajiv Batra
Founder and Vice President, Engineering
Rajiv Batra has extensive experience managing engineering teams through times of strong growth. Prior to Palo Alto Networks, he was the Vice President of Engineering at Peribit, which was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2005. While at Peribit, Rajiv assembled a strong engineering team developing best-in-class application acceleration platforms. Rajiv also co-founded VitalSigns Software and served as Vice President of Engineering at Bay Networks.
René Bonvanie
Chief Marketing Officer
René Bonvanie has more than 25 years of executive management and marketing experience in enterprise technology. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President of Marketing, SaaS, and IT at Serena Software, and was Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at SAP. Earlier, as CMO at Business Objects, René was responsible for all marketing activity, including corporate communications, field marketing, and product marketing. Prior to that, he served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at VERITAS Software Corporation. In his 10 years as Vice President of Product Marketing at Oracle Corporation, he managed the Oracle database product line, had editorial responsibility for Oracle Magazine and Profit Magazine, and co-founded Oracle's developer program, Oracle Technology Network.
Brett Eldridge
Vice President of Global Customer Engineering & Support
Brett has more than twenty years of experience working in security and networking startups and managing customer-facing technical organizations. Prior to Palo Alto Networks, he was at Infoblox where he was responsible for product management and marketing for 3 years and managed systems engineering and professional services for 2 years. Before joining Infoblox, Brett was responsible for the enterprise systems engineering team at Juniper. He joined Juniper Networks through the NetScreen Technologies acquisition where he managed worldwide field engineering. Prior to NetScreen Technologies, he was a co-founder and vice-president of operations at OneSecure and also held consulting positions at Hewlett Packard. Brett holds a MBA and BSEE from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Lee Klarich
Vice President, Product Management
Lee Klarich brings a strong track record in network security product management to Palo Alto Networks. Lee was Director of Product Management for Juniper Networks, where was he responsible for firewall/VPN platforms and software. He joined Juniper Networks through the NetScreen Technologies acquisition, where he managed the same product line. Prior to NetScreen Technologies, Lee held various positions at Excite@Home and Packard Bell-NEC.
;Steffan Tomlinson
Chief Financial Officer
Steffan Tomlinson brings deep financial and operational management experience to Palo Alto Networks and oversees the company's finance, accounting, IT, human resources, and manufacturing functions. Steffan served as chief financial officer of Aruba Networks and was instrumental in both their Initial Public Offering and helping the company scale to facilitate growth. From 2000 to 2005, he was the first non-founder employee and, ultimately, chief financial officer of Peribit Networks. He earned an MBA from Santa Clara University and a BA from Trinity College.
Larry Link
Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Larry Link brings to Palo Alto Networks a wealth of business experience in operational roles at top-tier start-up companies and leading high tech firms. Larry has a 20-year track record of successfully managing sales, customer service, and marketing programs for leading information technology companies including Juniper Networks, Neoteris, Excite@Home, Silicon Graphics, and Hewlett-Packard. Most recently, Larry led the Sales, Service and Business Development departments at Silver Peak Systems, which offers a WAN optimization solution. Larry has also held vice president positions at Juniper Networks, Neoteris, and the @Work division of Excite@Home. Earlier in his career, Larry held sales and sales management positions at Silicon Graphics and Hewlett-Packard.
Yuming Mao
Founder and Chief Architect
Yuming Mao brings to Palo Alto Networks an extensive knowledge of platform architecture and a proven track record. Prior to Palo Alto Networks, Yuming was Chief Architect and a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks, which he joined through the NetScreen Technologies acquisition. At NetScreen, he was one of the initial engineering architects. Throughout his time at NetScreen and Juniper, Yuming was actively involved in defining the hardware and software architecture of NetScreen's industry-leading firewall/VPN platforms. Prior to NetScreen, Yuming was a senior engineer at SAP Labs.
Punit Minocha
Vice President of Business and Corporate Development
Punit has more than 20 years of leadership experience in general management, business development, and marketing. Most recently, he was senior vice-president of corporate development and general manager of data center security at Trend Micro where he was responsible for mergers and acquisitions for the company as well for defining and executing the strategic direction of the company's datacenter and cloud computing solutions. During his tenure of over 8 years and over 20 transactions, he transformed how Trend Micro views merger and acquisition activity and was also responsible for integrating these acquisitions into the company. Prior to joining Trend Micro, he was director of business development at Nexsi, an internet security company. Before that, he spent over 8 years at Intel in various roles. Punit holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of New Hampshire.
