James Brear has proven experience driving high-growth startups to successful outcomes. Prior to joining Swimlane, James was Chief Executive Officer of Veriflow which was sold to VMWare in August 2019. Veriflow was launched in 2016 and quickly gained recognition as pioneers of Intent-Based Networking. Accolades include being named Gartner’s Cool Vendor, RSA Innovation Sandbox finalist, SC magazine Innovation award, Frost & Sullivan’s Top 10 to watch, Information Week’s vendors to watch and winner of Barclays innovation challenge.
Previously, James was the Chief Executive Officer at Procera (NASDAQ:PKT) until its successful acquisition by Francisco Partners in August 2015. At Procera, James grew annual revenues in excess of 1100% in less than six years. He completed a public offering in 2012. Under James’s leadership, Procera was added to the S&P 600 and the Russell 2000—two of the world’s most widely followed stock market indices. James built Procera into a global leader in its industry as a six consecutive year winner of Deloitte’s Fast 500 award and Light Readings Public Company of the year finalist in 2012. Brear was also selected as an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year regional semi-finalist in 2013.
Prior to Procera, James was at Tasman Networks (acquired by Nortel) and Force10 Networks (acquired by Dell). In addition, he spent five years with Cisco Systems with responsibility for delivering more than $900M in annual revenue. He is a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
As Swimlane’s Co-Founder and CSO, Cody is responsible for the strategic direction of Swimlane and the development of its security automation and orchestration solution. His focus on the open exchange of expertise and best practices allows him to work closely with industry-leading technology vendors and partners to identify opportunities to streamline and automate security operations activities that speed cyber response and enable security automation initiatives.
After a decade of hands-on security operations work, in 2011, Cody co-founded Phoenix Cyber, a cybersecurity professional services organization known for its ability to blend strategy and engineering with cutting edge security technology. After beginning his career in the U.S. Coast Guard, Cody spent 15 years in IT and security, including roles with the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), American Express and IBM Global Business Services.
Cody is a frequent presenter and resource on information security at Forbes, the Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force, the DHS Security Subcommittee on Privacy, and National Public Radio (NPR).
Charles leads finance, human resources, business systems and legal functions. Charles is a strategic and tactical execution-oriented leader, with extensive global finance, software, and operational experience. Charles has significant experience rapidly growing companies, driving global expansion, raising capital through public and private offerings, and mergers and acquisitions.
Before Swimlane, Charles served as CFO at BlastWave, an early stage cyber security SaaS company. Previously, Charles served as CFO for three public companies: CareDx (NASDAQ:CDNA), a leader in molecular diagnostics; Procera Networks (NASDAQ: PKT; acquired by Francisco Partners), a leader in network security and intelligence; and Netopia (NASDAQ: NTPA; acquired by Motorola), a leader in broadband gateways and remote management software. Charles began his career as a CPA at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Tony Thompson brings more than 20 years of dynamic marketing leadership to Swimlane, having elevated cybersecurity and IT networking technology brands, defining new markets, and breaking through the noise in crowded markets. Prior to joining Swimlane, Tony was Chief Marketing Officer for Kemp Technologies, where he successfully transformed the company from niche load balancing/application delivery into the rapidly growing category of “Application Experience (AX).” Kemp was acquired by Mill Point Capital, then later acquired by Progress Software. Under Tony’s leadership, the company saw brand awareness increase with nearly 50% new user acquisition growth while also achieving the #1 rating on Gartner.
Previously, Tony served as vice president of marketing and general manager for SS8 Networks (acquired by HighBar Partners), where he led the strategy, sales and marketing execution for a breakthrough in network intelligence, breach detection, and network detection and response (NDR). Prior to SS8, Tony was vice president of marketing for Silver Peak, where he reshaped the company from niche player into a leader in WAN optimization, and ultimately the pioneer of the burgeoning SD-WAN market. Silver Peak was acquired by HPE.
Prior to Silver Peak, Tony led OEM and embedded security marketing for McAfee. He came to McAfee from the acquisition of Solidcore, where he established the company as a leader in application whitelisting security. Earlier, Tony led public relations for security products at Juniper Networks, and was instrumental in the launch of Blue Coat, the web security leader that achieved over 300% growth in market valuation and profitability within 18 months, later acquired by Symantec. Tony holds a bachelor’s degree from Fresno State, where he was awarded Public Relations Alumni of the Year.
Frans Xavier serves as Swimlane’s Chief Technology Officer and SVP of Engineering. Frans is in charge of driving technology innovation within the Swimlane and creating the most sophisticated security automation platform in the world.
Prior to joining Swimlane, Frans led the engineering and strategy teams at Zuora for the Revenue products. Frans also spent 10 years in Responsys/Oracle leading the development of a market leading cross channel marketing campaign automation platform growing to over $200M revenue, which included a successful IPO and eventual sale to Oracle.
Prior to that, Frans held several important engineering leadership roles in small and large enterprises. He has built and managed large product and engineering teams around the globe. He holds a BS degree in Computer Science from St. Joseph’s College and MS degree in Computer Science from Bharathidasan University, India.
Jim Pickering is Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Swimlane. Most recently, Jim spent 11 years at Infoblox, a leader in modern, cloud-first networking and security solutions. As VP of Sales for Infoblox’s largest geographic region, Jim led his organization to an unprecedented 65% year-over-year growth and a $200M business.
Prior to Infoblox, Jim served as Vice President of North American Enterprise Sales at Fortinet, a provider of network security appliances and a market leader in unified threat management. During his more than five-year tenure at Fortinet, Jim built the organization’s enterprise sales division where he owned full responsibility for the strategy, execution and P&L of this operation. Prior to Fortinet, Jim was the regional sales manager at Juniper Networks for the North Central region, where he managed a $45 million operation and led the company’s top US enterprise sales region worldwide. Jim holds a Bachelors degree from North Carolina State University.
Mike is Sr. Vice President of Business Development, and is responsible for Swimlane’s Technology Partners, Advisory Alliances, and Channel Partner strategy. He brings over 25 years of experience developing and leading successful channel partner and Alliance programs, and has led multiple successful partner programs including Veriflow Networks (Acquired by VMware), Tasman Networks (acquired by Nortel), and Force10 Networks (acquired by Dell). In addition, Mike served 7 years at Cisco Systems where he led Cisco’s strategic relationships with EDS and IBM globally. Prior to Swimlane, Mike served as Chief Business Development Officer at BlastWave, an early state cyber security SaaS company.
As Swimlane’s Senior Vice President, Customer Experience, Trevis leads the post-sales customer delivery teams. Trevis has a deep passion for ensuring that both customers and partners have a great Swimlane journey, and he also believes that ensuring customers are raving fans is a huge competitive differentiator.
Trevis brings over 25 years of experience in post-sales team delivery, and has an extensive background in cybersecurity, networking, and SaaS/Cloud, where he excels at helping fast-growing companies scale, by leveraging people, process, and technology.
Prior to joining Swimlane, Trevis was the VP of Customer Engineering for ThousandEyes (acquired by Cisco) where he quickly scaled the support and services teams to handle Cisco size scale. Before ThousandEyes, Trevis also held senior leadership positions at Zscaler and Procera Networks. Trevis started his career in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, with 3 years in South Korea.
Michael Lyborg is the Senior Vice President of Global Security and Enterprise IT at Swimlane. Prior to taking his current role, Michael was Global Vice President of Advisory services, a highly sought-after expert by the world’s largest Fortune 500 companies and global government agencies to advise on the creation and operation of industry leading security operations programs in North America, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, and Asia.
Before joining Swimlane, Michael was a head of security for the Fortune 100 fastest growing pharmaceutical company Heska (HSKA), where he held multiple responsibilities for global security operations, engineering, and compliance. His roles at Swimlane and Heska built on decorated US Marine Special Operations career supporting both cyber and physical response and the mitigation of emerging threats.
Lindsie Upton is the Director of People Operations for Swimlane and leading the human resources strategies for the organization. Lindsie serves as a strategic business partner focused on employee relations, talent management, and development. She has a focus on improving the employee experience and modernizing people strategies to keep competitive in the current workforce.
Lindsie has a background in human resources and talent acquisition in the SaaS and academia industries. She has a strong track record in process improvements and implementing new HR programs related to recruitment, retention, ED&I, leadership qualities, and more. Lindsie received her BA in Business Management, emphasis in Human Resources Management from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also a SHRM Senior Certified Professional.
Armed with almost 2 decades of experience in Human Resource Management and Labour law compliance, Lakshmi is a self motivated, performance driven leader determined to deliver Talent acquisition, retention and motivation solutions that help organizations to harness the full potential of the most valued asset – People.
At Swimlane she is responsible to steer people management strategies to achieve business goals by creating a people centric environment, with infusion of diversity, equity and inclusion strategies across all stages of the employment lifecycle.
Prior to Swimlane, Lakshmi’s experience includes roles at Oracle, Responsys and Blucora where she was instrumental in creating and executing people centric policies and process, employee engagement programs with a goal to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. Throughout her career she has been a part of Talent acquisition, compensation and employee experience, culture performance management, employee grievance handling and Human Resource administration.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce, a Masters degree in Business Administration specializing in Human Resource management and University topper in Degree of Law.
Niloofar Razi Howe has been an investor, executive and entrepreneur in the technology industry for the past 25 years, with a focus on cybersecurity for the past ten. Most recently Ms. Howe served as Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations at RSA, a global cybersecurity company where she led corporate strategy, corporate development and planning, business development, global program management, business operations, security operations and Federal business development. Prior to RSA, Ms. Howe served as the Chief Strategy Officer of Endgame, Inc., a leading enterprise software security company, where she was responsible for driving market and product strategy, as well as leading marketing, product management, corporate development and planning. Prior to her operating roles, Ms. Howe spent twelve years leading deal teams in private equity and venture capital; first as a Principal at Zone Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm in Los Angeles, and then as Managing Director at Paladin Capital Group, a Washington DC based private equity fund focused on investing in next generation security companies.
Ms. Howe started her professional career as a lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers and as a consultant with McKinsey & Co.Ms. Howe speaks regularly on national security, cybersecurity, technology, innovation, corporate governance and corporate culture. She also created a TEDx talk entitled “The Gift of Exile” about the long-term opportunities that can arise from the most difficult challenges encountered in childhood for both the individuals who suffer the adversity and the communities that can accept and integrate such individuals.Ms. Howe graduated with honors from Columbia College and holds a JD from Harvard Law School. She serves as an advisor to Swimlane as well as to a number of other organizations including Dragos, Recorded Future, Endgame, and a US Intelligence agency.
Ms. Howe is a Senior Fellow, Cybersecurity Initiative at New America. Her non-profit work includes serving on the board of IREX, an international non-profit organization focused on promoting lasting change, as Vice Chair. Previously she served on the Board of Global Rights, an international human rights organization, as Chair, Sibley Memorial Hospital (a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine), as chair of its Investment Committee, and Sibley Memorial Hospital Foundation, as Vice Chair.
Sameer has over 15 years of experience in industrial and climate technology. He joined EIP in 2015 and has since led the firm’s investments efforts across cybersecurity and distributed energy. His investments at EIP include Arcadia, Attivo, Dragos, Enchanted Rock, Finite State, Mosaic, Opus One, Particle, Powin, RapidSOS, Swimlane, Trifacta, and Urbint.Prior to EIP, Sameer spent five years at Evercore in the firm’s Power and Renewable Energy Group where he advised clients on over $15bn of M&A transactions.
Prior to Evercore, Sameer spent three years at GE Capital’s energy venture capital group focusing on industrial and clean tech investing. Sameer has a dual degree in Finance and Economics from the University of Florida.
Raj has been investing at the intersection of technology and energy, transportation and industrial systems for 25 years and has founded three private investment firms focused on technology and sustainability over the previous three decades: Activate Capital, Silver Lake Kraftwerk and DFJ Element. Prior to these firms, Raj was a long time Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson from 2000-2011 where he spearheaded the firm’s work in cleantech, security and software, and India. Raj has served on over 25 public, private and nonprofit boards including SolarCity (SCTY), Ping Identity (PING), EnerNOC (ENOC), Parnassus Funds and current investments Generate Capital, Flexe, Ridecell, Voltus, Omnidian, Nozomi Networks and Swimlane.Raj holds BS and MS degrees in Environmental Engineering and an MBA from Stanford University. He was previously a Sandia National Labs research associate, an Aspen Fellow. and founder of an educational non profit, The Spotlight Foundation.
