Meet Our Leadership Team, Board, and Investors

Shannon Vaughn

General Manager, Virtru Federal

As the General Manager of Virtru Federal, Shannon leads the business development, operations, and delivery of Virtru’s federal engagements. Shannon brings 15+ years of federal contracting experience to Virtru. Prior to joining the company, Shannon served in multiple leadership roles, including VP of Technology, Chief Product Owner, and Chief Innovation Officer. Shannon is also a career U.S. Army officer, currently serving at Army Futures Command in the Reserves.

Shannon is a graduate of the University of North Georgia and the Department of Defense Language Institute.

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John Ackerly

Co-Founder and CEO

As CEO and Co-Founder of Virtru, John is a long time privacy advocate. Prior to co-founding Virtru, John was an investor at Lindsay Goldberg LLC, working with entrepreneurs to dramatically scale their businesses. John also served as a technology policy advisor at the White House and was the Policy and Strategic Planning Director at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

John graduated from Williams College, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Will Ackerly

Co-Founder and CTO

Will is the CTO and Co-Founder of Virtru. Prior to founding Virtru, Will spent eight years at the National Security Agency (NSA) where he specialized in cloud analytics and security architecture—specifically protecting the agency’s in-house data transfers. During his tenure at the NSA, Will invented the Trusted Data Format (TDF), an open standard used today by various government agencies for the secure transfer of data and the technical foundation upon which Virtru was founded.

Will graduated from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

Matt Howard

SVP & Chief Marketing Officer

A proven executive and entrepreneur with over 25 years experience developing high-growth software companies, Matt serves as Virtu’s CMO and leads all aspects of the company’s go-to-market motion within the data protection and Zero Trust security ecosystems. Prior to Virtru, Matt served 6 years as SVP and CMO at Sonatype where he designed, built, and led global marketing and demand generation for a pioneer in software supply chain management and DevOps automation. Earlier in his career, Matt co-founded, developed, and successfully sold two software companies. He also led sales and marketing at USinternetworking (acquired by AT&T) and Groove Networks (acquired by Microsoft).  Matt holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from The George Washington University and a Master of Arts from George Mason University.

Robert McDonald

SVP, Platform

Rob is the SVP of Platform and an advocate of safeguarding data across new applications and data-sharing workflows. Prior to Virtru, Rob was the CIO for several Acute Care facilities and Denovo Healthcare development teams. His significant expertise in the healthcare industry earned him a spot in Becker’s Review as a 2013 and 2014 Top 100 Healthcare CIOs. Rob has also consulted with corporations to help them assess their current information security position and develop a plan to not only mitigate the discovered technical shortcomings but more critically to raise security awareness amongst their employees.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas and is a perpetual student of technology, information security, and privacy practices.

Dana Morris

VP, Product & Engineering

As Virtru’s SVP of Product & Engineering, Dana is charged with leading the product and engineering strategy. Dana brings more than 20 years of product management and product development expertise to Virtru. Prior to joining the company, Dana led product and engineering for the administration and business analyst tooling at MicroStrategy. Before that, Dana spent 19 years at IBM where he held numerous product roles, most recently owning the M&A and partnership strategy for the Watson Data Platform.

Dana holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from George Mason University.

Will Peppo

SVP, Analytics and Customer Success

As Virtru’s SVP of Analytics and Customer Success, Will oversees user adoption and customer satisfaction, with a focus on giving Virtru customers greater insight into, and control over, how their data is used. Will comes to Virtru with more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry as an executive, investment banker, and software engineer. Prior to joining the company, Will led the development of new data and analytics products at Emodo, Inc., the data activation arm of Ericsson. Before that, Will served in executive management positions at Placecast, a data management platform acquired by Ericsson in 2018, and TxVia, a payments platform provider acquired by Google in 2012.

Will holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School in addition to a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree from Duke University.

Renaud Perrier

SVP, International Sales and Operations

As Virtru’s SVP of International Sales and Operations, Renaud is charged with Virtru’s operations and technology partnerships in EMEA and APAC. Renaud brings more than 20 years of sales engineering, product management and partnership development expertise to Virtru. Prior to joining the company, he co-founded We Advocacy, and before that, was chief product officer at LumApps overseeing the collaborative platform provider’s product strategy and marketing. Before that, Renaud spent eight years at Google, where he developed its global ISV program and helped launch Google Cloud solutions in EMEA. Earlier in his career, Perrier held sales engineering positions at Microsoft.

Renaud holds a Master of Engineering degree in Robotics, IT, and Management, from École d’Ingénieurs en Sciences et Technologies du Numérique.

Bill Smith

Chief Sales Officer

As Virtru’s Chief Sales Officer, Bill oversees the sales strategy and is responsible for accelerating the company’s growth.

Bill brings 20 years of sales leadership to Virtru. Prior to joining, Bill was SVP of Global Sales at Sonatype where he grew revenue from $5M to $75M annually over 7 years, positioning the company for a successful acquisition by Vista Equity Partners.  Before Sonatype Bill led the North American sales organization at Syncsort (now called Precisely) and has also held sales leadership positions at IBM, Ascential Software (acquired by IBM) and MicroStrategy.

Smith began his sales career at Amdahl and holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Advertising from Purdue University.