Meet Our Leadership Team, Board, and Investors

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.

Sophie Shiatis

SVP, Marketing

As Virtru’s SVP of Marketing, Sophie is responsible for leading the overall Marketing strategy, including product marketing, demand generation, customer marketing and marketing operations. Sophie is a B2B strategic marketing leader with over 20 years of success in driving awareness, demand and sales performance. Prior to joining Virtru, Sophie led global marketing teams at Neustar, where she drove the integrated positioning and marketing plans for the company. Prior to that, she was at Vocus and Network Solutions where she drove the customer acquisition and e-commerce strategies driving incremental sales for the companies. In the last five years, Sophie led her own marketing advisory agency, focusing on accelerating growth and developing compelling value propositions and content for her clients.

Sophie holds an MBA with a focus on E-Business from Johns Hopkins University in addition to a BBA in Marketing and a BS in English and Speech Communication from Radford University.

Dana Morris

VP, Product

As Virtru’s SVP of Product, Dana is charged with leading the product 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.

Renaud Perrier

SVP, International Business Development and Operations

As Virtru’s SVP of International Business Development 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.
 

Robert McDonald

SVP, Research and Development

Rob McDonald is Virtru’s SVP of Research & Development, overseeing the engineering team. 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.

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.

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.

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Jim Timmer

CFO

As Virtru’s Chief Financial Officer, Jim is responsible for creating and managing financial planning and accounting operations to ensure the company’s success as it grows rapidly. Prior to joining Virtru, Jim was the CFO at iSIGHT Partners, where he led financial operations through the company’s growth and acquisition by FireEye.

Jim holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Loras College and an MBA from Drake University.