Meet Our Leadership Team, Board, and Investors

John Ackerly

Co-Founder & 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 the lead technology policy advisor at the White House National Economic Council 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 & Chief Architect

Will is the Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Virtru. Prior to founding Virtru in 2012, Will spent eight years at the National Security Agency (NSA) where he specialized in cross-agency cloud analytics and security architecture. During his tenure at the NSA, Will led the development of the Trusted Data Format (TDF), an open standard published by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). TDF is the technical foundation on which Virtru was founded and is used today by agencies and companies for the secure transfer of data. Will holds 25 patents, and is a frequent speaker and quoted expert on cryptography, data access control policy and big data analytics.

Mishi Choudhary

SVP & General Counsel

A technology lawyer with over 17 years of legal experience, Mishi has served as a legal representative for many of the world's most prominent free and open source software developers and distributors, including the Free Software Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Linux Foundation, Debian, the Apache Software Foundation, and OpenSSL. At Virtru, she leads all legal and compliance activities, builds internal processes to continue to accelerate growth, helps shape Virtru and open source strategy, and activates global business development efforts.

Conley Hendseron McIntyre

VP, People

Conley Henderson leads, manages, and oversees the entire people function for Virtru. In her role, Conley leads a team that navigates all aspects of human resources, talent acquisition, people operations, employee relations, and employee engagement. Conley is dedicated to leading with an innovative, compassionate, people-first mindset that challenges the status quo to ensure people are empowered to succeed and cultivates a culture of inclusion and belonging. Securing and retaining best-in-class talent is one of Conley’s superpowers and this had a direct impact on Virtru's ability to achieve their latest round of funding. Conley graduated from Wake Forest University with a B.A. in Psychology. Conley splits her time between Washington, DC and Winston-Salem, NC with her husband and spunky goldendoodle, Blitz.

Matt Howard

SVP & CMO

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.

Ted Livermore

SVP, Operations

Mike Morper

SVP, Product Marketing

Mike Morper is a product strategy executive with over 20 years of experience leading product commercialization for enterprise software companies. Mike’s deep knowledge of business process automation, data security, and artificial intelligence have been leveraged across multiple product lines, helping countless organizations realize greater productivity.

Before Virtru, Mike led product marketing for a publicly-traded AI company, co-founded a SaaS software company, led product and marketing strategy for a very successful Washington, DC-based startup, and has held several leadership roles within leading tech companies including Veritone, Kofax, Sage, and GE.

Dana Morris

SVP, 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 & 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.

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.

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 over 20 years of government and military experience as he has served in multiple leadership roles, including Army Attaché, VP of Technology, Chief Product Owner, and Chief Innovation Officer. In his Army Reserve role, Shannon currently serves as the Chief of Artificial Intelligence for the Military Intelligence Reserve Command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Shannon is also a non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI).

Shannon graduated from the University of North Georgia and the Department of Defense Language Institute and is currently finishing his Masters of International Business and Policy from Georgetown University.