Meet the
HyTrust team

John De Santis

CEO and Chairman

John De Santis has operated at the bleeding edge of innovation and business transformation for over 30 years - with international and US based experience at venture-backed technology start-ups as well as large global public companies.

Most recently, Mr. De Santis was VP, Cloud Services for VMware. He joined VMware after being Chairman and CEO of TriCipher, a software security infrastructure company acquired by VMware in 2010. He led TriCipher’s transformation from a specialized niche provider of secure authentication solutions to the leading innovator in cloud based identity services for web application and SaaS access management.

Convergys Corporation) where he was Vice President, European Operations, responsible for delivering operational support systems and business process re-engineering to newly deregulated European telecommunication service providers. When he was 28 years old, he co-founded an optical fiber networking start up which built the first commercial application of optical channel networking for IBM mainframes.

Prior to TriCipher, Mr. De Santis served as CEO of enterprise security software company, Sygate Technologies, from 2000 until its acquisition by Symantec in 2005. Sygate's innovations continue to provide the foundational technology for Symantec's Endpoint Protection business. Prior to joining Sygate, he was SVP for Network Computing Devices (a leading thin client manufacturer), where he was responsible for all worldwide sales, marketing, and service operations. Prior to NCD, he was with Cincinnati Bell Information Systems (now

Mr. De Santis earned an AB in Philosophy from Fairfield University and completed the Stanford University Executive Institute Program for Management of High-Tech Companies. De Santis is currently on the board of Neohapsis, the premier provider of security, governance, risk and compliance services to highly regulated enterprises and government agencies. Previously, he was on the boards of Tablus (data leakage protection software - acquired by RSA) and Applied Identity (identity based access control software - acquired by Citrix).

Eric Chiu

Co-founder and President

Eric has over 13 years of experience in high tech management and finance. Most recently, Eric was VP of Sales and Business Development for Cemaphore Systems, a leader in disaster recovery for Microsoft Exchange.

At Cemaphore, Eric built the sales effort from the ground up and consistently delivered significant quarter-over-quarter growth in sales as well as put in place a key OEM partnership with EMC. Prior to Cemaphore, he led business development activities at MailFrontier (acquired by SonicWALL) and mySimon (acquired by CNET Networks). In these roles, Eric spearheaded OEM partnerships, technology alliances and new product initiatives.

In addition to his start-up management experience, he was a venture capitalist for Brentwood Venture Capital (now Redpoint Ventures) and Pinnacle Ventures, a venture fund he co-founded. Prior to Brentwood Venture Capital, Eric served in the M&A Group for Robertson, Stephens and Company. Eric holds a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Renata Budko

Co-founder and VP, Product Strategy

In her role as a VP of Product Strategy, Renata applies her deep understanding of virtualization technology and enterprise IT processes to defining, positioning and promoting virtualization platform security.

Renata brings 15 years of experience in the high tech industry, most of it in technology marketing and product management. Most recently, Renata was Director of Product Management for Cemaphore Systems, where she lead the company's product efforts in enterprise software for Microsoft Exchange disaster recovery and email archiving. Prior to Cemaphore, Renata was managing solutions marketing and technical marketing at VMware where she played a significant role in defining the VMware blades strategy, VMware positioning for disaster recovery, and VMware VDI.

Renata was instrumental in VMware's collaboration with Intel VT and various groups within EMC. Prior to VMware, Renata held a number of marketing management and leadership positions at StarVox Communications, Hewlett-Packard, and Infra Telesystems, the company she co-founded. Renata holds MBA and Master of Computer Engineering degrees from UC Davis, CA and BS in Physics from MIPT, Moscow.

Jim Gannon

Vice President of Sales & Customer Support

Jim brings to HyTrust a background rich in sales, global account management, and enterprise sales management; the last thirteen years of which have been in information technology.

He joins HyTrust from VMware, the world's leading provider of virtualization solutions. As Director of Global Accounts for VMware, Jim built a team that delivered average annual revenue growth of 20% and formed deep relationships with Fortune 50 companies in financial services,

telecommunications, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, information technology, and oil and gas. Prior to VMware, Jim spent three years in Tokyo as a Director for EMC Japan and held other sales management positions at EMC and General Electric.

Mercedes Caprara

Chief Financial Officer

Mercedes (Mercy) Caprara is the Chief Financial Officer of HyTrust. She brings to this position more than fifteen years of deep experience in corporate finance with Fortune 500 companies and a Top Ten accounting firm, as well as a specialized focus on startups.

Prior to HyTrust, Mercy served as Vice-President of Finance and Administration, CFO, and Company Secretary at TriCipher Inc.,—a company recently acquired by VMware. Here, she was a key member of the executive team, with full responsibility for the finance, accounting, legal, human resources and facilities functions. She worked closely with the CEO in raising over $35 million from venture investors. As co-founder and VP of Finance at Escalate, Inc., Mercy created and oversaw all finance functions and led several major financing initiatives. She established the company’s accounting and reporting policies and drove compliance with those policies and the company’s internal control standards.

Mercy earned her MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, with a concentration in Finance, Business Policy and Business Economics. Her Bachelor’s degree is from the University of Notre Dame, where she concentrated in Accounting. She is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Illinois. For recreation, Mercy enjoys tennis, volleyball and travel.

Hemma Prafullchandra

Chief Technology Officer and SVP, Products

Hemma Prafullchandra is Hytrust’s Chief Technology Officer and SVP, Products. As CTO and SVP, she is responsible for helping drive the company's security and compliance product innovations and strategy. As an evangelist for what's possible, she pushes the organization and the eco-system (partners, industry bodies, customers) to enable cost-effective, secure deployment of virtualization.

She is an active participant in the PCI SSC Virtualization SIG, and a regular panelist on the Virtualization Security Roundtable podcast. Hemma brings over 20 years of industry experience in the field of security and distributed networking. Her expertise includes Solaris security, IPSec, Firewall, Certificate Authority/PKI, Java 2 Security Model, Secure Messaging, Web Services Security (WSS), Managed Security Services and Strong Authentication. Before joining HyTrust, Hemma was CTO of FuGen Solutions, a managed provider of federated identity interoperability and compliance services.

During this time she co-chaired the Liberty Alliance Identity Assurance SIG. Prior to that, Hemma was VP of the Advanced Products and Research at VeriSign, where she led the development of numerous next-generation product concepts and co-authored specifications in various industry forums, including WSS and OpenID. Before VeriSign, Hemma held several management and technical positions at Sun Microsystems, Critical Path and The Wollongong Group. Hemma holds a BSc (Honors) in Computer Science with Electronic Engineering from UCL, England; and has authored several patents in the field of security.

Boris Strongin

Ph.D., Co-founder and VP, Advanced Products

Boris leads HyTrust's engineering team in designing and developing the company products. He brings 20 years of industry experience and leadership in the fields of enterprise software development, systems security, and management.

Prior to joining HyTrust Boris was VP of Engineering at SeeControl, a SAAS provider of inventory control and asset tracking solutions. While at SeeControl he expanded the team, spearheaded re-engineering of the company technology, led multiple major product releases, and was instrumental in bringing in new customers and increased revenues. Prior to that, Boris was Director of Engineering at Telephia (acquired by the Nielsen Company), a leader in mobile network testing and market research. While at Telephia Boris led major new product initiatives, as well as managed multiple geographically dispersed engineering teams, and helped set up

and run the company's offshore operations. Prior to that Boris was Director of Engineering at Determina (acquired by VMWare), a best of breed developer of host based intrusion prevention systems. At Determina Boris led the effort to develop highly scalable and reliable policy based enterprise management capability for the company host based agents. Prior to that Boris held senior technical and management positions at Varian, Broadvision, Hewlett Packard, and Arqule. Boris holds a Ph.D. in Physics from M.I.T.