Four new executives are appointed to F5's leadership team, reporting directly to President and CEO François Locoh-Donou.
Kara Sprague, in the new role of Senior Vice President, General Manager of Application Delivery Controller (ADC), and Ram Krishnan, in the new role of Senior Vice President, General Manager of Security, will lead product portfolio management and product and solutions marketing for their respective business units. They will have accountability for product success from development through sales across private and public cloud, software, hardware, and emerging technologies.
Tom Fountain has been named as the Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. In this new role, Fountain will lead the company’s mergers and acquisitions program. More broadly, he will be responsible for driving the business’ long-term strategy and working cross-functionally to accelerate growth and realize F5’s vision for application delivery and security. Fountain will also oversee corporate development initiatives, business development activities, technology partnerships, and new business incubation projects.
In addition, Ana White has joined F5 as the company’s first Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer. With over 4,500 F5 employees worldwide, White will lead people practices and professional growth programs, recruiting and diversity, organizational development, and employee advocacy initiatives.
“As we continue to strengthen our offerings in the cloud and security markets, executive-level management and experience expanding global teams will be a critical factor in our success,” said Locoh-Donou. “I’m thrilled with the additions of Kara, Ram, Tom and Ana to F5 and look forward to working with them to bring new, innovative solutions to market that will set us up for growth in the years to come.”
Leading new and exciting innovations
Kara Sprague joins F5 from the global management consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, where in her thirteen-year tenure she held various leadership positions across their technology practice. Most recently she led the Technology, Media, and Telecom Practice for the Western Region. Kate also contributed content to McKinsey’s research initiatives, including the popular ‘Grow Fast or Die’ series. Prior to McKinsey, Kate was on the engineering staff of Oracle, Agilent Technologies, and HP. A trained computer scientist and electrical engineer, she holds two master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and serves on the board of Girls Who Code. She is based in the Seattle office.
Ram Krishnan has held security and cloud-related general management and product leadership roles at diverse organizations ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 corporations. He joins F5 from CloudPassage, where he was the Chief Product Officer of their SaaS-based cloud workload security solution. Previously, Ram served as General Manager for HP’s Applications business and led Symantec’s Risk and Compliance business. Earlier in his career, Ram held product and marketing leadership roles at GuardianEdge, Elemental and Netscape. Ram holds a MS in computer science from Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. He is based in the San Jose office.
Tom Fountain joins F5 from the security company McAfee, where he was Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development. In this role, he was responsible for defining the company’s corporate strategy, building its technology partnerships and strategic alliances, managing the business’ operations, and leading corporate development. Tom served a central role in McAfee’s spin-out and stand-up from Intel and led multiple acquisitions for the company. Prior to McAfee, Tom held multiple leadership roles at Juniper Networks, including General Manager of the company’s Content & Media Business Unit and Vice President of Corporate Strategy. Earlier in his career, Tom was a principal at the venture capital firm Mayfield Fund, the co-founder of network security firm Ingrian Networks (acquired by SafeNet), and a faculty member at Stanford University where he taught electrical engineering and computer science. Tom earned a BS in computer systems engineering, MS in electrical engineering, MS in computer science, and an MBA from Stanford University. He is based in the San Jose office.
Ana White comes to F5 from Microsoft, having successfully led global HR teams for over 18 years across multiple business units. Most recently Ana acted as GM of Human Resources for Microsoft’s Marketing and Consumer Business organization, with responsibility for their team’s HR strategy, talent management, diversity & inclusion, and organizational capability. In addition, she acted as the Human Resources lead on many of Microsoft’s mergers and acquisitions, including LinkedIn and Skype. Prior to Microsoft, Ana was a Compensation & Benefits Consultant at Willis Towers Watson and holds a BS in mathematics from Seattle University. She is based in the Seattle office.
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