Meet Our Leaders

William (Bill) Welch (he/him) brings over 30 years of extensive experience in operationalizing and scaling product development and innovation, customer experience and expansion, talent acquisition and retention, and strategic alliances across the globe.

While at Talkdesk Bill served as the President and Chief Operating Officer where he led the Go To Market (GTM) organization. Prior to Talkdesk, Welch held executive leadership positions at Duo Security, Zscaler, and Symantec. 

While president and COO of Duo Security, he helped secure a $2.35 billion cash transaction with Cisco. As COO of Zscaler, he led the organization toward a dramatic expansion of employees and revenue, culminating in an industry-leading IPO and a $17 billion market capitalization.

Loris (he/him) is the Chief Technology Officer and founder of Sysdig. He is also the creator of the popular open source troubleshooting tool, sysdig, and the open source container security tool Falco. Prior to founding Sysdig, Loris co-created Wireshark, the open source network analyzer, which today has 20+ million users. Loris holds a PhD in computer engineering from Politecnico di Torino and lives in Davis, California.

Karen Walker assumed the role of Chief Financial Officer of Sysdig in 2021 to steer growth and financial strategy. With over 20 years of expertise spanning corporate finance, accounting, compliance, and investor relations, Karen’s leadership extends from pre-IPO to public companies. Her executive roles at PagerDuty, Uber Technologies, Pandora Media, CBS Interactive, and Virgin America underscore her proficiency. Karen excels at scaling finance teams in high-growth and global settings, notably at Uber Technologies. She spearheaded early IPO readiness for Uber and Virgin America, while also driving M&A activities, including Pandora Media’s sale to Sirius XM. Karen’s strategic acumen includes building and leading investor relations at PagerDuty.

Gary (he/him) leads global revenue strategy and execution at Sysdig. With over 30 years of experience in cybersecurity and SaaS, he has a proven track record of building and scaling high-performance teams, expanding global market presence, and delivering rapid and repeatable business outcomes that fuel top- and bottom-line success.

Before joining Sysdig, Gary oversaw global go-to-market strategy and revenue for Snyk – there, he led a global team of over 300 to achieve a $300M ARR milestone in his first year. Prior to that, he led the global go-to-market strategy and revenue for one of the largest Managed Security Service Providers in the world. Prior to being acquired into AT&T, he was VP & GM of Worldwide Sales at Zscaler, where he launched and scaled a new product and sales team globally and was part of the executive leadership team that took the company public. He has also held senior leadership roles at BMC Corporation, Blue Coat Systems, Sun Microsystems, and PTC, and his cybersecurity expertise spans endpoint, network, AI/ML, application, and cloud security, as well as building and leading global sales teams, strategic partnerships, and customer-focused growth initiatives.

Gary began his career as a United States Air Force Officer and is a veteran of Desert Storm. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Political Science from the United States Air Force Academy and a Master’s in Public Administration from Troy State University-European Region. Gary and his wife of over 35 years, have three daughters, and split their time between Incline Village, NV and Franklin, TN.

Shanta (she/her) is responsible for worldwide marketing at Sysdig. She has more than 20 years of experience across all marketing functions including integrated marketing, operations, global/field demand, customer success, and product marketing. Shanta is recognized as a GTM & demand generation strategist with a proven record to build scalable, high performing global programs focused on net new logo acquisition and customer expansion.

Before joining Sysdig, Shanta held senior marketing roles at enterprise security and software companies including Palo Alto Networks, Nimble Storage (acquired by HPE), and Blue Coat Systems (acquired by Symantec).

Shanta holds a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in marketing from California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo.

Omer Azaria is the Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Sysdig, Inc., where he leads the development of Sysdig’s runtime CNAPP platform and oversees engineering, product management, and threat research. Omer joined Sysdig in 2018 as Director of Engineering, where he built the Sysdig Secure technology from the ground up and scaled a global team. His leadership was instrumental in positioning Sysdig Secure as a leader in the cloud security space. In March 2020, Omer was promoted to Vice President of Engineering, driving innovation across research and development.

Prior to joining Sysdig, Omer served as VP of Engineering at Imperva, a cybersecurity software and services company focused on protecting enterprise data and application software. While scaling the field R&D team, he collaborated closely with engineering, sales, and product teams on key deals and marquee accounts. Omer also bootstrapped a cloud data security product that processed petabytes of data daily, leveraging cutting-edge cloud-native technology to disrupt the market.

Sergej Epp (he/him) is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Sysdig, where he leads the company’s cybersecurity strategy, operations, and risk management initiatives. With a distinguished career spanning over 15 years, Sergej brings a wealth of experience in cyber defense, threat intelligence, and incident response across global organizations.

Before joining Sysdig, Sergej served as CISO at Palo Alto Networks, where he advised executives and government entities on cybersecurity strategy and oversaw cybersecurity operations, threat intelligence, and regional product strategy. Before that, he held senior roles at Deutsche Bank, where he built and led global cyber defense centers and teams specializing in red teaming, digital forensics, investigations, and cyber hygiene, protecting critical assets across the Americas, Europe, and APAC regions.

Named one of Capital Magazine’s “40 Under 40,” Sergej is a sought-after speaker at international conferences and an educator, training executives in cybersecurity through the Frankfurt School’s management board programs. He also serves in advisory roles for government bodies, including The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), venture capital firms, and high-tech startups.

Sergej holds degrees from the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management and the University of Auckland, reflecting his strong academic foundation in technology and business.

Colleen (she/her) is the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for Sysdig and is an executive with over 20 years in-house legal experience in licensing, IP, compliance, privacy, and corporate governance. She has spent the majority of her career advising tech companies of all sizes, particularly in the enterprise software and SaaS space. Colleen has deep experience in tech transactions —including open source and strategic licensing—with a special emphasis on scaling processes and teams to address deal velocity and rapid revenue growth.

In addition to the legal team, Colleen also leads the people engagement and experience teams, which are focused on recruiting top talent and fostering company culture and employee potential. As the CAO, Colleen bridges the gap between legal strategy and human resources management, ensuring alignment across the company’s objectives and values. 

Before joining Sysdig, Colleen held senior legal positions at Magento Commerce (acquired by Adobe), Nimble Storage (IPO and subsequently acquired by HPE), and VMware (IPO). She successfully helped lead the mergers of both Nimble Storage and Magento Commerce and worked with both acquiring companies to advise and integrate the legal and HR processes post-acquisition.

Colleen holds a JD from Santa Clara University School of Law and is admitted to practice law in the State of California.

Crendal (she/her) leads business operations, customer business value, and go-to-market optimization at Sysdig. Throughout her career, she has driven operational excellence and developed customer-centric strategies that enhance satisfaction, foster loyalty, and deliver measurable value that contributes to long-term business growth.

Before joining Sysdig, Crendal held executive and leadership roles at Talkdesk, Exabeam, Zscaler, HP, NetApp, and Aricent, where she led initiatives to streamline processes, improve customer engagement, and scale business growth. Known for her strategic vision, Crendal’s leadership has consistently driven significant improvements in operational efficiency, customer engagement, and organizational performance.

Phil (he/him) is responsible for all corporate development, strategic alliances and global systems integrator (GSI) initiatives at Sysdig where he leads the team focused on building strategic partnerships across the security, cloud, and Kubernetes spaces. Phil has a passion for developing strategic alliances and ecosystems that deliver true value for both the partner and joint customers, and he has proven this in both startup and large public technology companies.

Prior to joining Sysdig, Phil led the corporate development & strategic alliances strategies for Hedvig, a pioneer in the software-defined and container storage markets, as well as, Kaminario, a leading early-stage startup in the all-flash storage market. Phil previously held executive leadership positions at Dell, as well as, Netapp, where he led the global strategic alliances strategy and team.

Phil holds a B.S. in Commerce & Business Administration from the University of Alabama Culverhouse School of Business and lives in the San Francisco area.