Management Team

David Alison

Sr. Vice President, Products

David Alison serves as the Sr. Vice President of Products for Cofense and leads the individual product, content, platform, and user experience teams. David joined Cofense in 2019. Prior to joining Cofense he served in a wide range of software executive and engineering roles dating back over three decades. He was the founder and CTO of Vovici, which was ultimately acquired by Verint Systems, Inc. and has been in leadership roles at Nantucket (a Computer Associates acquisition), Symantec and Thomson Publishing.

In addition, David has served in editorial roles for various technical print publications including eWeek, Network Computing and other Ziff Davis publications.

Carolyn Merritt

Senior Vice President, Customer Experience

Carolyn Merritt is the Vice President of Customer Experience at Cofense. In this role she is responsible for facilitating ownership of customer experience excellence throughout the company and leading the customer onboarding, customer success, professional services, and global technical support teams at Cofense. Carolyn draws on 20+ years of experience leading operational and customer-facing teams in Managed Services, Cloud Hosting, and SaaS Solutions. She is uniquely equipped to drive successful outcomes for Cofense customers and will ensure the voice of the customer is considered in all decisions across the business.

Prior to joining Cofense, Carolyn held various executive level roles across several technology companies – all focused on helping customers utilize technology to help them meet their business objectives. Carolyn is known as a true “customer champion”.

Carolyn is ITIL and Net Promoter certified and holds a bachelor’s degree in Historic Preservation.

Josh Bartolomie

Vice President, Global Threat Services

After joining Cofense in 2018 as the Director of Research and Development, Josh Bartolomie currently serves as the Vice President of Global Threat Services for the organization. With over 25 years of information technology and cybersecurity experience, Josh has designed, built, and managed security operations centers, incident response teams, and security architecture and compliance groups for large, global organizations such as Exelis, L3Harris, and Cognizant. Throughout his career, Josh has maintained a passion for continuous innovation with a focus on designing solutions that address real world gaps and provide immediate value to cybersecurity defenders and organizations around the world.

Tonia Dudley

Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer

After joining Cofense in 2018 as a strategic advisor, Tonia Dudley currently serves as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the organization. With over 15 years of cybersecurity experience, Tonia has managed programs in incident response, security awareness, and IT compliance for large, global organizations such as Honeywell and Charles Schwab. As a current Executive Committee Member for the National Cybersecurity Alliance, Tonia works closely with organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) promoting information security best practices and education to organizations around the world.

Laura Riviere

Vice President, Demand Generation

Laura Riviere currently serves as the Vice President of Demand Generation for Cofense, leading all aspects of the global marketing organization, including corporate communications, product marketing, demand generation, competitive intelligence, marketing analytics and creative content development. With 20+ years of marketing experience, Laura partners across the organization to showcase the power of Intelligent Email Security and the value that Cofense can bring to global businesses.

Mark Zigadlo

Sr. Vice President, Technology, Operations, & Security

Mark leads our Technology, Operations, and Security organization. As General Manager of our Managed Phishing Detection and Response service (MPDR), he is responsible for ensuring our phishing solutions, backed by human expertise, keep customers protected. Together these roles help Cofense ensure we protect our customers the same way we protect ourselves.

Since joining Cofense, Mark established an industry-leading technology organization by identifying and operationalizing the latest technologies to build a secure global and mobile workforce and, an award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service and achieving ISO 27001:2013 certification for Cofense’s corporate technology business operations.

Prior to Cofense Mark previously held technical and leadership positions for various organizations including, federal, start-ups, and internet service providers. He has also successfully achieved compliance for ISO 27001:2013, SOC, CMMI, Sarbanes-Oxley, SSAE16 / SAS70, HIPAA, PA-DSS, and PCI-DSS certifications.

Mark holds a Master’s in Information Technology Security and Management, and CCSP, CISSP, MCSE, VCP, ITIL AWS, Data Science, and Leadership certifications.

Mel Wesley

Chief Financial Officer

Mel has spent his career in finance and accounting, and for the past sixteen years has served as the Chief Financial Officer for both publicly traded and private technology companies. In the last seven years, Mel was instrumental in the sale of three companies for a total of $2.5 billion. During this time, Mel was also involved in the purchase and integration of several companies totaling over $900 million. As Chief Financial Officer, Mel has managed investor relations, directed IPO-readiness efforts, raised debt and equity, and partnered with both internal and external stakeholders to support fast-growing organizations.

Since February of 2017, Mel has served as the Chief Financial Officer of Cofense, Inc. (formerly PhishMe). His initial focus was supporting the Company’s growth initiatives. In the fall of 2017, Mel became involved in a market check process due to in-bound strategic interest. The process resulted in the sale of the Company to a group of private equity firms for $400 million. Mel’s focus continues to be supporting the Company’s growth initiatives.

Prior to his current role, Mel served for two years as the Chief Financial Officer of comScore, Inc., a publicly traded company. During his tenure, Mel’s focus included merging with another publicly traded company to strengthen customer offerings in the media measurement space.

Starting in January of 2013, Mel served as the Chief Financial Officer of Mandiant Corporation. His initial focus included IPO-readiness efforts. In the summer of 2013 his focus shifted to reviewing strategic alternatives, which ended with a sale of the company to FireEye, Inc. in December of 2013 for over $1 billion. Mel remained at FireEye as Chief Financial Officer of Global Services and Cloud Solutions until August of 2014.

Prior to joining Mandiant, Mel served as the Chief Financial Officer of OPNET Technologies, a publicly traded company, for eight years. During Mel’s tenure as CFO, OPNET’s revenue grew from approximately $50 million to $175 million before it was sold for over $1 billion in December of 2012.

Prior to joining OPNET, Mel held positions with increasing responsibility at various public and private technology companies where his focus included partnering with stakeholders, building teams, and implementing systems to support growth. Mel began his career as an auditor in public accounting.

Mel holds a B.S. in Accounting and an MBA from George Mason University. He is also licensed as a Certified Public Accountant in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Profile: /mel-wesley/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mel_Wesley_CFO

Blog: http://www.melwesley.com/

Melanie Major

Vice President, Human Resources

Reena Paraguya

Vice President, Legal & Compliance Officer

Aaron Higbee

Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder

Co-founder and CTO of Cofense, Aaron has more than 20 years of cybersecurity and senior management leadership. His prior experience includes senior security and consulting roles at McAfee Foundstone, Lucent, and Time Warner Cable.

Aaron pioneered the best practice of phishing simulations, now embraced by security teams in every major industry. He has driven research and development for the Cofense phishing defense platform. Under his guidance, Cofense has become the global leader in intelligent phishing defense, instructing millions of end users to recognize and report phishing threats and providing security operations teams with actionable phishing intelligence. He is named as an inventor on 19 granted US patents, as well as other pending US and international patent applications.

Aaron has been a featured speaker at RSA Conference, Black Hat, DefCon, SecTor and other major industry events. His expert opinion is sought by national media outlets and he has been a guest lecturer for the Information Security Technology and Management graduate program at Carnegie Mellon University and has mentored over 2500 students in various Ultimate Hackingtm courses.

He serves on the Forbes Technology Council, board of directors for ThreatQuotient and was named a 2017 and 2021 Tech Titan by the Washingtonian, and a CTO of the Year in the 2018 Info Security PG Global Excellence Awards. Under his leadership, Cofense has been recognized with several Cybersecurity excellence awards in 2019, Gartner Peer insights choice in 2018 and 2019, and a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader 2017 and 2018. Also, in 2018 Cofense solutions was honored as a CSO Best Security Software, and a SC Magazine Award Winner, 2016 and 2017.

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Michael Callahan

Senior Vice President, Global Marketing

Michael is the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Cofense, responsible for all aspects of marketing including corporate marketing, product marketing, demand generation, communications, and branding. Michael is a security marketing executive with successful experience in startups and established companies. He has held senior management level roles at McAfee, Hewlett Packard, TippingPoint (acquired by Hewlett Packard), Credant (acquired by Dell), Juniper, and Zimperium helping to drive significant growth at each.

Michael started his career in technical sales after receiving an undergraduate degree in engineering from The Ohio State University. Returning to school, he earned an MBA in marketing from the University of South Carolina and held leadership positions as a sales engineer and product manager before focusing on and delivering success within the marketing function. His industry experience spans most of the cybersecurity markets with functional expertise across corporate, product, and field marketing. He is often quoted in the security press and a frequent speaker at security events.

Rohyt Belani

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder

Rohyt Belani is an industry veteran with over 18 years of experience in technical and senior management roles at leading cyber security companies. Prior to founding Cofense (formerly PhishMe), Rohyt served as the CEO of Intrepidus Group (acquired by NCC Group PLC), Managing Director at Mandiant (acquired by FireEye, Inc.) and Principal Consultant at Foundstone (acquired by McAfee).

At Cofense, Rohyt has led the company’s growth from concept to over 400 employees globally, serving over 2000 enterprise customers including half of the Fortune 100. During his tenure, Cofense has established itself as a global leader in phishing defense and was acquired in February 2018 by BlackRock Private Equity Partners. The company has also been honored with several accolades including being featured on the Deloitte Fast500, Inc. 5000, and the Washington Business Journal’s best places to work in the Washington DC area lists. Rohyt has been honored with the 2017 EY Entrepreneur of the Year and Washington Business Journal’s 40 Under 40.

He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and been invited to speak at various industry conferences including the RSA Conference and Black Hat. He is also often called upon to provide commentary and analysis on cybersecurity issues for national print and broadcast media including CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, BBC World News, The Washington Post, The Harvard Business Review, and ABC News.

Rohyt holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Bombay University, and a Master of Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Shane McGee

General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer

Shane is an attorney, policy professional, and privacy and security expert. He has almost 20 years of experience guiding security and other technology companies and helping navigate the legal and policy environments they operate in.

As General Counsel, Shane is responsible for all of Cofense’s (formerly PhishMe) legal affairs. Shane is a member of Cofense’s management team, and acts as a strategic business partner by providing advice and oversight in several areas including compliance, privacy and ethics.

Prior to Cofense, Shane was Chief Privacy Officer and VP of Policy at FireEye, Inc. There, he managed FireEye’s global privacy program, working to safeguard and ensure proper treatment of FireEye’s customer information. Shane also led FireEye’s government affairs team, engaging with governments around the world to promote policy change in ways that makes the world more secure against cyber-criminals and state-sponsored attackers. Shane acted as General Counsel for FireEye’s Global Services and Cloud division before becoming Chief Privacy Officer.

Shane was Mandiant’s General Counsel from 2011 through January 2014 when Mandiant announced that it had been acquired by FireEye. He handled legal and government affairs for the company, and negotiated and finalized the sale of Mandiant to FireEye for more than $1 billion.

Just prior to joining Mandiant, Shane was a partner with SNR Denton (now Dentons) a large international law firm, ending his time there as chair of the firm’s U.S.-based Data Protection Group. Prior to that, he was an attorney at Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells) representing startups and counseling large technology companies on all types of privacy, security, intellectual property and corporate governance issues. He represented several clients in privacy-related FTC inquiries, counseled clients on transactions involving large volumes of consumer data, and joined litigation teams on cases involving technology rights and advanced electronic discovery issues.

Shane enjoys technology almost as much as he does the law, having worked as a programmer, consultant and instructor prior to and during his college years. In addition to his privacy credentials, Shane is also a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), and frequently speaks on issues at the intersection of law, privacy and security.
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Keith Ibarguen

Chief Product Officer

Keith Ibarguen has more than 25 years of diverse technical and managerial experience, most recently serving as the Chief Engineer for the Law Enforcement and Domestic Security Division at the MITRE Corporation. He has worked to develop and enable novel solutions across a number of MITRE Sponsor and internal programs throughout his career, leveraging his expertise in cyber operations and enterprise cyber security, software development, enterprise IT design and deployment. Throughout his years of service, he has led activities with the DoD, the Intelligence, and Law Enforcement Communities as well as partnered with numerous not for profit and commercial firms.

Keith is a leader in building and running agile teams. He also worked closely with MITRE’s corporate leaders to evolve and advance MITRE’s brand, strategic direction and future roles as a leading manager of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers.

As Chief Product Officer, Keith brings his extensive experience working with customers, setting strategic direction, executing advanced solutions, as well as building and leading dynamic teams to the Cofense family.

Brandi Moore

Chief Operating Officer

Brandi Moore is the Chief Operating Officer of Cofense, responsible for driving operational excellence across the company. Brandi has over 20 years of experience in cyber security, managing technical, strategy and sales teams.

Brandi started her career in cybersecurity at America Online (AOL) in the late 1990’s, as AOL brought the internet into the fabric of everyday life, working in a variety of technical and privacy roles to secure networks and customer’s finanical information. After leaving AOL, Brandi took her cyber background to the revenue generating side of the business, driving sales inside Mandiant (acquired by FireEye), Ounce Labs (acquired by IBM) and Trustwave (acquired by Singtel).

Brandi has a Masters of Forensic Science from the George Washington University and a Bachelor of Science from Michigan State University.

Mark Small

Senior Vice President, Global Sales

Mark is the SVP of Global Sales responsible for Cofense’s global sales, pre-sales, customer success, sales enablement and channel partners. With over 20 years of cybersecurity leadership experience, he brings an entrepreneurial mindset combined with a strategic approach in order to achieve business objectives, build high-performance sales teams, exceed revenue targets, and ensure customer success.

Mark’s most recent experience was for Proofpoint’s Digital Risk worldwide sales and technical teams. His prior experience includes senior leadership/company officer roles at Websense and McAfee, where he helped define and implement go-to-market and product strategy and ran a myriad of customer-facing organizations including direct sales, channel, customer experience and professional services.

Mark holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in Political Science from the University of California at Davis.

Chris Rimondi

Vice President, Engineering

Chris Rimondi is the Vice President of Engineering at Cofense, responsible for leading a diverse and high performing engineering team that builds, secures, and operates the products Cofense customers rely on to defend against phishing attacks. Prior to taking on this role at Cofense, Chris led the Production Engineering team, responsible for cloud infrastructure and operations engineering.

Previous to working at Cofense he was the Director of Site Reliability Engineering at FireEye. There he managed global teams of operations engineers supporting large, distributed cloud services. He has also had leadership roles in IT auditing, security assessment, and financial services. Additionally, Chris has been involved in the local security community, serving on the Board of Directors for the Chattanooga Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) chapter since 2012 and is a regular speaker at regional technology conferences.

Chris has a Master of Science in Information Systems Management from Auburn University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Brian Stone

Senior Vice President, Global Sales

Brian Stone has over 20 years of experience in sales leadership and operations in the technology and information security industries. He serves as SVP, Global Sales at Cofense, responsible for leading go-to-market strategies for sales, channel and partnership programs worldwide.

Brian has been with Cofense since 2014, serving as VP of North America in the sales organizations. He brings a deep passion for building high-velocity, world-class sales organizations. Previously, he was an early-stage investor and driving force behind sales growth at three successful technology companies, resulting in one IPO and two successful exits.

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