Our leadership team

Jay is an accomplished entrepreneur, having founded a series of successful companies, including AirDefense, CipherTrust, CoreHarbor, SecureIT, and Zscaler, now a public company as of March 16, 2018.

Jay has a history of introducing visionary innovations to market that address the demand for securely enabling emerging technology trends, such as the Zscaler global security cloud for distributed and mobile enterprises. Jay’s considerable work in the security technology sector has made him a trusted advisor for many enterprise CIOs and CISOs.

Jay leverages more than 25 years of security industry expertise, including engineering, sales, marketing and management experience with leading organizations, such as IBM, NCR and Unisys. Prior to founding Zscaler in 2008, he founded and led AirDefense, a wireless security pioneer, before its acquisition by Motorola. From 2000 to 2006, Jay founded and led CipherTrust, the industry’s first email security gateway, before its merger with Secure Computing. He also founded and led CoreHarbor, a managed ecommerce solution, before it was acquired by USi/AT&T. In 1996, Jay founded and led his first company, SecureIT, the first pure-play Internet security service, before it was acquired by VeriSign in 1998.

Jay has been honored as an Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year (Southeast USA),” an Information Week “Innovator & Influencer”, an SC Magazine “Market Entrepreneur”, an IIT BHU “Distinguished Alumnus” and a Goldman Sachs “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs.” He earned his MBA in Marketing, MS in Computer Engineering and MS in Industrial Engineering – all from the University of Cincinnati. He earned his Bachelor of Technology in Electronics Engineering from IIT BHU Varanasi. Jay has completed the Executive Management Program from Harvard Business School.

Dali Rajic is a progressive cloud leader with nearly 25 years of experience in sales leadership and go-to-market operational roles. Mr. Rajic has worldwide responsibility for all aspects related to revenue growth and go-to-market strategy. His 25-year career includes seven-plus years in leadership roles with AppDynamics, most recent as Chief Customer and Revenue Officer. He played a significant role in AppDynamics’ rapid ascent to market leader. Prior to joining AppDynamics, Mr. Rajic held several senior sales leadership positions at BMC Software and Verint. His extensive leadership and cloud experience include building multidimensional go-to-market models, designing end-to-end customer success lifecycle programs, as well as scaling value and metrics-based enterprise sales models for direct and partner sales.

Mr. Rajic has earned an MBA, Financial and Strategic Management from Northwestern University, and a Bachelor of Science, International Marketing from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Remo Canessa is a recognized industry leader with more than 30 years of financial management experience in both public and private technology companies, including 15 years as CFO at category-leading security and network infrastructure companies. Mr. Canessa has served as our chief financial officer since February 2017.

Mr. Canessa’s 30-year career includes 11 years as CFO at infrastructure leader Infoblox, where he led that company through a successful IPO in 2012, and three years as CFO at Netscreen, where he completed a successful IPO and sale of the company to Juniper Networks. His breadth of experience includes strategic planning, financial planning and analysis, investor relations, corporate finance, and treasury. Mr. Canessa has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from UC Berkeley and an MBA from the University of Santa Clara. 

Patrick Foxhoven is an experienced and innovative managed security entrepreneur and technologist, having spent 20 years building secure and scalable Internet-enabled networks while co-authoring three books on information security and receiving multiple patents. He is currently Chief Information Officer & Vice President of Emerging Technologies at Zscaler.

Prior to joining Zscaler in 2010, he was a founder and CIO of CentraComm, a leading managed IT security and services provider, and served earlier as an owner and principal network engineer of Friendly Net, an early residential ISP in the midwest United States.

Punit Minocha is an established security executive with history of nurturing key partnerships to develop robust technology ecosystems at industry-leading organizations, including Palo Alto Networks and Trend Micro.

As Vice President of Business Development and Mobile Solutions at Zscaler, Minocha is responsible for the strategic direction and execution of business development initiatives, including technology partnerships, strategic alliances and SI relationships; as well as its mobile security strategy, ecosystem and go-to-market. Minocha earned his MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, his MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin and his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire.

Robert Schlossman has served as our Chief Legal Officer since February 2016. Mr. Schlossman has been a key legal and business advisor to CEOs, management teams, and boards of directors of public, private equity, and venture capital backed companies. Mr. Schlossman develops legal departments into organizations that both protect a company and enable the success of the business. 

Mr. Schlossman is particularly skilled at guiding companies through major transformations including IPOs, M&A transactions, creation of new companies from large public companies, international expansion, implementation of new business strategies, introduction of new products and sales channels, and major corporate restructurings. He has substantial experience with streamlining legal operations, optimizing legal budgets, creating and managing compliance programs, IP strategy, contracts, complex sales programs and supply chains, government contracting, employment issues, litigation, international operations, and corporate securities and governance matters.

Prior to joining us, he served as the chief legal officer of several high technology companies. Mr. Schlossman holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, as well as a Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University.

Kavitha Mariappan is a seasoned go-to-market executive with a penchant for rapidly translating technology into customer-centric value, mobilizing global teams and operations, and transforming them into high-growth businesses. Over her 20+ year tenure spanning enterprise software and service provider, she has held various high-impact roles spanning marketing, product management, and engineering at industry-leading companies, including Databricks, Riverbed, Cisco, and Philips Electronics.

Prior to joining Zscaler, she served as CMO at Split Software, a venture-backed startup where she built the company's go-to-market engine from the ground up and was instrumental in defining a new category for product decisions. Kavitha is responsible for driving global transformation and innovation across all facets of Zscaler’s business, customers, strategy, products, and operations, with a strong focus on customer value creation.

Kavitha holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Communication Engineering from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia, and a Master of Science in Cybersecurity Risk and Strategy from New York University School of Law and Tandon School of Engineering.

Chris Kozup is a proven marketing executive with 20+ years of experience across all domains of enterprise technology marketing. He has held senior leadership roles at a wide range of successful companies, from multi-billion-dollar organizations to earlier-stage growth companies. At Zscaler, Chris is responsible for global marketing strategy and execution.

Chris was most recently CMO at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, where he was responsible for the strategy and execution of global marketing, implementing scalable and sustainable marketing systems for awareness, digital demand generation, sales enablement, channel marketing, and community. He has also steered marketing teams at high-tech leaders such as Nutanix and Cisco. Earlier in his career, Chris was an industry analyst at the META Group, responsible for advising enterprise organizations on IT best practices. Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts from Ohio University and a Master of Business Administration from IE Business School in Spain.

Brendan leads our People & Culture organization, a team focused on attracting, developing, and retaining incredible professionals worldwide through talent acquisition, learning and development, internal business partners, diversity, equity, inclusion, and workplace experience.

Brendan has 30 years of senior management and employee operations experience at large organizations. Most recently, he led Google’s 3,000-person global recruiting organization, covering all hiring from new graduates to industry and executives for all products, services, sales, and engineering. He brings expertise in building highly motivated, productive teams and implementing modern employee programs.

Before joining Google in 2014, Brendan served as Managing Director and Global Head of HR Shared Services at Citigroup. There, he oversaw 1,400 employees across 45 countries in onboarding, off-boarding, employee operations, payroll, equity, and mobility for Citi’s global workforce (over 300,000 at the time)

Originally from Australia, Brendan has also lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, New York, and now California, working in people-related capacities including HR Business Partner, HR Systems, Organizational Development, Project Management, Strategy, and Location Development.

Larry Biagini recently retired as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of GE. While at GE, Larry’s focus was on contemporizing infrastructure, employee services and deploying cloud technology enabling secure usage of those services by GE’s employees, customers and partners. At Zscaler, Larry will focus on helping customers and partners better plan and execute their inevitable move towards expanding their use of cloud services.

In his 26 years at GE, Larry held various positions in Information Technology including Vice President, IT Risk having responsibility for all aspects of risk, governance and security; Vice President & CIO, GE Capital; Chief Technology Officer, CIO & Services Delivery for GE company and Chief Technology Officer for GE Aviation. During his tenure at GE, Larry was instrumental in driving successful technology integrations of global mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. In 2012 Larry was named a GE Company Officer.

Prior to GE, Larry led International Applications for Emery Air Freight and was Director of Financial Applications for Olin Chemical. Larry’s career has spanned 35 years in technology covering manufacturing, logistics and financial systems. Industrial verticals include healthcare, media, aviation and energy. Larry is a recognized global leader in creating environments enabling businesses to take advantage of new technologies in a reliable and secure manner. Larry holds a B.S. in accounting for Fairfield University.

As Chief Information Officer, Praniti is responsible for leading Zscaler’s Information technology solutions and enabling a seamless experience for customers and employees. She is focused on driving a comprehensive strategy that will help scale the company rapidly, build a world class IT organization, deliver innovative solutions globally, and create a secure robust infrastructure.

Praniti has a proven track record of helping to build “best in class” execution focused IT teams that provide business value through process optimization and automation. Prior to Zscaler, Praniti was the CIO at Conga where she was responsible for Infrastructure, Applications, Security and Data Platforms. Under Praniti’s leadership, the Conga IT team repositioned the IT strategy, revitalized their brand within Conga, established a “Customer 0” program and executed a roadmap that doubled from prior years. Prior to Conga, Praniti was Vice President, IT for Nimble Storage and also held Sr. IT leadership roles at Guidewire and Invisalign. Praniti was awarded the Bay Area CIO of the year in 2017 by Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times.

Praniti holds a B.S. degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Arizona State University.

Steve House is a seasoned product leader with over 25 years of experience advancing network and security solutions. As Senior Vice President of Product Management, Steve is responsible for driving product strategy and executing product innovations across Zscaler's Zero Trust Exchange platform. He also runs the Program Management, Pricing and Technical Publications teams at Zscaler.

Before joining Zscaler, Steve served as VP of Product Management at Blue Coat Systems, where he led the core products portfolio, growing the company's market share under his leadership. Previously, he held product marketing and management positions at Packeteer, CacheFlow and Newbridge Networks. Steve holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Duke University.