F5 Adds Former Imperva, Google Execs To C-Suite

Former Google executive Lyra Schramm and former Imperva leader Kunal Anand have joined F5’s executive leadership team as the company sets up for its next stage of growth in application security.

F5 is bringing on two new tech leaders to its leadership team as the company seeks to reinforce its position as a multi-cloud application security, delivery and performance leader.

Former Google executive Lyra Schramm (pictured above left) has joined F5 as the company’s executive vice president and Chief People Officer (CPO). Former Imperva executive leadership team member Kunal Anand (pictured above right) has come on as F5’s executive vice president and Chief Technology Officer (CTO), the company revealed on Tuesday.

Schramm and Anand are reporting directly to F5’s President and CEO, François Locoh-Donou.

Schramm is taking over for Ana White, who formerly served as F5’s chief people officer. She moved on to serve as chief people officer for Lumen Technologies in September. Anand is stepping in for F5’s former CTO Geng Lin who also moved on in September and is serving as senior vice president and head of product, infrastructure industries at Oracle.

Schramm and Anand “not only bring business acumen and fresh perspectives that will raise the bar for F5, but they are also humble, generous, and authentic leaders who embody our culture of excellence,” said Locoh-Donou in a statement on the new hires. “I look forward to the impact they will have on our business as we continue to power and protect applications used by millions of people around the world.”

Schramm comes to F5 by way of Google, where she had a more than nine-year tenure in human resources for the tech giant. She most recently served as Google’s vice president, people strategy and innovation for more than three years. Prior to that, she held senior roles at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and at Amazon Web Services, which highlight her ability to drive change through people and building an interactive workplace. For F5, she’ll be tasked with leading people initiatives that support F5’s purpose to help bring a better digital world to life for businesses, according to the Seattle-based company.

Anand most recently held the dual roles of CTO and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at cybersecurity software and services specialist Imperva for the last five years. Before his tenure at Imperva, Anand was the co-founder and CTO of application security startup Prevoty, which was acquired by Imperva in 2018. He also has held senior tech and engineering roles at BBC Worldwide and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Anand is now responsible for setting F5’s technology vision and boosting F5’s leadership in app security and AI security, F5 said.

F5, in addition to its focus on securing applications and reducing multi-cloud application complexity, has been working to make AI persistent throughout its entire portfolio. To that end, the company in February released the latest version of its Distributed Cloud Services platform at its AppWorld 2024 event. The updated version includes new capabilities from the company’s Shape Security purchase and NGINX buy, as well as new features from API security provider Wib, which F5 also acquired in February.