OUR MISSION

Secure Data Access for Innovation and Growth.

Your data can do more. It can be used by analysts and data scientists to drive innovation. It can help you discover untapped markets, unseen opportunities, and unproductive workflows. It can change the way your business and the world works.

The Okera platform tackles the hardest issues behind data access and governance across hybrid and multi-cloud environments—giving you the ability to explore your data’s potential like never before. Our vision is to enable self-service analytics with responsible data access so that everyone can benefit from the potential of data in the enterprise.

Executive Team

Nick Halsey

Chief Executive Officer

Nick Halsey has been the CEO of Okera since March of 2020. Prior to Okera he has served as CEO, COO and other executive roles over a 25 year career in data and analytics, most recently as CEO of Zoomdata. Nick helped start several foundational analytics companies including Brio Software, Tableau, and Biz360, and help lead others to successful exits including Jaspersoft, Alphablox, and Keynote Systems. Nick is also an active venture investor and has served on the boards and advisory boards for over a dozen companies. He has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University. When not driving his four kids to school and sports, Nick endeavors to cycle and ski as much as possible.

Nong Li

Chief Technology Officer

Nong co-founded Okera in 2016. Prior to that, he led performance engineering for Spark core and SparkSQL at Databricks. Before Databricks, he served as the tech lead for the Impala project at Cloudera. Nong is also one of the original authors of the Apache Parquet project. He has a bachelor’s in computer science from Brown University.

Itay Neeman

Vice President of Engineering

Prior to joining Okera, Itay worked for Splunk, serving as both the engineering and site lead for the Seattle office while also personally contributing and leading several major projects, including a new product for Splunk’s cloud initiative. He has a master’s from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s from Brown University, both in Computer Science.

Ravi Ramachandran

Vice President of Sales

Ravi helped establish the Machine Learning Data Catalog category while serving as Vice President of Global Sales at Waterline Data. Previously, he held leadership positions at Infochimps (acq. by CSC), VanceInfo, and Xchanging (acq. by DXC). He has a bachelor’s in business from Delhi University and an MBA from Clark University.

John Marchese

Vice President of Global Alliances & Partner Channels

Prior to joining Okera, John worked most recently at Collibra & Sisense, two data technology leaders who both achieved unicorn valuation status during his tenure. At Collibra, he led global alliances & partner sales channels, developing trusted relationships and explosive revenue growth with GSi, regional data consultancies, and technology partners across the globe. He has a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Buffalo.

Desiree Therianos

Vice President of People

Prior to joining Okera, Desiree ran HR, people operations, culture, and talent in high growth startup environments, including Fictiv, inc., Crunchyroll, and HOTorNOT.com. She has over 17 years experience crafting programs and policies that empower teams to better connect and tap into their potential during times of high growth. She is extremely passionate about leveraging technology and innovative solutions to drive performance and enrich the culture at Okera. Desiree has formal training in Executive Coaching from the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute and a Bachelor’s Degree from UC Berkeley in Mass Communications.

Claire Umeda

Vice President of Marketing

Claire joined Okera from 4iQ where she led go-to-market strategies, brand identity, positioning, product marketing, and sales enablement. She spearheaded the annual 4iQ Identity Breach Reports, putting 4iQ on the map within the cyber intelligence industry. Prior to joining 4iQ, Claire has held senior and executive marketing and product positions for startups in the cyber intelligence, security, big data systems, conversational platforms and social gaming spaces. She has a bachelor of science degree in journalism from San Jose State University.

Alexander Rombaut

Director of Finance

Alexander is responsible for leading Okera’s global finance, legal, information technology, and operations organizations. He brings a strong background in building financial foundations, teams, and processes for high-growth companies in the software industry and is passionate about unifying finance with go-to-market strategies, product vision, and cutting-edge technology. Most recently, Alexander served as Head of Corporate Development and Strategy at Collibra where he spearheaded the company’s M&A and Investor Relations teams and helped the company achieve a valuation of over $2 billion. Alexander holds a Master of Science and BS in Business Economics from Ghent University and a Masters in Financial Management from Vlerick Business School.

Sameer Phatarpekar

VP of Global Customer Success

Sameer is responsible for leading Okera’s global Customer Success, Services and Support organization. He brings a strong background in building and scaling post sales functions at high growth companies. Most recently Sameer led the Customer Success organization at Fortanix, Usermind and NetSuite. At NetSuite he was responsible for building and rapidly scaling the worldwide technology services organization leading to the acquisition by Oracle and pioneered a unique productized approach to services. Sameer holds a Bachelors in Computer Engineering and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

John Fowlkes

Head of Security

John is an accomplished industry leader and advisor in cybersecurity, bringing more than 20 years of experience including multiple CEO appointments and successful acquisitions in mobile, email and anomaly detection security companies. His former roles have included CEO of Better Mobile Security, Mailcontrol, and Metafor Software, which was acquired by Splunk in 2015. John was pivotal in growing several companies with his product & sales strategy as well as fundraising & investor relations. He is an avid golfer and former bike racing champion. Father of two children and an amazing dachshund. In his earlier years he served as the Director of Business Operations at RSA, Silver.

Board Members

Ethan Kurzweil

Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners

Ethan Kurzweil is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners where he invests in developer platforms and consumer tech startups. Ethan has served on the board of leading platform companies including Intercom, PagerDuty, Periscope Data, Applitools, Twitch (acq. by Amazon), and Periscope (acq. by Twitter) and was actively involved in Bessemer’s investments in public companies Twilio and Sendgrid.

Patrick Heim

Partner & CISO, ClearSky Security Fund

Patrick is a partner and Chief Information Security Officer at ClearSky Security Fund and has over two decades of experience spanning venture investing, Fortune 500 enterprises, cloud providers, and early-stage security technology companies. Prior to joining ClearSky, he ran security at Dropbox, Salesforce, Kaiser Permanente, and McKesson. He currently serves as a director for Acurics, AppOmni, Okera, Preempt Security and ZeroNorth and has previously served on the boards of Ticto, Cylance, Solebit, and BigID.

Tim Eades

CEO, vArmour

With over 20 years of leadership experience in sales, marketing, and executive management at the CEO level, Tim has deep expertise in driving high growth for computing, security and enterprise software companies. Tim has been the CEO of vArmour since October 2013, and prior to that, he was the CEO at Silver Tail Systems (acq. by RSA) and Everyone.net (acq. by Proofpoint). He is also a seed investor in Okera and currently serves as Executive Chairman of the Okera board.

Wesley Chan

Managing Director, Felicis Ventures

Wesley Chan is a Managing Director at Felicis Ventures. He has led investment rounds and holds board or observer seats in Canva, CultureAmp, and Dialpad. As an early employee at Google, he founded and launched Google Analytics and Google Voice, which reach tens of millions of users worldwide.