Thales Leadership Team

As the Senior Vice President of Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing, Sébastien Cano leads a global business focused on helping organizations and the most respected brands in the world protect their most sensitive data, secure the cloud, and create more value for their software in the devices and services used by billions of consumers every day. He is responsible for the business and strategy for the company's industry-leading data encryption, identity and access management, and software monetization solutions.

Over the past twenty years Sébastien is a proven global leader of high growth businesses in the highly competitive security, telecommunications and financial services industries. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President of Gemalto’s Enterprise & Cybersecurity business unit. Prior to that he was President of Gemalto North America (2014-2016), responsible for all business operations across the region, and before that he managed the company's Telecommunications Business Unit in North America for five years. During these two previous assignments, he led the transformation of Gemalto into a leading provider of software, solutions and services to Fortune 500 Corporations.

Prior to these positions, he served Gemalto in a number of leadership roles including SVP Convergence Business Group in France, VP of Operations in Brazil during the country's EMV migration and General Manager of the Telecommunications Business Unit for southern Europe.

Sébastien has a master's degree in Technology Management from Grenoble École de Management.

Sanjeet Purohit leads global human resources for Thales Cloud Protection and Licensing. Most recently Sanjeet worked as the Vice President for Human Resources at Gemalto’s Enterprise & Cybersecurity business. Prior to that he managed the worldwide human resources for the S&I vertical based in La Ciotat, France. He started his career with Gemalto fourteen years ago and held various positions all within the Human Resources field looking after various geographies including Singapore, India, South Africa and Dubai.

His experience in multicultural and multinational environments enables him to partner with business to interpret people implications on business strategy in order to shape and drive a long term strategy for organizational efficiency, performance and integration management. Sanjeet’s focus is on simple and transparent human resources practices to facilitate an employee centric and barrier free workplace culture which promotes innovation and technical excellence.

Prior to joining Gemalto, Sanjeet worked as human resources specialist across various disciplines and verticals in India, including the Entertainment, Healthcare and Services industries. He has a Master of Business Administration degree in Human Resources from Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management as well as a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Delhi.

Ashvin Kamaraju drives the technology strategy for Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing, leading a global organization of researchers and technologists that develop the strategic vision for the company’s portfolio of industry-leading data protection products and services.

Previously Ashvin served as Vice President Global Engineering at Thales following its acquisition of Vormetric. He lead a geographically distributed engineering organization that developed a broad portfolio of leading edge data security products which met rigorous security standards and were designed for deployment in the enterprise, private and public clouds.

Ashvin is an experienced leader with a proven track record, having more than 25 years of software development experience with domain experience in storage management, operating systems, big data security, encryption and key management.

Prior to joining Vormetric, Ashvin spent four years as General Manager and Vice President of Engineering at Symantec Corporation, where he led the development of a portfolio of enterprise storage software products. Earlier in his career Ashvin worked at Sun Microsystems as a member of technical staff and engineering manager where he contributed to the Solaris operating system software for SPARCstations and led the development efforts for file and proxy cache servers. He has a MSCE and a master's in mathematics and computer science from the University of Cincinnati.

Todd Moore is the head of the Encryption Products portfolio at Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing, where he drives the strategy for the company’s industry-leading data encryption portfolio. Moore is a respected cybersecurity professional with more than 20 years of experience helping enterprises protect their most sensitive data and applications. He is a growth leader who routinely develops business cases and market analysis for new product investments, demonstrated capability to develop competitive strategies, and build teams from the ground up and negotiate strategic relationships and alliances.

Previously he was Senior Vice President for Encryption Products at Gemalto prior to its acquisition by Thales. Before that he was Vice President of Encryption products at SafeNet before its acquisition by Gemalto. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Product Management for the Federal Market at SafeNet where he focused on high-speed link encryption, high assurance authentication, cross domain solutions and cybersecurity. Before joining SafeNet, he was a director of product management at Harris Corporation.

Todd holds a Master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer & Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and a Bachelor’s of Art in Physics & Mathematics from Ithaca College.

Torjus brings more than 20 years of global leadership experience in data security, network security and software technology to his role of Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Thales’ cloud protection and licensing business line. During his career, he has held a number of senior management positions, overseeing sales, market development, operations, and alliance partnerships.

Prior to joining Thales in 2020, Torjus served as Vice President of Worldwide Channels & Alliances for Symantec, where he led all aspects of revenue generation, operations, sales and relationships with the company’s global network of partners. Torjus joined Symantec through its acquisition of Blue Coat Systems, where he held sales leadership positions for the company in the APAC and Japan regions. Prior to that, he held sales management positions at Norman Shark, IBM and Lotus Software.

Torjus has a master’s degree in International Marketing Management from the Copenhagen Business School.

Danny de Vreeze leads the identity and access management products and strategy for the Cloud Protection & Licensing business at Thales. He is a recognized industry leader in identity and access management and security, with a passion for transforming creativity and vision into practical solutions and business success.

Danny has more than 20 years of international experience in founding, building, and managing companies and teams in the IAM and security markets. Prior to joining Thales, Danny was the CEO and co-founder of OneWelcome, Europe’s leading customer identity and access management solution provider. He was previously the CEO and founder of iWelcome, and before that the CEO of IAM system integrator and consultancy firm Everett, which is now part of PWC.

Damien is Vice President for Software Monetization and is based in Austin, Texas. In this role, he leads the global go-to-market and sales strategy for the company’s industry-leading portfolio of Sentinel software licensing, protection and entitlement management solutions.

Previously he served as Vice President of Sales (East Region) for Gemalto’s Enterprise & Cybersecurity business. Prior to this, he held many roles within Gemalto, including Sales Director for the Telecom Business Unit, country manager of Brazil with responsibility for driving the software and services business and various sales and marketing management roles in other business units. A graduate from Aix-En-Provence University in France, Damien also holds an MSC in Marketing Management from IAE Business Institute.

Poupak leads the global marketing strategy and execution for Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing with responsibility for digital, regional and channel marketing as well as brand, communications, content strategy, thought leadership, and opportunity generation in support of the company’s industry-leading access management and data security portfolio.

She brings extensive digital security expertise, making data driven decisions to inform go-to-market strategy. Previously, Poupak served as Vice President of Americas Sales for Identity and Access Management at Thales. With nearly 20 years of marketing and sales experience across multiple data security technologies and regions, she brings a deep understanding and global perspective of how to help customers secure their cloud and digital transformation journey.

Experienced legal professional with 16+ years of comprehensive experience in complex commercial transactions, corporate finance & securities and ethics & compliance practice areas. Goal-oriented and solution driven attorney with strong business acumen and risk awareness who is able to effectively and strategically formulate practical and creative solutions to difficult and complex legal problems by using excellent negotiation, leadership, interpersonal, written and oral communication skills. A diplomatic, agile and effective team player who views issues from both a detail oriented and big picture perspective, who possesses excellent project management and organizational skills, and who demonstrates an ability to establish priorities, multi-task and meet strict deadlines on multiple matters when handled simultaneously.

Christine Draper is the head of Finance at Thales Cloud Protection and Licensing.

Lionel Merrien is Vice President of Strategy and Innovation for Thales Cloud Protection and Licensing. In this role, Lionel is guiding technology innovation and market analysis, channeling and validating business innovation and coordinating the strategic business plan for the organization. His team also oversees strategic partnerships with major cloud providers and strategic go-to-market activities for new value propositions, such as transformation to SaaS offering and developing value propositions for new vertical markets. 

Lionel has 25 years of expertise in developing and launching innovative solutions, with a strong focus on security. During his career he has been involved with nearly all aspects of the creation of new products, including technical consulting, development, product management, marketing, solution sales and go-to-market. He has led diverse teams of business and technical experts to discover, validate and launch several initiatives, either bound from pure technical innovation or initiated from business transformation. 

Prior to this position, Lionel led the Business Development activities of the business for five years, with the creation of strategy partnerships with major cloud players, and the launch of several innovative offerings. Prior to this, he lead the solution sales team of Gemalto for North America, in the domain of Telecom and Banking, where he oversaw the commercial launch of subscription management platform and mobile payment, among other things. Lionel has a background in mechanical engineering from France, and is based in Canada, where he has been living for the past 20 years.

Steve Walsh is the Vice President of Global Business Operations for Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing. In this role, Steve is responsible for overseeing customer service, manufacturing, supply chain, order fulfillment, professional services, trade compliance and global facilities.

Steve is a highly experienced executive with a specific focus in business process improvement, quality assurance, and customer service. Prior to Thales, he was Vice President of Client Services for Gemalto’s Enterprise and Cybersecurity business. Before that he held several executive leadership roles in operations and client services at SafeNet prior to its acquisition by Gemalto. Prior to joining SafeNet, Steve held a series of executive positions at Ciena Corporation, including Vice President of Quality and Business Processes Improvement and Vice President of Global Network Services for the Americas.

Steve holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Science as well as a Masters of Business Administration from Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.