Board members

Chetan Puttagunta joined Benchmark in 2018 after spending seven years at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), most recently as a general partner, where he focused on enterprise software. He currently serves as Elastic's Chairman of the Board and Lead Independent Director. His investments at NEA included MuleSoft, Elastic, MongoDB, Acquia, Reltio, Placester, Heap, Sentry, Swiftype, Forter, ScoutRFP, Canopy, and Folloze. He was previously involved with Gaikai (acquired by Sony). Prior to NEA, Chetan was an investor with H.I.G. Capital's Leveraged Buyout Group and a technology investment banker with Houlihan Lokey. He holds a BS degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

At Elastic, we see endless possibilities in a world of endless data. As CEO of Elastic, Ash Kulkarni’s priority is to drive innovation, and he has the pleasure of working with the bright minds at Elastic to create products and solutions that use the power of search to help its customers and community turn possibilities into results. Ash joined Elastic as chief product officer in 2021 and prior to that held senior product leadership and management roles at McAfee, Akamai, Informatica, and Sun Microsystems. He and his family live in San Francisco and enjoy hiking, skiing, and exploring national parks in their free time.

As a founder of Elastic and CTO, Shay Banon has been fascinated with search ever since he tried to build a recipe app for his wife in 2004, a journey that led to him writing the first few lines of code of Elasticsearch in 2009 and later founding Elastic in 2012. Shay believes finding beauty and excelling is a combination of perspective and grit. As someone who got into computers by counting the number of job postings in the newspaper, he loves building things — a product, a community, or a company and the process of acquiring the knowledge to do so.

Steven Schuurman was one of the four cofounders of Elastic and served as CEO for the first five years of the company. Previously, Steven was CEO of Orange11, which was acquired by Trifork A/S (TRIFOR.CO). In addition, he cofounded the internationally renowned open source software vendor SpringSource, one of the most successful open source companies at the time, prior to its acquisition by VMware (VMW) in 2009.

Julia Liuson is a veteran technology executive with more than three decades of experience spanning software engineering, AI, developer platforms, and enterprise technology. Julia most recently served as president of the Developer Division for Microsoft’s developer tools and Azure developer platform. Her portfolio also included GitHub, where she helped drive the integration of AI into software development through GitHub Copilot. In addition to serving on Elastic's board, Julia currently serves on the board of directors of Cadence Design Systems and Wanderboat.AI, an AI travel planning and local discovery platform. Julia is also an observer on the board of directors of Schneider Electric SE.

Julia holds a B.S.E.E. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Washington and was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2019.

Alison Gleeson was senior vice president of cisco's Americas organization, responsible for more than $25 billion in annual sales and leading nearly 9,000 employees across 35 countries, including Canada, Latin America, and segments such as US Commercial, US Public Sector, and the Global Enterprise Segment focused on cisco's top 28 customers. A passionate speaker about the role of technology in enabling business transformation and empowering women in technology, Alison has received Connected World's "Woman of IoT" award, Diversity Best Practice's "Above and Beyond Legacy Award," and Michigan Council for Women in Technology's "Woman of the Year Award." Alison currently serves on the board of 8X8, where she is the compensation committee chair, and Zoominfo, where she is the nominating and corporate governance committee chair and a member of the compensation committee, as well as the Advisory Board of the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University, her alma mater. Alison holds a BA in marketing from Michigan State University.

Shelley Leibowitz is a prominent technology advisor, director, and thought leader. She has spent her career at the intersection of financial services and technology, with both private sector and public sector experience. After more than two decades of CIO roles at top tier financial services companies, she served as group-wide CIO for the World Bank.

Shelley is a seasoned corporate director and in addition to Elastic, she currently serves on the boards of Morgan Stanley and several privately held companies in the fintech and information security arenas. She also advises companies in areas of digital transformation, IT portfolio and risk management, information security and digital trust, performance metrics, and effective governance.

She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, on the NY Board of the National Association of Corporate Directors, and on the CNAS Council.

Paul Auvil brings more than 35 years of finance, technology, and corporate leadership experience to the Elastic board of directors. He served as the CFO of Proofpoint, Inc., a provider of security-as-a-service solutions, from March 2007 until March 2023. From September 2006 to March 2007, he was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm. From August 2002 to July 2006, he served as the CFO at VMware, Inc., a computing virtualization company. In addition to serving on Elastic’s board, he currently serves on the board of Cerebras, Chainalysis, and Modern Treasury.

Paul has previously served on the boards of One Medical, OpenTV, Marin Software, and Quantum Corporation. He earned a BS in electrical engineering from Dartmouth College and a Master of Management degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.