Sanjay Poonen leads Cohesity as Chief Executive Officer and President, driving the company's mission to protect, secure, and provide insights into the world’s data so that the largest organizations in the world can rely on Cohesity for their resilience. A proven business executive with more than 25 years of experience scaling multi-billion-dollar enterprises, Sanjay brings a rare combination of technical depth, global sales leadership, and strategic vision to Cohesity.

Prior to Cohesity, Sanjay served as COO at VMware, where he oversaw sales, marketing, services, and alliances—helping double the company's revenue from approximately $6B to $12B. He was instrumental in architecting VMware's landmark cloud partnerships with AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle, and led the End-User Computing business, including the acquisition of AirWatch. Prior to VMware, Sanjay served as President of SAP, leading Applications, Industries, and Platform teams across engineering and sales, contributing to growth from approximately $10B to $20B in revenue. He began his career as a software engineer at Microsoft and Apple. 

Sanjay serves on the Supervisory Board of Philips and the Board of Snyk. He holds two patents, an MBA from Harvard Business School (Baker Scholar, top 5%), a master's degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Math, and Engineering from Dartmouth College, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.