Alongside these exclusive programs, we collaborate with a wider network of industry partners (Microsoft, MongoDB, Cloudflare, ClickHouse, and more) to provide credits, integrations, and product support.
Access to executives and advisors from top-tier companies across sectors
Execs spanning the US, Europe and Israel
Hand-picked introductions (no automation)
Meetings and networking opportunities around leading industry events
Meet the Hetz Data / Engineering
Advisor Network
As SVB’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Grant Bourzikas is responsible for developing and implementing SVB’s information security and privacy program. Grant oversees enterprise-wide security policies and global privacy, develops strategies to continuously improve enterprise data security and implements enterprise business continuity and disaster recovery plans. He works directly with SVB business units to facilitate risk assessment and risk management processes.
Prior to joining SVB, Grant was the Group Chief Information Security Officer at HSBC and responsible for the global cybersecurity posture and program for the bank. Before HSBC, Grant was the CISO and led the McAfee Labs and Data Science division, with responsibility for the Artificial Intelligence function.
With over 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, Grant is a five-time CISO at a Fortune 500 critical infrastructure company, financial services organization, and gaming company. He began his career in public accounting where he provided cybersecurity strategy, implementation, and assessment services to many global organizations. Grant has a proven track record in driving transformational change as well as leading diverse global cybersecurity teams.
Grant was named Top 100 Global CISO in 2020, awarded Security’s Most Influential People in Security 2019, and CISO of the Year in 2018. Grant has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and received a Master’s in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence from Southern Methodist University in 2022.
"Recognize that diversity of thought is essential for your success. As you build your teams, look for people who think differently than you and from each other."
Watch Grant: A cybersecurity discussion with Grant Bourzikas
Cybersecurity & Technology advisor, author and executive with 15+ years of repeated success in building Infrastructure Security, Application Security, Enterprise Security, Enterprise Software Engineering teams and programs from the ground up. Leader who attracts top talent and influences key leadership and board to communicate risk-based value proposition, overall roadmap and optimal budget requirements. Accomplished in fostering long-lasting business alliances, driving continuous improvements, and unlocking technology enabled opportunities to bolster top and bottomline growth across verticals such.
"Founders: Identify and model your core values, it can make the difference between success and failure."
Nico is the CISO at Lyft. Prior to Lyft, he led GitHub Security Lab and was the VP of Professional Services at Immunity while advising multiple Fortune 500 companies. With over 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, Nico is widely recognized for his contribution in offensive security, vulnerability development and penetration testing.
Yong was most recently Head of Security and Privacy Engineering at Stripe, where he led data security and privacy, security infrastructure, SaaS security, and user security. Prior to that, he was Director of Security and Privacy Engineering at Uber, responsible for data security and privacy, platform and infrastructure security, as well as customer identity and account security. Previously, Yong held executive leadership roles in security product development and security infrastructure at both public companies (RSA Security, EMC, MicroStrategy) and early-stage startups. He received his PhD degree specializing in Machine Learning systems from California Institute of Technology.
"To stand out among many peers, a security startup needs to articulate a best-in-class solution to real pain points instead of making generalized claims."
Hardik Parekh is responsible for company-wide global cybersecurity strategy and execution at Five9. Prior to Five9, Hardik developed and matured security programs at companies like DellEMC/RSA, Intuit, Amazon, and Splunk.Hardik brings two decades of global cyber security experience and a builder mindset. His previous experience includes developing product security, enterprise security, compliance, and SOC. Hardik delivered security at scale and speed. Hardik has built a modern, highly automated SOC at Amazon as the Physical Retail unit's CISO. Hardik Parekh co-authored the widely-used OWASP Software Assurance Maturity Model 2.0 and SANS Top 25 Programming Errors. In addition, he contributed to industry standards such as - BSIMM, and NIST SSDF. Hardik serves on advisory boards of innovative startups and the CompTIA Certification Advisory Committee for security certifications - Security+, CySA+, PenTest+, and CASP+.
Nishant Bhajaria is an executive in the cybersecurity and data privacy industry. Having started out as an engineer with a second act as a product manager, he pivoted to data protection before it became a high-visibility topic. Besides building and leading teams at Nike, Netflix, Google, Uber and now Meta, Nishant has also authored the recently released "Privacy by Design: a runbook for engineers" - a deep dive into strategies on effectively identifying, communicating and addressing privacy risks using technical strategies. He teaches courses on LinkedIn Learning on cybersecurity, career development and building inclusive teams, and has also built the first ever privacy engineering certification to offer hands-on training to the next generation of privacy professionals.
"John F. Kennedy once said, 'The time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining.' The same applies to data-powered companies."
Watch Nishant Bhajaria: Q&A on data privacy with Uber's Head of Privacy Engineering
Sumit is a seasoned IT professional with 22 years of IT industry experience, managing teams in product development, professional services and Information Technology. At present, he is working as the CIO of AuitomationAnywhere . In his current role, he is responsible for leading the vision, strategy and operations for entire Global IT team of AutomationAnywhere. Prior to joining AutomationAnywhere, Sumit was CIO at MobileIron, a pioneer in the MDM technology (Mobile device management and security). He is a strong proponent of zero trust security model. AutomationAnywhere is a cloud first company and Sumit is responsible for securing corporate systems and data.
"Cloud technologies have changed the way we operate. Although CIO's are responsible for securing all business applications within their organization, they aren't necessarily the buyer for every purchase. This is making their job harder to oversee how corporate data is managed, secured and flows through an organization. They need to constantly adapt and adopt newer technologies to find the true balance between user convenience and security."
David is currently the CISO at Sequoia Consulting Group, and most recently served as the chief information security officer (CISO) for Databricks, responsible for the security vision, strategy, and compliance programs to ensure customer and corporate information assets and technologies are protected. David has more than 15 years of security experience. Prior to Databricks he served as the chief security officer (CSO) for Jive Software, where he was responsible for Jive's corporate and product security. In addition to being Jive’s CSO, David ran technical operations for Jive’s Cloud platform. David has held director of security roles at Blue Coat Systems and Jasper Wireless, where he was in charge of the organizations' corporate and product security programs.
"CISOs who who are transparent with their customers by sharing how they protect customer data will build a more secure environment. This collaboration will foster trust and receive important feedback that will improve the company's security."
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