Our Team
Executive Leadership
Sam V. Kumar
Founder and CEO
Prior to starting Cyber Sainik, Sam was responsible for New Cloud since founding the company in 1988. He also spearheaded technology research and development for GTE (Verizon Communications). Sam has over 30 years of executive management and technical experience. Sam is focused on establishing an effective corporate growth strategy and helping businesses fight cyber criminals.
Sam Kumar received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University. Sam is a leader in the Colorado technology community, acting as a board member for TiE Rockies and an industry advisor for Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network (BEN). He has also been profiled in Denver Post, Denver Business Journal and Washingtonian Magazine as well as honored as a finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Sam V. Kumar
Founder and CEO
Lilly Beaver
Chief of Staff & Operations
Lilly has over a decade of experience working in the technology industry and holds several certifications. She has a Bachleor of Science in Accounting from Colorado State University. She enjoys working with and supporting Cyber Sainik’s team to ensure a highly funcitonal organization.
Lilly Beaver
Chief of Staff & Operations
Dean Teffer, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Dean is an executive, manager, and individual contributor in cybersecurity, data engineering, and applied machine learning, with proven success in multiple industries and using various technical stacks, both in the cloud and on-prem. He has expertise in executing product vision, building and leading teams, and developing and deploying analytic systems to customers.
Dean has over 25 years of experience building innovative products, including 18 years as a DoD and Intelligence Community contractor, where he worked on projects in tactical sonar, countermeasure deployment for aircraft, and cybersecurity. He also worked at several startups prior to Cyber Sainik. He was VP of Engineering at IronNet Cybersecurity (IRNT), a top-five NDR vendor; and he was Director of Data Science at JASK, a cloud-based and streaming NTA and SIEM startup that was acquired by Sumo Logic (SUMO). Prior to that, Dean was Principal Investigator for over 7 years for the data exploitation division of a multi-agency (DoD / IC) cyberdefense task force focused on cross-organization reconnaissance detection.
Dean has a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UT Austin, a Masters in Physics from UT Austin, and a Bachelors in Physics from Tulane University. He currently lives in Austin, TX with his wife and two children.
Dean Teffer, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Mary Anne Gunn
Chief Marketing Officer
With an extensive marketing background spanning more than 25 years and a range of high-growth, B2B technology companies, Mary Anne leverages an integrated marketing strategy to enhance ROI, improve sales productivity, drive marketing effectiveness, grow brand awareness, and build market share.
Prior to joining Cyber Sainik, she was the Vice President of Corporate Marketing for JASK, an AI-driven cybersecurity solutions provider that was acquired by Sumo Logic in 2019. Serving as a key member of the leadership team, she was responsible for building and guiding the marketing team, helping grow the company’s ARR from $200K to $5M in on year.
Throughout her career, Mary Anne has held a variety of marketing leadership roles where she blended demand generation, marketing communications, product marketing and partner/channel marketing programs to achieve exceptional results. She has played key leadership roles with SaaS-driven high-growth organizations acquired by such notables as IBM, Nuance and Sumo Logic.
A long-time resident of Austin, Texas, Mary Anne holds a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin’s McComb’s School of Business.
Mary Anne Gunn
Chief Marketing Officer
Tanner Stieglitz
Controller
Tanner Stieglitz
Controller
Board of Directors
Sam V. Kumar
Founder and CEO
Prior to starting Cyber Sainik, Sam was responsible for New Cloud since founding the company in 1988. He also spearheaded technology research and development for GTE (Verizon Communications). Sam has over 30 years of executive management and technical experience. Sam is focused on establishing an effective corporate growth strategy and helping businesses fight cyber criminals.
Sam Kumar received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University. Sam is a leader in the Colorado technology community, acting as a board member for TiE Rockies and an industry advisor for Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network (BEN). He has also been profiled in Denver Post, Denver Business Journal and Washingtonian Magazine as well as honored as a finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Sam V. Kumar
Founder and CEO
Shashi R. Kumar
Director
Shashi R. Kumar
Director
Scott C. Chandler
Director
Scott Chandler has over 30 years of senior and executive-level management experience. Scott has extensive senior management and board of director experience in both private and public companies. Mr. Chandler is currently managing partner for Franklin Court Partners, LLC. (FCP), www.franklincourtpartners.com. FCP’s focus is assisting companies in the following: developing business plans to raise initial funding, securing additional round(s) of financing, and restructuring of existing business to work within current financing and economic environment. At FCP, Scott has worked on a number of projects (financing, M&A, due diligence for private equity firms, etc.) for security companies including PING Identity and LogRhythm in their start-up stages. FCP also led the sale of Cascade Defense to Green Cloud Technologies (now Green Cloud Defense) in 2021.
Prior to founding FCP, Chandler was Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President for RHYTHMS NetConnections (ticker:RTHM), a leading provider of broadband services utilizing digital subscriber line (DSL) technology. At RHYTHMS, Scott was responsible for raising over $2 Billion for the company and led the financial restructuring of RHYTHMS which resulted in the sale of its assets to Worldcom (now MCI). Scott also led and managed the expansion of RHYTHMS internationally identifying, negotiating and managing joint ventures in Canada and Japan.
Before RHYTHMS, Mr. Chandler served as President and CEO of C-COR (ticker:CCBL), a pioneer in the cable television industry and a leading supplier of broadband telecommunications equipment. Under Mr. Chandler’s leadership, C-COR’s revenues increased 77 percent to $152 million, and the company was named by FORTUNE magazine as one of the 100 fastest-growing public companies. Mr. Chandler also launched three new product lines and forged strategic relationships with Bay Networks (now Nortel), Barco and Lucent Technologies.
Prior to C-COR, Mr. Chandler held a number of key positions at U S WEST. He was a founder and early leader of the !NTERPRISE Networking Services unit, broadly known as the most successful data initiative by any phone company in the country. Mr. Chandler also founded !NTERPRISE America, a national expansion of U S WEST’s data initiative, and forged joint venture relationships with competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) to offer frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and other data services.
Mr. Chandler’s business career began with Arthur Andersen & Co as a Senior Consultant/Accountant. At Arthur Andersen, Scott performed a wide range of assignments, including forming the microcomputer consulting group for the Western United States (now Andersen’s Business Systems Client/Server Consulting Group) in 1987. Mr. Chandler also worked for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee in 1984.
Mr. Chandler earned an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A from Whitworth College. He has also serves on the Board of Directors for various companies.
Scott C. Chandler
Director
Board of Advisors
James Carder
Chief Information Security Officer, Eptura
James Carder brings more than 25 years of experience working in corporate IT security and consulting for the Fortune 1000 and U.S. Government. At Eptura, he oversees the company’s information security programs, including security operations (blue and red teams), architecture and infrastructure, application and product security, governance, risk, compliance, privacy, audit, and security awareness, and training.
Prior to joining Eptura, James served as the Chief Security Officer and VP of LogRhythm Labs (threat research, compliance research, and operational risk) at LogRhythm where he built the program from its infancy and matured it into the world-class security organization it is today. He implemented key architecture and controls like Zero Trust and ensured that the products LogRhythm produced and the data that LogRhythm was responsible for were secure for our customers. In addition, James had responsibilities in R&D, led mergers and acquisitions, public and analyst relations, and contributed to the development of LogRhythm products and their capabilities.
Prior to joining LogRhythm, James served as the Director of Security Informatics at a large non-profit medical center in Minnesota, where he had oversight of threat intelligence, incident response, security operations, and offensive security groups. Additional experience includes serving as a Senior Manager at MANDIANT, where he led over 160 professional services and incident response engagements. He also conducted criminal and national security-related investigations at the city, state, and federal levels and was responsible for Mandiant’s support for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
James is a sought-after and frequent speaker at cybersecurity events and is a noted author of several cybersecurity publications. He is also an Advisory Board member for the University of Colorado Denver, PlexTrac, TruKno, Coalfire, Circle Systems, Resurface Labs, Cyber Sainik, Seclytics, and the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA); a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP); former ICIT Fellow; and a member of the Forbes Technology Council. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems from Walden University and an MBA from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
James Carder
Chief Information Security Officer, Eptura
Rob Anderson
Board Level Advisor, vCRO, GTM Advisor, Investor, USAF Veteran
Rob brings more than 40 years of early-stage startup experience and the veteran of 10+ startups. His expertise is helping with GTM strategies and Sales Process to bring value to both the company and their customers by connecting technical outcomes and business outcomes. He is on the advisory board of 4 companies and vCRO for one. In addition, Rob is the Director of Sales for Neosec in the API security space.
Rob Anderson
Board Level Advisor, vCRO, GTM Advisor, Investor, USAF Veteran
Jeffery Pearl
Board Level Advisor
Jeffrey Pearl has a stellar track record of 30 plus years in the telecommunications industry, but it is his relationships with the Industry leaders and top performing sales execs that he considers his real success and ongoing asset. Through unparalleled leadership and finesse, Jeffrey has a proven history of increasing momentum and accelerating large sales organizations.
Jeffrey is CEO and Founder of OTG Consulting as well as CEO and Founder of PearlCom and is involved in multiple boards. OTG is a consortium of some of the Industries top Executives focused on advising and consulting to SMB and Large Enterprise Business Customers. PearlCom is a consulting firm focused on supporting service providers and MSP’s deploying VoIP platforms, Go-to-Market Strategies, Channel Development, Sales Management, Recruiting and Exceleration. In addition, Jeffrey is involved in multiple Boards advising Executives on Strategy, Technology and Charitable events.
Previous to that, Jeffrey was at Broadsoft, where he was responsible for North America Carrier Sales, Global Channel Acceleration and built an Enterprise and Strategic Sales Channel.
Prior to that, he co-founded IP5280 Communications, a cloud based IP communications provider focused on delivering converged IP voice, video and data services to business customers. IP5280 was awarded Technology services of the year by CTA , was on the INC 500 list of fastest growing companies and was awarded one of The Best Companies to Work for in Colorado several years in a row.
IP5280 was acquired by MegaPath. Jeffrey took the role of SVP of sales at MegaPath and lead a refocused effort on VoIP and other cloud based services. Before IP5280, Jeffrey Co-founded, LineSider Communications, which specialized in secure VoIP communications,The VoIP Services were sold to Centric Voice and the remainder of the company was purchased by Cisco. Preceding Linesider, Jeffrey was CEO and previous to that EVP of Sales and Marketing with ICG Communications, a publicly traded CLEC, and a pioneer in Hosted VoIP services. As CEO, he successfully executed the sale of the company. He also held senior roles at Qwest Communications with responsibility for Direct and indirect revenue streams. He held Senior Sales Executive roles at Frontier Communications and Worldcom Communications
Jeffrey Pearl
Board Level Advisor
Michael Laudenslager
Board Level Advisor
Michael Laudenslager is currently VP of Cybersecurity at Churchill Mortgage (CMC). In this role, he oversees all of CMC’s security and threat management programs. It consists of a multi-layer approach that integrates cloud security programs and technologies, implements security policies and procedures, and manages education programs on user awareness and security compliance.
Prior to this position, Mr. Laudenslager served as Principal Cloud Threat Architect at IronNet Cybersecurity. He designed and created a new company-wide Cloud Detection and Visibility strategy, which he directed architecture, engineering, threat, and product teams to build and deploy. Prior to that, he worked in the financial services industry for nearly 20 years, mainly supporting hedge funds and buy-side trading with the last 10 years as a Cloud Architecture and Security Expert across Microsoft Azure/O365 and AWS. Mr. Laudenslager led or assisted in over 50 cloud security incident response situations.
Mr. Laudenslager is an active contributor and one of 13 maintainers for various activities in the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) project. OCSF is an open-source effort to deliver a simplified, vendor-agnostic taxonomy that helps all security teams realize better, faster data ingestion and analysis without the time-consuming, up-front normalization tasks. He holds many cybersecurity and cloud certifications. This includes defensive and offensive security, various MDR/EDR/XDR services, compliance auditing, cloud backups, virtualization, MDM services, and many more.
Michael Laudenslager
Board Level Advisor
