Plano, TX, September 13, 2022 – Company hires new Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Information Security Officer, and Chief Financial Officer; promotes new senior leaders for Product, People Strategy – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, announced the addition of three new executives to its leadership team, as well as two notable internal promotions:
- Chris Williams has joined the company as the new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)
- George Jones was recently appointed as the organization’s first Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
- John Schilsky has joined the company as the new Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
- Chris Carlson has been promoted to SVP of Product
- Roseanne Donohue has been elevated to SVP of People Strategy
“The need for simplified, proactive breach prevention solutions has never been greater as the cyber threat landscape continues to expand and evolve, while companies struggle with understaffed and under-skilled IT teams,” said Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. “The new leaders joining our team bring a valuable combination of experience and expertise that will help us maintain our rapid growth trajectory and deliver favorable outcomes for our customers and partners. The internal promotions are a testament to Critical Start’s unrelenting focus on product innovation and talent acquisition and retention.”
Chris Williams brings more than 25 years of sales, sales leadership and marketing experience spanning security on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS), networking, automation, software and tech-enabled services. As CRO he will drive the strategic direction of Critical Start’s revenue-generating initiatives and oversee sales execution operations as aligned with the company’s prodigious growth plans. Prior to his appointment, Williams held the Chief Commercial Officer position at Tripwire, where he was responsible for sales, marketing, technical support and services as well as professional services activities.
George Jones has more than 20 years of experience with technology, infrastructure, compliance and assessment in multiple roles across different business verticals. In his new role as CISO, he will lead the direction of all security and compliance initiatives within the company and keep Critical Start accountable for achieving all goals and milestones planned. Most recently, Jones was Head of Information Security and Infrastructure at Catalyst Health Group, where he oversaw all compliance efforts (NIST, PCI, HITRUST, SOC2) as well as vendor management for security-based programs.
John Schilsky has served as a middle-market CFO for over 20 years and has held board positions for two venture-backed software companies. As CFO, he will focus on driving increased scalability and efficiencies and ensuring that financial and operational resources are available to properly execute on Critical Start’s aggressive growth plan. Most recently, Schilsky worked as CFO for a $250 million private-equity-backed education technology service provider and was a key member of the management team, navigating through two recap processes and two buy-side acquisitions while the company experienced double digit organic growth.
As SVP of Product, Chris Carlson will define and drive the high-level initiatives for the product management and engineering teams. He joined Critical Start in November 2021 as VP of Product Management and brings more than 20 years of product management experience with security SaaS, software and tech-enabled services / MSSPs. Also promoted, Roseanne Donohue will lead, define and drive high-level strategic initiatives for the company’s combined talent and human resources team. She joined Critical Start in June 2021 as VP of Talent Management and brings more than 20 years of talent and human resources experience across the cyber security, high tech, investment banking, financial, and brokerage industries.
These new additions and promotions are part of the latest wave of momentum in an exciting year for Critical Start. This past April, the company announced a strategic growth investment of over $215 million from Vista Equity Partners, a leading global investment firm focused exclusively on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses. In August, Critical Start was named to both the 2022 Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies in America and the 2022 CRN Fast Growth 150 List.
About Critical Start
Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero Trust Analytics Platform™ (ZTAP™) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate, and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com.
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