Board of Directors

Gerhard Watzinger

Chairman of the Board, CrowdStrike

Gerhard Watzinger assumed the role of the Chairman of the Board of CrowdStrike in April 2012. Before CrowdStrike, Watzinger served as the Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President at McAfee, where he was responsible for guiding McAfee's global business strategy and development. Watzinger has helped accelerate the international expansion of McAfee and has directed the company through numerous successful mergers and acquisitions, which have resulted in record revenue growth and increased market share. He was also the architect of McAfee's acquisition by Intel, a $7.7B transaction which was one of the largest deals in the security industry.

Prior to joining McAfee in 2007 through an acquisition, Watzinger was Chief Executive Officer of SafeBoot Holdings, a leading enterprise security software vendor for data encryption and user authentication. With vast experience in information technology and global business development, Watzinger grew SafeBoot from a small, owner-operated company to an internationally recognized IT security firm with Fortune 500 customers in more than 70 countries.

Before SafeBoot, Watzinger served as Chief Executive Officer at iGate, where he expanded the company’s outsourcing and offshore businesses to several thousand employees. His other managerial positions include a CEO positions with APT International, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting division, and managing director for Cap Gemini International.

In addition to keynoting many events throughout his career, Watzinger is on the Board of Directors at Mastech, a publicly traded IT outsourcing company in Pittsburgh. Watzinger has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. 

Gerhard is also an avid race car driver who currently competes in the Radical SR8 series.

George Kurtz

President & CEO, CrowdStrike

Serial entrepreneur George Kurtz co-founded CrowdStrike, a cutting-edge, big data, security technology company focused on helping enterprises and governments protect their most sensitive intellectual property and national security information. Kurtz is an internationally recognized security expert, author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He has more than 20 years of experience in the security space, including extensive experience driving revenue growth and scaling small and large organizations. His entrepreneurial background and ability to commercialize nascent technologies has enabled him to drive innovation throughout his career by identifying market trends and correlating them with customer feedback, resulting in rapid growth for the businesses he has run. His prior roles at McAfee, a $3-billion security company, include Worldwide Chief Technology Officer and GM, as well as SVP of Enterprise. Prior to joining McAfee, Kurtz started Foundstone in October 1999 as the founder and CEO responsible for recruiting the other six founding team members. Foundstone, a world wide security products and services company, had one of the leading incident response practices in the industry, and was acquired by McAFee in October of 2004. He also authored the best-selling security book of all time, Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions. 

Denis O'Leary

Managing Partner, Encore Financial Partners, Inc.

Denis O’Leary is managing partner of Encore Financial Partners, Inc. a firm focused on the acquisition and management of U.S. based banking organizations. From 1978 to 2003 he held a variety of executive positions at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. including: treasurer for the corporation; DGM for the company's processing businesses; chief information officer; and head of retail and small business branch banking. He became a member of Chase’s executive committee in 1997. Following JPMC, Denis was active in private equity and as a senior advisor to the Boston Consulting Group. He received his MBA from NYU and his B.A. in economics from the University of Rochester.  Denis served as a director of McAfee (until its sale to Intel) and numerous private and not for profit entities, and as Chairman of NYCE Corporation. Presently he is also director of Fiserv (FISV) and Hamilton State Bancshares and serves on the advisory boards of Hewlett Packard Corporation and Information Week magazine.

Patrick Severson

Managing Director, Warburg Pincus

Patrick Severson is based in New York, joined Warburg Pincus in 2001 and focuses on software and healthcare technology investments. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, Mr. Severson was a consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton and Price Waterhouse, focused on media and technology industries. His current portfolio includes CrowdStrike, iParadigms and Nuance. Mr. Severson holds a B.S. in computer science from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.