Our executive leadership team

Steve brings a background in high-growth SaaS companies, leading product, marketing and engineering. He was most recently Twilio SendGrid’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer, and previously led global product and engineering at Marketo. He also held leadership roles at Amazon and Microsoft. Steve holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Away from work, you’ll most likely find him on an adventure with his family or swimming in the San Francisco Bay.

Bridget spent the past 20 years leading marketing at established and early-stage technology companies. Bridget led Adobe's commercial marketing through its transition to SaaS and launch of a digital experience platform. Most recently, Bridget led Adobe's marketing across EMEA. Bridget also held leadership roles at Microsoft across enterprise marketing, partnerships and sales. Bridget got her start in technology at a digital agency, incubating early-stage ventures and helping established brands adopt digital. Bridget holds a BA from Boston College and an MBA from Yale School of Management. Outside of work, Bridget loves spending time with her family and outdoors — running, skiing, hiking, biking and paddling.

Ed started his career in commercial insurance working on financial service products and transitioned into SaaS technology sales. Before joining Contentful, he worked for Salesforce, Jive, Box and Databricks. In the decade of selling SaaS products, Ed has overseen all aspects of B2B sales and comes to Contentful with a track record for identifying, implementing, and expanding new revenue channels. Ed holds a degree in Finance from Santa Clara University. Rumored to be a track and field champion, he also won the title of the fastest Contentfulero in 2017.

Laurence builds and leads teams across the full customer lifecycle for B2B software companies. Before joining Contentful, Laurence was responsible for new product initiatives at Twilio as Vice President of Emerging Businesses. Prior to Twilio, Laurence helped scale SendGrid from startup through IPO in several leadership roles including Vice President of Revenue — leading sales, customer success and professional services — and Vice President of Strategic & Corporate Development. Before SendGrid, Laurence led business development and go-to-market strategy for Bloomspot, an ecommerce startup that was acquired by JP Morgan Chase. Laurence holds a B.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University.

Margo brings an extensive background representing technology companies on IPOs, corporate governance, intellectual property and international law to Contentful, where she will lead global legal strategy, privacy, compliance and strategic initiatives. Margo was most recently Chief Legal Officer at Snowflake Inc., one of the world’s fastest-growing SaaS companies. She has also served as the top legal executive at Apttus, Marketo, QuinStreet, and Verigy. Margo began her career at global technology law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and holds a JD from Columbia University School of Law and a BA from the University of Washington.

As a student, Markus channeled his love for tech by founding an IT consultancy. Passionate about data, hard problems and finance, he then went into investment banking with Morgan Stanley. He continued honing his management skills at Zalando, where he has built up the UK business, was MD for Zalando Ltd, and later became the CFO of Zalando's operations entities. Before joining Contentful, Markus was a VP of Finance and IT at SoundCloud, the world’s leading audio platform. Markus holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from WHU Otto-Beisheim School of Management.

In 2006, Paolo left native Milan for London to be a part of the cloud revolution. He led the bid management development team at Forward, one of the fastest growing companies in the UK at the time, and later helped to scale the website of Autoscout24, the largest European car search engine. In 2010, Paolo joined the social gaming company Wooga, where he resolved Wooga's massive scaling issues and oversaw a 10X traffic growth spurt over his 2-year tenure. In 2012, Paolo met Sascha and founded Contentful. Paolo holds an Engineering Management degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan.

His fondness for programming helped Sascha land his first job at the age of 15, working as a webmaster for a VC-funded hardware startup Vircinity. In 2005, Sascha joined Hewlett-Packard where he was quickly recognized for spotting promising technologies and taking an entrepreneurial approach to day-to-day projects. After leaving HP in 2008, Sascha travelled extensively and founded Tagcrumbs, a geo-location based bookmarking service. In 2011, he started working on a publishing platform which went on to become Contentful. Sascha holds a degree in Business Information Technology from the University of Cooperative Education in Stuttgart.

Vanessa has more than 20 years of experience in human resources. As a dual-national with a passion for global business, she launched her career by joining the exploration division of BHP Minerals, a 70,000-person Australian mining company. She went on to work for Lucasfilm, Williams-Sonoma, and Lending Club, in a variety of people-focused leadership roles, focusing on growth and expansion. Vanessa leads Contentful’s global People and Workplace functions. She hold a BA in Psychology from the University of Washington.

Starting as an engineer at Autonomy Corporation R&D team, Suranga went on to become the company's CTO for the US market. In 2004, Suranga founded Blinkx, a video and audio search engine. As a CEO, he built a profitable business and took the company public on the London Stock Exchange in 2007. Since 2015 Suranga is a General Partner at Balderton Capital, one of Europe's leading early stage technology venture capital firms with over $2.5B under management. Suranga holds an MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.

Eric Vishria is a general partner at Benchmark, where he focuses on early stage startup investing, especially in infrastructure and enterprise software. Eric brings a long and varied background as an executive in technology startups (Loudcloud, Opsware, RockMelt) and public companies (HP, Yahoo), including consumer and enterprise, and across a range of functions including product, marketing and operations.

Trevor Oelschig is a managing director at General Catalyst, a venture capital firm with approximately $3.75 billion in total capital raised. Working from the firm’s West Coast offices, Trevor’s investment focus lies in the application layer with an emphasis on companies with a developer-first approach. Before joining General Catalyst, Trevor spent nine years on the investment team at Bessemer Venture Partners. Trevor earned a BS in industrial engineering at UC Berkeley, an MS in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University and holds an MBA from The Wharton School.

Andreas is a co-founder and managing director of Sapphire Ventures. He serves as a board director or observer at Contentful, CurrencyCloud, Matillion, Retail Solutions, and Wandera. Prior to Sapphire Ventures, Andreas held business development roles at SAP, co-developing the SAP enterprise services community and leading reseller partnerships with Virsa Systems and Mercury Interactive among others. Before SAP, he co-founded Zadu, a venture-backed instant messaging startup. Andreas holds a Diplom-Kaufmann (graduate business degree) from the University of Hamburg, Germany and an MLitt with distinction in management, economics and politics from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

His fondness for programming helped Sascha land his first job at the age of 15, working as a webmaster for a VC-funded hardware startup Vircinity. In 2005, Sascha joined Hewlett-Packard where he was quickly recognized for spotting promising technologies and taking an entrepreneurial approach to day-to-day projects. After leaving HP in 2008, Sascha travelled extensively and founded Tagcrumbs, a geo-location based bookmarking service. In 2011, he started working on a publishing platform which went on to become Contentful. Sascha holds a degree in Business Information Technology from the University of Cooperative Education in Stuttgart.

In 2006, Paolo left native Milan for London to be a part of the cloud revolution. He led the bid management development team at Forward, one of the fastest growing companies in the UK at the time, and later helped to scale the website of Autoscout24, the largest European car search engine. In 2010, Paolo joined the social gaming company Wooga, where he resolved Wooga's massive scaling issues and oversaw a 10X traffic growth spurt over his 2-year tenure. In 2012, Paolo met Sascha and founded Contentful. Paolo holds an Engineering Management degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan.