Sascha Konietzke

Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer

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.

Paolo Negri

Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

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.

Karthik Rau

Chief Executive Officer

Karthik brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in high-growth, disruptive technology markets. He was a founder and CEO of SignalFx, an early leader in cloud monitoring, from its inception until it was acquired by Splunk in 2019. Previously, he held several executive leadership positions at VMware during its early growth years and through its IPO, including as Vice President of Product Management and Worldwide Marketing. Karthik holds a BS and MS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a Terman Scholar.

Elizabeth Maxson

Chief Marketing Officer

Elizabeth Maxson is the Chief Marketing Officer of Contentful, a content management platform trusted by more than 4,200 companies around the world. Elizabeth brings nearly two decades of integrated marketing leadership to the role and is focused on driving marketing strategies that leverage AI and personalization to help brands deliver personalized and scalable content to their audiences. Prior to Contentful, Elizabeth served as the Chief Marketing Officer at Tableau, a Salesforce company, where she led go-to-market strategy, drove end-to-end marketing initiatives, and spearheaded strategic technology partnerships, launching critical relationships with industry giants such as AWS, Google, Alibaba, Apple, and many others. In addition to her role at Tableau, Elizabeth has also served as the Head of Marketing at Quip, another Salesforce acquisition. She holds a BAA in Facility Management and Marketing from Central Michigan University.

Chris Masino

Chief Revenue Officer

Chris Masino has over 25 years of experience leading high-performance selling organizations, from fast-growing startups to publicly traded companies. He’s well-versed in building and scaling large global sales teams to drive rapid revenue growth while improving operational efficiency. His expertise spans across category creation, enterprise sales strategy, and building go-to-market teams that win in competitive markets. Chris played a key role in leading Mercury Interactive through its acquisition by HP, helped scale Jive Software through its IPO, and, most recently, grew ActionIQ into a leader in the Customer Data Platform (CDP) space, culminating in its acquisition. Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Rhode Island College of Business.

Karl Rumelhart

Chief Product Officer

Karl Rumelhart is the Chief Product Officer at Contentful. He is a seasoned product and technology leader with over 25 years of experience scaling startups and global companies. He began his career as an academic mathematician before transitioning to the software industry, where he played a key role at VMware, helping take the company through its IPO. He later spent nearly a decade at Gainsight as Chief Product Officer and President, leading a global team of over 500 across product, design, and engineering. Karl holds a PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University and a BS in Mathematics from Stanford University.

Ray Martinelli

Chief People Officer

Ray has more than 20 years of experience in human resources leadership positions including as Chief People Officer at three San Francisco area technology startups. After starting his career at Apple, Ray helped technology companies including Juniper Networks and ServiceSource scale, taking ServiceSource through an IPO. Most recently, he helped evolve Coupa into a public company. His deep international experience fits well with Contentful’s global presence. Ray has successfully built and managed EMEA people operations multiple times, including large multidisciplinary teams in Germany. Ray holds a bachelor’s degree in human resources from California State University - Sacramento and an MA in organizational leadership from Golden Gate University.

Carla Cooper

Chief Financial Officer

Carla has a drive to understand the inner workings of businesses—and after nearly 20 years as a financial analyst covering technology stocks, she moved into the tech industry herself. Carla served in key financial roles for both Responsys and Mulesoft during their journeys to going public. Most recently she was VP Finance & Strategy for Salesforce. She also is on the advisory board of Gappify, a provider of SaaS solutions for corporate accountants. Carla earned an MBA at Northwestern University and an AB in Public and International Relations from Princeton University. An accomplished athlete, she completed six marathons and countless triathlons before her kids were born.

Margo M. Smith

Chief Legal Officer

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.

Jeff Gabriel

Executive Vice President, Engineering

Jeff has held many leadership roles in software development over the past 25 years. Prior to joining Contentful in 2024, he spent 8 years building Machine Learning platforms at Nexosis and DataRobot, following Nexosis’ acquisition by DataRobot in 2018. Jeff and his wife Meredith live in Berlin and are enjoying the city and European travel every chance they get. When not traveling you’ll probably find Jeff playing board games, reading a book, or cycling.

Todd Watts

Senior Vice President, Customer Experience

Leading Contentful’s global customer experience teams, Todd Watts brings over 20 years of experience in digital marketing, business operational leadership, and client relationship growth and management. He has a long track record of helping technology organizations and SAAS software companies grow and scale their businesses by driving repeatable processes and initiatives that help drive profitability, customer success, and customer retention. Previously, he served as the Global Services & Partner Leader for Adobe, The Chief Operating Officer for Clarizen, and most recently, the Chief Customer Officer for Planview. Todd holds a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature from George Mason University.