COUPA LEADERSHIP Supporting, Not Managing Our Employees and Our Business.
What it Means to be Upside Down
At Coupa, leadership starts at the "bottom" where – like a tree – every leader supports (not manages) their employees. With a strong foundational “trunk”, our leaders support their teams who make up the functional “branches” around the organization. The entire tree is bound by a common set of core values that guide us every day. It is this belief and model that nurtures the tree so it can flourish and grow.
We've featured our executive team and some key leaders on a rotational basis in our tree of leadership below.
See Our Leadership Tree
Tony Tiscornia
Chief Financial Officer
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Trackman 4 Golf Monitor with Dual Radar
Tony is the CFO of Coupa, and oversees the company's finance and investor relations teams. Tony has been with Coupa since 2012 in various progressive leadership positions, including having served as Chief Accounting Officer and VP of Finance leading up to his appointment as CFO. During his tenure, Tony has helped oversee the company's IPO in 2016, secondary offering in 2017, three convertible debt offerings, more than a dozen acquisitions, and overall rapid business growth and global expansion. After starting his career in public accounting with KPMG, Tony held various finance positions at the Clorox Company, Chiron Corporation, Robert Half, Blade Network Technologies, and Soraa. At Blade, he also played an integral role in the company's IPO readiness efforts, followed by the eventual sale of the company to IBM. Tony earned a B.S. in Managerial Economics from UC Davis and is a California CPA (inactive).
Maurizio Barrata
Chief Accounting Officer
Maurizio is the CAO of Coupa and is responsible for the company's accounting operations and financial reporting functions. Maurizio started his career in PwC Italy in 2002 and then moved to PwC US to gain more international experience before joining Coupa in 2016. Maurizio has held various progressive leadership positions during his tenure at Coupa, including Assistant Controller and VP Controller, leading up to his appointment as CAO. Maurizio helped lead Coupa through its IPO, secondary offering transactions, SOX readiness and implementation, and numerous M&A transactions. Maurizio has been a key strategic leader in the growth and expansion of Coupa from its beginnings as early-stage private company to becoming a public enterprise with a broad global footprint. Maurizio holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Università Commerciale ‘Luigi Bocconi.’, and is a California CPA (inactive).
Michael Van Keulen
Chief Procurement Officer
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Dolphin medication
MVK is the Chief Procurement Officer at Coupa, where he is responsible for driving best-in-class procurement practices across the company, supporting business development and being a trusted advisor to fellow procurement leaders looking to (digitally) transform Procurement.
Before joining Coupa MVK served as the Global Procurement leader at lululemon athletica where he led procurement transformation and digitized the Business Spend Management process with Coupa. Prior to that, MVK led global Procurement transformation at VF Corporation, a Fortune 300 global leader in lifestyle apparel and a Coupa Customer. At both companies MVK helped create significant shareholder value, implement best practices and supported high growth. MVK also spent 4 years as the European Controller at Foot Locker Inc. and held finance positions at Nuance and Sterling Commerce. He began his career in Management Consulting with Arthur Anderson.
MVK is a procurement evangelist and fanatic, who is frequently invited to speak at procurement conferences and provides thought leadership through publications, blog posts and webinars. He holds a BS degree from the University of Amsterdam and currently resides in Vancouver, BC.
Sal Alswafta
VP, Revenue Accounting
Sal is Vice President of Revenue Accounting at Coupa and is responsible for managing order-to-cash cycle, which includes billing, collections, revenue accounting, contract negotiation support, and revenue related SOX. Sal Joined Coupa in 2015 and led the process of establishing revenue processes & procedures and building a strong revenue team. During his tenure, Sal has helped in the Company’s IPO, managed the adoption of ASC 606, and supported numerous M&A transactions. Sal has more than 20 years of finance and accounting experience with focus on revenue recognition for the last 15 years. Sal oversees the Company’s revenue recognition policy, revenue operation, revenue system, processes and procedures, research, and evaluation of revenue recognition treatment and interpretation of accounting guidance. Prior to Coupa, Sal held various revenue management positions at NetSuite, Nanometrics, and Taleo. Sal holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from University of Jordan and dual MBA degree in finance and accounting from California State University. Also, he holds CMA and CFM certifications and is a California CPA.
JJ Freitag
SVP, Corporate Development and Coupa Ventures
JJ is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and the Managing Director of Coupa Ventures. JJ has led the strategic investment and M&A efforts at Coupa since 2014 and led the launch of Coupa Ventures in 2021.
Prior to joining Coupa, JJ was the COO at SlideRocket and led that company through its acquisition by VMWare. Previously JJ was a Vice President at Azure Capital, an early stage venture fund based in San Francisco focused on investing in innovative software, payment, and collaboration solutions. JJ started his career at Oracle on their finance team and spent a decade in product management and sales for analytics companies including SQRIBE Software, Brio Software, and Hyperion Solutions.
JJ earned a BA in Public Policy from Stanford University and an MBA from Columbia University.
Ron Chang
SVP, Operations
Ron is the Senior Vice President of Global Sales Operations at Coupa, supporting Coupa’s Sales transformational initiatives, go-to-market strategy, performance management and Sales process and productivity. Ron has more than 20 years of enterprise software industry experience across Finance, Sales and Operations. Ron is passionate about Sales optimization, change management, unlocking big GTM opportunities and building teams and infrastructure to ensure Customer success. Prior to joining Coupa in 2022, Ron served as the Global Head of Sales Strategy and Analytics at Atlassian where he was responsible for scaling strategic Enterprise Sales growth that resulted in 400%+ growth in just under 4 years. He has also held various leadership roles at Adobe in Sales Operations, License management and FP&A.
Ron received an MBA from USC Marshall School of Business and a BS Engineering degree from University of California, Irvine.
Chandar Pattabhiram
Chief Marketing Officer
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Queen Latifah and James Corden. Their participation in the keynotes at the recent Marketo Summit.
Chandar Pattabhiram is a seasoned marketing executive who brings to Coupa more than 25 years of experience in strategic marketing and management consulting. As Chief Marketing Officer, he is responsible for driving all aspects of worldwide marketing including strategic segment marketing, product marketing, growth marketing and corporate marketing.
Prior to joining Coupa, Chandar recently was CMO at Marketo where he was responsible for all aspects of marketing and in charge of positioning Marketo as the digital marketing industry’s innovation leader and the best solution for high-growth and enterprise businesses. Previously, Chandar was head of worldwide marketing for Badgeville where he was part of the team that won multiple industry awards for innovative storytelling including the Best Platform-as-a-Service for 2013. Prior to that, Chandar was vice president at IBM Cast Iron Systems where he was responsible for all product marketing and channel marketing efforts. In 2010, IBM acquired Cast Iron as a centerpiece of its Cloud strategy.
Chandar also spent years at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) as a strategic advisor to Fortune 500 companies in the high-tech, retail, and oil and gas industries. He has authored and has been quoted in more than 1000 articles and is a frequent keynote speaker at leading software industry events. In 2019, he was named as one of the Top Influential Leaders in Marketing and, in 2017, he was named by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 CMOs in the world to follow for thought-leadership in the digital marketing domain. Chandar is also a member of the WSJ CMO Network, an invite-only group that connects CMOs from some of the most prestigious brands in the world to share and shape marketing strategies.
Chandar earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from PSG College of Technology and an M.S. in management information systems from the University of Texas. He is a Strategic Advisor to the CEO of Freshworks and is on the Board of Directors for BlueShift, an AI platform for customer engagement, and Donnelley Financial Solutions (NYSE:DFIN).
Tom Gavin
Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing
Tom Gavin leads Coupa’s Corporate Marketing, with teams focused on brand, creative design, content, and corporate communications. He brings extensive experience in strategic communications and marketing in the technology, innovation, and public sectors, working at each opportunity to translate storytelling into action.
Gavin joined Coupa after 8+ years at Salesforce, where he most recently shaped executive communications for global leaders across that Fortune 150 company.
He led global communications and engagement efforts for the Information Technology Industry Council, the premier global advocate for technology, representing the world’s most innovative companies.
Tom served more than three years at the White House, working as a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama, leading Cabinet communications and the Office of Media Affairs. That followed nearly 15 years of senior media and communications roles in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Gavin worked as senior director of U.S. Communications for ONE, a global movement co-founded by Bono and other activists campaigning to end extreme poverty and preventable disease by 2030.
Tom has a Master’s degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield, and a Bachelor’s degree from Northern Illinois University. He and his family live in Washington, D.C.
Mike Schanker
SVP, Strategic Marketing
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Jaw Crushers
Michael Schanker is Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Coupa, supporting Coupa's go-to-market strategy, product marketing, segment marketing, and customer marketing teams. He has spent more than 20 years in enterprise software across Marketing, Sales, and Services leadership roles after starting his career in Finance. Common threads across all his work experience are a passion for leading new market categories, and a focus on creating customer value by applying technology to hard problems. He received an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BSBA degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
Raja Hammoud
EVP, Products
Raja is Executive Vice President of Products at Coupa, and drives the product portfolio’s strategy & roadmap. She leads Coupa’s Product teams, including product management, and user experience. Since 2012, Raja has led Coupa through expansion of the depth and breadth of its Organic cloud suite, which resulted in the launch of several new products and hundreds of new features and enhancements driving increased adoption and efficiencies across the customer base.
Raja has over 20 years of experience in the enterprise software space. She came to Coupa from Adobe Systems where she directed Product Marketing for its business process management business, resulting in Adobe’s recognition as a leader in respective industry evaluations. She subsequently drove the solutions roadmap for Adobe’s Customer Experience Management product line, and spearheaded the product management of Adobe’s innovative Social Brand Engagement Solution.
Prior to Adobe, Raja served as Sr. Director of Product management for webMethods, where she defined the BPM product roadmap and strategy, resulting in webMethods’ grand entry into the BPM space as an industry leader recognized by Forrester’s and Gartner’s BPM Magic Quadrant Evaluations.
Raja received her Bachelor of Sciences degree in Computer Science with high distinction from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
Fang Chang
SVP, Product Management
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
An airplane
Fang is Senior Vice President of Product Management at Coupa Software, driving product strategy and roadmap for various products across the portfolio that include Procurement, Contracts and Expenses.
With over 25 years of software industry experience, Fang has held leadership roles at Intuit, Macromedia and Adobe, building products that incorporated human-centered design and bringing consumer-like experiences to enterprises.
Prior to Coupa, he served as Vice President of Product Marketing & Management at Syncplicity, recognized as a leader for enterprise file synchronization & sharing in Gartner MQ evaluations, where he led product strategy, roadmap, and outbound product marketing.
Fang is a graduate of UC San Diego, and holds Master of Business Administration and Master of Engineering Management degrees from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Rajiv Ramachandran
SVP, Product Management
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Hyperloop Components
Rajiv Ramachandran is the product executive responsible for the overall strategy, management and engineering of Coupa’s B2B payment platform - Coupa Pay.
With over 20+ years of experience in the enterprise software industry, Rajiv has deep knowledge and experience on SaaS solutions, Cloud and On-Premise based integrations of financial platforms and streamlining B2B payment experiences and processes across the enterprise.
Prior to joining Coupa, Rajiv held technology and business leadership roles at Prolifics, a premier IBM Business Partner managing business process management and enterprise integration lines of business. Rajiv joined Coupa in 2013 leading Coupa’s cloud integration strategy and technical services organization and over the last 4 years has led the launch, the growth and the adoption of Coupa Pay for all Coupa customers in one of Coupa’s most successful product launches.
With an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Business, Rajiv is also a constant innovator, looking to disrupt the B2B payments space, with multiple patent pending innovations against his name.
Donna Wilczek
SVP, Product Strategy and Innovation
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Parts that ended up in space.
Donna is the Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Innovation at Coupa. She leads the development of the overall product strategy. She is a recognized industry expert that is passionate about business spend management and ensuring customer success. Donna has over two decades experience in the business software industry.
In her 10 years at Coupa, Wilczek has helped the company scale from young startup to successful public company. She has supported the development of many new applications and the unification of acquired companies while collaborating closely with customers and partners - with a core belief that “none of us is as smart as all of us.” Over the last decade at Coupa, Donna has held leadership roles in product strategy and marketing, customer experience, and professional services.
Prior to Coupa, Donna led shared services for TriNet (NYSE: TNET), a cloud-based professional employer organization for small and medium-sized businesses, and led professional services at Ketera (acquired by Rearden Commerce), a cloud spend management provider. She is also a board member and a technology innovator who has been awarded twelve software patents.
Ray Martinelli
Chief People Officer
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
A Super Bowl Ad.
Ray brings more than 20 years of experience in global human resource management with industry-leading, high-growth companies in Silicon Valley. Before Coupa, Ray was the chief people officer at Alfresco Software where he was responsible for global human resources and worked closely with the executive team to scale the organization and expand its global presence. Prior to Alfresco, Ray was chief people officer at ServiceSource where he helped grow the company from 150 employees to more than 3,500 employees worldwide. Throughout his career, Ray has held executive-level human resource positions at leading technology brands, including Macromedia where he served as senior vice president of human resources, as well as Juniper Networks. Ray earned a master’s degree in organizational development from Golden Gate University and a bachelor’s degree in organizational communications from Sacramento State University.
Gina Tesla
Vice President, Environment, Social, Governance (ESG)
Gina leads Coupa’s Environmental, Social, and Governance team, spanning sustainability, social impact and diversity, equity & inclusion. She is passionate about the intersection of business & society, creating innovative partnerships, and building strong, diverse teams. She is also the Executive Chair of Empower, an employee resource group focused on working smarter together to unleash the power of women, and their allies to #breakthebias and build a more inclusive world.
Prior to Coupa, Gina was at Microsoft, where she conceptualized the Sustainability Service Line for Microsoft Consulting Services. Additionally, as a leader at IBM in Corporate Responsibility for 10 years, Gina’s portfolio spanned multi-million-dollar investments driving social impact across education & skills, health, gender equity and community resiliency. She also led global sustainability, covering employee engagement, environment, human resources, public policy, supply chain, and governance. Gina also drove IBM’s employee volunteerism and the award-winning Corporate Service Corps, including 4,000 employees from 60 countries and spanning 1,500 social impact projects in 40 countries.
Gina holds an MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. She also served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama. Her successful career began in advertising, including roles at Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy & Mather and McCann Erickson.
Ronan Kerouedan
VP, Global Value Solutions Consulting
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Clowns
Ronan Kerouedan is Senior Vice President, Global Value Solutions Consulting and leading all functional and technical presales resources globally at Coupa. The Value Solutions Consulting team is responsible for helping prospective clients understand how our technology can help them transform their organizations and generate sustainable value.
Ronan has over two decades of experience in the software industry, starting initially with the implementation of SAP systems in the discrete manufacturing industry in the UK before moving to presales roles at early e-procurement pioneers Commerce One and Ariba.
Ronan has a real passion for the environment, launching in 2007 a Carbon Management cloud-based software startup, Hubsphere, raising venture capital, and developing the business across key markets in Europe. After successfully helping thousands of schools and businesses mitigate their environmental impact, Ronan joined Coupa in 2012 to help kickstart its operations across EMEA. Ronan is a keen believer in mixing technology innovation with a rigorous KPI-based value framework to help businesses generate sustainable value and is working relentlessly with the global sales team to optimize how organizations of all sizes are joining our ever growing community and adopting our Value as a Service solutions.
Mark Riggs
Chief Customer Officer
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Cars
Mark is the Chief Customer Officer (CCO) at Coupa where he champions, orchestrates, and advances the customer experience across Coupa’s ever-more-complex range of customer interactions. With more than 25 years of experience, Mark has a consistent track record of creating and scaling customer-facing teams across organizations while delivering optimal success to internal and external stakeholders. Prior to Coupa, Mark worked as the Chief Customer Officer and General Manager for Bazaarvoice during a period of rapid revenue growth and was also part of the team that led the company through its initial public offering (IPO).
Previously, Mark was Senior Vice President of World-Wide Customer Success for Endeca Technologies where he helped grow the company from early stage through its acquisition by Oracle for $1.1 billion. Before Endeca, Riggs served as Vice President of Global Services for Business Objects where he helped grow the company from $400 million to $1.6 billion in annual revenue. Business Objects was acquired by SAP for $6.8 billion.
Mark is an Advisory Board member for Conscia, the Toronto based Interactive Management Platform company. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Computer Information Systems, Magna Cum Laude, from Northern Arizona University. Mark also took engineering classes of distinction at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
Kim Hopman
SVP, Professional Services
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Live animals and dead animals to feed those live animals.
Kim Hopman is the Senior Vice President, Professional Services & Customer Value Management at Coupa Software where she works with companies to ensure they receive the value they expect from the business spend software they purchased. With more than 30 years of experience, Kim has proven how to drive success through partnering with customers and SI partners to focus on the measurable goals of the project while maintaining laser focus on value to retain a customer for life. Previously, Kim worked as the Vice President, Professional Services for various software startups during a period of rapid revenue growth and was part of a team that led Indus International, Commerce One and Coupa through its initial public offerings (IPO).
Kim has won multiple sales awards and most recently the Coupa Leadership award voted on by those she supports. She enjoys seeing others grow personally and professionally and tries to impart lessons learned from her own journey.
Kim holds a BS in quantitative business analysis and a minor in political science from Indiana University.
Gregory Mark
SVP, Customer Value Management
Gregory Mark, SVP of Global Enterprise Customer Value Management, supports a team of Value Directors tasked with helping Coupa customers achieve increased realization of value through their existing entitlements. Greg has over 25 years experience in the BSM space having held the positions of Chief Executive Officer at Hubwoo, Chief Revenue Officer at Perfect Commerce, Chief Customer Officer at Zycus, and and VP Marketplace Strategy at Commerce One. Greg is based in both Kansas City and Philadelphia.
Keaton Miller
SVP, Customer Value Management
Keaton Miller, SVP of Global Mid-Market Customer Value Management, supports a team of Value Managers tasked with helping Coupa customers achieve increased realization of value through their existing entitlements. Keaton has over two decades of experience in the Supply Chain and Procurement space across management consulting, industry, and technology. Keaton spent the first four years of his Coupa tenure in the Asia Pacific region supporting our early customers to adopt and realize value from Coupa. Keaton received an MBA from the University of Texas and a BA degree from Stanford University. Keaton is based in Dallas, Texas.
JP Krishnamoorthy
EVP, Engineering
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Prosthetic arms and legs
JP is responsible for Coupa Engineering. He brings over 20 years of software development experience building complex enterprise applications with high performance requirements in the communications and media industry.
Prior to joining Coupa, JP led product management and development for the Billing and Revenue Management application suite at Oracle. He was CTO for Portal Software before it was acquired by Oracle and was instrumental in defining and managing the product architecture from its startup days. JP holds several patents in revenue management software methods.
In the early part of his career, he worked at Sybase on Object-Relational database technology and at Amdahl (Fujitsu) building software to install, service and manage large processing clusters.
JP received his M.S. degree in Computer Science from Iowa State University and his B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Anna University in India.
Arjun Ramaratnam
SVP, Engineering
Arjun is Senior Vice President at Coupa Software, leading Software Development in the areas of Mobile, Analytics, Supply Chain Design & Planning, Suppliers, Risk, Travel & Expenses on the core and power applications for Coupa enterprise cloud platform.
A proven technology leader with 20+ years executing high-value Enterprise & Consumer technology programs with expertise in scaling technology building global software teams.
Previously he was with WalmartLabs leading the Architecture and Development of Walmart.com search, cart, checkout, grocery, payment, tax and customer account platforms. He has also held engineering positions at Hewlett Packard and BroadVision. Arjun has a Masters in Computer Science and an MBA along with a Bachelors in Electronics Engineering.
Vilas Madapurmath
SVP, Engineering
Vilas Madapurmath as the SVP of Engineering supports the engineering teams responsible for the CWM product, global Quality, and PMO.
Vilas has 30+ years of enterprise software development experience that combines a hands-on software development background and customer-facing skills. Prior to joining Coupa, Vilas held senior engineering leadership positions with Oracle, Portal Software, CA Technologies, and VeriFone building software solutions spanning revenue management, payments, and applications monitoring. Vilas joined Coupa in 2014 and has been instrumental in establishing the engineering development practices for Coupa.
Vilas earned a BS in electrical & electronics engineering from BITS at Pilani, India, and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix.
Stéphane Pelchat
VP, Platform Engineering
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
Rocket parts
Stéphane is Vice President, Platform Engineering, joined Coupa in 2011 and is supporting common business objects, application frameworks, pipelines and services leveraged across Coupa's entire suite. He also leads the Application Security, Integration and Performance programs within the engineering organization.
Prior to Coupa, Stéphane held technical and leadership roles at several consumer and enterprise companies.
Stéphane holds a B. Eng. from the UQAC in Canada, where he studied Computer, Electronics and Information Engineering.
Ken Ricketts
Chief Information Security Officer
What is the most interesting item or service you have seen sourced through Coupa?
PPE, during the Covid pandemic
Ken is Chief Information Security Officer, supporting Coupa’s security and compliance mission. He has spent the last 25 years in the Silicon Valley leading teams and helping them scale and innovate.
Ken has a passion for security, quality, and operational excellence, Ken has worked in a variety of roles throughout his time in large enterprise organizations and also at start-ups. His experience in large enterprises honed his skills in building results driven customer centric organizations. His time innovating in start-ups, taught him the importance of hiring high performers and being laser focused on achieving the most impactful outcomes for customers. Prior to joining Coupa, Ken built a world class Security, Quality, and Infrastructure Engineering function to support SurveyMonkey’s rapidly expanding consumer data business.
Ken is passionate about giving back to others and is an executive sponsor for the Coupa Cares organization.
Ken Ricketts holds a BS degree from the University of California at Riverside and currently resides in the Bay Area.
Supporting the tree
Charles Goodman
Chairman and interim CEO
Charles Goodman is the Chairman of the Board and interim CEO at Coupa, taking on the role in May 2023. Charles has more than 30 years of experience building successful enterprise software businesses. He joined the Coupa board in February 2023.
Before joining Coupa, Charles served as interim CEO of Anaplan, which was acquired by Thoma Bravo in June 2022. Before Anaplan, he was CEO of PowerPlan, another Thoma Bravo portfolio company. Prior to joining PowerPlan in 2015, Charles was CEO of P2 Energy Solutions. In addition to helping companies expand, Charles has a passion for transforming organizations by focusing on employee culture and the customer experience. Charles graduated from Texas Tech University with a B.S. degree in Engineering.
