Our leadership

 

Executive team

Santosh Thomas

Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director

As a business leader and technologist, Santosh has a proven track record for building and managing multi-billion dollar businesses and leading expansion into new markets.

Before joining Virtusa, Santosh was part of Cognizant’s Executive Committee team responsible for managing a business with over $4 billion in revenue and driving growth in Europe, Asia Pacific, India, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. A visionary leader, he envisioned, built and managed businesses in Banking, CommTech, and Products & Resources.

Santosh obtained his degree in marketing and finance from XLRI Jamshedpur, India.

 

Thomas R. Holler

EVP & Chief Strategy Officer

Thomas R. Holler is chief strategy officer and executive vice president at Virtusa Corporation, and has played a pivotal role in Virtusa’s  journey. Prior to his promotion, he served various positions at Virtusa – executive vice president (finance), chief financial officer, treasurer and secretary since 2001.

Prior to Virtusa, Holler was chief financial officer and vice president of finance at Cerulean Technology Inc., a global supplier of wireless mobile applications and services that was later acquired by Aether Systems.

Holler earned his B.S. in Business Administration from Wayne State University, and his Masters in Business Administration from Northeastern University.

Amit Bajoria

Chief Financial Officer

Amit Bajoria is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Virtusa Corporation and is responsible for Business finance, Controllership, Internal audit, Financial Planning and Analysis. He has extensive experience in deal structuring, driving levers for operating margin, financial planning, M&A integration, driving cash flows and setting up strong processes.

Before joining Virtusa, Amit spent 15 years in leadership roles at Wipro, most recently as Senior Vice President - Finance & Global Controller, where he was responsible for deal structuring, financial reporting, Security & Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting, financial controls, and merger and acquisition activities. He has overall 21 years of experience in Wipro with the design and implementation of global finance activities.

Amit graduated from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata and is a qualified chartered accountant.

Ram Meenakshisundaram

Chief Technology Officer

Ram Meenakshisundaram is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Virtusa Corporation and is responsible for leading our Lines of Service, including technology strategy and solutions, building digital competencies and capabilities, and working with Virtusa's alliance group to enable partner solutions.

He was earlier employed with Cognizant for over 15 years, where he served as head of Delivery, Growth markets. He was responsible for leading a $4 billion business with a geographically distributed team. Previously, he was the delivery head for their Life Sciences, Information, Media and Entertainment verticals, and a SBU leader in their Banking and Financial services vertical.  Ram has also served on the Executive Leadership team at Cognizant. Prior to Cognizant, Ram worked with iNautix Technologies, EDS, and TCS in many roles.

Ram graduated from Jadavpur University, Kolkata with a degree in Production Engineering.

Lori Mullane

Chief People Officer

As Virtusa’s Chief People Officer, Lori is tasked with spearheading the global HR organization with a focus on attracting and retaining world-class talent, enabling Virtusa to continue providing cutting-edge services to our valued clients.
 
Lori has over two decades of leadership experience creating impactful talent solutions that enhance employee and client experiences. Prior to joining Virtusa, she served as a Principal in the Human Capital Advisory practice at KPMG LLP, in addition to leading the Human Resource function for their Advisory business. Before that, Lori led Human Resources for the Americas business at Cognizant, where she focused on building a leadership pipeline and creating development and career opportunities for the company's over 40,000 employees. In her earlier years, Lori held various leadership roles at Unisys Corporation, where she built the people strategy for emerging markets in India, Eastern Europe, and China.
 
Lori, a Penn State University graduate, is a Penn State Great Valley campus board member. She is based out of Philadelphia, PA.

Leadership team

Sanjay Deshpande

EVP & Head of Banking & Financial Services,
Americas

Sanjay Deshpande heads North America Banking & Financial Services business, and is responsible for the overall P&L management, business growth strategy and execution across the region.

Sanjay has successfully established and grown businesses across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia/Asia-Pacific markets. Prior to his current role, he was based out of London, UK, leading Virtusa’s international banking business across EMEA & APAC.

Sanjay joined Virtusa through its acquisition of Polaris where he was a Partner and played key leadership roles like the Chief Sales Officer for the Americas, Head of business development for Americas & Europe and board member of Polaris Canada. He is also recognized for growing Polaris’ flagship intellect universal banking product suite business manifolds across various geographies. 

Prior to joining Polaris, Sanjay worked with various organizations in the Information Communications Technology (ICT) space in the Indian Sub-continent & the Middle East and successfully established a Contact Center Technology start-up for one of the leading conglomerates in the UAE.

He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Business Administration. He also has Certifications in - Disruptive Strategy from Harvard Business School, Sustainability Finance from University of Cambridge, and Financial Markets from Yale University.

John Gillis

EVP & Co-Founder

John Gillis, is one of the co-founders of Virtusa Corporation and is responsible for Client Services and Business Development across the organization.

Prior to joining Virtusa Corporation, John was a founder and executive vice president at INSCI Corporation. INSCI Corporation is a leading supplier of digital document repositories and integrated output management products and services. In his career at INSCI, John also held the key position of chief operating officer. As a vital member of the organization’s management team, John played a crucial and strategic role in taking INSCI Corporation public in 1994. Prior to INSCI, John spent more than 20 years in sales as well as sales management with several technology firms. John has played key roles in various technology companies such as IBM, EXXON and Data General.

John holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Stony Brook University.

Sanjeev Gulati

EVP & Head-Strategic Initiatives

Sanjeev Gulati leads Virtusa’s Strategic Initiatives, such as Business Transformation, M&A integrations, and other key transformational initiatives.

In his previous role at Virtusa, Sanjeev led Digital Transformation initiatives for the Americas and provided leadership and direction to the domain and technical capability-building initiatives and the “Go To Market” strategy. He also led the Business Consulting team. Prior to that role, Sanjeev was the P&L owner of Virtusa’s largest Strategic Business Unit.

Prior to Virtusa, Sanjeev had a 17-year-long association with Polaris, where he was Head of Business for the Americas, responsible for the business in Canada, the USA, Mexico, and South America. Prior to this, Sanjeev was Global Account Director for Polaris’ largest Banking and Financial Services client.

Before joining Polaris, Sanjeev worked with companies such as Madura Coats (Coats Viyella), National Grid, and National Power (UK) in roles as diverse as Marketing & Product Management, Consulting, and Business Strategy.

Sanjeev holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from IIT Delhi and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Sumit Kaushik

SVP & Head of Technology,
Media & Telecommunications,
Americas (West Coast)

Sumit Kaushik heads the Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) Services in the West Coast and is responsible for overall P&L management, business growth strategy and execution.

In a career spanning two decades, he has been instrumental in creating large accounts and partnerships. He has been responsible for creating new service lines, unique business models and entry into new geographic markets. 

Sumit started his career as a software engineer developing software product for industrial automation and business applications. He continues to invest his time in tracking and analyzing newer technologies and trends impacting different industries. He is passionate about cyber safety and wellness for kids and students.

Mallesh Kalary

EVP & Head of Healthcare & Life Sciences, Americas

Mallesh Kalary heads Virtusa’s Healthcare and Life Sciences business unit. He is responsible for defining business strategy, driving sales growth and business operations, and managing overall P&L.

Mallesh has over 26 years of experience in the IT Industry. He has played several key leadership roles, managing large and high-growth portfolios across industries and markets. He had also led the integration of large-scale acquisitions in the US and Europe. He has deep experience in the Healthcare industry and has managed strategic client portfolios across the US and Europe.

Prior to joining Virtusa, Mallesh was the Healthcare Midwest Business Head at Cognizant. He was responsible for growing market share and managing large Healthcare client portfolios. As the Country Manager and Managing Director, he led the rapid expansion of business in Germany and enhanced brand and local delivery capabilities.  

Mallesh has a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from NIT Calicut, India.

Frank Palermo

EVP & Head of Technology, 
Media & Telecommunications, 
Americas (East Coast)

Frank Palermo has over 20 years of global experience as a successful technology executive, with broad-based skills including business consulting, strategy, technology, and development, financial and operational management. Frank excels at cultivating an entrepreneurial culture, assembling high performance teams, identifying emerging technology trends, and incubating innovative, high growth businesses. Frank is passionate about helping companies re-imagine their digital future through the application of technology. He frequently collaborates with organizations on ways to accelerate their innovation roadmap.

In his last role, Frank led Virtusa’s Digital Business where he was responsible for building highly specialized technology practices focused on capabilities in UX, Mobility, Social, Cloud, Gamification, Analytics, Big Data and IoT. Frank oversaw all innovation strategy, business development, solution creation and global technology partnerships for the Digital Business. Frank led a large global team of consultants who have delivered over 200+ large-scale digital programs for Fortune 500 organizations across the financial services, insurance, media and healthcare markets.

Prior to joining Virtusa, Frank was chief technology officer (CTO) for Decorwalla, an emerging B2B marketplace in the interior design industry. At Decorwalla, Frank was responsible for the overall technology strategy, creative direction, site development and deployment. Prior to that, Frank was CTO and VP of Engineering for INSCI Corporation, a supplier of digital document repositories and integrated output management products and services. Under Frank’s leadership, INSCI’s products were awarded the prestigious Product of the Year award for 1998 by Imaging and Document Solutions magazine, a leading industry source.

Prior to INSCI, Frank held several innovation positions at IBM in the Cambridge Scientific Center, TJ Watson Research Facility and Advanced Workstations Division. He was involved in MIT’s project Athena to create distributed computing environment for educational use. He took part in the PowerPC consortium with IBM, Motorola and Apple and was involved in the design and development of the PowerPC family of microprocessors. He was also instrumental in architecting and developing a massive distributed client/server design automation and simulation system involving thousands of high-end clustered servers. Frank received several patents for his work in the area of microprocessor design and distributed client/server computing.

Frank enjoys sharing his point of view and is a published columnist and frequent speaker on leading technology trends. Frank enjoys networking and connecting with innovators in technology.

Darshana Pai

Global Head, Delivery Strategy and Governance

Darshana Pai heads Global Delivery Governance and strategy function at Virtusa. The charter for this function is to create next-gen delivery platform powered by tools, automation and predictive analytics to achieve business goals. This scalable platform will help organization to deliver solutions to global customers with speed, quality and predictability. Delivery governance focuses on creating and auditing controls to ensure robust risk mitigation strategy.

Prior to this role, Darshana was heading Virtusa’s Banking and Financial Services (BFS) Business unit for Americas, Europe and Rest of World regions. She was responsible for enhancing customer experience through delivery excellence, employee engagement and growth of this SBU. She led a large team of professionals across delivery centers in Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and onsite client locations. She also has extensive experience in running complex business and technology transformation programs delivering business outcomes to customers.

Darshana joined Virtusa as Hyderabad Center delivery head. In this role, she helped scale the center from 1000 employees to 3500 employees by building strong delivery leadership team, grooming talent from within and running campus recruitment and training programs.

For helping Virtusa’s clients solve the business problems that they face today through her experience and industry perspective, Darshana has been recognized by the industry and honored with:

  • “Women Leadership Achievement Award in the IT sector-2014” by the World Women Leadership Congress and Award (WWLCA).
  • “Women Achievers in IT-2014” award under the ‘Business leader’ category at INTEROP 2014. INTEROP is a leading global independent technology conference and platform.
  • Named as one of the “Top 20 Women in IT – 2014” by Dataquest magazine in the August 2014 issue.
  • “Best Woman Corporate Leader-2013” award by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC).

Prior to joining Virtusa Corporation, Darshana worked in leadership positions for organizations such as Wipro, Capgemini, Satyam and Patni Computers over the last 20 years. She brings in varied professional experience from the IT Industry after having led large teams delivering multi-million-dollar IT solutions to customers in Retail & CPG, Finance, Energy & Utilities, Travel & Leisure, Logistics and Government sectors spread across Europe, US, Australia, Singapore and Japan. Darshana has travelled extensively across the globe and brings with her vast knowledge and experiences on people, culture, technology and business.

Darshana has a B.E. degree from Mumbai University, and has done her Masters in Technology from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.

Naresha Supramaniam

SVP & Head of Asia Pacific

Naresha Supramaniam has over 25 years of hands on experience in the IT industry including positions of leadership and accountability with several Nasdaq/Fortune 500 listed companies and has also worked across multiple geographies including the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Singapore and the UAE.

Prior to his current role, he was heading global delivery for all of Virtusa’s engagements in the communications, media, entertainment and information services segments. In addition to ensuring first time, on time delivery, he was also responsible for account expansion and building domain-based go to market solutions. He has also held several other strategic positions within Virtusa, including Global Head of Delivery for the Telecom Business Unit and for all of Virtusa’s engagements in the MEA + APAC regions focused on diversified, healthcare, media, Insurance and logistics industries.

Naresha has helped many clients transform their business by successfully implementing complex transformational programs that improve end user experience & time to market.

Prior to Virtusa, he led P&O Nedlloyd’s Global development centre based in Australia and set up and headed offshore development centers for BRATHENS Norway and Emirates airlines.

Naresha has a honors Degree (1st class) in Information Systems Management from the Manchester Metropolitan University.

 

Paul Tutun

EVP & General Counsel

Paul D. Tutun joined Virtusa Corporation in July 2003, and provides advice primarily to the executive team, board of directors and committees of the board and is responsible for all the company’s general corporate matters including client contracts, SEC filings and compliance, employment and real estate matters and equity compensation. Paul has over 15 years of experience representing technology companies and investment banks in mergers and acquisitions, initial and follow-on public equity offerings, ongoing public company and other related technology matters.

From 1994-2001, Paul was a corporate associate at Goodwin Proctor, Hoar, Testa, Hurwitz and Thibeault. From 2001 to 2003, Paul was corporate counsel to MarketSoft Corporation.

Paul holds a BA in English from Colgate University and earned a J.D., cum laude, from the Boston University School of Law. He was also managing editor of the B.U. International Law Journal. His publications include, “Arbitration Procedures under the United States-German Income Tax Treaty: The Need for Procedural Safeguards in International Tax Disputes,” 12 B.U. Int’l L.J. 179 (1994).

Ramaswamy P V

Chief Information Officer

Ramaswamy P V is the Chief Information Officer of Virtusa Corporation and is responsible for leading our IT driven business transformation with a digital inside & user centric focus in the organization.

Ram P is a digital transformation leader with a solid 28 years of experience in the industry and served at HCL, where he led digital transformation, application modernization & data driven analytics as a Senior Vice President. He has been in leadership roles at HCL, Siemens, AIG and Mphasis and comes with 360-degree exposure in domain, delivery, pre-sales, and the CIO function and worked closely with global CXOs across fortune 500 enterprises.

Ram P completed his computer education at NIIT, is SAP certified, and has a Master’s degree in Accountancy & Costing from the Institute of Cost Accountants of India and a Master’s degree in Law, Accounting and Finance from The Institute of Company Secretaries of India.

Venkatesan Vijayaraghavan

EVP and Global Head – Technology Service Lines

Venkatesan has 25+ years of experience in technology and operations services and strong financial service background. His expertise spans primarily around scaling segments of businesses in technology services exponentially. He has vast experience managing global clients and has expertise in servicing clients across North America, Europe, and Asia, both in delivery and commercial roles. His ability to set up teams for strong collaboration across delivery and practice has produced outstanding results in growing business segments.

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