F5 appoints two senior executives to boost business transformation and cybersecurity
F5 announced the appointment of two senior executives as the company bolsters its focus on customer success, business transformation, and cybersecurity.
Yvette Smith joins the company today as Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Business Transformation, where she will lead a newly formed group combining both functions and multiple other teams into a single organization committed to delighting customers.
Gail Coury, who joined F5 in 2018, has been promoted to Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), effective March 1.
Coury will oversee the expansion of F5’s cybersecurity organization with responsibility for F5’s enterprise security, the security of the company’s product and service offerings, and showcasing to customers and the industry the use of F5 security technologies.
“F5 is continually raising the bar to deliver better experiences for our customers, and Yvette and Gail bring the deep expertise, proven leadership, and customer-centric approach needed to help us achieve that goal,” said Tom Fountain, Executive Vice President of Global Services and Chief Strategy Officer at F5.
Smith comes to F5 from Microsoft where she most recently led the customer success programs for their $60B+ Commercial Cloud business. She managed Microsoft’s Enterprise Support P&L of nearly $4B in revenue and was previously the General Manager for Cloud Customer Support, leading a team of over 7,000 professionals.
Prior to Microsoft, Smith was SVP of Managed and Professional Services at Xerox and held multiple executive roles at IBM. She serves on the national board of directors for INROADS, Inc., which develops talented underrepresented youth in preparation for careers in the business world.
Coury previously served as Vice President and General Manager of F5 Silverline, where she led product management, marketing, architecture, engineering, and customer success for F5’s cloud-based Silverline managed service offerings.
Before joining F5, Coury was CISO of Oracle Cloud, PeopleSoft, and J.D. Edwards. She brings more than 20 years of experience both as a CISO and a security product leader. Coury is also board chair of One in Tech, an ISACA Foundation committed to building equity and diversity in the digital world.
In their roles, both Smith and Coury report to Tom Fountain.