MariaDB Leadership

Rohit de Souza joins MariaDB as Chief Executive Officer. Rohit brings over 25 years of blue chip, strategic technology and change management experience to the role, having driven results at both large enterprise technology companies and smaller, early-stage ventures in a global context.

Prior to joining MariaDB, Rohit was the the Senior Vice President and General Manager of two major business units at Micro Focus comprising about $1.3 billion in revenue. Here, he was responsible for transforming these businesses, returning them to growth and preparing them to be independent standalone businesses. He also helped drive the combination of Micro Focus with OpenText. Prior to Micro Focus, Rohit served as Chief Executive Officer & President of Actian Corporation, a relational database company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. At Actian, Rohit oversaw the transformation of the company, its return to profitable growth and its focus on the core vision of hybrid enterprise data management. Rohit also drove the strategic acquisition of Actian, by HCL Technologies, a $9 billion global SI with commitment to investing in breakthrough, innovative software technology, providing customers and employees with long term stability.

Prior to Actian, Rohit held multiple leadership positions at Hewlett-Packard, Siebel, Oracle, Booz Allen & Hamilton and Intel, where in each instance he contributed to the accelerated growth and market success of the firm. Rohit holds dual master’s degrees in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an undergraduate degree in engineering from Madras University in India.

Vikas Mathur leads product and engineering for MariaDB. Vikas brings to the role his passion for delivering value in products by focusing on customer needs, as well as leveraging best practices in AI/Gen-AI, data platforms and enterprise readiness.

Vikas is a seasoned executive with 25+ years of enterprise growth experience in product management, R&D, GTM strategy and business development. Previously, he was at OpenText/MicroFocus where he was the Vice President of Product and Engineering for their IT Operations Management business with ~$550M in revenue, and led a global engineering team with hubs in India, China, Romania, Germany and the US. Prior to OpenText, Vikas was SVP of Products at Actian, a PE-backed database company with transactional, embedded, object, and columnar database products including Ingres. Prior to Actian, Vikas held various leadership and individual contributor roles in Strategy, GTM, and R&D at HP, A.T. Kearney, Sun Microsystems, and Apple.

Vikas graduated with an MBA from Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He also holds a M.S. in Computer Engineering from University of Kentucky, Lexington, and a B.E. in Electronics Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh. Vikas lives in Sunnyvale, CA with his wife and two daughters and enjoys playing tennis and hiking on trails around the Bay Area.

Mike serves as chief revenue officer (CRO) at MariaDB, offering strong sales leadership experience in both startup and public software companies. He has more than 20 years’ experience providing customer-focused go-to-market (GTM) leadership for B2B companies during transformational periods and times of high growth, resulting in customer and market momentum, revenue growth, and customer satisfaction and retention. Prior to joining MariaDB, he served as CRO at several San Francisco Bay Area companies, including Kentik, Outreach, Centrify and Imperva, leading one organization through a successful IPO and several through acquisitions.

Tracy Strauss serves as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at MariaDB, bringing over 25 years of experience driving high-velocity growth for B2B tech and SaaS leaders. A strategic brand-builder and demand generation expert, Tracy most recently served as Practice Director for Marketing at K1 Investment Management, where she built growth-oriented marketing functions for a diverse portfolio of companies. Her executive pedigree includes marketing leadership roles at CornerstoneOnDemand, Yotpo, Cylance and D2L where she specialized in scaling global GTM motions and digital-first brands during periods of rapid market shift and expansion.

Conor McCarthy has over 30 years of experience as a CFO in areas such as corporate strategy and corporate finance including capital raising. Conor most recently served as the CFO of Ideanomics, a NASDAQ listed cleantech company, where he developed the revenue models for vehicle-as-a-service and charging-as-a-service products. He was also CFO of OS33, a private equity backed FinTech SaaS platform for compliance and productivity enablement for the wealth management industry. Prior to that, he served as the CFO of Intent Media from May 2016 to July 2018, the CFO of Convergex Group from June 2014 to July 2015 and the CFO and Finance Director of the Americas for GFI Group, Inc., a NYSE listed fintech wholesale money broker with revenues of almost $1 billion (now part of BGC Partners, NASDAQ: BGCP), from March 2005 to June 2014. Conor holds a CA from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. He started his career as an auditor with KPMG in Ireland before transitioning into financial services, working as CFO, treasurer, and in other executive finance roles, with trading and brokerage firms, as well as high growth technology companies supporting the SaaS industry.

Michael “Monty” Widenius is the “spiritual father” of MariaDB, a renowned advocate for the open source software movement and one of the original developers of MySQL, the predecessor to MariaDB. He is co-founder and CTO at MariaDB, and was previously co-founder at SkySQL, and the CTO of MySQL AB until its sale to Sun Microsystems (now Oracle). Monty was also the founder of TCX DataKonsult AB, a Swedish data warehousing company. He was awarded the Finnish Software Entrepreneur of the Year prize in 2003. In 2015, Monty was selected as one of the 100 most influential persons in the Finnish IT market. Monty studied at the Helsinki University of Technology and lives in Finland.

With over two decades of experience guiding leaders, managers, and employees across the full spectrum of human resources, Mary is a seasoned HR executive known for driving strategic transformation and fostering high-performing organizational cultures. Throughout a career spanning large multinational corporations and dynamic private equity-backed firms, Mary has established a strong track record of aligning talent strategies with business objectives to accelerate growth and operational excellence. She has held key leadership roles at renowned companies including Siebel Systems, Dell/EMC, Saba Software, Simpplr, and IXOPAY. Across these roles, she has led global HR teams and advised senior leadership on complex issues such as organizational design, workforce planning, performance management, and employee engagement.

A trusted leader during times of change, Mary has played a pivotal role in numerous mergers and acquisitions, leading integration efforts that harmonized cultures, systems, and structures to ensure business continuity and long-term success. Known for a pragmatic and people-first approach, Mary combines deep HR expertise with business acumen to create value through talent. Whether navigating high-growth environments or supporting large-scale transformations, she brings clarity, composure, and vision to the table.

Mary holds a Juris Doctorate from Santa Clara University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the College of the Holy Cross.

Lalit Ahuja has a long track record of successfully helping companies define and implement technology strategies that meet the real-world business needs.

Lalit is responsible for the direction, implementation and delivery of MariaDB’s in-memory computing technology strategy through the GridGain business. He works closely with GridGain customers and partners worldwide and leads the engineering, product management and delivery teams in ensuring products and services meet or exceed all customer expectations.

In his career spanning over 25 years, Lalit has led various IT functions including enterprise architecture, product management, large scale program management, IT operations and served as a digital strategy advisor to executives at Fortune 500 enterprises.

Prior to GridGain, Lalit led the global customer success team at Akana, a leader in API management and application services governance space, where he was responsible for improvements in customers’ time to value and overall customer satisfaction.

Lalit holds a Master’s degree in Engineering and an MBA from UCLA.

Hans van Dijk is a dynamic and results-oriented executive with over 25 years of experience in support, customer success, IT operations, and strategic business development. He has successfully driven large-scale transformations, integrated cross-functional teams, and optimized resource management. Known for building strong relationships with clients, Hans consistently leads teams to exceed business goals and deliver outstanding results.