Yvonne Wassenaar is a seasoned executive with over 25 years experience advising leaders across the globe on scaling and diversifying their businesses throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She has broad industry experience working with start-ups and F1000 companies across retail, consumer products, utilities, professional services, and technology.
Most recently Yvonne served as CEO at Airware; a pioneer in the creation of the commercial drone marketplace. In this role she drove significant operational improvements and proved the business value of drones in building cloud-based digital twins of the physical world to enable advanced analytics for mining, construction and insurance customers. Prior to this Yvonne was Chief Information Officer and senior vice president of operations at New Relic, a 100% cloud-based software analytics company. During her time at New Relic, Yvonne was instrumental in the company’s successful IPO and early years as a public company managing the private to public transition and leading key growth initiatives that strengthened the company’s move into enterprise and the expansion into new product areas.
Earlier, Yvonne held multiple leadership positions at VMware, scaling the company from $2B to $6B. She drove over $55 million of annual innovation investments, supported more than eight acquisitions for the company and several divestitures. As a lead partner in the development of VMware’s hybrid cloud business, Yvonne guided the company’s transition into a blended business model that supported both on-premise software and cloud-based solution offerings. Yvonne began her career as a software engineer at Accenture, where she held many leadership roles during her 17 years. These included running the corporate development team for the company’s $4B Communications, Media, and Technology business unit, leading the company’s $40M global sales operations community of practice, and co-authoring Accenture’s definitive blueprint for B2B go-to-market transformation; helping clients more effectively sell into the enterprise.
Yvonne currently serves on the board of directors and is a member of the audit committee for Forrester (FORR). Yvonne also serves on the Harvey Mudd College Board of Trustees, serves as an Advisor to Snyk (a DevOps security start-up). Previously Yvonne served as the CEO Board Director for Airware, on the board of directors and audit committee for MuleSoft acquired by Salesforce in 2018, Bitium acquired by Google in 2017, and the Athena Alliance, a non-profit focused on building diverse boards.
Yvonne holds a bachelor’s in economics from UCLA and an MBA in strategy and operations from UCLA’s Anderson School of Business. Her market impact earned her recognition as a Woman of Influence in Silicon Valley; theBoardlist Top 20, SF Business Times Public Company CIO Award Winner, and as a WSJ Woman of Note. Yvonne thrives when working with other talented individuals who share her commitment to delivering impact. She is an avid traveler and uses her experiences abroad to deepen her understanding of human interaction and experience.