Sascha Konietzke

Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer

His fondness for programming helped Sascha land his first job at the age of 15, working as a webmaster for a VC-funded hardware startup Vircinity. In 2005, Sascha joined Hewlett-Packard where he was quickly recognized for spotting promising technologies and taking an entrepreneurial approach to day-to-day projects. After leaving HP in 2008, Sascha travelled extensively and founded Tagcrumbs, a geo-location based bookmarking service. In 2011, he started working on a publishing platform which went on to become Contentful. Sascha holds a degree in Business Information Technology from the University of Cooperative Education in Stuttgart.

Paolo Negri

Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

In 2006, Paolo left native Milan for London to be a part of the cloud revolution. He led the bid management development team at Forward, one of the fastest growing companies in the UK at the time, and later helped to scale the website of Autoscout24, the largest European car search engine. In 2010, Paolo joined the social gaming company Wooga, where he resolved Wooga’s massive scaling issues and oversaw a 10X traffic growth spurt over his 2-year tenure. In 2012, Paolo met Sascha and founded Contentful. Paolo holds an Engineering Management degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan.

Karthik Rau

Chief Executive Officer

Karthik brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in high-growth, disruptive technology markets. He was a founder and CEO of SignalFx, an early leader in cloud monitoring, from its inception until it was acquired by Splunk in 2019. Previously, he held several executive leadership positions at VMware during its early growth years and through its IPO, including as Vice President of Product Management and Worldwide Marketing. Karthik holds a BS and MS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a Terman Scholar.

Elizabeth Maxson

Chief Marketing Officer

Elizabeth Maxson is the Chief Marketing Officer of Contentful, a content management platform trusted by more than 4,200 companies around the world. Elizabeth brings nearly two decades of integrated marketing leadership to the role and is focused on driving marketing strategies that leverage AI and personalization to help brands deliver personalized and scalable content to their audiences. Prior to Contentful, Elizabeth served as the Chief Marketing Officer at Tableau, a Salesforce company, where she led go-to-market strategy, drove end-to-end marketing initiatives, and spearheaded strategic technology partnerships, launching critical relationships with industry giants such as AWS, Google, Alibaba, Apple, and many others. In addition to her role at Tableau, Elizabeth has also served as the Head of Marketing at Quip, another Salesforce acquisition. She holds a BAA in Facility Management and Marketing from Central Michigan University.

Ray Martinelli

Chief People Officer

Ray has more than 20 years of experience in human resources leadership positions including as Chief People Officer at three San Francisco area technology startups. After starting his career at Apple, Ray helped technology companies including Juniper Networks and ServiceSource scale, taking ServiceSource through an IPO. Most recently, he helped evolve Coupa into a public company. His deep international experience fits well with Contentful’s global presence. Ray has successfully built and managed EMEA people operations multiple times, including large multidisciplinary teams in Germany. Ray holds a bachelor’s degree in human resources from California State University - Sacramento and an MA in organizational leadership from Golden Gate University.

Jason Holmes

President, Revenue and Field Operations

Jason brings a wealth of industry experience and a passion for focusing on metrics, process, and people to understand the customer experience and improve customer retention, growth, advocacy and lifetime value. Jason recently served as President and Chief Operating Officer at Showpad, and Chief Customer Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Marketo. He has also led large global customer operations teams at companies including Adobe and Oracle. Jason holds a bachelor of science degree in finance from Arizona State University and an MBA in marketing and strategy from Northern Illinois University.

Carla Cooper

Chief Financial Officer

Carla has a drive to understand the inner workings of businesses—and after nearly 20 years as a financial analyst covering technology stocks, she moved into the tech industry herself. Carla served in key financial roles for both Responsys and Mulesoft during their journeys to going public. Most recently she was VP Finance & Strategy for Salesforce. She also is on the advisory board of Gappify, a provider of SaaS solutions for corporate accountants. Carla earned an MBA at Northwestern University and an AB in Public and International Relations from Princeton University. An accomplished athlete, she completed six marathons and countless triathlons before her kids were born.

Margo M. Smith

Chief Legal Officer

Margo brings an extensive background representing technology companies on IPOs, corporate governance, intellectual property and international law to Contentful, where she will lead global legal strategy, privacy, compliance and strategic initiatives. Margo was most recently Chief Legal Officer at Snowflake Inc., one of the world’s fastest-growing SaaS companies. She has also served as the top legal executive at Apttus, Marketo, QuinStreet, and Verigy. Margo began her career at global technology law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and holds a JD from Columbia University School of Law and a BA from the University of Washington.

Jeff Gabriel

Executive Vice President, Engineering

Jeff has held many leadership roles in software development over the past 25 years. Prior to joining Contentful in 2024, he spent 8 years building Machine Learning platforms at Nexosis and DataRobot, following Nexosis’ acquisition by DataRobot in 2018. Jeff and his wife Meredith live in Berlin and are enjoying the city and European travel every chance they get. When not traveling you’ll probably find Jeff playing board games, reading a book, or cycling.