Board of directors

Vlad Shmunis founded RingCentral in 1999 and launched RingCentral's cloud business phone service in 2003. He developed the service based on the need he saw among businesses for an alternative to inflexible and expensive hardware-based phone systems.

Since founding RingCentral, Shmunis has led the company in reimagining business communications. Today, the company empowers hundreds of thousands of businesses and their employees to work with unparalleled freedom and in imaginative new ways, via a wide variety of mobile and fixed line devices in traditional as well as dispersed work environments.

Shmunis has more than 25 years of industry and management experience. Prior to launching RingCentral, he founded and served as the CEO of Ring Zero Systems, a desktop software communications company. After shipping more than 25 million copies of its Windows software through partnerships with leading PC manufacturers, Ring Zero Systems was acquired by Motorola.

Shmunis was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2011 Northern California Award finalist. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from San Francisco State University, and is a named inventor in a number of U.S. patents.

Secretary Duncan was U.S. Secretary of Education from January 2009 through December 2015 as part of the Obama Administration. Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Duncan served as chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools. From 2001 to 2008, Duncan won praise for uniting the city’s stakeholders behind an education agenda that included opening 100 new schools; expanding after-school, summer learning, early childhood, and college access programs; dramatically boosting the caliber of teachers; and building public-private partnerships around a variety of education initiatives.

He is also a managing partner at Emerson Collective, an organization dedicated to removing barriers so people can live to their full potential. He currently leads Chicago CRED, a nonprofit trying to achieve a transformative reduction in gun violence in Chicago. Secretary Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1987, majoring in sociology.

Duncan serves on the boards of: Ariel Capital Management, Aspen Institute, Communities in Schools, Lucas Museum, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, National Association of Basketball Coaches, Pluralsight, Revolution Foods, Thrive-Chicago and Catapult Learning, LLC. He also serves as Co-chair of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

Mignon Clyburn was a Commissioner of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from 2009 to 2018, including as acting chair. While at the FCC, she was committed to closing the digital divide and championed the modernization of the agency’s Lifeline Program, which assists low-income consumers with voice and broadband service. In addition, Ms. Clyburn promoted diversity in media ownership, initiated Inmate Calling Services reforms, supported inclusion in STEM opportunities and fought for an Open Internet. Prior to her federal appointment, Ms. Clyburn served 11 years on the Public Service Commission of South Carolina and worked for nearly 15 years as publisher of the Coastal Times, a Charleston weekly newspaper focused on the African American community.

Ms. Clyburn is President of MLC Strategies, LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, a position she has held since January 2019. Ms. Clyburn is also a board director and member of the Compensation Committee and Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of Charah Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: CHRA) since March 2019. In addition, she has served on the board of directors and as a member of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation (NYSE: LGF.A) since September 2020.

Rob Theis is a general partner at World Innovation Lab. Previously, Theis was a Managing Director with Scale Venture Partners, investing in SaaS, Technology Infrastructure, Cloud Application Companies, Mobile and Digital Media. In addition to serving as a director of RingCentral, while at Scale, Theis invested and was a Board Member of BrightRoll (Acq: Yahoo), HubSpot (NYSE), PeopleMatter, SailThru and sourced DocuSign and Vitrue (Acq: Oracle).

Prior to joining Scale in 2008, Theis was a General Partner with Doll Capital Management (DCM) and invested in leading companies such as Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT), Jaspersoft (Acq: Tibco), NeoPath Networks (Acq: Cisco), PGP Corporation (Acq: Symantec), Roamware, VanceInfo (NYSE: VIT), Tapulous (Acq: Disney) and SigFig.

Before joining DCM, Theis served as COO/EVP of New Era of Networks (NASDAQ: NEON), where he grew the company to $200 million in revenues and led NEON through a successful IPO. Prior to NEON, Theis spent 10 years in executive roles at Sun Microsystems, where he drove growth in a series of new strategic initiatives, including Sun’s over $1 billion success in the Financial Services Industry sector. His previous experience includes marketing management at Silicon Graphics’ and in sales at McDonnell Douglas Corp. (Boeing).

Theis holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Pittsburgh and is a Sheriff mountain rescue specialist and rescue diver.

Neil Williams was Intuit’s senior vice president and chief financial officer from January 2008 to February 2018. Williams has nearly 30 years of strategic, operational and transactional experience in the financial services industry. He is responsible for all financial aspects of the company, including corporate strategy and business development, investor relations, financial operations and real estate.

Before joining Intuit, Williams was the executive vice president and chief financial officer for Visa U.S.A., Inc. In that role, he led all financial functions for the company and its subsidiaries, including financial planning, business planning and financial monitoring. Williams concurrently served as chief financial officer for Inovant LLC, Visa's global information technology organization, responsible for global transactions processing and technology development.

His previous banking experience includes senior financial positions at commercial banks in the Southern and Midwestern regions of the United States.

Williams, a certified public accountant, received his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern Mississippi.

Michelle McKenna joined the NFL as SVP and Chief Information Officer in September 2012. Prior to that, she was Chief Information Officer at Constellation Energy, where she implemented major technology strategic initiatives and led the company’s integration with Exelon upon the firm’s merger. From 2007 to 2010, McKenna was SVP and Chief Information Officer at Universal Orlando Resort. She previously spent more than 13 years at the Walt Disney World Company where she held senior leadership positions in Finance, Marketing and Information Technology.

Allan Thygesen is the President, Americas at Google, responsible for the advertising business in North and South American. He is also a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before joining Google, Thygesen consulted to Google and other companies in 2010 and until September 2011 and previously co-founded an early stage venture firm and was a managing director and partner in the U.S. venture and growth funds of The Carlyle Group, where he led investments in startups in sectors including e-commerce, mobile advertising and imaging. Earlier, Thygesen served as an executive in several public and private companies, including Wink Communications, which he helped take public in 1999. Mr. Thygesen has also served on the boards of directors of various private companies.

Thygesen received a master’s degree in economics from the University of Copenhagen and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business as an Arjay Miller scholar. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and four children.

Ken Goldman has served as President of Hillspire, a wealth management firm, since April 2018. He brings extensive financial leadership experience to RingCentral through numerous executive and board of director roles at enterprise technology companies.

He recently served as Chief Financial Officer at Yahoo! overseeing all global finance functions for the company. Prior to Yahoo!, Goldman served in chief financial officer roles for several enterprise technology companies including Fortinet and Siebel Systems. Goldman serves on the board of directors of NXP Semiconductor, Trinet, GoPro, Inc., and non-profit boards such as the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Foundation Board. Goldman is also a member of the Standing Advisory Group of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

Goldman’s depth and breadth of experience in scaling multiple technology companies will prove invaluable as RingCentral grows and meets global customers’ communications and collaboration needs. His leadership will support RingCentral’s goal of achieving one billion dollars in revenue by 2020.

Goldman received a bachelor’s degree of science in electrical and electronics engineering from Cornell University and an MBA and MBA from Harvard Business School.

Godfrey Sullivan served as a member of the board of directors of Splunk, Inc., an enterprise software company, from December 2011 to June 2019, including as Chairman of the board of directors from December 2011 until March 2019, and he previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Splunk, Inc. from September 2008 to November 2015. Prior to this, Mr. Sullivan was with Hyperion Solutions Corporation, a performance management software company acquired by Oracle Corporation, where he served in various executive roles, most recently as President and Chief Executive Officer from October 2001 to April 2007, and as a member of the board of directors from July 2004 until April 2007. Mr. Sullivan has served as a member of the board of directors of CrowdStrike, Inc., a cybersecurity technology company, since November 2017, and previously served as a member of the board of directors of Citrix Systems, Inc., an enterprise software company, from February 2005 to June 2018.

Sullivan holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Baylor University.