Leaders
Nick Mo
CEO and Co-founder
Nick Mo is an accomplished serial entrepreneur, currently leading Ridge Security as his second venture after a triumphant $1 billion IPO with Hillstone Networks. His multifaceted expertise is honed at Juniper, Netscreen, and Cisco Systems. Leading the engineering development of the first 100Gbps next-generation firewalls in 2010 with a team of 200 engineers, Nick has, over the past decade, seamlessly transitioned to excel in business. His strategic acumen enables him to steer companies towards growth, skillfully converting challenges into strategic opportunities.
Nick revitalizes business operations with his innovative approach, influenced by his global outlook and rich international experience, positioning him as a visionary leader in the tech sector.
Nick’s academic journey, with a foundation in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the UC Santa Barbara, has been integral to his pursuit of innovation and operational excellence in his business endeavors.
Lydia Zhang
President and Co-founder
Lydia’s career in networking and cybersecurity is defined by entrepreneurial drive and strategic leadership. A pioneer in applying artificial intelligence to cybersecurity, from machine learning and deep learning to agentic AI, she has led teams that built industry-leading solutions spanning defensive protection and offensive security testing. Lydia began her career at Cisco in product management and later played a key executive role in scaling a next-generation firewall company from early startup to IPO. She is now Co-founder and President of Ridge Security, an AI-driven company advancing offensive security.
Lydia is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, a published author, and a frequent industry speaker. Her leadership and product vision have earned multiple honors, including a Stevie Award for Women in Business, CRN Woman of the Channel, and the Global Infosec Award for Pioneering Women in Cybersecurity. She holds dual master’s degrees from USC and dual bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University.
Hom Bahmanyar
Global Enablement Officer
Hom is a well-rounded technology leader with 20+ years of experience working with large enterprise customers as well as global engineering, marketing and sales teams, driving innovative technologies. He’s a cybersecurity veteran with 10+ years at RedSeal, where he drove the integration and modeling of Cloud infrastructure and traditional network devices, and 10+ years at Cisco where he led engineering teams for Cisco Security Manager and IP Solutions Center product lines. As the Engineering VP at RedSeal, he created a strong team culture with focus on execution, innovation, and customer care. He has a passion for strong customer relationship and turning customers into loyal advocates.
Piergiuseppe Mallozzi
AI Architect
Pier brings an exceptional background in AI research combined with extensive hands-on experience in the cybersecurity industry. His joining reflects our strong commitment and continued investment in frontier AI technologies. Pier will be leading our AI chapter, helping position Ridge Security as a front runner in applying the latest AI advancements to offensive security.
Pier earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Chalmers University in Sweden and later served as a Postdoctoral Researcher at UC Berkeley, where he focused on autonomous systems and formal verification. Beyond academia, he has contributed as a founding engineer in the cybersecurity industry, applying AI to practical challenges such as novel vulnerability discovery and automated patching.
Advisors
Bret Hartman
Senior Advisor
Bret is a cybersecurity veteran with over 40 years of experience. He is currently a partner at Oak Seed Ventures and a lecturer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. As the CTO of Cisco’s security business unit, he defined the security technology strategy for Cisco’s $3B+ security business. Prior to Cisco, he was CTO of RSA and an EMC Fellow, where he defined the security technology strategy and drove many acquisitic He has also worked at several startups and began his career as a U.S. Air Force officer assigned to the U.S. National Security Agency. He holds a B.S. in computer science and engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland.
Paul Auvil
Senior Advisor
Paul Auvil brings more than 35 years of finance, technology and corporate leadership experience as an advisor to Ridge Security. He served as the Chief Financial Officer of Proofpoint, Inc., a provider of security-as-a-service solutions from March 2007 until March 2023. From September 2006 to March 2007, he was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm. From August 2002 to July 2006, he served as the Chief Financial Officer at VMware, Inc., a computing virtualization company. Paul currently serves on the Boards of Elastic and Cerebras, and previous Board roles include One Medical, OpenTV, Marin Software, and Quantum Corporation. He earned a Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Dartmouth College and a Master of Management degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
James Kawamoto
Senior Advisor
James is a cybersecurity expert, focused on investing and advising VC backed security start-ups and later-stage companies. He has extensive experience at Zscaler, Netskope and Juniper Networks over the past 20+ years in key senior Product Management roles. James has led Secure Web Gateway and Cloud Firewall product teams, developing the overall strategy and core product features leading to annual revenues over $300M. James holds a BS Electrical Engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and holds patents on several Cloud Firewall technologies.
Claudionor Coelho
Senior Advisor
Claudionor is a global technology executive with more than two decades of leadership experience across Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, software engineering, and semiconductors. Recognized as one of the Top AI Executives to Watch in 2025 by PixieBrix, he is a pioneer in generative agent science, AI credibly extending human reasoning, coining the term “Bring Your Own Agents” to describe agentic operating systems that integrate dynamic data sources to solve complex problems.
Claudionor serves as an invited professor in Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Reinforcement Learning, while previously holding senior executive roles at some of the world’s most influential technology companies.
Claudionor holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stanford University and an MBA from Ibmec, Brazil. He also earned his M.Sc. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.