Leadership team
The Navan leadership team represents a mission-driven team of deep tech, travel, and software expertise.
As the CEO and co-founder of Navan, Ariel Cohen is focused on the company’s growth. This is the second company Ariel has founded with Navan Chief Technology Officer Ilan Twig — the other being StreamOnce, a business multimedia integration platform that Jive Software acquired.
Before StreamOnce, Ariel led product management in a senior leadership role at Hewlett-Packard. Ariel earned an Executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
As co-founder and chief technology officer of Navan, Ilan Twig oversees the company’s product development and engineering teams. This is the second company Ilan founded with CEO Ariel Cohen — the other being StreamOnce, a business multimedia integration platform that Jive Software acquired.
With almost two decades of experience in engineering, Ilan led large research and development teams at both Hewlett-Packard and Rockmelt. Ilan earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo.
Amy Butte is a respected leader, strategic visionary, and advisor to startups, growth companies, and corporates. Amy is a board member and audit chair for DigitalOcean (NYSE: DOCN) and Stash Financial, and a board member for Bain Capital Specialty Finance (NYSE: BCSF). She is a strategic advisor to the CORI Innovation Fund and the Long Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), a Silicon Valley-led Exchange creating a vision and marketplace for long-term investors, issuers, and leaders. Amy’s prior board experience includes audit and compliance chair for Fidelity Investments Strategic Advisers Funds and an independent director and audit chair for BNP Paribas USA. Previously, Amy helped spearhead two major financial services IPOs as chief financial officer, including the historic transition of the New York Stock Exchange to a public company in 2006, and was a highly ranked equity research analyst at Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch covering the financial services industry. Amy received her MBA from Harvard and her B.A. from Yale University.
Nina Herold joined Navan in 2018 and was appointed chief operating officer in 2023. In her tenure as COO, Nina oversaw product development, operations strategy, and service, combining technology with a steadfast commitment to service excellence. Prior to Navan, Nina held leadership roles in product operations and logistics at Uber, where she spent nearly four years scaling global operations and working closely with product and engineering to launch driver-facing products and services. Prior to Uber, Nina worked in finance for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Finance, and Information Systems from Duquesne University.
As president, Michael Sindicich is focused on bringing Navan's leading travel and expense management platform to every traveler across the globe. He leads Navan’s global go-to-market strategy and oversees sales, marketing, partnerships, and revenue operations. Previously, he served as CEO of Navan Expense and before that, vice president of sales. Prior to Navan, Michael led sales teams at Apptimize (acquired by Airship) and was co-founder of the financial brokerage Hurley Brothers. Michael earned his bachelor’s in psychology and biology, graduating with honors from UCLA.
Rich Liu, CEO of Navan Travel, is a dynamic leader renowned for architecting high-impact teams and driving growth for the world's most influential technology companies. With a track record spanning five multi-billion dollar unicorns, Rich has shaped go-to-market strategies for transformative companies like Everlaw, Lattice, Navan, MuleSoft (acquired by Salesforce), and Meta (formerly Facebook). A biomedical engineer turned C-suite executive, his mission is to pioneer legendary organizations that redefine industries and change how people live and work.
As the chief operating officer at Navan, Ofer Ben-David oversees customer-driven product development, global operating processes, and account management to deliver on Navan's promise to make travel and expense easy for every traveler. Ofer’s experience spans nearly 20 years and includes full lifecycle product development, product management, engineering, and global operations for large-scale cloud enterprise software solutions. Prior to Navan, Ofer was the chief product officer of Tenable, where he led the overall product and engineering organization. Prior to Tenable, Ofer was the head of technology at Elementum, the EVP of products and engineering at Jive Software, and the VP of central engineering at VMware, where he led a 1,000+ person global organization. Ofer holds an MBA from Heriot-Watt University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Bar-Ilan University.
As the CEO of Navan in EMEA, Michael Riegel steers the full business motion across Europe and leads Navan’s effort to increase market share across the region. Michael is an experienced entrepreneur and builder of companies, having started his career in the early Internet era, where he learned to aggressively scale businesses and create success out of growing organizations. Merging the worlds of growth and technology is central to Michael’s operational capabilities at Navan, where he currently leads the go-to-market effort for the entire EMEA segment.
Grant McGrail has more than 16 years of experience working at multiple successful high-growth startups. He joined Navan in October 2020 and is currently chief revenue officer (CRO), overseeing global sales and customer success. His previous roles include CRO at Benefix, SVP of global enterprise at WeWork, and various leadership roles at NetSuite. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross and lives in San Francisco.
Fred Stratford joined Reed & Mackay in 2012, coming full circle and returning to travel after beginning his career at Thomson Holidays. A chartered accountant by trade and having spent time as the CEO of a private equity-backed business services group, Fred leads with a strong commercial focus, extensive experience in international growth, and a passion for service at every touchpoint. In Fred’s time at Reed & Mackay, he has steered the business from being a best-in-class UK travel management company to a true international player with wholly owned offices and technology across the globe.
Yoad Shraybom joined Navan in October 2022 as general manager of growth, overseeing SMBs, Navan product-led growth, partnerships strategies, loyalty, and personal travel. Prior to joining Navan, Yoad served as chief operating officer at Nexar and in various business and finance leadership positions in The Walt Disney Company, Teva, and Comverse. Yoad holds a bachelor’s degree from the Bar-Ilan University in Israel and lives with his family in Tel Aviv.
Howard Baik has spent more than 20 years in public/private technology companies, helping to build high-performing teams and guiding companies through fast global growth and scale. He previously served as general counsel of ClickUp and chief business and legal officer of InsideSales.com. He also led legal at Instructure, where he was key to that company’s successful IPO, and spent five years at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Howard has a B.A. and J.D. from Brigham Young University and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.
As the executive vice president of strategy and operations, Jannik Wässa oversees corporate strategy, leads company-wide strategic initiatives, and shapes organizational structures and processes of Navan. Previously, Jannik was the co-founder and managing director of Comtravo, which was acquired by Navan. He started his career as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Jannik holds a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and a Master in International Management from HEC Paris. He lives in Berlin.
Yuval Refua has more than 15 years of experience managing and scaling product organizations and developing products that excite users. Yuval joined Navan in 2019 to launch and direct the Navan Expense and payment products. Prior to Navan, Yuval ran digital payments at American Express, was the senior vice president of product at News America Marketing, chief product officer at Syp and Aris Genuine Solutions, and held several product leadership roles at Thomson Reuters and Noise. Yuval earned his MBA from Columbia Business School.
Navan Board of Advisors
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and The New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which is now available in 19 languages. He also created the Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund, which aims to connect the greatest cultural leaders in the world to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.
Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007, and was appointed vice president and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. Earlier, he was vice president and general manager of America Online’s E-commerce Platform division, where he oversaw development of the company’s flagship Shop@AOL service. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications. He also served as vice president of Netscape’s widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. Before joining Netscape in July 1995, he held various senior product marketing positions at Lotus Development Corporation.
Ben has an MS in Computer Science from UCLA and a BA in Computer Science from Columbia University. He serves on numerous boards, including Databricks, Genius, Lyft, NationBuilder, Okta, SignalFx, Tanium, and CODE2040.
Arif joined Lightspeed in 2008 and focuses primarily on investments in the areas of cloud, infrastructure, AI, and data driven SaaS applications.
Prior to joining Lightspeed, he worked in the Corporate Business Development Group at Cisco Systems where he focused on mergers and acquisitions, strategy, and investments in the Unified Communications, Enterprise Collaboration, Mobile, and SaaS market segments. Before joining Cisco Systems, Arif was with Novitas Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm. Earlier in his career, Arif worked in technical development and product management roles at WebTV (acquired by MSFT), Andes Networks (acquired by SUNW), and Sun Microsystems.
Arif holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a BSc in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada.
In his free time, Arif plays ice hockey with his wife, who yells at him for never passing the puck to her.
Oren Zeev is the Founder of Zeev Ventures , a One Man Venture Capital firm. He serves as a board member at Houzz, HomeLight, Tipalti, Navan, Next Insurance, Domestika, among others. Oren is a former board member of Audible (went public and then acquired by AMZN) and of Chegg, (NYSE: CHGG) where he was the main investor and one of the two main early backers respectively. Prior to that, he was a general partner at Apax Partners from 1995 to 2007.
Mike Kourey is a respected leader with extensive financial and strategic leadership expertise. He has served on the boards of several private companies, including Navan, since October 2024, and has previously held board positions at Okta, RingCentral, Aruba Networks, Riverbed Technology, and more.
Since 2021, Mike has been the chief financial officer of Dialpad, an artificial intelligence-powered communications company. His tech experience includes serving as CFO and advisor at Okta, CFO at Vlocity (acquired by Salesforce in June 2020), EVP and CFO at Medallia, and partner at Khosla Ventures. Mike also spent more than 20 years in various roles at Polycom, including as CFO, further solidifying his expertise in the communications sector.
He holds a B.S. in Agricultural and Managerial Economics from the University of California, Davis, and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
Sandesh Patnam is the Managing Partner running both the private and listed equities investing practice at Premji Invest (PI) in the US. He joined PI to establish their US presence and drive their investment strategies in the US. PI is a multi-strategy crossover fund with over $11B in AUM. At PI, Sandesh directs and manages investments in the technology, consumer, and financials sectors. At PI, he led investments in Anaplan (SaaS Planning Solution, IPO, Ticker: PLAN), Zuora (SaaS Subscription Billing, IPO, Ticker: ZUO), Coupa (SaaS eProcurement, IPO, Ticker: COUP), Looker (BI Analytics, Acq. by GOOGL for $2.85B), Apttus (SaaS CPQ and CLM, Acq. by Thoma Bravo for $1.85B), ServiceMax (SaaS Field Service Automation, Acq. by GE for $1.0B), Outreach (SaaS Sales Enablement), Icertis (SaaS Contract Management), Heyday (E-commerce enablement), Signifyd (E-commerce Fraud), Sysdig (Container Security), and, DataStax (NoSQL database).
Prior to Premji Invest, Sandesh was a Senior Equity Analyst and Investment Officer at the Seligman Technology Group at Ameriprise, a General Partner at Bay Partners and with TeleSoft Partners.
Clara Liang is a technology executive with experience across leading consumer, enterprise and financial services companies. She currently serves as a business unit lead at Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform. Prior to Stripe, she most recently was Vice President and General manager at Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB) and held a number of roles across nearly 6 years including international and commercial operations, new business verticals, and product management. Ms. Liang has also served as Chief Product Officer at Jive Software, and spent 11 years at IBM in a number of technology and professional services roles. She also holds a BS from Stanford University in Symbolic Systems, and an MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas at Austin. Ms Liang is also a member of the board at SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI).
David George is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he focuses on growth investing.
Prior to joining a16z, David spent seven years at General Atlantic where he led and partnered on numerous consumer internet and enterprise software growth deals. Previously, he was an investment associate at FFL Partners and an investment banking analyst for William Blair & Company.
David graduated summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame and earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is currently on the Advisory Council of the IDEA Center at the University of Notre Dame.
David led many of the firm’s growth investments, and serves on the boards of Current, Greenlight, and Workrise.
Adam Bain is the co-founder and managing partner at 01Advisors, a venture firm targeting companies who have found product-market fit and are looking for operating expertise as they scale. He also serves on the Board of Directors at Opendoor (NASDAQ: OPEN) and Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE).
Adam is the former Chief Operating Officer of Twitter, where he was responsible for the company’s business lines, including the go-to-market, product and operations teams for the advertising and data businesses. Previously, Adam was the President of the Fox Audience Network at News Corp and ran Product teams at Fox Sports and The Los Angeles Times.
In 2012, Adam ranked #1 in Ad Week’s annual listing of the top 50 indispensable talent. In 2013, Adam was inducted into The American Advertising Federation Hall of Achievement. In 2015, Adam was named one of the 30 United Nations Women “He for She” Impact Champions to help advance gender equality.
Navan is backed by
Navan is backed by