Our Staff
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Ellie is President and CEO of the GitLab Foundation, with the mission of improving lifetime earnings and economic mobility of workers worldwide. With a background in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, she brings a shared value, cross-sectoral approach to drive sustainable impact.
Prior to joining the GitLab Foundation, Ellie spent ten years in the private sector, with roles at Wells Fargo and Walmart. Much of her work focused on frontline worker economic stability and mobility, and included work on instant access to earned pay, scheduling predictability, removing hiring barriers, and developing internal learning and career pathing programs. In 2020 Ellie was awarded Walmart’s highest recognition, the Sam Walton Entrepreneurship Award, for the development of LiveBetterU, the largest free educational benefits program in the US, and Walmart’s most successful diversity & inclusion program.
Earlier in her career, Ellie spent nearly ten years in the nonprofit and public sector, including positions with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. State Department, Third Sector Capital Partners, and Rotary International. She received her Master of Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and her MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. She loves comedy, karaoke, and being kept on her toes by her husband and three crazy boys.
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Elicia is currently the Director of Operations for the GitLab Foundation and is responsible for ensuring the effectiveness of the strategy, administrative, financial, and operational systems necessary for achieving the GitLab Foundation’s mission.
With over 12 years of nonprofit experience, Elicia previously served as Chief Operations Officer for the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, a national nonprofit focused on collaborating with workers, employers, and communities to advance a skilled workforce, promote good jobs, and invest in equitable outcomes. She has also worked for several public and private law offices, volunteered at several nonprofit organizations, and worked in the hospitality industry for over a decade.
Elicia currently serves on the board of The Sound of a Smile Program (SOAS) and the Advisory Council for the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL).
Elicia earned a Juris Doctorate from Suffolk University Law School and bachelor's degree in business administration from Bryant University.
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Matt is Senior Program Officer of the GitLab Foundation where he leads global grantmaking and partnerships focused on improving economic mobility for low and moderate income individuals and communities.
Prior to this role, Matt was Chief Program Office for the Americas for Village Capital where he led teams responsible for capacity building and investment programs for high impact technology startups working in areas such as economic opportunity, healthcare, the future of work and sustainability. He also co-founded the Resource Initiative, a large-scale national capacity building and funding program for leaders of color guiding entrepreneurship support organizations, in partnership with the Black Innovation Alliance.
Matt has over 20 years of experience as a nonprofit executive, grantmaker, investor and economic development professional and loves to help mission driven leaders navigate building partnerships to scale outcomes, resilient teams, and future proof organizations. He has also held leadership roles at The Forbes Funds, Catholic Charities USA, and Team Pennsylvania Foundation - Pennsylvania’s private statewide economic development foundation. In his free time you can find him outside in trail runners or hiking boots, camera in hand, raising his two adventurous boys to do the same.
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Roger is GitLab Foundation’s Program Officer focused on developing economic inclusion strategies and investments in the United States, Colombia, and Mexico. His work explores how stakeholders can increase lifetime earnings for individuals while incorporating intersecting aspects of community development.
Roger has dedicated his career to social and racial justice in the United States and abroad. Prior to GitLab Foundation, Roger led grantmaking and assisted with impact investing at the Roy and Patricia Disney Family Foundation. In this role, he created the foundation’s participatory grantmaking program and collaborated with community members and social sector actors to address the root causes of systemic inequities in the Affordable Housing, Criminal Justice Reform, and Environmental Justice sectors. He also served as a strategic financial advisor at Nonprofit Finance Fund, supporting organizations with financial management, forecasting, and scenario planning.
Roger is a trustee of the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, treasurer of California ChangeLawyers, and active in the Los Angeles Latino giving circle. Roger earned an MA in International Development and MBA from Brandeis University, and a BS in Environmental Science from the University of North Carolina in Asheville. Roger grew up in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and currently lives in Los Angeles - where you can find him hiking and biking in the Angeles National Forest.
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Spencer is the Director of Impact Measurement and Analytics at the GitLab Foundation. He has more than a decade of experience in impact evaluation, data analytics, and international development. He is passionate about implementing innovative solutions to both social impact prediction and impact evaluation in the philanthropic and impact investing sectors. Spencer also enjoys advising nonprofit and social enterprise organizations on best practices in leveraging impact measurement to support learning and strategy. He brings both a rigorous and practical perspective to impact measurement, given his experience uncovering common challenges in gathering impact evidence.
Before joining the GitLab Foundation, Spencer was the Director of Impact at Kiva. At Kiva, he built impact prediction models and conducted impact evaluations on the social impact of their international and U.S. microfinance programs. He previously worked at the World Bank's Africa Gender Innovation Lab, implementing impact evaluations throughout Tanzania, including managing a randomized control trial studying the effects of a mobile savings product on the profits of women-owned small businesses. Spencer holds an M.S. in International and Development Economics from the University of San Francisco and a B.A. in Economics and Government from Claremont McKenna College.
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Geetika is the Manager of Impact Measurement and Analytics at GitLab Foundation. She estimates the potential impact of grants, monitors impact data, and synthesizes findings across GitLab’s grant-making portfolio.
During her internship at the Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), Singapore, she conducted impact assessments of current and potential investees of IIX’s Women’s Livelihood Bond. She also advanced the Orange Bond Initiative (OBI) expansion by researching new issuances and verifying compliance of existing sustainability bonds.
She has over five years of experience conducting research, entrepreneurial development, policy, and finance. Previously, she led the team at an economic policy think tank, conducting extensive research, evaluating policy efficacy, and providing recommendations on a wide range of issues with a focus on gender lens investing and India’s gender budgets. She has worked for several Indian social enterprises and non-profit organizations addressing gender inequality and women’s economic empowerment.
Geetika holds a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and BA (Hons) in Economics from the University of Delhi and has cleared the CFA Level 1 exam. Currently based in New York, in her free time you can find her drawing intricate mandalas, experimenting with cooking, or finding the best restaurants in the city. And she insists on walking while doing that.
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Jessica is the Program Analyst for the GitLab Foundation, where she plans, analyzes, and implements projects that span the entire Foundation, with an emphasis on grants management.
With over a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, Jessica is committed to systems change. Prior to joining GitLab Foundation, she supported program implementation and grants management for national initiatives aimed at organizations, projects, and artists in contemporary dance, jazz, and theater at the Doris Duke Foundation. Jessica has contributed her expertise as a program coordinator at the Ballet Tech Foundation and Dancing Classrooms NYC, overseeing the logistics of their public school programs.
Jessica holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from William Paterson University of New Jersey. She has served as a grantmaking panelist to Borealis Philanthropy's Disability Inclusion Fund and Queens Council on the Arts.
Jessica enjoys baking and immersing herself in a good book.
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Kali Shebi is a Program Officer at the GitLab Foundation, where she drives impactful grantmaking and fosters strategic partnerships to advance global economic mobility.
Previously, Kali was the Economic Security Program Manager at San Francisco’s Department on the Status of Women, where she provided grants to local organizations and launched economic support programs like guaranteed income and microgrants for underserved communities, especially justice-impacted individuals and domestic violence survivors. Kali also worked as a Project Manager and Planning Analyst at San Francisco’s Human Services Agency, where she led projects to assess community needs and improve systems for low-income residents. Her international development work with the United Nations Foundation included leading efforts to address gender-based discrimination and social inequities, utilizing grantmaking and collaborating with various sectors and UN agencies to advance gender equality and social justice.
Kali currently serves on the board of YWCA's Berkeley/Oakland Chapter, where she promotes women’s empowerment and racial justice. In her spare time, Kali loves to capture the beauty of nature and other subjects through photography.
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Samii Willeford is the Philanthropic Partnerships Manager at the GitLab Foundation, where she is responsible for nurturing and building relationships and fostering collaborations with institutions and individuals.
Grounded in her service through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (via AmeriCorps), Samii brings a true passion for cultivating impactful connections. She has a decade of experience in Community Impact and CSR at leading corporations like TOMS and Cisco. At TOMS, Samii led impact trips and other employee engagement programs, and later secured significant funding for partners when the impact model shifted from giving shoes to giving grants. On the Community Investments team at Cisco, she led strategic nonprofit partnerships, enhanced employee engagement, and improved sponsorship reporting and planning.
As a First-to-Go college student, she holds a Master’s in Nonprofit Administration from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University. Her "30 Before 30" goal of traveling to 30 countries deepened her commitment to DEIA, reinforcing her dedication to creating positive change. She currently resides in Southern California, where she loves soaking up the sun with her dog and husband.
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Tracy is a 25+ year financial executive in the nonprofit space. She recently joined GitLab Foundation as Chief Financial Officer. GitLab Foundation is a global, private foundation which funds initiatives that improve people’s lifetime earnings through access to opportunities.
In 2022, Tracy launched a consulting firm, Next Eddy Consulting, LLC, providing financial and operational expertise to nonprofit organizations. Next Eddy specializes in start-up operations, planning, reorganizations, and strategic initiatives in the nonprofit arts & culture field.
Tracy previously served as the Chief Financial Officer for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Art Bridges Foundation, Whole Health Institute, and other related start-up nonprofits through a shared services company, Art & Wellness Enterprises (AWE). AWE was established to provide centralized accounting, communications, IT, and human resource services for private operating foundations and public charities founded by Alice L. Walton. Tracy served as CFO of each member institution.
Prior to the launch of AWE, Tracy served as Chief Financial Officer of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art from early design and planning through its 10th anniversary. As CFO, she oversaw the business services division of the museum, including Finance, Information Systems, Museum Store, the Museum Restaurant Eleven, and Special Events. Career highlights included serving on the founding leadership team responsible for the construction of the museum as well as the development of all business units contributing significantly to the bottom line and mission of the museum.
Prior to joining Crystal Bridges, Cude led the accounting and operations team at the Walton Family Foundation and served as Vice President for Finance and Planning at the Walton Arts Center. Early in her career, Cude worked in the private sector with Raytheon, a Fortune 100 company, andKPMG. She holds a Certified Public Accountant license (inactive) in the state of Arkansas.
Tracy currently serves as the board chair for the Arkansas Community Foundation. In her free time, she enjoys all that the natural state has to offer including hiking, paddling, fishing, boating, and water sports.
Our Board
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Sid Sijbrandij (pronounced see-brandy) is the Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and Board Chair of GitLab Inc., the DevOps platform. GitLab’s single application helps organizations deliver software faster and more efficiently while strengthening their security and compliance.
Sid’s career path has been anything but traditional. He spent four years building recreational submarines for U-Boat Worx and while at Ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid he worked on the Legis project, which developed several innovative web applications to aid lawmaking. He first saw Ruby code in 2007 and loved it so much that he taught himself how to program. In 2012, as a Ruby programmer, he encountered GitLab and discovered his passion for open source. Soon after, Sid commercialized GitLab, and by 2015 he led the company through Y Combinator’s Winter 2015 batch. Under his leadership, the company has grown with an estimated 30 million+ registered users from startups to global enterprises.
Sid studied at the University of Twente in the Netherlands where he received an M.S. in Management Science. Sid was named one of the greatest minds of the pandemic by Forbes for spreading the gospel of remote work.
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Brian Robins is the Chief Financial Officer at GitLab (NASDAQ: GTLB), the DevSecOps platform single application helps organizations deliver software faster and more efficiently while strengthening their security and compliance.
As CFO, Brian is responsible for GitLab’s financial, data and business systems functions, including accounting, tax, treasury, corporate finance, IT, data science and investor relations. He helps to ensure GitLab’s finance and accounting systems and processes scale and grow with the company. His team oversees GitLab’s financial reporting, provides data driven decision support and offers strategic guidance to the business.
Prior to GitLab, Brian served as CFO at Sisense, Cylance, AlienVault, and Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN). As a 20-plus year veteran leading both private and public high-growth software companies, and with extensive experience with IPOs and M&As, Brian has a long, documented track record of improving financial performance, increasing productivity, and creating shareholder value. He lends this wisdom as a special advisor at Brighton Park Capital, L.P. and on the Advisory Council at ForgePoint Capital Cybersecurity.
Brian holds a B.S. in Finance from Lipscomb University and an M.B.A from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.
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Robin Schulman is the Chief Legal Officer, Head of Corporate Affairs, and Corporate Secretary of GitLab Inc., the DevOps platform where she oversees Legal & Corporate Affairs. GitLab’s single application helps organizations deliver software faster and more efficiently while strengthening their security and compliance.
GitLab’s CLO and Corporate Secretary since 2019, Robin leverages her leadership experience scaling high growth technology companies to create a culture of compliance and set and manage the company’s overall global legal, corporate development, compliance, policy and privacy philosophy and strategy. Supported by a talented team of attorneys and legal professionals, Robin ensures GitLab maintains balance across the company’s business activities and practices with its values and culture. Additionally, Robin provides counsel to the GitLab Board of Directors across the entire spectrum of legal, compliance and corporate governance matters that pertain to the company. Robin is the executive sponsor of GitLab’s women’s and pride team member resource groups and the unofficial sponsor of our #dog Slack channel.
Prior to joining GitLab, Robin oversaw global legal affairs, public policy and compliance at Couchbase, Inc. (NASDAQ: BASE) as their SVP, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary. She also established, scaled, and led New Relic Inc.‘s (NYSE: NEWR) global legal and compliance organization as their General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer from pre-IPO to profitable public company. Prior to that, Robin was Legal Counsel to Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) where she led the legal function for several of Adobe’s Marketing and Creative Cloud products and specialized in advising high growth companies while an associate at Fenwick & West LLP, a law firm providing legal services to technology and life science companies. Robin earned a B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing and Film from New York University and a J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law - Newark. In 2017, Robin was honored by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and the San Francisco Business Times with an award for Best Bay Area Corporate Counsel for a Public Company General Counsel. She has taught intellectual property law at Santa Clara Law School and is a board observer for a private biotech company.
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Caroline Whistler is co-founder and CEO of Third Sector, where she leads the organization’s work advising our government agencies on effective ways to reshape their policies, systems, and services toward better outcomes for all people, no matter their race, background, and circumstances. Third Sector is a national nonprofit helping to unlock possibility, confront inequity, and catalyze change to the benefit of the people and places our government, community-based, and philanthropic partners serve. It has transitioned more than $1.8B in public funding to be outcomes-focused, directing those resources on improving solutions for key social issues, including diversion and re-entry, behavioral health, early childhood, and family economic mobility. Third Sector has grown to serve more than 50 state and local government jurisdictions. Under Caroline’s leadership, the organization has become an established national nonprofit with 60 remote employees and a $10M operating budget.
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Ellie is President and CEO of the GitLab Foundation, with the mission of improving lifetime earnings and economic mobility of workers worldwide. With a background in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, she brings a shared value, cross-sectoral approach to drive sustainable impact.
Prior to joining the GitLab Foundation, Ellie spent ten years in the private sector, with roles at Wells Fargo and Walmart. Much of her work focused on frontline worker economic stability and mobility, and included work on instant access to earned pay, scheduling predictability, removing hiring barriers, and developing internal learning and career pathing programs. In 2020 Ellie was awarded Walmart’s highest recognition, the Sam Walton Entrepreneurship Award, for the development of LiveBetterU, the largest free educational benefits program in the US, and Walmart’s most successful diversity & inclusion program.
Earlier in her career, Ellie spent nearly ten years in the nonprofit and public sector, including positions with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. State Department, Third Sector Capital Partners, and Rotary International. She received her Master of Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and her MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. She loves comedy, karaoke, and being kept on her toes by her husband and three crazy boys.
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John Freddy Vega is the Founder and CEO of Platzi, the largest tech school in Latin America.
In 2004 Freddy founded Cristalab, the first hispanic web design and development community, which later evolved into Platzi, the growth engine of the hispanic tech world and the first company targeting Latin America to be funded by Y Combinator.
Every startup in the region has Platzi students and every country has founders who studied at Platzi.
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Rahim is the Co-Founder of SV Academy, an online, employer-driven training program that helps high potential, underrepresented jobseekers break into sales and customer success careers with 400+ companies across the tech industry. SV Academy was named the #2 Most Innovative Education Program by Fast Company, and is backed by OWL Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Kapor Capital, ReThink Education, as well as Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures.
Prior to SV Academy, Rahim was the CEO and Co-Founder of Involver, an enterprise social media platform, which was acquired by Oracle and is now part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Post sale, he was a key account executive supporting the global field and inside sales organizations.
Previously, he founded a web hosting company with his friend Husein while still in high school. Its sale (for $1.5m!) was negotiated while writing his senior year exams. Because of life circumstances, Rahim didn’t end up going to a four-year college, or receiving his bachelors.
A few years back, Rahim received an Empact 100 Award at the White House from Startup America and The Kauffman Foundation. Rahim was also named one of the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 in America by Inc. Magazine, one of the Top 40 Under 40 by the San Francisco Business Times, and one of the Top 25 Digital Thought-Leaders by iMedia.
Rahim loves helping and learning from people who are charting their own course. He’s an investor or advisor to a number of start-ups, early-stage venture funds, and non-profit organizations. He’s also been invited to speak at several cool places around the world like SXSW, President Obama's Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Dubai, MIT’s $100K Business Plan Competition, Imperial Bank in Kenya and Startup Weekend in Egypt.
