Former Zscaler SVP to Lead Key Cloud Security Initiative at Aviatrix Amid Q2 Momentum and Industry Recognition
Aviatrix announced the appointment of Willie Tejada as General Manager for Cloud Native Security Fabric (CNSF). Tejada’s leadership marks a strategic milestone in Aviatrix’s commitment to establishing a secure, integrated cloud architecture for the world’s most regulated industries and mission-critical workloads.
Tejada joins Aviatrix at a moment of rapid acceleration. In Q2 2025, Aviatrix achieved significant milestones, including its strategic integration with Wiz, allowing enterprises to go from critical risk identification to containment in minutes, and its inclusion in the AWS AI Marketplace, giving customers a one-click path to protect agentic workloads. The company’s achievements were recognized with multiple industry awards already this year, including the Fortress Cybersecurity Award for Cloud Security, a Gold Globee, and SiliconANGLE Media’s Tech Innovation CUBEd Award for Most Innovative Security Solution.
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This momentum underscores the critical need for a new architectural approach to meet the demands of AI-native software, agentic systems, and the growing regulatory pressures placed on the global digital economy. Massive breaches such as those from groups including Salt Typhoon and Laundry Bear continue to occur, exposing pervasive holes in traditional security models. CNSF confronts this challenge, unifying networking and security across clouds, applications, and data layers; embedding security directly into the cloud fabric rather than bolting it on at the perimeter. Aviatrix is answering the call for this new cloud native approach by investing in leadership capable of shaping the category itself.
“We’re not just solving a technical problem, we’re addressing a structural gap in cloud security that impacts every enterprise operating at scale,” said Doug Merritt, CEO at Aviatrix. “Willie brings a rare combination of deep security experience, cross-functional leadership, and policy awareness. His leadership in CNSF is an investment in the greater good, helping our customers, governments, CSPs, and partners align around a shared model for secure operations in the cloud era.”
A longtime executive at the intersection of cloud, security, and application delivery, Tejada previously served as Senior Vice President at Zscaler, where he led global efforts across data protection, workload communications, and zero trust user experience. Prior to that, he held strategic roles at IBM and Akamai, helping define new markets and operational models in the earliest days of cloud computing.
“I’m excited to join Aviatrix at a pivotal moment,” said Tejada. “As enterprise security shifts from user-centric zero trust to workload-centric zero trust, and as AI and agentic software architectures explode, the very surface we must protect is expanding and accelerating.”
Tejada’s role at Aviatrix will extend far beyond internal coordination. He will serve as a policy advocate and ecosystem builder, working alongside cloud service providers (CSPs), independent software vendors (ISVs), government agencies, and industry standards bodies to define the Cloud Native Security Fabric as an industry-recognized best practice. This includes collaborating with regulatory entities and insurers to close ambiguity in the hyperscaler shared trust model, a key barrier for CISOs justifying investments in runtime cloud security.
Over the past five years, the security industry has invested heavily in user-centric zero trust architectures. However, as the CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model evolves, Aviatrix and its partners recognize the urgent need to secure workload-to-workload communication — a cornerstone of CNSF. Nowhere is this need more pressing than in regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, and government, where AI, data sovereignty, and runtime security are converging into existential challenges.
“With Willie at the helm of our CNSF efforts, we’re doubling down on our responsibility to not only build the right technology, but to help define the policy, the category, and the long-term architecture the industry needs,” Merritt added. “This is about shaping a secure digital foundation for the global economy.”
Aviatrix remains committed to working as a trusted advisor, building the fabric that unites customers, partners, and the public sector in a shared mission to secure the cloud-native future.
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