Sam Chandler

Founder and CEO

Sam Chandler is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Nitro since 2005. Under Sam's leadership, the once-tiny startup has transformed into a leading global document productivity software company that went public on the ASX in 2019. Today, Nitro employs over 200 Nitronauts around the world, has over 2.6 million licensed users, and nearly 12,000 business customers in 154 countries.

A serial entrepreneur, Sam brings with him over 20 years of global technology leadership experience, both in Australia and Silicon Valley. He started his first company at age 16, while still in high school, and his second at age 21, while attending university, before co-founding Nitro. In 2014, Sam was named the Ernst and Young Australian Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year. Sam previously sat on the Board of the Australian Communities Foundation and is currently an investor and mentor at Startmate, the leading Australian tech accelerator, and an investor and advisor at Bloom Venture Partners, an early-stage SaaS VC firm in the United States.

Kurt Johnson

Executive Chairman

Kurt Johnson joined Nitro’s Board of Directors in 2010 as a Non-Executive Independent Director, then stepped into the role of Chairman in 2019.

Kurt brings with him over 24 years of management experience, including public and private company leadership, initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, strategic investments, recapitalizations and venture stage investing. Prior to joining Nitro, Kurt was President and CEO of Fastclick (NASDAQ: FSTC), where he led the company to a USD $285 million valuation and sale of Fastclick to ValuClick in 2005. Before this, Kurt served as CFO of ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK), where he was instrumental in the company’s growth from an early-stage enterprise to a USD $1.4 billion international media technology company. Earlier in his career, Kurt was an investment banker at Olympic Capital Partners in Seattle.

Kurt holds an MBA from Gonzaga University and a Bachelor’s degree from Eastern Washington University.

Ana Sirbu

Chief Financial Officer

Ana Sirbu joined Nitro in 2020 as CFO. In this role, Ana is responsible for the overall financial leadership of the business, including financial planning and analysis (FP&A), reporting, and budget planning. As CFO, Ana also helps to drive corporate strategy as a key contributor to company growth and direction.

Prior to joining Nitro, Ana served as CFO at BlueVine, where she played a critical role in the company’s growth and success, spearheading their capital markets strategy and leading them through three funding rounds that raised over $800 million in debt and equity financing. Before this, Ana was a technology investor at Capital G, Google’s growth investing arm, and at Silver Lake Partners.

Ana was named one of the Top 25 Women Leaders in Financial Technology in 2020 and was recognized by the Women in Fintech Powerlist in 2017. Ana was also previously recognized as one of Growth Cap’s 40 Under 40 top growth technology investors.

Ana holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard University.

Gina O’Reilly

Chief Operating Officer

Gina O’Reilly joined Nitro in 2008 as SVP of Sales and Marketing, then moved into the role of COO in 2011. In her current role as COO, Gina has global responsibility for the Business Operations and People functions, including Workplace and Facilities, Employee Experience and Talent.

Gina brings with her over 15 years of software industry experience. Prior to Nitro, Gina served as Director of Sales and Marketing at activePDF, a leading provider of server-side PDF solutions and developer tools, where she oversaw global sales and marketing. Gina also previously managed sales and marketing strategy and planning for several major software publishers, including Microsoft, VMware and Crystal Decisions.

Gina holds an MBA from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelor’s in International Marketing and Languages from Dublin City University, Ireland.

Sam Thorpe

Chief Product Officer

Sam Thorpe rejoined Nitro in 2020 as CPO. In this role, Sam oversees product innovation, security and user experience.

Prior to Nitro, Sam served as CPO at Flow Kana, where he was responsible for formulating Flow Kana's technology and data strategy to accelerate the responsiveness of all supply chain tiers. Prior to Flow Kana, Sam was the Director of Product Strategy at Nitro, where he led strategy, customer research and innovation toward synthesizing and unifying Nitro's global product strategy.

Earlier in his career, Sam built and led innovative, high-performance product organizations in start-up environments, including two different enterprise real estate systems that were acquired in succession by Fortune 500 companies.

Sam holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a Business minor from Humboldt State University.

Mark Flannagan

Chief Revenue Officer

Mark Flanagan joined Nitro in 2020 as Vice President of EMEA Sales. He then moved into the role of Senior Vice President of Global Sales and now serves as Chief Revenue Officer. In his current role as CRO, Mark oversees all of Nitro’s global Sales, Customer and Revenue Operations.

Mark is an accomplished executive with a proven track record of driving high performance and business transformation through focused execution, often in challenging and highly competitive market segments.

Prior to Nitro, Mark was a member of Marketo’s senior leadership team in EMEA, responsible for accelerating growth across the region. He also served as Executive Vice President at Vistatec, where he led global sales, marketing and strategy. Mark also previously held a number of senior sales and marketing leadership positions in organizations such as PFH, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Hewlett Packard.

Mark holds a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing and a Postgraduate Higher Diploma in Marketing Practice from the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Stefan Gass

Chief Marketing Officer

Stefan joined Nitro in June 2022 as CMO. In his role, he is responsible for all Corporate marketing, field marketing and has full P&L responsibility for Nitro`s e-commerce business. Stefan reports directly to the CEO.

Stefan brings with him extensive experience building global marketing and sales teams with a focus on digital transformation, digital marketing, SaaS and cloud services, e-commerce, technology and predictive scoring to drive demand, and brand awareness. He is an expert in optimizing customer lifecycle journey from strategy design to hands-on marketing, sales and operational effectiveness to accelerate top line revenue growth.

Prior to joining Nitro, Stefan held C-level and executive positionings at B2B SaaS scale ups (nShift, Starmind, Veeam) and blue-chip strategy and software companies (The Boston Consulting Group, Microsoft, Oracle).

Stefan holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Konstanz and Rotterdam and completed an Executive Marketing Program at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.