Meet Sureify

Dustin Yoder is an insurtech entrepreneur with a passion for the next generation of insurance sales and policyholder engagement. Dustin was early to insurtech and has been primed to make a splash in the insurance space since his high school days working at the family brokerage. He is one of the few people who goes to sleep thinking about increasing persistency or dreams of insurance innovation.

In pursuit of his passion, Dustin formed Sureify in 2012 to revitalize the life insurance space. Prior to Sureify, he built, and eventually sold, Vendus Product Labs, an enterprise product development company that served clients such as Genentech, Stanford University, and Honda. Now, Dustin wants nothing more than to use his entrepreneurial talent to meaningfully impact the industry his father thrived in.

Dustin has a BA in finance from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. He lives with his wife and kids in San Jose, CA.

Dan Gordon has extensive experience as an insurance technology product leader having led the product management organization at Guidewire for 11 years as they grew from 2 customers with $2M in revenue to 150 customers with $350M in revenue. He also served on Guidewire’s management team, participating in key strategic and operational decisions for the company and was involved in sales deals, customer relationships, M&As, and partnerships. More recently, Dan has served as the Head of Product for startups in big data and in martech. He is responsible for driving company growth plans, working closely with all company departments to ensure that strategic and operational growth plans are aligned and that longer-term efforts get sufficient attention.

Dan has an MBA from Stanford and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Yale and serves on the board of Made in a Free World, a non-profit working to eradicate modern slavery. He lives in San Carlos, California with his wife and two kids.

Ben Brantley has fifteen years of experience in the enterprise software arena, most recently in advisory roles with software startups in the domains of retail finance, automotive, and energy. Before joining Sureify as CTO in 2021, Ben was Head of Technical Sales, and then CTO, at Guidewire. In that position, he blended his sharp insight, innovative talent and smooth customer skills into a successful mix that helped the company grow and forge its influence as an insurtech leader.

Ben studied computer science at Caltech and served as a faculty member there for five years after graduating. He lives with his wife and daughter in Oregon.

As the Chief Business Development Officer, Bryan Padgette is responsible for developing Sureify’s clientele and partnerships. Usually the first face a client sees, Bryan is key in introducing Sureify’s platform to insurance executives and identifying critical needs that the platform can help solve. He also uses his charisma and industry insight as a frequent speaker at conferences focused on innovation in insurance.

His more than 15 years of professional experience and leadership have been focused on delivering technology-driven business services and solutions, providing outstanding client service and driving revenue growth. Before joining Sureify in 2016, Bryan applied his skillset in multiple SaaS companies, including Validic, the world’s leader in IoT data delivery.

Bryan attended Elon University, graduating with a dual Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Business Management. He lives in Charlotte, NC with his wife and three children.

Mike Etheridge brings more than 20 years of financial leadership experience to Sureify, with a track record of scaling venture- and private equity-backed SaaS and technology companies. Prior to joining Sureify, Mike was VP Finance at Arena Solutions and was promoted to SVP Finance at PTC after its acquisition in December 2020. Mike started his career with KPMG LLP and has also held financial executive roles with such companies as IGN Entertainment, Shutterfly, and VeriSign.

Mike holds a Bachelor of Science in Management from Tulane University and also serves on the board of Samaritan House, an organization leading the fight against poverty in San Mateo County. He lives in San Mateo, CA with his wife, kids, and their dog Ashby.

Natalie Spano brings more than twenty years of experience driving growth in financial services technology, with a career spent building high-performance sales organizations, forging enterprise partnerships, and leading large-scale digital transformations at some of the industry’s most recognized firms.

Before joining Sureify, Natalie held senior leadership roles at Salesforce, KPMG, IBM, and Zinnia, where she developed a reputation for driving growth, innovation, and customer value. She joined Sureify in 2026 as its first Chief Customer Officer, bringing together sales, account management, and GTM strategy around a deep conviction that L&A transformation can only succeed when modern digital and GenAI capabilities are paired with a real understanding of data, workflows, and the back-office legacy systems that aren’t going away — a problem she’s been solving, from different angles, for over two decades.

Natalie holds an M.S. in Technology Management from Columbia University. She is a board member and Fundraising Executive Chair for A Better Chance in Wilton, Connecticut, where she lives with her husband and three daughters.

Sulu Velugu is the Chief Technology Officer and cofounder of Sureify. Sulu joined the company in 2015 and is responsible for architecting the company’s platform and leading the technical team. He is also a member of the information security team.

Sulu started his career as a software developer at Solivar in 2004. While there, he played multiple roles, including Senior Software Engineer and Software Engineering Lead.

Sulu next joined SaaS Softpro Leaders as the company’s Lead Solutions Architect, where he directed the architecting of a large employee benefits platform. Immediately prior to joining Sureify, he was the CTO at MSR COSMOS.

Sulu attended Andhra University and graduated with a master’s in computer applications.

Brian leads Sureify’s customer implementations team and is co-founder of the Lifetime AI Lab. Previously, he worked as SVP of Underwriting Audit at AIG and SVP of Marketing at Mutual of Omaha. Brian’s experience in customer implementations began with serving as the Director of Marketing for Continuum (a global policy admin systems vendor acquired by DXC for $1.4 billion). He also co-founded pioneering paramedical exam startup Force Diagnostics.

Brian frequently writes on insurtech and teaches scaled agile project management classes for companies such as Apple and Oracle several times a year. His agile certifications include CSP, SPC, CSSBB, and PMI-ACP. In 2006, Brian founded and endowed an annual enterprise innovation student writing competition at MIT.

He received a Master of Science in Financial Services from American College (his thesis was on insurers’ CRM systems). Brian holds CLU, ChFC, and FLMI insurance industry designations.

Ryan Swanson is Vice President, Product Operations and cofounder of Sureify. Ryan heads up product operations and leads security operations. He brings tremendous value working across Sureify product teams in the US and globally.

Prior to Sureify, Ryan was Director of Operations for Vendus Product Labs, the enterprise application development company Dustin founded. He was also the co-architect of a job search application.

Ryan graduated from Santa Clara University with a bachelor of science in commerce and marketing.

Aarthi Pasupulati is the Engineering Manager at Sureify based out of our Hyderabad location and is a PMP certified manager with over 18 years in the IT industry. Her experience ranges across various domains from Automotive to Aerospace. In her previous roles, she used her expertise to manage and deliver mission critical projects, lead process improvement strategies and has been instrumental in scaling up the Engineering team. Aarthi graduated with a Masters in Computer Applications from Osmania University.

Erik Rasmussen has over 25 years of experience in insurtech and healthcare IT. Prior to joining Sureify, Erik most recently led the global delivery teams responsible for implementations and client engagement for Reinsurance Group of America’s (RGA) automated underwriting technology platform, Aura Next. Prior to his time with RGA, he served in various progressive IT and organizational operating roles with BJC HealthCare. Joining Sureify in 2024, Erik leads our professional services organization and is responsible for delivery and customer support of Sureify’s products, platform and services.

Erik holds a Masters and Bachelors of Science in Management of Information Systems degrees from the University of Missouri – St. Louis. He resides in St. Louis, Missouri with his wife and children.

Ramakrishna Yeggadi (known as RK) is the Managing Director for Sureify India and joined the company in 2022. He has 20+ years of rich industry experience in managing large scale operations, setting up CoEs from scratch for product development and IT Services companies. He has led many mission critical digital transformation programs in strategic leadership roles before joining the company. He started career as a product developer back in 1999 and played various roles like Technical Lead, Solution Architect, Delivery Manager, Product Manager, Head of Professional Services, Head of India Operations etc before joining Sureify. He has worked for renowned companies like Mphasis, Aztec Technologies (a Mindtree company and now it is LTIMindtree Ltd), Cyient, Kore.ai and Navomi Inc. He is a certified Six Sigma green belt and very instrumental in multiple CMMi Level 5 assessments.

RK has done a Master of Technology (M.Tech) from Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, one of the prestigious technology universities of India. He is closely associated with a few non-profit organizations who facilitate better education for underprivileged children in India. He lives in Hyderabad, India with his wife and three children.

Rob Anagnoson has more than 20 years of experience in engineering, software solutions, product management, and innovation. After early work at notable companies including Accenture, he brought his skills to Guidewire Software in 2007, rising through the ranks to become Senior Director of Project Management and, ultimately, Senior Director of Strategic Portfolio Planning. Later, he put his background in software innovation and product line development to work for ContractRoom and Dialpad before aligning with Sureify as Vice President of Product.

Rob attended Harvard University where he earned an A.B. in Psychology and lives in the bay area with his wife and two teenage children.

Vijay Thodupunoori is the head of the Engineering team and a co-founder of Sureify Labs. He joined the company in 2014 and is responsible for leading the core engineering team. He started his career as a full-stack developer in 2009 and worked as Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead, and Project Lead for enterprise software applications. Vijay is highly experienced in managing a team throughout the lifecycle of a product/project development.

Prior to Sureify, Vijay was leading an engineering team at Vendus Product Labs, an enterprise application development company. While there, he led the building of at least ten applications for customers such as Genentech, Stanford University, Sutter Health, and Honda.

Vijay attended the Hyderabad Institute of Technology and Management and graduated with a bachelor’s in electronics and communication.