François Locoh-Donou is F5’s President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors. He joined F5 in April 2017, bringing to the office nearly two decades of enterprise technology experience building a wide range of products, teams, and operations around the world.

Locoh-Donou previously held successive leadership positions at Ciena, the network strategy and technology company, including Chief Operating Officer; Senior Vice President, Global Products Group; Vice President and General Manager, EMEA; Vice President, International Sales; and Vice President, Marketing. Prior to joining Ciena, he held research-and-development roles at Photonetics, a French opto-electronics company.

Locoh-Donou serves on the board of Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE: COF). He is also the co-founder of Cajou Espoir, a cashew-processing facility that employs several hundred people in rural Togo, 80 percent of whom are women. Cajou Espoir exports more than 400 tons of cashew kernels annually to the U.S. and Europe.

He holds engineering degrees from École Centrale de Marseille and Télécom ParisTech in France and a M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.