Runzel Joins Autonomous Pentesting Leader to Strengthen Culture and Drive Company Expansion

Horizon3.ai, a leading provider of autonomous security solutions, today announced that Torie Runzel has joined as Vice President of People, effective immediately.

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Torie Runzel, VP of People, Horizon3.ai (Photo: Business Wire)

Runzel brings extensive experience in developing both strong and successful teams through the structures, culture, and programs that attract top talent. She joins Horizon3.ai at a time of high growth, fueled by its breakthrough position as the first company to deliver a fully autonomous penetration testing solution to organizations worldwide. NodeZero™ enables IT, cybersecurity, and MSSP pros to continuously reduce security risk. Using NodeZero, organizations find their exploitable weaknesses, receive detailed guidance about how to prioritize and fix the discovered issues, and verify that their fixes are effective.

As VP of People, Torie will focus on implementing strategic HR initiatives to set the operational foundation for growth and build a culture that attracts, retains, and develops top talent. She’ll focus on systems and practices for recruitment, team alignment, professional and organizational development, performance management, and total rewards, having previously guided startups successfully through similar innovation and high-growth cycles. Torie brings strategic leadership and a hands-on approach to people operations that will play a crucial role in shaping the company’s culture and ensuring achievement of its ambitious growth objectives. Further, with her experience driving diversity and inclusion, she will lead efforts to create a positive and inclusive workplace that reflects Horizon3.ai’s commitment to excellence and opportunity.

"Horizon3.ai’s continued rapid growth depends on attracting the industry’s best talent and supporting them to do their best work,” Runzel said. "My team and I will support our executive team in reaching and sustaining their highest priorities, with the right talent and culture to drive today’s growth and setting a high bar for excellence moving forward. I'm honored and excited to join Horizon3.ai at this time, building on the exceptional product and team of talented individuals across engineering, sales, marketing, and operations, in order to further accelerate our pace of growth and market expansion.”

Horizon3.ai CEO and Co-founder Snehal Antani said, “Torie is accepting a strategic and demanding operational role, at which she is unsurpassed. She is a strong and essential addition to the leadership team. And after raising $40M in our Series C in August 2023, demand for NodeZero is growing at exponential rates. Now is the time to further expand our teams worldwide and we are looking for Torie’s leadership to do just that. As other players in the security space are downsizing, we are expanding our teams across the board. Torie’s superpower is helping ensure our culture remains a competitive advantage, especially as we scale.”

“Organizations adopting NodeZero now see their enterprise through the eyes of their would-be attackers, and are proactively closing the security gaps that cyber-criminals would otherwise exploit to execute ransomware attacks and other campaigns,” Antani continued. “Foundational to our success is Horizon3.ai’s groundbreaking ‘humans by exception’ approach that uncovers blind spots in any organization’s security posture that goes beyond known and patchable vulnerabilities, such as easily compromised credentials, exposed data, misconfigurations, poor security controls, and weak policies. Our next stage of Horizon3.ai’s ‘humans by exception’ innovation will depend on the successful recruitment, engagement and retention of exceptional humans, and we are delighted to welcome Torie.”

Torie added, “At a growing and fast changing startup, it is essential to cultivate a team that can perform in often ambiguous and ever evolving environments, consistently stretching to meet the needs of the organization. In this next period of growth for Horizon3.ai, we’ll be focused on recruiting for and developing skills internally to stay aligned and get to outcomes quickly. That's what we have to be laser focused on as a rapidly scaling business.”

The appointment continues Runzel’s role in guiding key growth aspects for companies with solutions that are broadly adopted by Fortune 1000 organizations and targeted sectors. She was most recently VP of People with Divvy Homes, where she built a performance-driven culture and the systems supporting it, scaling out a team of 100 to over 325, and carefully aligning talent and objectives. Prior to that, she was Head of People Operations and Chief of Staff at fintech start-up Bolt Financial, spearheading the advancement and overhaul of recruitment, evaluation, compensation and professional development. She has also served as Chief Operating Officer at CoLane Logistics, where she fulfilled pivotal human resources, operations, legal and sales functions.

About Horizon3.ai

The NodeZero™ platform empowers organizations to continuously find, fix, and verify exploitable attack surfaces. It is the flagship product of Horizon3.ai, founded in 2019 by former industry and U.S. National Security veterans. Our mission is to help organizations see their networks through the eyes of the attacker and proactively fix problems that truly matter, improve the effectiveness of their security initiatives, and ensure that they are prepared to respond to real cyberattacks.

Additional Resources:

Visit https://www.horizon3.ai/ for a free trial. Follow on X, formerly known as Twitter, @horizon3ai.

Learn more about Horizon3.ai’s Red Team research here.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240108946662/en/

Now is the time to further expand our teams worldwide. As other players in the security space are downsizing, we are expanding our teams across the board. Torie’s superpower is helping ensure our culture remains a competitive advantage as we scale.