Nat Natarajan, from Intuit, Joins as Executive Vice President of Product and Technology

Vineet Mehra, from Johnson & Johnson, Joins as Executive Vice President and
Chief Marketing Officer

LEHI, Utah and SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 30, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ancestry, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, today announced two new appointments to its growing executive team. With more than three million having taken its AncestryDNA test and record sales during the fourth quarter of 2016, Ancestry remains the world’s largest consumer genomics provider and first choice for consumers looking to understand more about who they are and where they come from.

Nat Natarajan, named Ancestry’s Executive Vice President of Product and Technology, comes from Intuit where he recently served as senior vice president and chief information security and fraud officer. His tenure at Intuit also included holding the position of chief technology officer and senior vice president of product and engineering for the Consumer Tax Group, which serves a customer base of more than 30 million.

Vineet Mehra joins Ancestry as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for the company. He joins Ancestry from Johnson & Johnson where he was Global President of J&J’s multi-billion dollar flagship Baby Care business. His tenure at J&J also included holding the position of President for J&J’s Global Marketing Services organization, where he led J&J’s core consumer marketing functions across the globe including Consumer Insights, Business Analytics, Digital Marketing, and J&J’s Media organization, where he managed more than $2 billion USD in spend around the world.

Both Natarajan and Mehra will be based in Ancestry's San Francisco office.

“As we continue to expand our global presence, Nat and Vineet are exactly the type of experienced and visionary leaders we want to help us move forward,” said Tim Sullivan, chief executive officer of Ancestry. “Their mutual experience building and leading teams focused on serving tens of millions of customers will be invaluable to us as we continue to scale and grow. I, and our entire team, look forward to working with them to drive innovation and engage with consumers around the world in ways never before possible.”

“Ancestry has done an incredible job of using complex technology and massive computing power to deliver a customer experience that is engaging, meaningful and beautifully simple,” said Natarajan. “This is a rare opportunity to lead a team that has already built products that define a category – family history – and is poised to do it yet again in a rapidly emerging market – consumer genomics.”

“There are very, very few brands in the world that can develop such a deep emotional bond with consumers as Ancestry,” said Mehra. “It is through this deep connection and trust that Ancestry has built such powerful competitive advantages in a crowded market and helped make Ancestry a globally recognized name. The outstanding Ancestry marketing team has built a strong foundation, and I look forward to leading this world-class team to take our consumer-centricity to the next level with even bolder, data-driven, insight-laden brand stories that highlight how life-changing the discoveries that Ancestry uncovers can be. Through this combination of purpose, marketing technology, and human understanding, we have the opportunity to truly take Ancestry’s leadership in both family history and consumer genomics to the next stage.”

Prior to joining Ancestry, Natarajan held executive positions in technology and product development at Intuit and PayPal, and was also one of the early members on the team that founded Travelocity.com, totaling more than 20 years of experience building highly innovative products and successful teams. At PayPal, Natarajan managed and led significant growth during his tenure. He was a key executive in PayPal’s merchant services business that was about 60% of PayPal’s revenues in 2014.  He led global engineering, operations and platforms teams at PayPal.  As chief technology officer and senior vice president of product management and engineering for Intuit’s Consumer Tax Group, Natarajan helped to shape their product and technology roadmap, accelerate the pace of innovation and build a world-class product leadership team. He speaks regularly at technology forums and has served on multiple panels related to product innovation, agile technologies and leading transformations.

Natarajan has a Master of Science degree in industrial engineering from Clemson University and a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University in India.

Prior to J&J, Mehra held leadership positions at some of the world’s best brands – building companies such as Novartis Consumer Health, General Mills, and Procter & Gamble. He has lead diverse teams across Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Most recently, as Global President of Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Care business, he was tasked with leading a world-wide team driving to re-invent their portfolio of baby brands to reinvigorate growth. He is a frequent speaker and panelist on the topics of shaping modern marketing organization, balancing the art and science of marketing, and data-driven marketing. Mehra has been a Judge and Speaker at Cannes, jury chair for the M&M Global Media Awards, and finalist judge for the Global Effie Awards. Most recently, Vineet was recognized as one of the 100 most influential marketing leaders in the world. Mehra holds a degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.

About Ancestry
Ancestry, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, harnesses the information found in family trees, historical records, and DNA to help people gain a new level of understanding about their lives. Ancestry has more than 2.4 million paying subscribers across its core Ancestry websites and DNA data from more than 3 million people. Since 1996, more than 19 billion records have been added to Ancestry’s databases, and users have created more than 80 million family trees on the Ancestry flagship site and its affiliated international websites. Ancestry offers a suite of family history products and services including AncestryDNA, Archives, AncestryProGenealogists, Newspapers.com and Fold3. AncestryDNA is owned and operated by Ancestry.com DNA, LLC, a subsidiary of Ancestry.com, LLC.