Backstory

Phil is a Partner at Ballistic Ventures where he focuses on early stage cyber and cyber-adjacent investments and supporting the growth of a leading portfolio of companies. He is also a Senior Advisor at Warburg Pincus, working on private equity investments across a range of sectors. Finally, he also remains in service at Google as a Strategic Security Advisor to their executive leadership in cloud, security, AI and other businesses.

Before this, Phil was the first Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Google Cloud where he led the risk, security, compliance, and privacy teams and drove many AI security initiatives. Before joining Google, he was a Partner at Goldman Sachs, holding multiple roles over a long career, initially as their first Chief Information Security Officer, a role he held for 17 years.

In subsequent roles, Venables was Chief Operational Risk Officer, an operating partner in their private equity business, and a Board Director of Goldman Sachs Bank. Before Goldman Sachs, Venables held multiple CISO roles, and senior engineering roles across a range of finance, energy, and technology companies. He has been honored with many distinctions and awards, and in 2024, was inducted into the Chief Security Officer Hall of Fame.

Phil is active in a range of Boards, including the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, the NYU Stern Business School Volatility and Risk Institute, the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board of NIST, the Security and Technology Advisory Board of MITRE, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2021 to 2025, he served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology at The White House where he drove multiple initiatives from cyber-resilience, the future of AI, through to improvements in scientific communications. He serves on multiple private sector Boards, including HackerOne, Interos.ai, Veza, and is a Board Advisor to Plaid, the leading financial technology company. He remains active in advising many other organizations on matters of security, risk and compliance including The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Bank of England, and the Port Authority of Singapore.

Venables holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Computer Science, Formal Methods and Cryptography from the University of York and The Queen’s College at Oxford University. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Scientist, a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Information Security.