Dropbox CFO Vanessa Wittman steps down due to ‘health reasons’; Ajay Vashee replaces her

Cloud file sharing software company Dropbox today announced that it has appointed a new chief financial officer, Ajay Vashee. He has been at Dropbox since 2012, initially as head of finance and more recently as head of corporate development.

Vashee replaces Vanessa Wittman, who took on the chief financial officer position in February 2015 in place of Sujay Jaswa, who was Dropbox’s first business leader. Prior to arriving at Dropbox, Wittman was senior vice president and chief financial officer at Motorola Mobility under Google. Earlier in her career Wittman was senior director of corporate development at Microsoft.

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Wittman is leaving because of health reasons, Dropbox cofounder and chief executive Drew Houston wrote in a blog post. She’ll stay on through September.

“Vanessa has had a huge impact on Dropbox since joining us and has brought great breadth and depth of experience to the role,” Houston wrote. “Under her leadership, we changed how our finance team partners with and drives our business. We became a company that’s better prepared for scale, more efficient, and — notably — free cash flow positive. She strengthened our global financial infrastructure, and we’re now building best-in-class revenue and accounting systems. We’re grateful for everything Vanessa has done for the company. She’s a beloved and inspiring leader at Dropbox, and we’ll really miss her.”

As for her successor, Vashee has been in charge of Dropbox’s fundraising and investor relations, among other things, Houston wrote. He previously worked at New Enterprise Associates and Morgan Stanley.

The San Francisco-based company has been in a position to go public, so the CFO role is an important one. Without question, becoming free cash flow positive is an achievement for the company’s business side and the company in general. Now, as Dropbox approaches its 10th birthday, the company is bringing in new leadership that could finally usher it through an initial public offering, so it can take its place in public markets alongside competitor Box and more fully challenge the likes of Google and Microsoft.

Earlier this year Dropbox said it had more than 500 million registered users.