Zendesk Hires First Chief Customer Officer, Expands Executive Bench with New CIO and SVP of Product Management

By STS News Desk On Feb 15, 2019

Zendesk Hires First Chief Customer Officer, Expands Executive Bench with New CIO and SVP of Product Management

Company appoints former Microsoft executive Elisabeth Zornes as first chief customer officer, former Adobe executive Colleen Berube as chief information officer, and former Salesforce executive Shawna Wolverton as senior vice president, product management

Zendesk, Inc. announced the appointment of three new executives to its growing leadership team. Joining the company are Elisabeth Zornes, former general manager of global support for Microsoft Office, as Zendesk’s first chief customer officer; former Adobe executive Colleen Berube as chief information officer; and former Salesforce executive Shawna Wolverton as senior vice president, product management.

“Never have we seen customer expectations or technology changing as rapidly as it is today,” said Mikkel Svane, Zendesk founder and CEO. “We are thrilled to be adding these proven enterprise leaders to Zendesk so we can help more companies around the world transform their customer experiences.”

Zornes will represent the collective voice of Zendesk’s 125,000 paid customer accounts in the role, and lead the teams responsible for helping customers onboard and maximize the benefits of the company’s growing product portfolio. She brings 20 years of experience as a leader in customer support, operations and services, most recently leading global customer support for Microsoft Office consumers, enterprise customers, and partners.

Colleen Berube joins as chief information officer, having formerly served as executive vice president and chief technology officer of Fisher Investments and executive in residence at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She brings more than two decades of leadership experience from pre-IPO to the Fortune 100 companies.

Wolverton comes to Zendesk with more than 15 years experience in product management and leadership. Most recently, she was the chief product officer at Planet, and previously was senior vice president for product management at Salesforce, where she oversaw all platform development.

The new appointments are part of the company’s recent leadership expansion aimed at supporting its global growth and long-term goal of becoming a multibillion-dollar revenue company.