As tech companies scale, it’s natural for them to bring on new leaders armed with fresh perspectives, ideas and growth strategies. In January, at least five Boston tech startups, including Wayfair and BitSight Technologies, experienced major leadership changes, adding new teammates with big plans for the future. Check them out below.
Wayfair, one of the largest online home retailers, announced that Molly Sullivan would be joining the company as head of creative this month. Sullivan is joining Wayfair with more than 15 years of creative marketing experience under her belt. In her new role, Sullivan will oversee Wayfair’s brand and marketing creative initiatives. Prior to joining Wayfair, Sullivan worked on the creative team at Salesforce. Before that, she founded Edelman Digital’s Pacific Northwest digital and creative teams, working with brands that included Microsoft, Xbox and Starbucks.
Cambridge startup Sense hired former Amazon exec George Zavaliagkos as its new vice president of technology in January. Zavaliagkos joins Sense from Amazon Alexa, where he led a team of 300 data scientists, engineers and linguists. In his new role, Zavaliagkos will oversee Sense’s technology portfolio, which includes the development of deep machine learning for the Sense home energy monitor. This device collects data and helps homeowners understand how their appliances, devices and lights are using energy so that they can live more sustainably and efficiently. Sense also appointed Rhoda Ullmann to vice president of marketing and consumer sales this month, where she will be in charge of driving consumer sales and directing marketing and communications. Ullmann has been with the startup since 2015.
Mimecast, an email and data security company headquartered in Lexington, made two key hires this month. Janet Levesque, formerly the chief security officer at RSA, was brought on as senior vice president of systems, risk and security; meanwhile, March French, former CSO at Constant Contact, joined the company as its first-ever chief trust officer. In this role, French will be responsible for overseeing a global strategy to ensure customer confidence in Mimecast products and services. Levesque, who brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in information technology and security to Mimecast, will be responsible for overseeing the company’s internal security, infrastructure and risk teams in her new position.
2017 was a big year for marketing tech startup Blueconic, which tripled its year-over-year growth and brought on more than 100 new clients. To support its explosive growth, Blueconic made a handful of strategic hires, including Michele Szabocsik, who was brought on as the new VP of marketing at the start of January. Szabocsik joins BlueConic from Visual IQ with B2B digital marketing experience. Blueconic also recently hired Ryan Fecher from InsightSquared as the new director of inside sales, as well as Lauren Pettiglio from TripAdvisor as the new director of demand generation.
BitSight Technologies, a startup offering a security ratings platform to help companies manage third-party risk, closed 2017 with a bang, recording over 90 percent worldwide revenue growth and 75 percent customer growth. To support its expansion, BitSight strengthened its executive team this month, adding Mary-Jo Porcello as its new vice president of people and talent, and Eric Fischer as its senior vice president of sales. Prior to her current role, Porcello was VP of human resources at Mendix, while Fischer was chief revenue officer at Turbonomic.
