Meet the Talend Management Team and Board of Directors

Management Team

Christal Bemont
Chief Executive Officer

Christal joins Talend as a seasoned executive with a demonstrated track record in defining and leading sales and go-to-market strategies to significantly scale cloud businesses. Previously, she spent 15 years at SAP Concur, most recently leading its $2B business organization as Chief Revenue Officer. Prior to her CRO appointment, Christal was Senior Vice President and General Manager of SAP Concur’s Small, Midsized and Nationals (SMN) business unit. Early in her career, Christal served in a number of capacities focused on operational and technical roles at Motorola, Extensity, and Clarify.

Adam Meister
Chief Financial Officer

Adam joined Talend as Chief Financial Officer in 2018, bringing with him an in-depth knowledge of the software industry and strong capital markets expertise. Prior to Talend, Adam served as a Managing Director in the Technology, Media and Telecom Investment Banking Group at Goldman Sachs where he focused on advising and leading transaction execution for software clients.

Krishna Tammana
Chief Technology Officer

Krishna is responsible for scaling the product and engineering organizations to drive innovation and Talend’s continued market growth. Previously, Krishna spent nearly a decade as VP of Engineering at Splunk where he led global engineering teams and cloud operations during the company’s successful portfolio expansion and transition to the cloud. Prior to Splunk, Krishna held engineering management roles at Dun & Bradstreet, YouSendIt, RIGHT90 INC. and E*Trade.

Ann-Christel Graham
Chief Revenue Officer

Ann-Christel is responsible for Talend’s worldwide sales and channel operations. Prior to joining Talend, Ann-Christel was SAP Concur’s vice president sales, enterprise clients. She was part of the leadership team from Concur which was acquired by SAP in 2014. Ann-Christel brings over two decades of experience in SaaS enterprise sales from a global, regional, and sales engineer perspective.

Jamie Kiser
Chief Operating Officer & Chief Customer Officer

Jamie leads all of Talend’s operating and customer success functions. Prior to joining Talend, Jamie served over six years with SAP in various product, services, and operations leadership roles. Her most recent role at SAP was vice president, global public sector for SAP Concur where she led the formation of a global center of excellence focused on growing the public sector footprint. Before that, Jamie led operations for a global services organization of 3,500 people and drove the transformation of multiple areas of their business, including learning services, partner delivery, security and compliance, and systems innovation.

Lauren Vaccarello
Chief Marketing Officer

Lauren joins Talend with a lengthy track record of accelerating revenue growth at some of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing SaaS companies through modern digital marketing, branding, and demand generation programs. Previously, she served as Vice President of Marketing at Box and has also held executive roles at AdRoll and Salesforce.

Michelle Sitzman
Chief People Officer

Michelle joined Talend in 2019 bringing with her extensive experience in talent management. As Chief People Officer, she leads Talend’s global People and Workspaces teams. Prior to Talend, Michelle held People leadership roles in several of Silicon Valley’s fastest growing companies, including Equinix, VMware and most recently LinkedIn.

Aaron Ross
General Counsel

Before joining Talend, Aaron held senior in-house legal roles at Flex, Atmel, and Technicolor. Earlier in his career, he was an associate in the London and Paris offices of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and the San Francisco offices of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Aaron has a B.A. in Philosophy from Cornell and a J.D. from the U.C. Berkeley School of Law.

Board of Directors

Christal Bemont

Christal Bemont is the Chief Executive Officer of Talend. She is a seasoned executive with a demonstrated track record in defining and leading sales and go-to-market strategies to significantly scale cloud businesses. Previously, she spent 15 years at SAP Concur, most recently leading its $2B business organization as Chief Revenue Officer. Prior to her CRO appointment, Christal was Senior Vice President and General Manager of SAP Concur’s Small, Midsized and Nationals (SMN) business unit. Early in her career, Christal served in a number of capacities focused on operational and technical roles at Motorola, Extensity, and Clarify.

Nora Denzel

Ms. Denzel is the former interim CEO of Outerwall. Prior to that position, she served as the Senior Vice President of Big Data at Intuit and held several executive roles at HP Enterprise including SVP of HP’s Global Enterprise Software Business. Denzel currently sits on the boards of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Ericsson, and NortonLifeLock. She also previously served as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of AnitaB.org, a non-profit dedicated to increasing the number of women in computing.

Elizabeth Fetter

Elizabeth Fetter, a three-time public CEO, brings significant leadership and technology experience to Talend, having worked for companies in networking and B2B SaaS spaces. She previously served as CEO for Symmetricom Inc., QRS Corporation, and Jacent Technologies. Ms. Fetter is currently a director on a number of corporate, non-profit and advisory boards, including McGrath RentCorp, Fox Factory Holding Corp, and the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Elissa Fink

Elissa Fink brings significant marketing experience to the board, most recently having served as CMO for Tableau. She currently sits on the board of several technology companies, including Qumulo and Pantheon. Prior to Tableau, she was Executive Vice President at IXI Corporation, a financial services technology company acquired by Equifax, Inc.

Pat Jones

Pat Jones has been Chairman of the Board of several public technology companies and most recently was Chairman of the Board of InsideSecure SA (now Verimatrix), a digital content protection software company based in France. He has had considerable independent board member experience with a variety of technology companies, including software companies like Openwave Systems and Novell Inc. He was CFO of Gemplus SA (now Gemalto) as the company completed its IPO. Before that, he was VP Finance-Corporate Controller of Intel Corp., and was CFO of LSI Logic prior to that. Pat started his career at IBM and has lived and worked in Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Ryan Kearny

Ryan Kearny is Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Development at Lassen Peak, a software security company. He previously drove technology strategy, roadmap, and growth for more than two decades in various executive roles, including CTO, at F5 Networks, an application services and application delivery networking company.

Brian Lillie

Brian Lillie served as the Chief Product Officer of Equinix from October 2017 to April 2019. Prior to that, Mr. Lillie was the company’s Executive Vice President for Technology and Chief Customer Officer and the company’s Chief Information Officer. Before joining Equinix, Mr. Lillie held strategic leadership roles at Verisign, including Vice President of Global Sales Operations. Previously, Mr. Lillie was an officer with the United States Air Force for nearly a decade, serving as commander of a communications squadron.

Steve Singh

Steve Singh serves as a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group. Previously Mr. Singh, has served as Chairman & CEO of Docker, as a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE running the SAP Cloud Business Group, and as Chairman & CEO of Concur. Mr. Singh currently serves as Chairman of Talend, Executive Chairman of Center ID, Chairman of Modumetal, and a director at Clari, WaFd Bank and DocuSign.

Thierry Sommelet

Thierry Sommelet is Managing Director within the Mid & Large Cap division of Bpifrance Investissements, the private equity arm of the French public investment bank (formerly known as Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement, or “FSI”). Prior to joining FSI, he spearheaded investments of Caisse des Dépôts, a French public entity, in telecom infrastructure projetcts and digital services. Before that Thierry held different positions with HSBC, in Paris and New York, Los Altos-based Renaissance Software (now part of Sungard) and media company InfosCE. Thierry graduated from ENPC civil engineering school in Paris and holds an MBA from Insead.

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