Our leaders

Ben Barclay is Zendesk’s SVP of Strategy, Corporate Development and Transformation. In this capacity, he is responsible for aligning the management team and company around its strategy and subsequently guiding the execution of that strategy through business operations, acquisitions and investments, and strategic partnerships.

Ben joined Zendesk in 2015. Ben previously worked at Kleiner Perkins and Deloitte. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Carleton College, and lives in San Francisco with his wife and 3-year-old son.

Ben is an avid public radio listener and supporter, volunteer at Jewish Vocational Services and an enthusiast of California’s national parks, foods and wines.

Chris is President of Global Sales and Field Engineering and has over 25 years of enterprise selling experience in the North American and Global markets and a proven track record driving business results and developing GTM organisations. In his role, Chris leads field sales, presales, customer success and consulting with a primary goal of positioning Zendesk’s market- leading service cloud solutions across all market segments from SMB to the Fortune 500 segment.

Most recently, Chris served as the President of Global Sales and a member of the Executive Committee at Celonis. During his time there, Chris was responsible for the development of Celonis’ global GTM organisation across a number of regions and industries.

Prior to Celonis, Chris spent 26 years at Oracle in a number of application and technology leadership positions. Before leaving Oracle, Chris was the EVP of Oracle’s multibillion-dollar N.A. Applications and Consulting Business and was responsible for positioning Oracle’s market- leading back-office and front office cloud solutions across all market segments.

Chris and his wife live in Madison, New Jersey and have three children. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Susquehanna University and a finance industry certification from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Chris also served as a Trustee at Lafayette College.

Tom is the CEO of Zendesk and a member of the board.

Most recently, Tom was a partner at the private equity firm Permira, where he was the Head of the Menlo Park office and focused on investing and value creation in the technology sector. In addition to the Zendesk board, Tom serves on the boards of Axiom, G2, Seismic and Mimecast. Prior to joining Permira, Tom was the President of Genesys, a Permira fund portfolio company and global leader in omnichannel customer experience and contact centre software. During his more than ten-year tenure with Genesys, he focused on developing and implementing strategic and operational initiatives aimed at driving value creation across the business. Tom’s previous global experience includes working in Paris, France for almost five years along with over 20 years operational experience in the technology sector leading teams from sales to research and development.

Tom holds a BA from the University of Dayton and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

Tom and his family live in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. He enjoys travelling, reading history books and following the University of Dayton Flyers basketball team.

Craig Flower is Chief Information Officer at Zendesk and is responsible for ensuring that Zendesk’s technology stack and digital capabilities are deployed in a way that enable customer and employee success.

Craig is a seasoned tech executive with extensive experience across a broad range of businesses. Prior to Zendesk, Craig was Chief Technology Officer for TriNet, where he focused on establishing the company as a cohesive, scalable HR service provider tailored to the needs of six industry verticals by replatforming the product, digitising key processes and accelerating the transition to cloud. Earlier in his career, Craig served as Chief Information Officer for Hewlett-Packard. As a hands-on executive during his 20+ year HP tenure, Craig drove business model innovation in conjunction with process and IT transformation, resulting in significant revenue growth and margin expansion.

Craig has a Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Sciences from Stanford University.

Craig lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. He enjoys many outdoor activities, travelling with family and friends, reading, live music and Bay Area sports.

Cait is the Chief of Staff to the CEO at Zendesk, with more than 12 years’ experience driving organisational business operations and strategic initiatives across various departments within Zendesk. In this role, Cait will work with key leaders across the organisation to ensure execution against the company’s strategy, including our highest business priorities. Most recently, she held the critical role of SVP of Customer Service, leading a team of globally-distributed CX professionals focused on delivering a world-class customer experience to our 100,000+ customers. Prior to this, Cait was the the General Manager of Zendesk Chat, spending two years in Singapore building out the GTM strategy and roadmap for this emerging product. Cait’s background includes Sales, Account Management, Renewals and Customer Success at Marketo and ServiceSource.

Cait holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Italian from UC Davis. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children. She enjoys travelling, reading and spending time with family and friends.

Since 2010, Adrian has led Zendesk’s product management and engineering teams, constantly creating new paths for product innovation and development. As the company’s Chief Technology Officer, he is currently responsible for defining its long-term strategic product direction that will shape the future of customer service. He also helps guide the company’s global customers on how to enhance their customer experience to create better relationships.

Previously, Adrian served as Chief Technical Officer at Attributor, where he managed web-crawling and content-identification systems for text, video and images. He was the first engineer hired by Plumtree Software, and remained with the company through its IPO and subsequent acquisition by BEA.

Adrian is a Yorkshireman living in San Francisco.

Annmarie is the Acting Chief People Officer at Zendesk. She is a Partner and Chief Talent Officer at Hellman & Friedman. Her primary responsibility is to help Zendesk drive value by improving the organisational and leadership effectiveness. Annmarie has over twenty years of experience working with global organisations on executive leadership, talent management and organisational development. Prior to H&F, she ran her own consulting firm and held the Chief Talent Officer roles at both Cisco Systems and First Data Corporation. Additionally, she was a senior consultant with RHR International. Her education includes Boston College; Santa Clara University, Master’s Degree in Counselling; Harvard University, Graduate Certificate of Special Studies; and California School of Professional Psychology Alameda/Berkeley, Doctorate in Clinical Psychology with an Emphasis in Management Psychology.

Shana Simmons is the Chief Legal Officer at Zendesk. She oversees corporate governance and advises on the legal implications of the company’s strategic initiatives.

Shana joined Zendesk in March 2024. Prior to this, Shana served as the Chief Legal Officer at Everlaw, where she spearheaded the legal department overseeing all aspects of legal, regulatory, privacy, governance, risk and compliance matters. Before joining Everlaw, Shana held the position of Head of Go-To-Market Legal at Google Cloud, where her team played a pivotal role in driving the company’s expansion into global and regulated markets. Shana achieves results by investing in and mentoring her teams, while also being a committed champion of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

Shana began her legal career as a capital markets associate at Cleary Gottlieb Stein & Hamilton LLP in New York and London. She earned her Juris Doctor (Doctor of Law) degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and also holds a BA degree with honours from Wesleyan University.

Committed to giving back to her community, Shana serves on the boards of Lawyers for One America and the Oakland Zoo. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and two children.

Julie Swinney is the Chief Financial Officer of Zendesk. She oversees global finance, which includes finance and strategy, accounting, revenue operations, tax and treasury, internal audit and procurement. Julie focuses on driving strategy through execution with disciplined financial management and is an ardent champion of diversity and inclusion.

Julie joined Zendesk in October 2021 as Senior Vice President of Finance and Strategy. Prior to joining Zendesk, Julie had a 25 year career at Intel Corporation, including serving as the Chief Financial Officer at the cloud and enterprise data centre business, leading corporate planning, strategy and reporting, and overseeing a portfolio of startup software businesses. Julie holds a Bachelor’s in Finance from Indiana University and a J.D. from the Indiana University School of Law.

Julie enjoys hiking, travelling, reading and spending quality time with family.

Kelly Waldher is Chief Marketing Officer for Zendesk and responsible for leading the company’s global marketing, communications and social impact team, building the Zendesk brand and delivering world-class demand.

Prior to Zendesk, Kelly was Vice President for Google Workspace and responsible for global marketing, including brand, product, demand gen, growth and analyst relations. Before Google, Kelly was General Manager at Qualtrics, where he led product management; product marketing; service delivery and the profit and loss of their BrandXM and DesignXM business lines. His career also spanned 14 years at Microsoft, where he was General Manager of Microsoft 365 and Teams and responsible for global product marketing. Waldher started his career at Dow Chemical, where he spent seven years across a range of functions including sales, marketing, supply chain management and production engineering.

Kelly holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Washington State University.

Kelly lives in the Seattle area with his wife and three children. He enjoys outdoor sports, travelling to new locations, reading and spending time with family & friends.

Shashi Upadhyay is Zendesk’s President of Product, Engineering and AI, responsible for developing innovative products that leverage advanced AI. With a proven track record of creating transformative solutions, he combines a deep understanding of AI's potential for business transformation with a strong commitment to customer-centric design.

Before Zendesk, Shashi held a key role at Google, where he led the advertiser product portfolio and spearheaded innovation as the head of Google Ads, Google Analytics, DV3, SA3 and Performance Max, one of Google’s fastest-growing products. Prior to Google, he founded Lattice Engines, which was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) in 2019. He played an instrumental role in D&B's public offering in 2020 and has since become an active investor in start-ups across diverse sectors, including energy storage, neuroscience and enterprise infrastructure.

Shashi earned his undergraduate degree in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University.

He resides in San Francisco with his wife, two teenagers and their Bernedoodle. In his free time, he enjoys reading science fiction, hiking, cycling and exploring new destinations.