Hiya, the Seattle startup whose tech helps block unwanted spam and fraud calls, has added Salesforce President and CMO Sarah Franklin to its board of directors, the company announced Thursday.
Franklin has been at San Francisco-based Salesforce for 13 years, where she was also executive vice president and general manager of Platform and AppExchange for the company. She did a short stint with Amazon Web Services in 2013 and has worked for a number of smaller startups, with a focus on emerging technologies and marketing strategies.
“Sarah has a unique blend of technical knowledge and business acumen that spans from large enterprises to scrappy startups, and her strategic guidance will be invaluable to our continued growth and success, especially with large enterprise customers,” Alex Algard, CEO and founder of Hiya, said in a news release. “As we look to create a better voice experience for all, Sarah is the perfect person to ensure we remain committed to thinking big and launching products that transform the voice call.”
Hiya has added nearly 50 million new monthly active users to its network in the past year, serving 180 million users worldwide. It’s grown its global enterprise customer base by more than 115% in that time.
The company topped Forbe’s Best Startup Employers List for 2021and was a finalist for Workplace of the Year at the 2021 GeekWire Awards.
“I’m very excited to join Hiya’s board at this time in their evolution. They have a great product, strong value proposition, massive market opportunity, and, most importantly, a stellar team,” Franklin said in a statement. “Hiya is addressing a huge pain point for businesses and consumers alike, and I look forward to working with the team to continue its rapid growth with large enterprise customers.”
Hiya also announced a couple more personnel moves on Thursday:
- Bill McAleer joins as a new board advisor. The managing director at Voyager Capital led Voyager’s investment in Zipwhip, which was acquired by Twilio earlier this year.
- Aaron Martin has been added as chief financial officer. He was previously CFO at cloud based travel technology company Yapta, which was acquired by Coupa Software in 2019.
from GeekWire https://www.geekwire.com/2021/seattle-spam-call-blockers-hiya-add-salesforce-president-cmo-sarah-franklin-board/