Talkdesk CEO and leadership

Johnson brings to Talkdesk more than two decades of expertise in global marketing leadership, including software as a service (SaaS) marketing and demonstrated success accelerating revenue growth through full-funnel marketing. Before joining Talkdesk, Johnson held diverse executive marketing and communications positions at Salesforce - a Fortune 500 company, and Dassault Systèmes - a Fortune Future 50 company.

During her tenure at Salesforce, Johnson served as senior vice president (SVP) of marketing, responsible for growing the company’s approach with a focus on seven industries and 18 sub-verticals. Previously at Salesforce, she was integral to the success of marketing’s organizational transformation following the Demandware acquisition. During her career, Johnson’s work has been celebrated with domestic and international recognition, including the prestigious European Excellence Awards, Communicator Awards, Internet Marketing Association (IMA) Impact Awards and Telly Awards.

Charanya (CK) Kannan has over 15 years of experience bringing innovative cloud saas products to market. Prior to Talkdesk, Kannan held product leadership and management positions in Model N, Oracle Corporation and AT&T. As Chief Product Officer, Kannan oversees product strategy, product marketing, product management and user experience design. She earned a Masters in Innovation Management from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

Raoul was Talkdesk's first hire and currently serves as the company’s CTO. His main objective is to empower engineering teams to build solutions that emphasize quality, simplicity, and reliability. Raoul holds a M.S. in Distributed Systems and Software Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon.

Chad has more than 20 years of software experience, most recently in key customer-facing executive roles at Skillsoft as Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Operations Officer (COO), and as SAP’s COO of Regulated Industries. Gaydos has served customers globally in both the private and public sectors across 15 different industries. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Kennesaw State University.

I have extensive experience as a CFO leading public and private high growth SAAS companies. I have a broad range of financial and operational experience both as an executive and as a board member in the areas of accounting, financial planning, mergers and acquisition, investor relations, treasury, facilities, compliance and IT/business operations.

David Middler is Talkdesk’s first Chief Legal Officer (CLO), bringing more than 20 years of corporate legal experience within the software technology space to the company. Before joining Talkdesk, Middler spent 15 years at cloud software provider Ariba, most recently as executive vice president and general counsel. Middler helped build the legal and governance team at Ariba from startup through Initial Public Offering (IPO) and eventually led its sale to SAP. Most recently, Middler served as general counsel and CLO for more than six years at Cloudera, also steering the company from startup to IPO and continued growth as a public company.

As Talkdesk’s Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), Laura is responsible for creating and strengthening a positive culture that thrives on innovation and doing great work. Laura has spent more than two decades shaping global talent strategies and building award-winning employee experiences for Fortune 500 and Cloud 100 companies. Before joining Talkdesk, Laura was the Senior Vice President of People and Culture at Workfront, an Adobe company. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Johnson brings to Talkdesk more than two decades of expertise in global marketing leadership, including software as a service (SaaS) marketing and demonstrated success accelerating revenue growth through full-funnel marketing. Before joining Talkdesk, Johnson held diverse executive marketing and communications positions at Salesforce - a Fortune 500 company, and Dassault Systèmes - a Fortune Future 50 company.

During her tenure at Salesforce, Johnson served as senior vice president (SVP) of marketing, responsible for growing the company’s approach with a focus on seven industries and 18 sub-verticals. Previously at Salesforce, she was integral to the success of marketing’s organizational transformation following the Demandware acquisition. During her career, Johnson’s work has been celebrated with domestic and international recognition, including the prestigious European Excellence Awards, Communicator Awards, Internet Marketing Association (IMA) Impact Awards and Telly Awards.

Charanya (CK) Kannan has over 15 years of experience bringing innovative cloud saas products to market. Prior to Talkdesk, Kannan held product leadership and management positions in Model N, Oracle Corporation and AT&T. As Chief Product Officer, Kannan oversees product strategy, product marketing, product management and user experience design. She earned a Masters in Innovation Management from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

Raoul was Talkdesk's first hire and currently serves as the company’s CTO. His main objective is to empower engineering teams to build solutions that emphasize quality, simplicity, and reliability. Raoul holds a M.S. in Distributed Systems and Software Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon.

Chad has more than 20 years of software experience, most recently in key customer-facing executive roles at Skillsoft as Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Operations Officer (COO), and as SAP’s COO of Regulated Industries. Gaydos has served customers globally in both the private and public sectors across 15 different industries. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Kennesaw State University.