The Ascent Go To Market San Francisco Summit

Joe Camberato is the CEO and founder of National Business Capital – the leading fintech marketplace, helping entrepreneurs access competitive financing fast through an easy-to-use online platform and experienced team. Joe knows entrepreneurs because he is an entrepreneur. With a strong vision, determination, and passionate leadership, Joe grew his firm from a small operation in his spare bedroom to one of the top workplaces on Long Island – all without one dollar of private equity.

Tim Riesterer, Chief Visionary at B2B DecisionLabs, is dedicated to helping companies harness the power of Decision Science to win more business with prospects and customers. He is a recognized thought leader, keynote speaker, and practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in marketing and sales management. Riesterer is co-author of four books, including Customer Message Management, Conversations that Win the Complex Sale, The Three Value Conversations, and The Expansion Sale.

Nathan joined Lucid in 2017 with 20+ years of experience overseeing sales and marketing efforts across a variety of technology companies. Prior to Lucid, Nathan led worldwide marketing activities for Puppet and helped scale Jive through an IPO as he directed product marketing and brand. Nathan holds a B.A. in humanities from Brigham Young University.

Gaurav Agarwal is the Chief Growth Officer at ClickUp, accelerating hyper-scale growth through data-driven marketing and product growth. He leads the $4B SaaS company's growth marketing, growth product, growth ops, data science, inbound & content, content, CRM & lifecycle, and more. He is a passionate about growth with proven expertise in growing businesses at scale across many industries. Before joining ClickUp, he was SVP of Growth at Freedom Financial Network after serving as the SVP of Growth (and Interim CMO) at Molekule. Gaurav is also an advisor and angel investor in 25+ companies disrupting SaaS, e-commerce, CPG, fintech, and hardware.

As CMO, I have helped pioneering companies achieve the coveted leadership position of trusted guide in new industry categories. The result has been billions of dollars of enterprise value for SignalFx (acquired by Splunk for $1.05B); Sprinklr (last valued on NYSE at $3B+); AppNexus (acquired by AT&T for $1.6B); PTC (pivoted from CAD vendor to PLM leader); and Red Hat (2nd highest IPO in NASDAQ history & most-valued Open Source company). My journey has led me to Airship.

As Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Pantheon, Josh is focused on making the Open Web a first class platform for delivering results. Championing the value of the developer experience, and the need to demonstrate impact with data, his work combines the visionary ideals of Open Source with the pragmatic utility of the agile approach. In 2021, Josh was recognized as a Top 25 Software Products Executive by The Software Report. As a very early Drupal adopter (user #3313), Josh was part of the team that drove the first high-profile public Drupal use-case with the Howard Dean campaign in 2003. He went on to found the Drupal Dojo, an online learning community for developers, and to co-found the premiere Drupal agency in San Francisco, Chapter Three. The web is the cornerstone of modern campaigns, causes, businesses and brands, and the demand for quick, quality digital experiences is high and only getting higher. At Pantheon, Josh’s mission is to liberate web teams from the confines of enterprise monoliths and the drudgery of infrastructure operations so they focus on their real strategic goals using the highest-quality tools of the trade.

Ali leads all marketing and communications efforts at MNTN. Ali is also an instructor at UCLA Extension, teaching marketing and advertising courses in the Business & Management certification program. Previously, Ali served as principal product designer at Symantec working on the Norton Security line of consumer software. Prior to Symantec, Ali oversaw digital marketing for the Digital Media Services division of Verizon.

Guy Marion is GM of Chargebee Retention and the former founder and CEO of Brightback. Marion is a revenue-focused SaaS leader with hands-on experience growing ARR from $0M - $150M. His areas of expertise include customer retention strategy, marketing, product, growth, and sales functions for marketing automation & attribution, CRM, marketing technology, customer service, open source software, and dev tools.

Julie is the Chief Revenue Officer and US CEO at Babbel, the No.1 destination for language learners globally. She’s focused on accelerating Babbel's global growth, transforming Babbel's function as the world’s top-grossing language learning app into a multi-product ecosystem for differentiated language learning experiences for consumers and businesses alike. Julie joined Babbel in 2017 as the US CEO and successfully scaled the US market up to Babbel's biggest country in terms of new subscriber revenue. Prior to Babbel, she was the COO and President at Business Insider, establishing the news site as the most visited business outlet on the internet.

Fran Wilson is the Chief Marketing Officer of Boomi. She brings more than 20 years of successful leadership in SaaS and B2B enterprise software organizations. Prior to Boomi, Fran played an integral role in marketing leadership through Red Hat’s initial public offering (IPO), and during its rapid growth from $400 million to more than $4 billion, culminating in its sale to IBM for $34 billion. Following the acquisition, she co-led global Synergy GTM programs developing joint sales and marketing programs to drive net new customer acquisition at scale. Fran holds a MBA from Wake Forest University.

Helping large enterprises and start-ups build their brand and bring it to life through compelling content experiences.

As CMO of Intentsify, Jennifer Ross empowers marketing, sales and customer success leaders with accurate and predictive customer and market insights that accelerate alignment and revenue growth, with powerful integrated technology, data, and programs that activate dynamic future-proof go-to-market strategies. An author, thought leader and keynote speaker on B2B marketing best practices, Jennifer is passionate about accelerating profitable growth, driving innovations, and leading business transformations. Most recently, Jennifer led the B2B Marketing Executive service at Forrester and SiriusDecisions, a global research and advisory firm that empowers the world’s leading marketing, product, and sales leaders to align with one another, execute with precision, and accelerate growth, where she and her team acted as the trusted personal advisors to leading global CMOs, providing actionable intelligence, transformative frameworks, and expert industry guidance that equipped executives to modernize and elevate sales, marketing, and product performance, and deliver exceptional audience-centric go-to-market strategies. Prior to joining SiriusDecisions, Jennifer held marketing leadership roles at both established and startup B2B companies including JD Edwards, CosmoCom, IBM, Alteryx and Telelogic, building and scaling high- performing world class marketing teams that drive outstanding growth.

Lu Zhang, Founder and Managing Partner of Fusion Fund, is a renowned Silicon Valley based investor, a serial entrepreneur, and a Stanford Engineering alumna. Lu is a World Economic Forum(Davos) Young Global Leader (Class of 2018) and was recently selected as a Best 25 Female Investor by Business Insider. She has also garnered other accolades including the Featured Honoree in VC of Forbes 30 Under 30, Silicon Valley Women of Influence, and Town & Country 50 Modern Swans – Entrepreneurship Influencer. Prior to starting Fusion Fund, she was the Founder and CEO of Acetone.inc, a medical device company focused on non-invasive technology for the early diagnosis of Type II diabetes (acq. 2013). Lu is a frequent speaker at tech events and conferences such as Davos Economic Forum, Future Investment Initiative (FII), Forbes, Web Summit, SuperReturn, etc. and also serves as a mentor and advisor to several tech innovation programs in Silicon Valley. Lu is the board member of the Youth Council of Future Forum and Future Science Award. Lu is also on the Jury Board of the Cartier Young Leader Award. She received her M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Rashmi Gopinath is a Partner at B Capital Group, where she focuses on growth-stage investments in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, devops, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. She was previously a Managing Director at M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, where she led investments globally in the enterprise space. Prior to M12, Ms. Gopinath was an Investment Director with Intel Capital.

Andrew joined Activant in Fund I and has played a key role in all aspects of firm building as one of the firm’s longest-serving investors. He focuses primarily on fintech and B2B commerce infrastructure software, and frequently shares Activant’s thesis work in major tech media. Prior to joining Activant, Andrew was the co-founder and CEO of IvyMinded, a global ed-tech business. Originally from Northern Ireland, Andrew moved to the US to earn his undergraduate degree from Harvard University.

David Siegel is the CEO of Meetup, the platform for finding and building local communities, owned by the We Company. He has over 20 years of experience as a technology and digital media executive leading organizations through innovative product development, rapid revenue growth and traffic acceleration. Prior to joining Meetup, David was CEO of Investopedia, the largest finance and investing education site and before that President of Seeking Alpha, a crowdsourced investment research business. David holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics & Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and Pace University where he teaches courses in Strategic Planning & Entrepreneurship.

Tyler is a marketing executive with a passion for creative storytelling, data-driven marketing, and creating exceptional customer experiences. As VP of Marketing at Vidyard, he’s spent 6+ years immersed in the world of online video and content marketing, helping to define and share best practices for businesses of all shapes and sizes. He’s a frequent speaker and author on topics spanning video marketing, content marketing, B2B sales, and account-based marketing, and is the host of the Creating Connections podcast and Video in Focus show.

Khalid El Khatib is the Chief Marketing Officer at Stack Overflow and is responsible for marketing, communications, and advertising initiatives. Throughout his career he’s elevated and transformed the awareness and perception of global brands, most recently at GLG where he was Vice President of Marketing and Communications. Before GLG he worked as a senior director at Group SJR, a WPP agency, where he led a diverse portfolio that included General Electric, Goldman Sachs, TED, and Xerox. He began his career working in communications at Teach For America which fostered a passion for social impact; he continues to volunteer in NYC schools and fundraises for numerous refugee relief organizations today. Khalid graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science and creative writing. In his free time he contributes to VICE, them., and PAPER where he writes about art, culture, and LGBTQ issues.

Clint helped found SugarCRM in 2004 with the goal of enabling companies around the world to turn their customers into loyal fans. Today, he leads strategy and acquisitions for the company. Clint was one of the original architects and developers of the Sugar application and has focused on building out the product, company, partners and community in a variety of executive roles.

I am a seasoned marketing leader with a proven record of accelerating revenue and pipeline in high growth SaaS businesses. I have extensive hands-on experience developing marketing strategy, leading go to market operations, building brand awareness, establishing new categories, generating quality leads at scale, increasing customer lifetime value, and heading up all marketing functions. Growing up I would never have imagined the life and career I’ve enjoyed but I learned early on to trust my instincts and seize every opportunity that came my way. A lot of luck and fortunate timing mixed with good problem solving skills led me to the opportunities to build the global campaigns, product marketing, and demand generation functions at Concur in its high-growth years and then on to build out a full marketing organization in my first CMO role at Schoology. As SVP of Marketing at New Relic I had the unique opportunity to transform an SMB-oriented high velocity marketing organization into an enterprise SaaS marketing leader. And along the way I have been fortunate that the travels from my roles leading marketing teams across Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America have brought me in contact with amazing and inspiring people, many of whom I count as close friends today.

As founder and CEO, Ben Wright leads strategy and growth of Velocity Global and its hundreds of global team members. Wright founded the company in 2014 as a revolutionary way for businesses to expand and hire across global markets and applies two decades of experience supporting clients’ global business and distributed teams. Today, the company’s Global Work Platform™ offers a full suite of talent solutions, including global Employer of Record (EoR) and Contractor Management, to help thousands of companies compliantly onboard, manage, and pay full-time and part-time talent, contractors, and freelancers anywhere. Wright is a recognized expert on the future of work and global expansion strategies. He was a national finalist for EY's Entrepreneur of the Year and holds a B.B.A. in Accounting from the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame.

Eldridge, a lead investor in Velocity Global, employs more than 3,000 people and has made investments in over 70 operating businesses, including Security Benefit, of which Mr. Boehly is Chairman, dick clark productions, A24, Fulwell 73, and Penske Media, which includes The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Vibe, Music Business Worldwide, Life is Beautiful, and the investment in South by Southwest. Mr. Boehly is Chairman of Chelsea Football Club and an owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Los Angeles Sparks, Cloud9, and DraftKings. He is on the boards of the Los Angeles Lakers, Flexjet, PayActiv, CAIS, Cain International, Kennedy Wilson (NYSE: KW), Vivid Seats (NASDAQ: SEAT), and Horizon Acquisition Corporation II (NYSE: HZON). Mr. Boehly was formerly on the board of Truebill. Prior to founding Eldridge, Mr. Boehly was President of Guggenheim Partners and founded the credit business at Guggenheim. He received his B.B.A. from The College of William & Mary, where he later founded The Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance, and studied at the London School of Economics. Mr. Boehly supports epilepsy research, Focused Ultrasound Foundation, Prostate Cancer Foundation, Brunswick School, and The College of William & Mary.

Dave West is the CEO at Scrum.org. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports, along with his acclaimed book: Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, that helped define new software modeling and application development processes. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational. After IBM/Rational, West returned to consulting and managed Ivar Jacobson Consulting for North America. Then as VP, research director Forrester research where he ran the software development and delivery practice. Prior to joining Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture.

Tim Geisert serves as a Partner at AuctusIQ. He is the executive on the leadership team that crafts the vision, shapes the product strategy, and inspires teams to grow the business. That, and more than 30 years of experience growing companies through marketing and sales, is what Geisert brings to AuctusIQ.

As Co-Founder and Chief Officer of Science and Strategy for AuctusIQ, Dr. McCashland brings academic and applied insight to how the talents, experience, knowledge, and skills of the salesforce can be measured and managed to shorten the sales cycle and increase sales production.

Founder of @sequel, ex @HP. Growing an awesome team with the purpose of providing organizations of all sizes with the ability to fully realize the future of work and connectivity. Expert and keynote speaker at global events with a focus on innovation, the importance of consumer engagement in a B2B environment, women in technology, and entrepreneurship.

Nithi Vivatrat is the Chief Product Officer of Sorcero, the leading language intelligence platform for life sciences companies. Nithi has spent his career starting and working in early stage tech companies, particularly in the field of analytics. Prior to joining Sorcero, Nithi was the Chief Product Officer of Socially Determined, a provider of risk intelligence on social determinants of health. Prior to that, Nithi was the Chief Product Officer of Clarabridge, the leading customer feedback analytics and management platform, acquired by Qualtrics in 2021 for $1.125 billion, where he was responsible for product management, engineering, and cloud operations. He is the co-author of two Clarabridge patents on unstructured data analytics. Nithi has served as Chief Operating Officer of Ntrepid, co-founder of Claraview (acquired by Teradata), and multiple roles at MicroStrategy. Nithi received an SB in Economics from MIT. Nithi also serves as the board chair for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.

Dror has over 25 years of technology, security, and business development experience. Before joining Coro, Dror was the CIO of the IDF’s military police and then became the CEO of Pose, a Venture Partner at RDSeed, a GM at IXI Mobile, and a SVP at Publicis.

As Chief Marketing Officer, Cristy Ebert Garcia spearheads impact.com’s global marketing. Named by Business Insider as one of “The Most Important Marketing-Tech Executives of 2021,” and SaaS Marketing Leader of the Year by Appealie, Cristy leads an award-winning team of marketers. Prior to her current role, Cristy was Vice President of Global Marketing at Celtra and before that, Rakuten Advertising. She is part of the Forbes Communications Council, regularly contributing articles about the expanding power of partnerships to drive revenue and growth. She is also a member of Chief, a network designed to highlight and mentor women in executive leadership positions.

Jordana Beck is the Director of Creator and Influencer Marketing for Walmart U.S. With over 10 years of experience, she leads and develops U.S. influencer partnerships by identifying revenue-generating marketing strategies that drive brand growth for Walmart. Jordana is a customer-obsessed and results-driven leader that creates innovative experiences that are changing perception and sentiment for one of the world’s largest retailers. Jordana’s expertise lies in executing digital and experiential programs, influencer activations, and events, all supported by analytics to drive sales, conversion and customer acquisition. Jordana graduated from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. When Jordana isn’t working, you can find her chasing her two young kids and labradoodle around Westchester.

Alina Vandenberghe is a Romanian native that created a tech billion dollar from nothing. Chili Piper is the leading inbound conversion software, fueling today’s high-growth B2B revenue teams. Co-founded with her husband Nicolas, Chili Piper boosts buyer engagement for companies like Spotify, Airbnb, Twilio, Shopify, and many more. With more than 240 employees in over 40 countries, Chili Piper has been spicing sales up since 2016. The born-entrepreneur started her first company before high school — before she even knew what entrepreneurism was. After building mobile products used by millions in varied industries like media at Reuters, finance at Bloomberg, and education at Pearson, Alina decided to take her product management talents to B2B software solutions. Alina earned a Engineering Degree in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University in Bucharest, Romania. She currently resides in New York City with her husband and two sons.

Kuda Biza started his first company when he was just nine years old in Zimbabwe. Kuda moved to the U.S. with only $40 in his pocket to study at Lynn University, he started his second company, a socially conscious apparel brand, before graduating as valedictorian of his class. Kuda went on to climb the ranks of corporate leadership at a Fortune 500 company before transitioning to become a full-time entrepreneur with the goal of balancing success with being a force for good in the world. Today Kuda is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Nunbelievable, a mission-based baked goods company built on a foundation of purpose: fighting hunger. The company is backed by Tony Robbins, IdealabNY and Loeb.nyc, and it donates a meal for every cookie sold. In less than two years, Nunbelievable has donated over one-million meals to people in need. Before starting Nunbelievable, Kuda spent over a decade in innovation and e-commerce roles at Newell Brands, home to iconic brands like Calphalon, Crock-Pot, Graco, Mr. Coffee and Sharpie. Kuda led highly successful multi-million-dollar growth initiatives but was convinced there was a way to both succeed and drive social change—to put purpose in the driver’s seat. As a speaker, Kuda’s extraordinary business and leadership acumen combine with his passion for helping leaders, organizations and individuals find their own path to being purpose-driven. The author of The S.P.E.A.R. Method: 5 Simple Steps to Balanced Success & Fulfillment, Kuda Biza inspires audiences to identify their purpose and make a difference.