Kira Systems has appointed former Thomson Reuters vice president for corporate sales, Joanna Trimble, as the company’s chief revenue officer, completing the Kira executive team, which has undergone a strategic transformation over the past year.
Trimble joins Kira Systems with over 25 years in the legal industry including spearheading sales transformation at online directory LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell (now owned by Internet Brands) and scaling Practical Law (acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2014). At TR, Trimble oversaw the teams working with in-house lawyers and led five years of double-digit growth while executing on major sales force transformation projects. At Kira, Trimble will primarily focus on driving new revenue opportunities, implementing strategic initiatives and ensuring customer success.
“Joanna has a stellar track record leading sales teams in legal and corporate markets; a horde of people we respect told us superlatively great things about her.” said Noah Waisberg, CEO and co-founder of Kira Systems. “I look forward to learning so much from Joanna and our other highly experienced leaders as we accelerate Kira into its next era of our growth.”
Trimble’s addition completes the formation of the Kira executive team, which has built out supporting roles in finance, marketing and since it’s $50M USD minority investment by Insight Ventures in 2018. Vinay Nair, senior vice president for marketing, joined the company in January 2019 with a breadth of technology market experience in growth tech and large multinational companies such as Intelex (where he was also SVP marketing), IBM, and Microsoft.
Maria Cartagena, senior vice president people, is another recent addition and joined Kira Systems last year with over 20 years of technology HR experience, including roles at Nulogy, ScribbleLive, and IntelliResponse.
Also having joined within the last two years are Susan Fox, CFO/COO, and Michael Raw, senior vice president technology, who was previously senior director for cloud adoption, innovation and technology at RBC.
Rounding out the rest of the executive team are the originals, Noah Waisberg, co-founder and CEO; Dr. Alexander Hudek, co-founder and chief technology officer; and Steve Obsenski, chief product officer. While this is Kira’s first dedicated CRO hire, Obenski started out life as chief commercial officer and refers to himself as CRO on LinkedIn, a role he held between 2014-17, during which period the company grew its annual revenue from zero to eight figures.
“After first meeting Noah and Alex, and understanding the technology and company they have built, I was convinced that I wanted to join the team to capture this amazing opportunity,” said Trimble. “I am looking forward to working closely with the executive team as we continue to expand our customer base towards ubiquitous use in professional services firms and increasingly into mainstream corporations, scaling the impact that Kira can have on how people work”
To learn more about Joanna and the rest of Kira Systems’ leadership team, you can read their individual bios here.
Postscript: We recently joined Kira in its Toronto offices, where you can tell it’s a proper tech company because it has a new cool, all singing, all dancing canteen with free food and sweets. It also has a cool hangout area, complete with drawbridge. See photos below.
It’s the important things that impress us. Keep an eye out for more interviews and news from Toronto.
