David Cancel is the co-founder and CEO of Drift. He is a serial entrepreneur, podcast host and angel investor/advisor best known for creating hypergrowth products and product teams at companies such as Drift, HubSpot, Performable, Ghostery and Compete.
David was named the top-ranked CEO by USA Today, has been featured in media outlets The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Wired and Fast Company, and is an entrepreneur in residence at Harvard Business School. David is also the author of the best-selling book, Conversational Marketing.
Elias Torres is the co-founder and CTO of Drift. Torres previously served as the VP of Engineering at HubSpot and helped grow their revenue to $100 million after the acquisition of his previous company Performable. Prior to Performable, Elias served as VP of Engineering at Lookery and spent the first 10 years of his career as an engineer at IBM.
In addition to starting, advising and helping early stage companies, Elias is passionate about building winning teams. He is also a community activist focused on supporting Latinx entrepreneurs across the US.
He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur and TechCrunch.
Jim is the CFO of Drift. Prior to Drift, he was the CFO of Actifio and also served as the CFO of LogMeIn from 2006 to 2015. During that time he played a pivotal role in taking LogMeIn public in July 2009, and scaling the company from 50 employees and $10M in revenue when he joined to over 1,000 employees and $250M in revenue prior to his leaving.
Prior to LogMeIn, Jim held roles including CFO of IMlogic and VP of Finance and International Chief Financial Officer of PTC, a publicly traded software development company. Jim also is very active in promoting business between Boston and Ireland and is currently the Chairman of the Boston College Irish Business Council (BCIRB).
Dena Upton is the Chief People Officer at Drift, where she leads the people operations team, responsible for the company's talent development, operations, recruitment and retention. Prior to Drift, Dena served as VP, People and Talent at LogMeIn.
Under Upton's leadership, her prior companies have been recognized for outstanding culture and talent management, including nine consecutive Best Places to Work accolades for LogMeIn from the BBJ. She strives to find new and innovative ways to approach business opportunities and tends to push the edge. She believes in enabling all people to reach their potential and wakes up every day thinking about what she can do to deliver on this intent.
Leo Tenenblat is the Chief Product Officer of Drift. He is a seasoned product leader and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in enterprise and consumer software. Prior to Drift, Leo drove the Einstein Platform at Salesforce, founded a mobile CRM startup, AppMesh, invested and advised other startups, and before that was at Salesforce serving in roles across Sales, Operations, and R&D, helping drive the company's stellar growth from 2006-2012.
Leo was born in the US but raised in Brazil. In between jobs and school he has ridden a bicycle half-way around the world through some of the most remote areas of the planet. As a result he has a perspective and perseverance that he applies daily to everything he does.
He has a bachelors degree in Math from UC Berkeley and got my PhD in Operations Research (MS&E) at Stanford University.
Bart Hammond is the Chief Customer Officer at Drift. Prior to Drift, Bart ran the Customer Care organization for Ping Identity scaling it more than 10x through tremendous growth and their public offering. He brings 30+ years of customer-facing experience across the full spectrum of Success, Services, and Support at SaaS companies, global multi-national technology leaders and consulting organizations, including Ping Identity, EMC, Interlink Group and Accenture.
Bart is a proud geek, who wholeheartedly embraces his mission to help customers succeed and truly personifies Drift's #1 Leadership Principle for "Putting the Customer at the center of everything you do". He currently lives in Denver, Colorado with his family.
Dave Gerhardt is Chief Brand Officer at Drift and regarded was one of the top brand builders in SaaS. Prior to Drift, Dave was Chief Marketing Officer at Privy (acquired by Attentive Mobile). Dave is also the founder of DGMG and shares his thoughts on startups and marketing at davegerhardt.com and on Twitter @davegerhardt. He lives in Vermont with his wife and two kids.