Medallia Names SaaS Industry Veteran Leslie Stretch President and Chief Executive Officer

Medallia, the leading customer experience management cloud company, announced that Leslie Stretch has been named Medallia’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Previously, Stretch served as President and CEO of CallidusCloud for 10 years. In his time at Callidus he delivered a 25X increase in value in the public markets culminating in the company’s acquisition for $2.5 billion earlier this year. Medallia co-founder and former CEO Borge Hald will assume new roles of Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer while co-founder and former President Amy Pressman will remain a Board Director and focus on writing and speaking about customer experience.

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“The Medallia founders and their outstanding global team are leading the Customer Experience movement and this is the perfect time to join them,” said Leslie Stretch, President and CEO of Medallia. “Great forces have completely rewired the selling and buying processes in the 21st century. Medallia understands that power has transferred to customers, forever. Today, customers buy experiences not products, the world’s smartest companies know this and they use the Medallia Experience Cloud to deliver unprecedented returns. I couldn’t be more excited about our prospects,” continued Stretch.

“We founded Medallia to leverage the power of technology and the cloud to enable companies to drive growth and innovation by systematically understanding and optimizing their customers’ experiences,” said Borge Hald, co-founder of Medallia. “I am extremely excited to bring Leslie onboard. He is a proven public company CEO with a founder’s mentality and a deep passion for the vital importance of customer experience.  He is the right leader for Medallia as we continue to scale and expand our global reach.”

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“Medallia is one of Sequoia’s most important companies and, following an extensive CEO search, we are delighted to have hired Leslie, a world-class software executive, to help Medallia grow for years to come,” said Doug Leone, Global Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital.  “Customer experience management is one of the most important technology themes of our time and having a leader of Leslie’s stature, in combination with Borge’s industry vision, is the ideal combination for Medallia.”

Stretch is joining Medallia after leading CallidusCloud on a journey that delivered record returns for shareholders. Prior to joining Callidus, Leslie worked for Sun Microsystems for nearly a decade. At Sun, he held the position of Senior Vice President of global channel sales and was the Managing Director of Sun Microsystems UK Ltd. Before joining Sun, Leslie held various sales positions at Oracle Corporation.

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