Clari Names Cornelius Willis as Chief Marketing Officer

Clari, the leading provider of AI solutions for sales, announced the appointment of Cornelius Willis as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). With more than 25 years of industry experience, Cornelius joins Clari at a time of record growth and market momentum. As CMO, Cornelius will be responsible for telling the Clari story, creating and executing an integrated marketing strategy and increasing awareness.

Cornelius’ experience spans 10 years at Microsoft and a decade spent in the startup trenches as an employee, founder, consultant and angel investor. He has also held leadership positions at BEA, Rackspace and VMware. Most recently, he led product marketing and strategic communications for Google Cloud Platform. During his tenure, Cornelius’ team launched several innovative AI products including TensorFlow and Cloud Vision API, and debuted Google in two different Gartner leader’s quadrant for Storage and Infrastructure as a Service.

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“Clari’s growth is accelerating, with heads of sales starting to understand the critical value of predictive analytics in calling and making their number. As we look at the opportunity ahead for the company and our customers, we’re really just getting started,” said Andy Byrne, CEO of Clari. “To help drive the next phase of our growth, we were looking for a marketing leader with strategic and operational experience and a proven track record of establishing brands in fast-growing markets. Cornelius’ expertise across marketing disciplines is an incredible asset, and we’re excited for him to execute on our mission to make selling easier and more predictable.”

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Cornelius joins Clari on the heels of its series C funding led by Tenaya Capital, with participation from Thomvest Ventures and Blue Cloud Ventures and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Northgate Capital. The new capital will be used to scale sales and marketing and accelerate product innovation for Clari’s solutions which use sales-ready AI to drive better and more predictable sales execution and forecasting.

“Sales is the most critical business process in every company, and Clari customers love the product because it makes selling more effective and just plain easier. It’s clear to me this is a company with purpose and vision — and one I want to be a part of,” said Willis. “The fact they have been able to achieve such growth so quickly is impressive, and I am thrilled to be joining the team.”

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