Meet the Talkdesk leadership team.

Pioneering innovation, igniting growth, and driving excellence.

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Executive Team.

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Tiago Paiva

Chief Executive Officer & Founder

Tiago Paiva is the chief executive officer and founder of Talkdesk. Over the past eleven years, he has scaled Talkdesk to more than 2,000 employees and crossed major industry milestones, including reaching #8 on the Forbes Cloud 100. In 2022, Paiva was recognized as the UC Leader of the Year by UC Awards and named a Globee Gold Winner for 2022 Entrepreneur of the Year. He was also honored as a Goldman Sachs 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs 2021 and received the 2021 Entrepreneurship Award from Business Intelligence Group. Paiva earned a Master of Science in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico.

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William Welch

President and Chief Operating Officer

William (Bill) Welch is the president and chief operating officer for Talkdesk, bringing over 30 years of extensive experience in operationalizing and scaling product development and innovation, customer experience and expansion, talent acquisition and retention, and strategic alliances across the globe.
Prior to Talkdesk, Welch held executive leadership positions at IronNet, Duo Security, and Zscaler. While president and COO of Duo Security, he helped secure a $2.35 billion cash transaction with Cisco. As COO of Zscaler, he led the organization toward a dramatic expansion of employees and revenue, culminating in an industry-leading IPO and a $17 billion market capitalization.

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Sydney Carey

Chief Financial Officer

Sydney Carey is an accomplished Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with deep public markets, corporate finance, and strategy expertise. Carey has extensive experience in leading public companies and pre-IPO organizations, as both an executive and a board member. Prior to Talkdesk, Carey served as CFO at Sumo Logic where she led the company through its initial public offering (IPO), and previously held CFO positions at several other high-growth private SaaS companies. Carey holds a bachelor degree in economics from Stanford University, and is a passionate advocate for female leadership in finance/IT.

Neville Letzerich

Neville Letzerich

Chief Marketing Officer

With more than 25 years of experience in marketing and executive management roles, Neville Letzerich leads the Talkdesk global marketing organization and company-wide sales development initiatives. Letzerich has been instrumental in shaping and advancing transformative technology across different industries for startups and Fortune 500 brands. Most recently, Letzerich served as vice president and chief marketing officer (CMO) for Cisco Security, responsible for the end-to-end marketing strategy and results driving one of the world’s largest B2B security businesses. He was previously CMO at Forescout Technologies, leading global marketing and sales enablement, and also held CMO roles at Virtru, Duo, Forcepoint, and HotSchedules. Letzerich holds a bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University.

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David Middler

Chief Legal Officer

David Middler is Talkdesk’s first Chief Legal Officer (CLO), bringing more than 20 years of corporate legal experience within the software technology space to the company. Before joining Talkdesk, Middler spent 15 years at cloud software provider Ariba, most recently as executive vice president and general counsel. Middler helped build the legal and governance team at Ariba from startup through Initial Public Offering (IPO) and eventually led its sale to SAP. Most recently, Middler served as general counsel and CLO for more than six years at Cloudera, also steering the company from startup to IPO and continued growth as a public company.

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Dr. Shauna Geraghty

Senior Vice President, Head of People & Operations

As the first U.S. employee at Talkdesk, Shauna Geraghty helped scale Talkdesk’s Marketing team, infrastructure, and activities from the ground up. In 2016, she was tapped to build Talkdesk’s Talent Acquisition function and since then has helped scale Talkdesk to more than 2,000 employees worldwide. Geraghty now leads the Talkdesk People and Talent teams in their strategic focus to attract, retain, and grow the best and brightest talent. Geraghty has a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and has applied foundational knowledge from the field of psychology to help propel Talkdesk along its hyper-growth trajectory.

Board of Directors.

Paiva Tiago

Tiago Paiva

Tiago Paiva is the chief executive officer and founder of Talkdesk. Over the past eleven years, he has scaled Talkdesk to more than 2,000 employees and crossed major industry milestones, including reaching #8 on the Forbes Cloud 100. In 2022, Paiva was recognized as the UC Leader of the Year by UC Awards and named a Globee Gold Winner for 2022 Entrepreneur of the Year. He was also honored as a Goldman Sachs 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs 2021 and received the 2021 Entrepreneurship Award from Business Intelligence Group. Paiva earned a Master of Science in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico.

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Tom Reilly

Tom Reilly joined the Talkdesk Board of Directors in February 2022. Formerly the CEO of Cloudera, Reilly also serves as a board member at several high-performing enterprise software companies. Previous to Cloudera, Reilly served as president and CEO of ArcSight, where he led the company’s successful IPO and subsequent sale to HP. He also held executive positions at IBM and HP. Reilly holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from University of California, Berkeley.

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Graham Smith

Graham Smith joined the Talkdesk Board of Directors in July 2023. He also currently serves on the boards of Splunk (Board Chair), Procore Technologies, and Axon. His prior board experience includes Mindbody, BlackLine, Xero, Citrix and Slack. Before retiring in 2015, Smith held financial roles in the software industry for nearly three decades, including as CFO for Salesforce, Advent Software and Nuance. He holds a B.Sc. in Economics and Politics from Bristol University in England and qualified as a chartered accountant in England and Wales.

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Josh Stein

Josh Stein joined the Talkdesk board of directors in April 2015. Josh is a co-founder of Threshold. Prior to becoming a venture investor he founded a software startup and worked at BCG and Microsoft. In addition to Talkdesk, he led investments at AngelList, Box (NYSE: BOX), Doximity (NYSE: DOCS), Front, LaunchDarkly, Redfin (NASDAQ: RDFN), Rippling, Sanity, Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) and Yammer (Microsoft). Josh was named by Forbes to its annual Midas List of top technology investors for three consecutive years. He was also a recipient of the Deloitte Fast 500 Venture Capitalist of the Year award.

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