Lisa Edwards joins Diligent Corporation as COO
NEW YORK, Oct 12, (Agencies): Diligent Corporation, a leading modern governance company whose solutions are trusted by nearly 700,000 board directors and leaders, today announced the appointment of Lisa Edwards as President and Chief Operating Officer. Edwards joins Diligent from Salesforce where she served most recently as EVP Strategic Business Operations, and will report to Diligent CEO Brian Stafford.
“Lisa’s experience overseeing the go-to-market strategy for the world’s leading cloud enterprise software company makes her ideally suited to join us in continuing to scale Diligent globally and capitalizing on the opportunities ahead,” said Brian Stafford, CEO of Diligent. “In addition to bringing considerable expertise and leadership credentials, Lisa uniquely understands our clients as a board member of a large global public company. Further, she embraces the importance of ESG and stakeholder capitalism in the evolution of today’s leading companies and the necessity of companies investing in governance solutions. I am excited to welcome her to Diligent and to the leadership team.”
Edwards joins Diligent after an extensive search process. Her priorities will include building upon Diligent’s position as the leading global modern governance platform; ensuring the success and satisfaction of the Diligent customer community; and further advancing Diligent’s innovation and partnership strategy. She brings nearly two decades of global experience driving large-scale business transformations and operational excellence. During her eight years at Salesforce, she held multiple leadership positions culminating with her tenure as EVP Strategic Business Operations. In that role, Edwards oversaw Global Sales Strategy, Partnerships & Alliances, Industries, Customer Experience, Office of Innovation, and IT for the world’s #1 CRM platform.
“I am honored to have the opportunity to join this world-class team and serve as Diligent’s President and COO,” said Edwards. “This is an exciting time for Diligent, a company that models the ethos of doing well while doing good, to maximize its growth potential as it supports digital transformation for boards and executive teams. Boardrooms now more than ever need to be more connected, nimble, digital and real-time. Diligent’s commitment to providing solutions for modern governance will bring tremendous business value to the clients we serve.”
Edwards joins Diligent Corporation from Salesforce where she served as EVP of Strategic Business Operations after running Global Corporate Services (GCS) and serving as CPO.
Prior to Salesforce, Edwards led global strategic partnerships for Visa, Inc. as SVP/Head of Global Strategic Alliances and Global IP Strategy and earlier served in an operations role as Head of Global Corporate Services.
Earlier in her career, Edwards served as CEO of KnowledgeX, a database startup which she led in a sale to IBM and co-founded Valubond, an online fixed income exchange and subscription service, and served as President, COO, and head of the ATS (Alternative Trading System) prior to its acquisition by Knight Capital.
Edwards serves on the Board of Directors of Colgate-Palmolive and is deeply involved in the two nonprofits where she previously served on the board, Playworks and the Presidio YMCA. Edwards graduated with a BA from Stanford University and received her MBA from Harvard Business School.