Boston, November 16, 2023 – Leapwork, a fast-growing leader in software test automation, has appointed Board Members Lou Shipley and two new members of the management team: Mike Anand as Chief Marketing Officer and Robert Salesas as Chief Technology Officer.
The appointments, which follow Leapwork's strategic partnership this year with Microsoft, position the company to accelerate democratization of its visual AI-based platform and help modernize the $50bn software testing market. Designed for enterprises, the platform lets non-technical, everyday business users build and maintain test automation across enterprise applications at scale and secure fast release cycles and quality releases.
"With the new additions to our Board and Management Team, Leapwork is well-positioned to become the leading automation platform as we empower Enterprises to digitize their businesses. Lou Shipley has unique experience in technology and a proven track record driving business growth of fast-growing software companies, and I am delighted to welcome him to our Board of Directors", said Christian Brink Frederiksen, CEO and co-founder of Leapwork. Frederiksen recently relocated to Boston, MA, to establish the company's regional headquarters in North America. He continues:
"I am also excited to announce CMO Mike Anand, to accelerate and scale our go-to-market efforts across global markets and our partners. Also, I am confident that with CTO Robert Salesas joining the team, we will continue to drive leading-edge product innovation to further serve customers".
Background of new Member of the Board, Lou Shipley:
Member of the Board and independent advisor Lou Shipley was previously President and CEO of Black Duck Software, where he grew the valuation of the security company by over 300% and led it to a successful acquisition by Synopsys. Prior to Black Duck, Shipley served as President and CEO of Turbonomic (acquired by IBM) and Reflectent Software (acquired by Citrix Systems). Shipley also serves on Wasbi, Fairmarkit, TeamWorks, and CustomerGauge boards. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and is a member of the faculty at Harvard Business School, where he teaches three classes in the Entrepreneurial Management unit.
"I've been very impressed with the progress Christian and his team have made in the test automation market. With my experience with software security, I am familiar with the importance of this function, which will only grow in our increasingly software-dominated world. Leapwork's partnership with Microsoft shows how valuable their solution is. I am honored to join the board", said Lou Shipley, Board Member at Leapwork.
Background of new CMO, Mike Anand:
Mike has spent over 15 years building, pitching, and growing products at various stages of many successful companies, with a proven track record of driving exponential growth. His passion for customer experience and storytelling led him on a journey deep into Product Marketing, starting with AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco for almost USD $4 billion) where he played a critical role in transforming the story of application analytics into business performance and then to Amazon Web Services where he led go-to-market for Observability Portfolio (Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray) and then for AWS Container Services. Most recently, Mike held a position as CMO of Redis, Inc.
Mike holds a B.S. from UC Davis and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
"Enterprises have largely relied on human testers or spent precious developer resources to test and secure quality software", says Mike Anand, CMO at Leapwork. "Neither is an effective solution for modern digital enterprises. We built the Leapwork platform to empower business users and shift the test automation approach to understanding business requirements. I couldn't be more excited to join Leapwork and reshape the market for software testing as I believe we can democratize and make no-code software testing effortless for all teams", said Mike Anand, CMO of Leapwork.
Background of new CTO, Robert Salesas:
Chief Technology Officer Robert Salesas was previously Chief Technology Officer / Chief Product Officer at Aircall, growing their annual revenue to USD $130 million. Before Aircall, Salesas served as Chief Technology Officer at Condeco. Throughout his career, Salesas has gained in-depth experience developing sophisticated software solutions to meet the needs of a diverse customer base, including SaaS applications and AI-powered products.
"I am proud to join Leapwork, who offers a strong, AI-powered visual platform, built for enterprise users to give them a tool that accelerates their digitization processes significantly, especially for users of Microsoft Dynamics 365", said Robert Salesas, CTO of Leapwork. "I join Leapwork at a time where we are taking that vision further to support and empower enterprises on their growth journeys".
About Leapwork
Leapwork is the leading global AI-powered visual test automation platform, empowering the world's largest enterprises to adopt, maintain and scale automation in less than 30 days. Unlike traditional test automation, Leapwork is as easy and intuitive to use as cobbling Lego blocks together, for even the most complex test automation cases, which is why we are used by hundreds of global enterprises across all industries, from banks and insurance companies to life science, government, and aerospace. Clients include Mercedes Benz, PayPal, Beckman Coulter Life Sciences and BNP Paribas.
The company is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has local offices across USA, Europe, and Asia. To learn more, visit: leapwork.com.
