Michael Boese is CEO of Hearsay Systems. He has over 25 years of software leadership experience with high-performing software companies. Most recently, he was co-founder and CEO of Plantt, a SaaS-enabled garden goods marketplace that was purchased by Monrovia. Previously, Mike was the CEO of Certent, a fintech SaaS company, where he oversaw 5x revenue growth and significant margin expansion over a six-year period. Mike has also held various senior leadership roles at Taleo, SAP, PeopleSoft, and Oracle, and has been a board advisor and consultant to several software companies.
Mike holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Washington and an MBA from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar.
Cerys Davies is our Chief People Officer, and is responsible for Hearsay’s employee and candidate experience, which includes company culture, people operations, recruiting, diversity and inclusion, and global office operations. Having spent over 15 years within People functions at various global SaaS businesses, Cerys is passionate about all things People.
Cerys holds a BA in American Studies from the University of Wales, Swansea, and loves travel and exploration.
As Chief Financial Officer, Michael Depold is responsible for Hearsay’s finance, accounting and legal functions. He is a key contributor to the strategic direction of the company, ensuring that Hearsay is resourced to deliver on strategy, while maintaining the appropriate financial rigor and risk profile. Previously, Michael was Director of FP&A at Hearsay.
Prior to Hearsay, Michael held senior financial roles at ON24 and Intel. He earned a BS in Finance from Santa Clara University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.
With 20 years of industry experience, Adam Dyer leads Hearsay’s engineering team, overseeing all aspects of development and technology. Prior to Hearsay, he was VP of Engineering at Genesys Cloud, where he helped build and grow the platform’s digital and outbound offerings from the very early days into a 9-figure business. He also spent time leading the software group for FLIR Mass Spectrometry, as well as working on in-vehicle software at Ford Motor Company.
Adam has a BS in Computer Technology from Purdue University, and an MS in Software Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Alex Falls is responsible for leading Hearsay’s product vision, direction, and development. He has over two decades of experience delivering product strategy and execution for high-tech enterprise software firms.
Prior to Hearsay, Alex worked at Guidewire Software for 14 years, where he held a number of management roles. As Vice President of Product Management, he was recognized for building and evangelizing Guidewire’s cloud transformation strategy to reinvent non-SaaS products as cloud-native products and solutions.
Alex also served in management roles at Epiphany and Clarify, leading the early wave of customer relationship management (CRM) software development.
He holds a BS in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis.
Chuck Hebert leads Hearsay’s global customer success organization—comprising customer success, training and education, professional services, support, integration and customer advocacy teams.
As Chief Customer Officer, Chuck brings more than 25 years of experience leading customer success and professional services teams at companies like Oracle, Workday, PlanGrid and Autodesk. Whether at start-ups or Fortune 500 companies, he is recognized for creating, simplifying and scaling processes and programs to help customers achieve exceptional ROI.
At Hearsay, he is chartered with further enhancing our world-class customer experience by empowering distributed financial services teams to grow their relationships and business through digital transformation.
Chuck graduated summa cum laude from Michigan State University with a B.A. in Business & Economics. He’s also a certified executive coach.
Leslie Leach leads Hearsay’s marketing and corporate strategy functions. In addition to overseeing marketing initiatives, she is responsible for assessing and accelerating Hearsay’s strategic market and product opportunities in compliant digital communications.
Leslie brings over two decades of experience in consumer and B2B marketing, having started her marketing career as a Brand Manager at The Clorox Company. More recently, she served as Vice President of Marketing for ZapLabs, the innovation lab for Realogy RLGY (NYSE) and Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Certent, a fintech SaaS company, which was acquired by insightsoftware.
Leslie holds a BA in Economics from The University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she was named an Edward W. Carter Fellow. In her spare time, she enjoys cheering on her two teenage boys, traveling, and the outdoors.
With over 25 years of sales leadership experience, Matt Newman is Chief Revenue Officer at Hearsay. He oversees Hearsay’s sales, sales operations, business development, solutions consulting and value consulting organizations, which are responsible for driving revenue and business growth through effective strategies and operations.
Prior to Hearsay, Matt was part of the leadership team at ISS, growing the company from its spinoff from MSCI in 2014 to its $2.2 billion sale to Deutsche Böerse in 2021. During his 17-year tenure at ISS, Newman led product, customer success and global sales teams. He was instrumental in leading efforts to land and expand many of ISS’ top clients, which include many of the world’s leading institutional investors. Before ISS, Matt was a co-founder of Castle Point Systems, which provided web development and systems consulting services.
Matt holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
Currently the CEO of Salesforce Service Cloud, Clara Shih is Co-founder and Executive Chairperson of Hearsay Systems. A digital pioneer, Clara developed the first social business application in 2007 and subsequently authored the New York Times best-seller, The Facebook Era, and sequel, The Social Business Imperative. Clara has been named one of Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs,” Fast Company’s “Most Influential People in Technology,” and a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum. She also has been listed in both Fortune’s and Ad Age’s “40 Under 40,” as well as Investment News’ “40 Under 40” and ThinkAdvisor‘s 25 Industry Influencers.
Clara is a member of the Starbucks board of directors and previously served in a variety of technical, product and marketing roles at Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com. She graduated #1 in computer science at Stanford University, where she also received an MS in Computer Science. She also holds an MS in Internet Studies from Oxford University, where she was a U.S. Marshall Scholar.