Proven Leadership
Industry Executives and Diverse Focus
Who We Are:
Collective Experience Over Individualism
Learn more about Five9's executives and board of directors, including biographies and photos of our call center management team directory below.
Management
Mike Burkland
Chief Executive Officer
Mike Burkland is the CEO and Chairman of Five9. He originally joined Five9 as CEO in January 2008 and held the position for nearly 10 years. Mike established the vision and strategy for Five9 to become one of the leading providers of cloud contact center software for the enterprise market, built an organization that is known for its operational excellence and exceptional culture, led the company through its IPO in 2014 and scaled Five9 into one of the fastest growing public companies in the CCaaS space. He was also honored with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for Northern California in June 2017. In December 2017 Mike transitioned from CEO to Chairman after being diagnosed with cancer. Under Mike's leadership for nearly 15 years as both CEO and Chairman, Five9 has scaled from an 80-person company to a 2,000-person company. He returned to the CEO role effective November 2022 and is excited to be back on the field with the Five9 team.
Before Five9, Mike was the CEO of several enterprise software and cloud companies in market segments ranging from systems management and content management to security and CRM. Earlier in his career, he held various positions at Oracle and BMC. Mike holds MBA and BA degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.
In Mike's view, business is the ultimate team sport. Building a successful company is analogous to building a winning sports franchise. It requires top talent, the right playbook and great team chemistry.
Barry Zwarenstein
Chief Financial Officer
Barry Zwarenstein has more than 35 years of financial leadership in the technology industry. Barry is responsible for the company's financial planning and operations. In 2019, Barry was awarded the Bay Area CFO of the Year Award for the small to medium public category.
Barry has been the CFO of several companies: He's managed three successful IPOs (Five9, VeriFone and Logitech), and played a significant role in the sale of SMART Modular Technologies to Silver Lake Partners for $635M and the sale of Acuson to Siemens Health Care for $700M. Barry was also CFO of Iomega Corporation and Mellanox Technologies. Barry holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Natal, South Africa and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.
Barry's philosophy is to take a broad approach to the role of CFO and become an effective business partner across the entire organization. Barry's approach is to keep shareholders adequately informed, ensure sufficient funding, drive process improvements, and report accurate and timely financial information. A key element that connects these roles are in-depth, contextual analyses about all aspects of the business; something that is easily accomplished in a cloud company like Five9 since there is an abundance of consistent and coherent data. He also believes it is essential to have best-in-class, scalable, and integrated systems, as well as a strong, seasoned finance team.
Andy Dignan
Chief Operating Officer
As Chief Operating Officer at Five9, Andy brings a dynamic blend of operational expertise and strategic vision to drive growth and enhance customer value. Leading sales, partnerships, channels, services and customer success, he ensures that all revenue-generating functions work seamlessly to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Andy has spent his entire career in the CX space. Andy is skilled at developing solutions that create positive business outcomes. He has a deep understanding of the technology landscape and is considered an industry expert in the Contact Center & Collaboration industry.
Prior to Five9, Andy was the Global head of Collaboration & Contact Center GTM at Cisco Systems, responsible for 5.5B in annual revenue. Prior to Cisco, Andy led the Collaboration & Contact Center at CDW, taking the business from 300M to 700M in revenue.
Panos Kozanian
Executive Vice President of Product Engineering
Panos Kozanian is the Executive Vice President of Product Engineering for Five9 and is responsible for all technology operations and security. Panos is a seasoned executive with a proven record of executing technology, process, and cultural changes while managing efficiency and scale across global teams.
Prior to Five9, Panos spent 14 years at Cisco where he led the Webex platform team composed of DevOps, SRE, Data Center Operations, SysOps and Cloud Engineers with responsibility for the productivity, reliability, and operating budget of over 3000 developers. Under Panos' leadership, Webex scaled to four times its pre-pandemic usage - helping enable the business continuity for 85 percent of all Fortune 500 companies.
Niki Hall
Chief Marketing Officer
Niki Hall is Chief Marketing Officer of Five9, the provider of the Intelligent CX Platform, where she leads a world class marketing team and serves as a co-lead of the company’s global go-to-market strategy. Hall’s focus is on all areas of B2B marketing, including demand generation, partner marketing, product marketing, field enablement, branding, corporate communications, analyst relations, channel marketing, marketing analytics, and events.
With over 20 years of experience in technology marketing, Niki has established and grown business market positions by developing clear, differentiated positioning while building and extending value, increased awareness, and driving demand and market differentiation. Niki has a strong track record in delivering global growth and operational efficiencies for some of tech’s largest companies, including Cisco, Five9 and Poly. Her unique approach and management style landed her on INSIDER’s list of 19 exec shaping the future of marketing technology. Prior to Five9, Niki was CMO at Contentsquare, and Selligent Marketing Cloud.
Dan Burkland
Executive Vice President of Go-To-Market Strategy
As EVP, Go-To-Market Strategy, Dan focuses on key partners and customers and other external facing evangelism for Five9. Prior to this role, Dan has held various executive leadership roles at Five9, including leading our global sales, services and channels organizations.
Dan has more than 30 years of contact center experience building and scaling successful sales and leadership teams. Before Five9, Dan was SVP of Sales at Transera Communications. He also ran worldwide sales for IP Unity, growing the business tenfold, and held sales management positions at Cisco and GeoTel.
Tricia Yankovich
Chief People Officer
As the Chief People Officer, Tricia heads up the Global HR team at Five9 and has been with the company for a total of 4 years. Tricia is a seasoned HR professional with over 20 years in HR roles across multiple industries with an emphasis in software.
Prior to Five9, Tricia held leadership and HR roles at McGrath RentCorp, Remedy Software and Informix Software. Tricia is a trusted and respected leader with experience collaborating with leadership and stakeholders to drive performance through strong partnerships and a deep understanding of the company, employees and culture.
She is passionate about unlocking and developing talent within the organization to increase employee engagement and drive success. Tricia completed her bachelor’s degree in Management from Golden Gate University.
Ajay Awatramani
Chief Product Officer
Ajay Awatramani is the Chief Product Officer of Five9. He enjoys the art of building products that customers love! Ajay was recently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Storm Ventures advising on investments in Artificial Intelligence. Ajay has built his career in a variety of GM and Product/ Tech leadership roles in Enterprise SaaS companies including Marketo, Adobe, Cornerstone On Demand, Oracle and Siebel Systems. Ajay serves on private company boards and is an active investor/advisor.
Ajay completed his Masters in Computer Science at the University of Southern California, and his Bachelors in Computer Engineering at the University of Bombay.
Jonathan Rosenberg
Chief Technology Officer
Jonathan Rosenberg is the Chief Technology Officer and head of AI at Five9. Jonathan has dedicated his career to transforming the telecommunications industry and joins Five9 from Cisco where he was CTO for the Collaboration Technology Group (CTG). Jonathan is also well known for his authorship of the SIP protocol, which is the foundation for modern IP-based telecommunications. Prior to Cisco, Rosenberg was the Chief Technology Strategist at Skype, where he guided the company's technology strategy. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from MIT and holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia University.
In 2002 he was named one of the most innovative young technologists in the world by Technology Review magazine. He also was named a "Top Supergeek" by CRN and won a Pulver Von Pioneer award for contributions to the VoIP industry. In 2015 he was presented with the Ohio University Strowger Award for transformational innovation in the Telecommunications industry.
James Doran
Executive Vice President of Strategy & Operations
James Doran is the Executive Vice President of Strategy & Operations at Five9, responsible for advancing the company's growth strategy and operational maturity to enable the organization to deliver on its promise. James is a widely respected veteran leader, having led multiple business transformations throughout his 20+ years in the industry.
Prior to Five9, James was Vice President of Strategy & Operations for Cisco's Collaboration division, where he led the business transformation to subscription, inked alliances with SalesForce, Apple, IBM and Google and drove the merger and acquisition agenda to include Broadsoft, Mindmeld and AppDynamics. James also held a variety of executive positions at Symantec, worked in strategy consulting, with successful start-ups, and served on staff for both the White House and Capitol Hill.
James received a BA in Economics from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Callan Schebella
Executive Vice President of Product Management
Based in San Francisco, Callan Schebella is EVP of Product Management. Callan has worked his entire career in Voice Automation, Machine Learning and related technologies, with a focus on creating solutions that make it easier for businesses of all sizes to build and maintain speech-enabled applications.
He was CEO of Inference Solutions prior to the company being acquired in 2020. Callan held multiple roles at Inference Solutions, first as co-founder, then chief architect and finally as CEO. He helped grow Inference from an initial concept to an established market leader in the Intelligent Virtual Agent space. Prior to Inference, he started his career at Telstra Research Laboratories in Australia working on spoken dialog systems and technology commercialization.
Callan has a master's degree in engineering from the University of South Australia and an MBA from Melbourne Business School.
Ashish Koul
EVP and General Manager, Acqueon Business Unit
As EVP and General Manager of the Acqueon Business within Five9, Ashish Koul leads the charter to grow the Revenue Execution Platform business for the company. Prior to the acquisition by Five9, Ashish was the Founder and CEO of Acqueon and led its growth from inception to becoming a leading revenue execution platform in the industry.
Ashish is a dynamic business executive, AI innovator and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in driving growth for global companies in the enterprise SaaS and technology services sectors. He excels in building high-performing, growth-oriented platforms, and teams across various industries, including Banking & Financial Services, Retail, Healthcare, Utilities and Business Services. Ashish has a proven ability to collaborate effectively with diverse boards, venture capital and private equity firms, establishing enduring partnerships with management teams, global enterprise clients and partners that have resulted in significant top-line and bottom-line growth for the businesses.
Ashish possesses strong expertise in the areas of customer experience, revenue orchestration, automation, and conversational & generative AI. Ashish also advises various founders and CEOs of growth stage companies in the CX space.
Ashish completed his education from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS, Pilani) in India with a specialization in Information Systems and General Management.
Tiffany Meriweather
Interim Chief Legal Officer
Tiffany N. Meriweather is the interim Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at Five9, responsible for leading the legal and compliance function and supporting growth of the business. Tiffany is a dynamic, commercial minded executive with over 15 years of experience as a trusted legal and compliance leader, thought partner and strategic advisor to domestic and global enterprises. She brings to Five9 expertise in overseeing legal, compliance, risk and employee relations at both established public and private companies, as well as high growth start-up companies. Her career has been marked by leading transformational corporate and business transactions, driving commercial outcomes and minimizing risks with a focus on operational and organizational excellence.
Prior to joining Five9, she most recently served as SVP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Guitar Center, Inc., overseeing the legal and compliance function of the leading retailer of musical instruments, lessons, repairs, and rentals in the U.S. Prior to Guitar Center, she served as the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of Enjoy Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENJY), a mobile retail and technology company where she successfully led the Company’s IPO and subsequent asset sale.
Tiffany has also served as Senior Vice President, Legal and Assistant Secretary at Clear Channel Outdoor (NYSE: CCO), and as Vice President, Counsel, Corporate and Securities at CBS Corporation (NASDAQ: PARA). Previous to CBS, she spent nearly 9 years as a corporate attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP where she represented clients in a variety of industries in connection with complex M&A, securities and financing transactions and provided general corporate advice. Tiffany received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in Psychology and Political Science from Emory University, and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School.
Board of Directors
Mike Burkland is the CEO and Chairman of Five9. He originally joined Five9 as CEO in January 2008 and held the position for nearly 10 years. Mike established the vision and strategy for Five9 to become one of the leading providers of cloud contact center software for the enterprise market, built an organization that is known for its operational excellence and exceptional culture, led the company through its IPO in 2014 and scaled Five9 into one of the fastest growing public companies in the CCaaS space. He was also honored with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for Northern California in June 2017. In December 2017 Mike transitioned from CEO to Chairman after being diagnosed with cancer. Under Mike's leadership for nearly 15 years as both CEO and Chairman, Five9 has scaled from an 80-person company to a 2,000-person company. He returned to the CEO role effective November 2022 and is excited to be back on the field with the Five9 team.
Before Five9, Mike was the CEO of several enterprise software and cloud companies in market segments ranging from systems management and content management to security and CRM. Earlier in his career, he held various positions at Oracle and BMC. Mike holds MBA and BA degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.
In Mike's view, business is the ultimate team sport. Building a successful company is analogous to building a winning sports franchise. It requires top talent, the right playbook and great team chemistry.
Dave Welsh (Menlo Park) is a Partner and is Head of TMT Growth Equity within KKR's Private Equity platform, where he serves on the TMT growth equity investment committee. Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Welsh was a Partner with Adams Street Partners, where he focused on technology growth equity investments. Earlier in his career he was Executive Vice President of corporate development and strategy at McAfee, Inc., a General Partner at Partech Ventures and vice president of corporate development at Portal Software. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Cherwell, Five9, ForgeRock, iValua and OneStream. He is also a Board Member of SEO Scholars SF and the Special Olympics of Northern Calif & Nevada, and is the Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the Athenian School. He holds a B.A., cum laude, from UCLA and a JD, order of the coif, from UC Berkeley and Harvard Law Schools.
Jack Acosta has served in a board role for multiple companies. Previously, Jack served as CFO and vice president of finance for Portal Software. Prior to Portal Software, Jack served as executive vice president and CFO as well as vice president, engineering services, integration, and business management for Sybase, Inc. Jack was also the president, COO, and a director of Tanon Manufacturing, Inc. Prior to these assignments, Jack held various management positions at Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Atari, Inc., Diablo Systems, Inc., and Ford Motor Company.
Michael J. Burdiek has served as the president and chief executive officer and also as a member of the Board of Directors of CalAmp since 2011. From 2006 to 2011, Michael held various positions at CalAmp, a global provider of wireless communications solutions, including president of CalAmp's Wireless DataCom segment and president and chief operating officer. Prior to joining CalAmp, Michael was the president and CEO of Telenetics Corporation, a manufacturer of data communications products. From 1987 to 2003, Michael held a variety of technical and general management positions with Comarco Inc., most recently as senior vice president and general manager of Comarco's Wireless Test Systems unit. Michael holds a master's degree in business administration and a master's degree in electrical engineering from California State University, Fullerton, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Kansas State University.
Ms. Walker served as Founding Partner and Chief Financial Officer of Patient Square Capital, LP, a health care investment firm, from August 2020 until her retirement in December 2023. Ms. Walker served as the Chief Financial Officer for Montes Archimedes Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company, from October 2020 to September 2021. Ms. Walker co-founded, and served as Chief Executive Officer of, Recuerdo Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the postponement of Alzheimer’s disease, from July 2018 to February 2020. From June 2008 to July 2018, Ms. Walker held various leadership roles at KPMG U.S., a public accounting firm, including as Audit Partner, Senior Director of KPMG’s Venture Capital Practice and a Global Lead Partner of Private Equity, and she led the San Francisco Bay Area Asset Management Practice. Ms. Walker served as a member of the board of directors of Forgerock, Inc., an identity and access management software company, from 2019 through its sale in 2023. Ms. Walker holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego.
Mr. Mariner is the founder and has served as president of TaxDay, LLC, a private software firm, since April 2016. Mr. Mariner previously served as the Chief Administrative Officer of Enjoy Technologies, a premium home delivery company that operated mobile retail stores for major consumer technology companies in North America and the U.K., from December 1, 2020 to September 30, 2022, and was a member of its board of directors.
He also served, on an interim basis, from February 2019 to August 2019, as the Head of Regional Sports Networks for the Walt Disney Company. He spent the majority of his professional career as an executive in professional sports, serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Major League Baseball from 2002 to 2014, where he led the league’s accounting, treasury and budgeting functions, completed more than a dozen franchise purchase and sale transactions, and helped create the league’s strategic investment fund, and as Chief Investment Officer from 2015 to 2016.
Prior to his position at Major League Baseball, Jonathan was the CFO for the Florida Marlins Baseball Club, Florida Panthers Hockey Club and Dolphins Stadium. Mr. Mariner serves on the board of directors of Tyson Foods, Inc., one of the world’s largest food companies, where he also serves as the chair of the audit committee, and Rocket Companies, Inc., a technology-driven real estate, mortgage and financial services business, where he also serves as the chair of its audit committee.
He also serves on audit committees of private companies, including OneStream Software, IEX Stock Exchange, and Little League Baseball International. He previously served as a director for Ultimate Software, a software company engaged in research, development, and delivery of human capital management technology, from 2017 to 2019, where he served as the chair of its audit committee and on the compensation committee and chaired the audit committee of McGraw Hill Education.
Julie Iskow served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Workiva Inc. since October 2019 and as Workiva’s President and Chief Operating Officer since March 2022. Prior to joining Workiva, Ms. Iskow served as Chief Technology Officer of Medidata Solutions, Inc. from April 2015 to October 2019, and was also its Executive Vice President of Product Development from July 2016 to October 2019. Prior to Medidata, Ms. Iskow served as Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President at WageWorks, Inc., and prior to that as its Senior Vice President of Product Development and Vice President of Product Development. Ms. Iskow has also served as Vice President of Engineering at Asyst Technologies and GW Associates, Inc.
Ms. Iskow earned a B.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.S. degree from the University of California, Davis. Ms. Iskow was an independent director of Vocera Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VCRA) and a member of its Governance and Nominating Committee from May 2019 until its acquisition in February of 2022.
Relevant Experience:
• Building and scaling innovative SaaS companies
• Technology strategy, product development, commercial operations
• ESG, risk management/controls, cyber security, and AI/data analytics
Over the past thirty five years, Robert Zollars has led eleven healthcare and technology companies as President or CEO, ranging in size from $100M to over $5B in revenue. These companies include venture, private equity and publicly traded businesses. His most recent experiences included Chairman and CEO of Vocera, Chairman of Diamond Foods, and Corporate Director of VWR Corporation.
Mr. Zollars currently serves as a Senior Advisor at Frazier Healthcare Partners, and is also a Corporate Director of Change Healthcare, Appian Rx, TCGRX and Kate Farms. He is also a Board Leadership Fellow of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and is Co-Chair of The Trustee's of Arizona State University.
Sue Barsamian is a former Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager who brings both a strong business and technical skillset. Having worked in both early stage and Fortune 50 organizations she has operated in a range of roles from sales and marketing to product, R&D and business operations. Barsamian spent the last 10 years of her 35 year operating career at Hewlett Packard across a range of executive roles including Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for HPE Software ($3B) and General Manager of the Enterprise Security Products business ($1B). Earlier in her career she held leadership positions at Mercury Interactive and Verity, Inc. where she was based in London for four years. Sue's focus as a Board Director is on helping high growth enterprise software, SaaS and cybersecurity companies as they scale. Sue serves as a board member at Box Inc. (NYSE: BOX), NortonLifeLock Inc. (NASDAQ: NLOK, formerly Symantec) and several private companies including Auth0 Inc., Gainsight Inc. and Xactly Corp. She also served on the board of Segment Inc. which was sold in Nov 2020 to Twilio for $3.2B.
Sagar Gupta has served as a Portfolio Manager and Head of Active Engagement at Anson Funds since 2023. Prior to Anson Funds, he was a Senior Analyst at Legion Partners and served on the Board of Directors at Momentive Global, the holding company parent of SurveyMonkey. Previously, Sagar was a member of the founding team at Finchwood Capital, and an investment professional at Balyasny Asset Management and KKR. Sagar began his career as an investment banker with UBS. He earned a BS in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated Beta Alpha Psi.
