Degreed, the leading workforce upskilling platform, augments its world-class leadership team by adding Wendy Steinle as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and promoting former Mastercard CLO Janice Burns to Chief People Officer.
The direct correlation between upskilling and economic optimism, coupled with the general lack of skill data inside organizations, has Degreed poised to continue having a big impact in the skills tech market, already helping more than 100 of the Fortune 500 prepare their people for the future. In addition to increasing its team by 50% to 600 employees across six continents over the last year, Degreed also recently closed a $153 million Series D funding round and announced a $1B+ valuation.
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Degreed’s new CMO, Wendy Steinle, joins from Adobe, where she led global marketing and strategy for Adobe’s Digital Experience customer learning platform. Wendy was also Adobe’s Lehi (Utah) site leader, spearheading wellness and diversity initiatives for its 1,900 local employees. Wendy will build on the work of Degreed’s previous CMO Marc Eberhart, as she continues to scale Degreed’s leadership position in the corporate learning and upskilling market.
Wendy said, “The world faces a pivotal moment where skills are truly becoming the driving force for greater productivity, innovation and agility. Degreed is in a strong position to help shape organizations’ skills strategies and support career growth. I am excited to build Degreed’s reputation further and continue its global market leadership so that every individual can benefit from a skills-based foundation to their careers.”
Janice Burns, who joined Degreed in 2020, is promoted from Chief Career Experience Officer to Chief People Officer, effective immediately. Janice spent 28 years at Mastercard in a variety of people leadership roles, including as Chief Learning Officer, Chief Diversity Officer and Group Head, HR Business Partner, a 3,000 person unit. In her new role, Janice will focus on enhancing the Degreed employee experience to deliver business outcomes, drive innovation, and encourage Degreed’s people to innovate and thrive; and she will continue her tireless work as an advocate and thought leader for upskilling and career mobility in Global 2,000 organizations. Her promotion comes at a timely point as 46 percent of workers globally see their core job skills becoming obsolete within five years, but fewer than 40 percent of employers actively support upskilling and career development.
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Janice said, “People are core to a business’ success and this is the message we’ve been sharing with Degreed customers for a long time. With my appointment, I will further the work Degreed has been doing to grow and nurture its own workforce, improve its internal people processes, and ensure that everyone at Degreed has the skills and support they need to create a world-leading skills tech solution.”
Degreed also boosted its customer-facing experience with key hires Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer, and Annee Bayeux, Chief Learning Strategist, both starting in the last 60 days. Dan joins Degreed from LinkedIn where he was Head of Customer Success, Americas. Annee joins Degreed from Edcast, where she was Chief Learning Strategist leading its global Learning eXperience Center. Prior to this she worked at Danone and GE and is based in Paris.
Dan Levin, CEO of Degreed, said: “As Degreed enters the next stage of growth, it’s vital that we have the right senior leaders to ensure we scale properly while exceeding our customers’ expectations. We remain focused on innovating and driving the upskilling and career mobility markets forward alongside our visionary clients like Unilever, Bayer and Verizon. I’m excited to have Janice in a people-operations role to bring her passion and broad experience to our internal team, and I’m pleased to welcome Wendy, Annee and Dan, who will help us continue to play a massive role as CEOs and learning leaders around the world focus on upskilling their teams to rapidly evolve and meet the challenges of today.”
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