Akeneo, a global leader in Product Experience Management (PXM) solutions, has announced several key executive appointments to support its rapid expansion in the global marketplace.
Following Akeneo’s recognition as one of Built In’s Best Places to Work and as an Innovatech Award Winner, the hires leave the company poised to expand, drive innovation, and unlock customer success. The executive appointments include Johan Benoualid as General Manager for EMEA and APAC; Lisa Manske as Vice President of Business Operations; Antoine Barbier as Vice President of Product and industry veteran, Dagbert Sansen, as General Manager for the Americas. Collectively, the new appointees bring decades of industry expertise, and position Akeneo to bring its game-changing PXM offer to new markets in 2022.
Akeneo’s explosive growth in EMEA and APAC will be overseen by General Manager Johan Benoualid, who steps into the new role following a successful 4-year tenure as Akeneo’s VP of EMEA and APAC Sales. A veteran software sales manager who previously served as Managing Director for Southern Europe at Hootsuite, and as Regional Manager for Adobe, Benoualid is a powerful champion for Akeneo’s PXM offering, and has used his expertise to help hundreds of leading global enterprises to leverage the power of product data to grow their businesses and optimise sales, marketing, and customer experience.
Other key additions to the Akeneo global leadership team include Lisa Manske, who joins the company as VP of Business Operations after working as Director of Strategy and Operations for ServiceNow, the cloud computing and digital workflow management leader. Manske formerly served as Head of SMB Sales for EMEA at Facebook, and spent four years as part of the Business Operations team at LinkedIn. Educated in New York, and with experience working in France, Ireland, and the U.S., she brings deep experience identifying and capitalising on growth opportunities in new global markets.
Antoine Barbier also joins as VP of Product, bringing deep technological and business operations expertise gained working for top tech companies in Silicon Valley, the UK and France. A SaaS product specialist with 18+ years of experience working in the global digital media and advertising industry, Barbier comes to Akeneo from Ogury, where he served as SVP of Product. He previously served as Director of Product Management at Adobe, where he led digital video, display, native, and social products for Adobe Advertising Cloud, and held senior product and business development positions at TubeMogul, Rhythm, and End2End Mobile.
A global ecommerce leader with a 10-year record of growing companies from start-up to exit, Dagbert Sansen joins Akeneo from Rokt, the ecommerce adleader, where he served as SVP of Business Development. Sansen previously held top leadership roles with major U.S. software and services companies including digital experience management leader Sitecore, martech innovator STYLELABS, and open-source business software vendor Odoo. Known for his success in forging partnerships to bring complex software solutions to top global businesses such as Diageo, P&G, The Coca Cola Company, Unilever and Columbia Sportswear, Sansen has built and managed agile teams operating across Europe, North America, and APAC. In his new role as General Manager for the Americas, based in Akeneo’s U.S. headquarters in Boston, he will spearhead Akeneo’s expansion throughout the Americas with a specific growth focus on the U.S.
“At Akeneo, we know we’re only as good as the people we hire — and that’s why we’re so delighted to welcome Dagbert, Johan, Lisa, and Antoine to the executive leadership team,” said Frederic de Gombert, Akeneo CEO. “All of these supremely talented leaders bring deep experience in the world of ecommerce, along with the entrepreneurialism, dynamism, and genuinely global mindset needed to scale Akeneo and bring our innovative experience-driven product to new markets. We have ambitious plans for 2022, and our new executive team gives us the expertise and strategic vision required to build out our product and expand into new markets all around the world.”
