Leadership Team

Deidre Paknad has founded and led three tech startups, acquired companies and been acquired, and led a high-growth business as an executive at IBM for several years; this affords her a unique perspective on using both speed and scale to drive growth. In her role as CEO at WorkBoard, she works with senior leadership teams at some of the world’s largest companies to clarify, align, and drive strategic priorities with greater speed and agility.

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Deidre is a frequent speaker on outcome mindset and tapping into ambition, including regular speaking engagements at Stanford. Deidre has over a dozen patents and has twice been inducted into the Smithsonian Institution for innovation. Deidre has been featured in 4 books, including 2 in the last 12 months, When Women Lead and Valley Girls: Lessons from Female Founders in the Silicon Valley and Beyond. Deidre hosts The OKR Podcast, which focuses on accelerating outcomes and fostering an outcomes culture.

Daryoush Paknad co-founded WorkBoard in 2013 and has led its technology roadmap ever since. He's co-founded and led tech teams at several early-stage startups. Earlier in his career, Daryoush played a key role in pivotal technologies as a member of the first four-person Adobe Acrobat team where he helped develop the Portable Document Format (PDF), at Netscape where he led a dev team working on its first generation enterprise server, and at Sun in its early Java initiatives. Daryoush is an avid cyclist who, not surprisingly, is passionate about using data to measure and analyze his results so he can win more and train less. He holds several patents and has a BS in computer science from the University of California.

David Chase leads Sales, Marketing, Revenue Operations and Go-to-Market strategy at WorkBoard. Having previously served as WorkBoard's Chief Marketing Officer, David brings extensive experience in Product Marketing, and a record of driving efficient growth with Messaging, Content, Brand and Enablement at the center of the Marketing strategy. He began his career in Sales and while at 8x8 led the Sales Engineering efforts for the European market and many of the company's largest global enterprise clients. Originally from the UK and now living in Silicon Valley, David graduated with honors in Marketing from Coventry University and is an accredited Chartered Marketer from The Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Mike Hipp leads the WorkBoard revenue organization in EMEA. Mike joined WorkBoard in 2018 and has been an integral part of WorkBoard's success, including the launch of WorkBoard's European business. Prior to joining WorkBoard, he held sales leadership positions at notable technology companies, including PTC, Medallia, and Aprimo.

Sameera leads the customer success, strategic services, and solutions teams at WorkBoard. She has helped hundreds of organizations tailor strategy execution and OKR practices to their culture and align on outcomes. Sameera has personally coached over 1,000 teams to set and align OKRs and is one of the most experienced OKR coaches in the world. She is a member of the Results Foundry faculty and works directly with senior leaders across Ford, Workday, Juniper, Unilever, AstraZeneca, and other large enterprises. Sameera has a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz and has lived and worked in Spain and the UK.

Kamran leads WorkBoard’s strategic alliance efforts with channel partners, systems integrators, and other solution providers like Microsoft and Workday. Earlier in his career he founded eCentives and took it public; most recently he led a strategic B2B marketplace initiative for Samsung US.

Cate Hanson is a finance executive with over 20 years of experience helping technology companies navigate significant growth, transformation, and complexity. She currently leads the finance function at WorkBoard as VP of Finance, reporting directly to the CEO, with responsibility spanning finance, FP&A, accounting, and the financial infrastructure that supports executive decision-making and company growth.