Our leaders

Mr. Svane is the CEO, chairman and founder of Zendesk, a global company that builds software for the best customer experiences. He has driven the vision, culture, and growth of the company since it was founded in 2007. Under his leadership, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 and currently helps more than 169,000 organizations around the world better help, engage with, and understand their customers. Originally from Copenhagen, Denmark, he is a published author of the book Startupland, a father of four, and a lover of handcrafted cocktails.

Soren Abildgaard is executive vice president of engineering at Zendesk and has been with the company since 2017. He leads the company’s engineering function and is responsible for building both SaaS products and developer platforms.

He is passionate about empowering his teams to build products that work together to improve customer relationships. Additionally, Soren oversees Zendesk’s platform software, which provides developers with the flexible tools needed to extend the customer experience.

Prior to Zendesk, Soren served as senior vice president of engineering for TubeMogul, where he managed the Advertising Cloud platform, which was acquired by Adobe. Previously, he held senior engineering positions at Microsoft and Autodesk.

Shanti Ariker has served as SVP, General Counsel since December 2020. She has more than 20 years experience working internationally with high-growth companies.

Prior to Zendesk, Ms. Ariker was VP, Deputy General Counsel at Twilio Inc. Ms. Ariker also served as SVP, General Counsel at Salesforce.org and held other senior leadership roles at Salesforce.com, Inc. and Autodesk, Inc. She started out her career in private practice. She has worked closely on Environmental, Social & Governance programs and has expertise in charity law, formation and an understanding of different philanthropic models. Ms. Ariker received her B.A. from University of Massachusetts and her J.D. from the University of Virginia. She is an aspiring writer, currently working on her memoir.

As Zendesk’s chief information officer, Colleen is reshaping Zendesk's benchmark for modern IT at scale and a customer-centric workforce. She is passionate about the role of both customer and employee experience in the digital age.

With more than 20 years of experience across multiple industries and an ever-changing technology landscape, Colleen is a digital- and business-model transformation leader. Her innovative strategies help companies put their customers at the center and create work environments focused on collaboration and open communication.

Previously, she was an executive in residence with PwC where she worked on a range of commercial and internal initiatives. Prior to this, Colleen was vice president of IT for Adobe Systems, and also held executive-level IT roles at Cisco Systems, Palm, and SAP.

In her spare time, Colleen is an avid rower. She takes what she learns about discipline and teamwork on the water to the business world. She holds a bachelor’s degree from State University of New York at Potsdam and an MBA from the University of North Florida.

As a finance leader at Zendesk, Marc brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in investment banking, finance, and strategy. Over the past seven years, Marc worked as part of the leadership team to grow Zendesk’s SaaS business.

Prior to Zendesk, he held senior leadership positions in investment banking and equity research at Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Salomon Brothers, and Cowen and Company. As an Institutional investor-ranked analyst, Marc built a track record with investors and companies in industry thought leadership. Between his time on Wall Street and at Zendesk, Marc advised high-growth companies as a strategic consultant. Throughout his career, he has enjoyed working with and managing growth and scaling businesses as an advisor and manager.

Outside of the office, Marc enjoys connecting with family and spends time outdoors hiking, running, and paddling.

Alex Constantinople joined Zendesk as CMO in May 2021, and is responsible for our global marketing efforts including brand, product, campaigns and integrated marketing, creative, communications, social impact and events. She focuses on unifying our messages across our customers, products and the company to keep building our marketing engine and driving continued growth. Alex will also focus on more clearly connecting our social impact work with our company mission, and guiding the development and evolution of our corporate strategy.

Prior to Zendesk she was the CEO of Outcast, an integrated marketing agency, where for a decade she partnered with some of the world’s most well-known companies to help them shape and grow their brands. She has also served in marketing and communications roles for GE, Condé Nast, NBC and CNN.

She lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children.

Norman Gennaro is president of sales at Zendesk, and has more than 25 years of business and technology experience leading and growing global teams of high-performance sales professionals. In his role, Norman is focused on accelerating Zendesk’s move into the enterprise market, scaling and expanding the global sales organization, and delivering on the company’s quarterly goals and long-term strategy.

Most recently, Norman built Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) mid-market segment for North America into a multi-billion-dollar business. Prior to AWS, Norm spent 16 years in enterprise sales with Oracle Corporation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA in finance and computer-information systems from the University of Notre Dame de Namur.

John Geschke is chief of staff at Zendesk and is responsible for aligning the company’s office of the CEO leadership group with the execution of the company’s strategy. Prior to serving as chief of staff, John was Zendesk’s chief legal officer. He has more than 25 years of legal experience in the technology industry.

Before joining Zendesk, John was general counsel of Norwest Venture Partners, a venture-capital firm, and practiced law as a partner at Cooley LLP. John holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University with a concentration in the School of Public and International Affairs, and a juris doctor from Stanford University.

Outside of Zendesk, John is working hard on his empty nesting lifestyle with his wife of over 23 years and appreciating his two kids and two very large dogs.

As Zendesk’s chief people and diversity officer, InaMarie Johnson leads the company's vision for delivering a great employee experience. Day-to-day, she is responsible for overseeing multiple functions, including talent acquisition, development, diversity equity and inclusion, and workplace experience functions.

Before joining Zendesk, InaMarie was senior vice president and chief human resources officer for Plantronics, Inc., an audio communications company. Prior to that, she was the chief human resources officer at UTi Worldwide Inc., a supply-chain management company, and held various senior leadership roles at Honeywell International Inc., an international technology and manufacturing company.

InaMarie holds a bachelor’s degree in social sciences, with an emphasis in human resource management, from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in organizational development and management from John F. Kennedy University.

When she's not at the office, InaMarie enjoys spending her time gardening and is an avid yogi.

Since 2010, Adrian has led Zendesk’s product management and engineering teams, constantly creating new paths for product innovation and development. As the company’s chief technology officer, he is currently responsible for defining its long-term strategic product direction that will shape the future of customer service. He also helps guide the company’s global customers on how to enhance their customer experience to create better relationships.

Previously, Adrian served as chief technical officer at Attributor, where he managed web-crawling and content-identification systems for text, video, and images. He was the first engineer hired by Plumtree Software, and remained with the company through its IPO and subsequent acquisition by BEA.

Adrian is a Yorkshireman living in San Francisco.

With more than 20 years of experience designing digital experiences, Toke Nygaard oversees Zendesk’s brand and product UX/UI as the company’s chief creative officer. In this role, he is constantly developing and building the Zendesk brand with his global team of passionate creatives, keeping the product experience true to its origins of being simple and easy to use. Toke’s quietly humble ambition is to build the greatest and most unique cloud-software brand of all time.

Before joining Zendesk, Toke was a founding partner of one of the largest pioneering design communities, K10k. He was also the founder and creative director at Cuban Council, a digital-design company, where he helped design the original Facebook identity, and worked with a range of clients from Tyra Banks and Francis Coppola, to Apple and NASA. Previously, he worked for Danish web-design frontrunner Araneum and later helped start the Oven Digital offices in London. Toke attended Kolding School of Design and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design, focusing on new media and graphic design.

Outside of the office, Toke enjoys spending quality time with his family and is a table tennis aficionado.

As Zendesk’s chief operating officer, Jeff brings the Product, Advocacy and scaled Go-to-Market customer teams closer together to fully understand how our customers experience Zendesk so that we can create the best possible CX solutions for them.

Prior to being named COO, Jeff spent four years as Zendesk’s CMO, where he helped Zendesk realize significant growth by focusing on what matters most to our customers and delivering a more seamless, simplified and frictionless customer experience. Before joining Zendesk, he spent nearly two decades in leadership roles at SaaS and other tech companies, where he focused on marketing, product marketing, conversion and retention optimization, analytics and business management at companies ranging from startups to enterprise companies.

Most recently, he ran engagement marketing and campaign marketing for Adobe’s multi-billion dollar ARR Creative Cloud business, and before that he served as CMO at 99designs. He has also spent many years in the Silicon Valley startup scene, where he honed his strength in data-driven marketing and growth best practice.

When he’s not digging through the numbers and mulling over strategy, you can find him spending time with his husband and two children, or doing long runs or bike rides throughout the Bay Area.

Maarten has served as Zendesk’s chief information security officer since 2018, leading the global security organization. He is also a board member and former Chairman of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), a nonprofit association of 400 security teams in more than 80 countries.

Maarten has more than 15 years of experience managing security organizations, which includes building the cybersecurity-threat intelligence team at Amazon, and working on the security teams at Google and Microsoft.

He holds a master’s degree in information security from Edith Cowan University and a master’s degree in international relations from Freie Universitat Berlin. When not working, Maarten enjoys backpacking, sailing, and collecting first-edition travel literature.

As executive vice president of product at Zendesk, Shawna manages the organization’s global product teams to deliver thoughtfully designed, market-changing products. She follows a customer-first mindset and is energized by seeing what experiences are possible with Zendesk technology.

Shawna currently holds three patents, and her career has revolved around making hard concepts easy and intuitive for users. She previously spent 15 years at Salesforce as SVP of product management, where she was a pivotal part of multiple product strategy teams, including the Customer 360 platform.

When she’s not at the office, you can find her listening to live music or soaring to great heights on the trapeze.