Brett Caine headshot
Brett Caine.

Urban Airship today named former Citrix president Brett Caine as its new CEO.

Caine previously spent nine years at Florida-based Citrix, helping grow the virtualization software company’s revenue from $40 million to $600 million and from 225 employees to 2000.

“I’m excited by the industry, the opportunity for Urban Airship, and for our ability to impact our customers’ business,” Caine wrote in a blog post. “Only Urban Airship has the reach to deliver experiences to the hands of billions of consumers.”

Caine will take over as president and CEO at the Portland mobile marketing startup, while acting CEO Mike Temple will return to his post as CFO. Temple had been a temporary replacement for former CEO and co-founder Scott Kveton, who left the company in July amid sexual assault allegations by a former girlfriend.

urbanairship21Urban Airship confirmed that Caine — who was also named to the company’s board of directors today — will split time between offices in Portland, London, and San Francisco, while spending most of his working hours in the Bay Area.

“At Citrix Online, Brett led 13 global offices with only a couple of his executive team based in the same location,” the company said in a statement. “He’s a modern leader — not command-and-control — who embraces managing diverse, disperse workforces, focusing on results not face time.”

Caine will reunite with former Citrix executive Mark Baker, who arrived at Urban Airship in July. The new CEO will take the helm at a company that has maintained a strong culture despite Kveton’s out-of-office problems this summer. On a recent trip to Portland, we sat down with two Urban Airship directors to find out out how the company handled not only the distraction, but also losing one of its leaders.

“You can’t deny that this doesn’t have impact on culture,” Chief Marketing Officer Brent Hieggelke said. “But you can certainly recover, and I think we have recovered remarkably fast.”

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