How To Build An Enduring Culture In The Era of COVID-19
Zillow Group CEO Rich Barton, Icertis CEO Samir Bodas and Axiom CEO Elena Donio for this interactive virtual event, moderated by GeekWire co-founder John Cook.
In this hour-long session, discussed tactics needed to boost morale and maintain culture during a crisis. The session took place at 11 a.m. (PST) on May 28, and was open to all GeekWire readers.
Rich Barton, co-founder and CEO of Zillow Group
As chief executive officer of Zillow Group, Rich leads the company’s work to transform how people buy, sell, rent and finance homes. Rich co-founded Zillow in 2005 and served as CEO until 2010, when he became the company’s executive chairman. He returned as CEO in early 2019.
Before Zillow, Rich founded Expedia within Microsoft in 1994 and successfully spun the company out as a public company in 1999. He served as president, CEO and board director of Expedia from 1999 until 2003. He also co-founded and served as non-executive chairman of Glassdoor from 2007 to 2018.
Rich was a venture partner at Benchmark from 2005 until 2018. He’s served on many public company boards and continues to be a board director for Netflix, Qurate, Artsy, and Zillow Group. He earned a Bachelor of Science in General Engineering: Industrial Economics from Stanford University.
Samir Bodas, co-founder and CEO of Icertis
Samir Bodas is Co-founder, Chairman, CEO of Icertis. He has over three decades of experience in product development, sales, marketing, and culture-building at both mega-cap and start-up software companies.
After his undergraduate studies, Samir began his professional life as a software engineer at National Instruments. He then went on to receive an MBA in 1992, and spent several years in management roles at Microsoft Corporation. He cut his teeth at startups starting in 2000 at Imandi and then at Jamcracker, and was appointed CEO of Disha Technologies in 2002. He helped grow Disha Technologies five-fold in 2-years and managed its acquisition by Aztecsoft in 2004. In 2006, Samir was appointed the CEO of Aztecsoft and in 18 months successfully guided the company to become the fastest-growing publicly traded mid-cap IT services company. In 2009, he helped finalize Aztecsoft’s acquisition by MindTree.
Samir is a golf addict to the annoyance of his family. When not playing golf, he reads books about golf. And when not reading about golf, he contributes to the local community as a Board Member of the Seattle Chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and the Seattle Chapter Pratham USA. Samir is also a former trustee of Lakeside School in Seattle.
Samir has a BA in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and MBA in Finance and Marketing from the Wharton School of Business.
Elena Donio, CEO of Axiom
Elena Donio is Chief Executive Officer of Axiom, a leading global marketplace for on-demand corporate legal talent. Serving over half the Fortune 100 globally, Axiom enables corporate legal departments to become more agile and efficient, and empowers lawyers to pursue more of the work they love.
Elena has over 20 years of experience in fast-paced technology companies. Prior to joining Axiom as CEO, she served as president of SAP Concur. Elena joined Concur in 1998 through the acquisition of 7Software, a Palo Alto start-up, and served in various leadership roles including the head of worldwide sales and marketing, head of product management, executive vice president, and general manager of small and medium-sized businesses.
She helped lead the company through many transitions, including Concur’s acquisition by SAP in 2014; its transition from licensed, enterprise software to cloud-based solutions; from desktop computing to the mobile device; and from its dominant focus on large business clients to small and mid-market organizations. Elena is a member of the Board of Directors at Twilio and PayScale. She earned her BA in Economics from the University of California, San Diego.