Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Scott is co-founder and CEO of Avalara. For more than 30 years, Scott has pursued a specific vision: to blend strategic innovation with rigorous operational discipline to create companies with unique cultures that shake the status quo. Beginning with his college days at Claremont McKenna, Scott partnered with his roommate to launch Lifecycle, the most popular computerized exercise bike of all time, and since then has led and advanced several companies including Aircoa and MetaInfo (which was sold to Check Point Software Technologies).

Chief Financial Officer

Ross runs the financial operations at Avalara. With a track record of successfully leading teams and building businesses, Ross has in-depth knowledge of the software industry, and strong strategic and capital markets expertise. Prior to Avalara, Ross was a managing director in the technology investment banking division at Goldman Sachs and focused on advising enterprise software clients. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Ross served as an investment banking vice president at Credit Suisse and was one of the first employees of VIACK Corporation, a web collaboration software company, where he served in several operational and financial leadership roles.

President and Chief Operating Officer

Amit manages growth operations at Avalara, overseeing sales, marketing, business development, customer experience, and professional services. Throughout his career, Amit has focused on supporting the small business category with tools and solutions to help that segment grow and thrive in the global economy. Prior to Avalara, Amit was general manager and head of the small and medium business segment for North America at PayPal. He also served in senior leadership roles at Web.com and Dell, focusing on the needs of small businesses by developing partnerships and go-to-market strategies.

EVP and Chief Legal Officer

Prior to joining Avalara, Alesia held operational and legal executive roles for private and publicly traded companies. Her broad background includes leadership positions in legal, accounting, and operations. Alesia has deep experience managing public offerings and private financings, as well as mergers, acquisitions, and strategic transactions. She has served as general counsel of InfoSpace Inc. and drugstore.com and also practiced law at Perkins Coie, LLP. Alesia began her career as a certified public accountant at Deloitte Haskins and Sells.

EVP and Chief People Officer

Kathleen leads Global Human Resources for Avalara with a focus on growth and company culture. Bringing more than two decades of experience directing global human resources to Avalara, she has overseen human resources strategy that concentrates on people, culture, and growth at companies of all sizes across several industries, including Cisco, Deloitte, and Livent.

EVP and Chief Technology Officer

Danny leads Avalara's global development and engineering teams, and guides product innovation, integration, and reliability in the complex world of transaction tax compliance. He was previously senior vice president of engineering and chief software development officer with MobileIron, a leading mobile security company, and before that he was a group VP with Oracle, responsible for building the Oracle Service Cloud. Danny also served as VP of engineering at RightNow Technologies before it was acquired by Oracle in 2012.

EVP and Chief Product Officer

Sanjay oversees Avalara’s global product strategy. He combines technology expertise with business strategy, having spent years driving investment in leading technologies and fostering the entrepreneurial teams that create them. After an acquisition in February 2019, Sanjay joined Avalara from Indix, an artificial intelligence-based product information platform he founded. Prior to Indix, Sanjay was at Microsoft for nearly two decades, serving in a variety of senior executive and leadership roles. As corporate vice president of Microsoft’s developer and platform group, Sanjay established a division to drive global growth in the developer tools business and reinvigorate Microsoft’s connection with the developer and partner communities.

EVP and Chief Security Officer

Tim Gaylor oversees security operations at Avalara. With over 25 years of experience in the security industry and global security team management, Tim is building out Avalara's regulatory, policy, enterprise risk management, corporate security, and privacy programs. Prior to Avalara, Tim managed all security operations, protecting over 100 million patient records, at athenahealth. Tim also spent 13 years at Citrix Systems and focused on security strategy, operations, and architecture for cloud and virtualization technologies.  He also served eight years at Sandia National Labs designing highly secure networking systems for U.S. government command and control centers. Tim holds seven patents for cryptographic systems.

EVP, Strategy

Marshal guides Avalara’s overall strategy, including pricing, partnerships, and product business review. He works in tandem with corporate development to find new deals and partnerships that will drive growth for the company. Marshal previously managed Avalara’s key strategic ERP accounts and independent software vendors, supporting their software and usability needs and ensuring the highest-quality customer care and technical support systems are in place. His extensive industry experience includes creating and maintaining partnerships with hundreds of development, software solution, and value-added reselling partners worldwide.

EVP, Corporate Development

Jayme oversees Avalara’s mergers and acquisitions strategy and drives the acquisitions process from due diligence through integration. He has an extensive background in helping global companies understand and manage their tax compliance, and more than two decades of experience in tax technology, consulting, product development, and business management. Before joining Avalara, Jayme was responsible for leading the development and expansion of the software division at Ryan, a global tax services firm. He also previously served as senior vice president of sales, marketing, and professional services at Taxware.

SVP and General Manager of TTR, an Avalara company

Shon is SVP and general manager of TTR, an Avalara company. For more than 20 years, Shon has worked to improve the quality of people's lives by delivering best-in-class tax products and building a culture of care. Shon is one of the nation's leading experts on issues of sales tax, use tax, and transaction tax.

SVP, International

Salim is responsible for leading and scaling Avalara's international growth by driving the right product mix, marketing and sales capabilities, partner coverage, and end-to-end customer experience. He joined Avalara in January of 2020 with a background spanning from startups to very large enterprise software companies. In addition to his accomplishments in creating and scaling growth operations for technology companies, Salim’s business expertise is complemented by a background in marketing, product management, and engineering.

SVP, Global Compliance

Liz oversees global compliance operations at Avalara. With more than 20 years of leadership experience from a variety of technology sectors including software, media, and services, Liz is known for her strong track record of innovative problem solving, process optimization, and the ability to deliver automation for efficiency and scale. Her commitment to operational excellence and aptitude for partnering cross-functionally helped her drive value in prior roles with Vubiquity, a provider of content monetization technology, and Zilog, a computing microcontroller manufacturer.

SVP, Customer Success

Allison leads customer success at Avalara, including onboarding, professional services, technical support, customer success, and renewals. She joined Avalara in June of 2020 after 20 years with IBM, where she was vice president of customer success for IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software. In addition to her accomplishments in delivering cloud-based and on-premises software, Allison’s expertise in customer experience is complemented by a background in general management spanning strategy marketing, product management, and sales and business partner enablement.

SVP, Business Development

Greg is responsible for leading business development for Avalara through strategic partnerships. He joined Avalara in 2013 with a background in building business development strategies for technology companies. In addition to his thorough understanding of business development operations, Greg has deep channel partner expertise in helping businesses grow their operations through SaaS partnerships.

General Manager, Strategic Initiatives

Zach is responsible for accelerating growth within Avalara's strategic verticals and products. He collaborates with teams across the organization to meet the complex needs of nascent and unique markets. He's spent over 25 years building and leading businesses from technology startups to Fortune 100 companies across North America, Europe, and Asia. Zach's experience spans product, marketing, finance, and operations.

SVP, Engineering

Denis leads the engineering teams responsible for Avalara's returns platform, focusing on accuracy, reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency for customers. He was previously vice president of product development at Workday, managing their Data-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service products, and vice president of software development at Oracle, building Oracle’s Service Cloud and Beehive Enterprise Collaboration Server. Denis has also held technical leadership positions at Sun Microsystems and several startup companies (founding one of them) and has been granted nine patents.

VP, Engineering

Marcus leads the development of the Avalara AvaTax calculation and multi-tax engines as well as exemption certificate, document management, and shared services platforms. He joined Avalara in May 2019 and has 25 years of engineering experience in organizational transformation and innovation from startups to multinationals. Marcus focuses on growth and efficiency with an open platform strategy delivering scalability, nimbleness, and reliability.

SVP and Chief Marketing Officer

Jay oversees Avalara's growth in business through marketing, product development, and business strategy. He brings more than 20 years of experience developing high-performing marketing teams empowered to increase customer engagement and drive financial results. Prior to Avalara, Jay served as global head of marketing for PayPal's Business Financing Solutions division, where he helped small businesses obtain financing to achieve their aspirational goals. He previously held leadership positions at large companies like American Express and GE, and at smaller entrepreneurial companies like Aimia and Swift Financial.

Managing Director, India Operations

Manjula manages growth operations at Avalara India, overseeing sales, marketing, business development, and customer experience. Manjula brings extensive global business management expertise as well as a unique combination of experience in engineering, consulting, presales, and training. Before joining Avalara, she served in leadership roles at Infosys, HSBC, and Socion Advisors. During her two decades with Infosys, Manjula helped restructure the presales team for efficiency and develop the Learning Services offering. At HSBC, she was Head of Digital Engineering for Commercial Banking. As a strategic consultant for Socion Advisors, Manjula was involved in social initiatives committed to resolving large-scale societal challenges.

VP, Product Management

Paul is responsible for Avalara’s global product offerings spanning calculation, returns, and exemptions. With over 20 years of experience ranging from startups to large enterprises, Paul specializes in leading and overseeing product strategy and execution for high-growth stage companies. Paul started his career as a developer and, prior to Avalara, held product roles at Microsoft and Splunk.

SVP, Sales

Greg is responsible for leading and transforming Avalara's sales operations by applying complex channel model optimization to drive customer acquisition. He joined Avalara in 2017 with an extensive background in managing enterprise sales organizations. In addition to his accomplishments in establishing and growing sales operations for technology companies, Greg brings expertise in promoting customer success efforts to retain and support customers.

VP, Product Management, Platforms

Niranjan leads product management for Avalara’s integration ecosystem, global customer and developer experiences, and platform services. Niranjan brings over 20 years spanning product, engineering, and commercial leadership roles with Expedia, Boston Consulting Group, Microsoft, and AMD. Prior to Avalara, he was General Manager at Expedia, where he founded and led a commercial SaaS business that provides commerce solutions to smaller travel companies. Niranjan has a strong track record of combining business strategy with deep technical know-how to deliver compelling product experiences for customers and partners.

Rajeev Singh is the CEO of Accolade, the market leading on demand healthcare concierge for employers, health plans, and health systems. Prior to that, Rajeev co-founded Concur (NASDAQ: CNQR), the global leader in travel and expense management, in 1993 two years after graduating from college. He worked in nearly every role in the business – culminating in his final role as president, chief operating officer, and board director for the last nine years of his tenure. Rajeev graduated from Western Michigan University in 1991 (BSE). Today, he serves on the board of Avalara, Apptio, a SaaS technology business management solutions provider, and Seattle Children’s Hospital Foundation, a not for profit.

Kathy Zwickert is a global technology executive with years of human resources and leadership experience. Kathy was the Chief People Officer at NetSuite (now Oracle NetSuite) leading organizational culture, talent acquisition, and people operations. She has more than 25 years of experience working with leaders, boards, and global teams to help companies scale and architect change. Before joining NetSuite, Kathy served as EVP of Human Resources and Communications for Oclaro (NASDAQ: OCLR). Prior to joining Oclaro, Kathy led Human Resources at Solid Information Technology and Keynote Systems. Kathy spent the first 10 years of her career at EY and Accenture, where she advised multinational companies on employment, tax, and global expansion issues as a consultant and Certified Public Accountant.

Tami Reller is an industry software executive with extensive marketing, finance, and operational experience. She is currently executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Optum, one of the world’s largest diversified health data and technology companies and a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. Before that, Tami was an executive vice president at Microsoft Corp., most recently serving as its executive vice president of marketing. During her career, Reller also has served as CFO for several divisions within Microsoft. In 2013 she ranked #5 in The World's Most Influential CMOs | Appinions & Forbes CMO Influence Study. A mathematics graduate of University of Minnesota, Moorhead, Tami also earned a MBA from St. Mary’s College. She started as a receptionist and an accounting intern at Great Plains Software in 1984 to fund college and eventually rose to chief financial officer in 1999. After Microsoft acquired Great Plains in 2001, Tami served a number of senior leadership roles within the Dynamics business.

Chelsea Stoner is a Partner at Battery Ventures, a global private investment firm with $4B under management. Chelsea joined Battery in 2006 and focuses on growth equity and buyout investments, with a specific emphasis on SaaS and Healthcare IT. She is currently on the boards of Avalara, Brightree, and Data Innovations, and is involved with Glassdoor and Marketo. Her earlier investments include Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN), Guidewire (NASDAQ: GWRE) and RealPage (NASDAQ: RP). Prior to Battery, she was an Associate at the private equity firm Key Principal Partners. Earlier in her career, Chelsea was a manager at Accenture, where she led technology and strategy projects. She has also held positions with Merrill Lynch Equity Research in Hong Kong, and with Classified Ventures, where she completed strategic planning and marketing projects as a Kauffman intern. She received a BS with honors in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Edward (“Ned”) Gilhuly is a founder and Member of Sageview Capital, LP, an investment firm with approximately $1 billion of assets under management. Prior to founding Sageview Capital, Ned was at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) for 19 years. He joined KKR in 1986 in San Francisco, became a partner in 1995, and from 1998 until 2005 he lived in London where he established and oversaw all aspects of KKR’s business in Europe. He also served on KKR’s Investment Committee from its inception in 2000 until his departure in 2005. Before joining KKR, Ned received an M.B.A. from Stanford University, worked in the mergers and acquisitions group of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets in New York, and graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in History and Economics. Ned has been on over 20 corporate boards and is currently a member of the board of directors of Cinedigm and GoPro, as well as a member of the board of the Duke Management Company, the California Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team Foundation.

Robin Foote is a private investor, corporate director and consultant. In her corporate career, she held a variety of executive leadership positions in pioneering roles with several large banks, which subsequently became formative merger partners for Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. She also served as head of Strategic Marketing for AT&T just prior to that company’s break-up in 2000. Robin began her career as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, Inc., and has returned to that field at various points throughout her 40+ year career. Most recently, in 2005 she merged her independent consulting practice into Novantas, LLC., where she remains a partner today. In addition to Avalara, Robin serves on the Board of Directors of Saturna Trust Company as well as several community organizations. She is a past Director of Cascade Financial Corporation and its subsidiary, Cascade Bank as well as of DLJdirect (now part of E*Trade) and several private companies, all of which have been successfully sold or merged. Robin graduated magna cum laude from Smith College with a degree in Economics and with High Distinction from Harvard Business School, where she was inducted into the ‘Century Club’ and honored as a Baker Scholar. She is also a graduate of Northwestern University Kellogg School’s ‘Women Director Development Program.’

Brian Sharples is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and advisor to technology and ecommerce companies. Brian most recently served as Chairman of Twyla Inc., an online fine art marketplace that he co-founded, from October 2016 to December 2018. Brian previously served as Chief Executive Officer of HomeAway, Inc., a vacation rental marketplace he co-founded, from April 2004 to September 2016, as President from April 2004 to May 2014, and as Chairman from March 2011 to December 2015. Prior to founding HomeAway, Brian was an angel investor from 2001 to 2004 and also served as Chief Executive Officer of Elysium Partners, Inc., a company in the vacation club ownership market, from 2002 to 2003. Brian was President of IntelliQuest Information Group from 1990 to 1996 and Chief Executive Officer from 1996 to 2000. Brian holds a B.S. in math and economics from Colby College and an M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Scott McFarlane is a co-founder and the CEO of Avalara. For more than 30 years Scott has pursued a specific vision: to blend strategic innovation with a rigorous operational discipline to create companies with unique cultures that shake the status quo. Beginning with his college days at Claremont McKenna, Scott partnered with his roommate to launch Lifecycle, the most popular computerized exercise bike of all time, and since then has led and advanced several companies including Aircoa and MetaInfo (which was sold to Check Point Software Technologies).

Bill ran the financial operations of Avalara. His career includes leadership roles in finance and general management at leading technology companies. Prior to Avalara, Bill was interim CFO at Khan Academy, a provider of online learning resources. Before Khan, he was executive vice president of strategy for Leap Wireless (parent company of Cricket Wireless, now a division of AT&T), a facilities-based wireless service provider that grew to be the fifth largest in the U.S. at the time of its acquisition by AT&T. Before Leap Wireless, Bill served as CEO of Nuera Communications, where during his nine-year tenure the company grew to be a leading provider of VoIP gateways, soft switches, management systems, and telephony solutions for telecommunications service providers worldwide.