True Search Finds CEO for Everbridge
July 26, 2019 – Executive recruitment firm True Search has placed David Meredith as chief executive officer and member of the board of directors of Everbridge Inc., a critical event application software company. Josh Withers, one of True’s founders, and Kelli Allen, partner, led the assignment.
Mr. Meredith brings over 25 years of executive leadership experience across leading multi-billion-dollar cloud managed services providers and software companies. He most recently served as CEO at Rackspace. He succeeds long-time CEO Jaime Ellertson who is transitioning to the role of executive chairman of the Everbridge board.
“I am thrilled to welcome David as the new CEO of Everbridge,” said Mr. Ellertson. “David has an extensive background scaling category-leading software-as-a-service and infrastructure providers, demonstrating a strong record of corporate growth, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. Last June, we announced our intent to identify and retain an executive who could lead our business through the next stage of growth to $1 billion in annual revenue, and I am confident that David’s experience and proven leadership skills make him the perfect choice for this role.”
Mr. Withers said True Search was equally thrilled to have partnered with the company to find Mr. Meredith. “David’s proven success partnered with Everbridge’s forward thinking approach and client focus is going to have material impact,” he said. “We’re excited to see what this dynamic leader and innovative company accomplish together.”
Deep Experience
Mr. Meredith has led international technology-related businesses in roles including CEO, president, and member of the board of directors. His experience spans a range of industry verticals from venture-backed firms such as NeuPals in China to business units of large public companies such as Capital One, CGI and VeriSign.
As COO of Rackspace, Mr. Meredith helped lead the transformation from managed hosting to a multi-cloud ITaaS provider recognized as a leader by the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Worldwide Public Cloud Infrastructure. He served during a period of growth which included the integration of the largest acquisition in the company’s history.
Prior to Rackspace, Mr. Meredith was president of Global Data Center Hosting at CenturyLink. In this role, he was responsible for P&L oversight, sales, product management, marketing, operations, security, service delivery and analytics for nearly 60 large data centers and related operations across North America, Europe and Asia. He helped lead the successful carve-out of the CenturyLink/Savvis global data center hosting platform and roll-up of multiple SaaS managed security and big data companies as part of a $2.8 billion private-equity transaction.
“I am excited to be joining the Everbridge leadership team and to become part of the Everbridge family that has built such a powerful platform for helping businesses, governments and other organizations automate their operational response to manage critical events,” said Mr. Meredith. “As a category leader, Everbridge has established an enviable, mission-based business built on a customer-first culture, helping government entities protect their constituents and helping companies protect employees, safeguard assets, and ensure business continuity through their global, unified critical event management platform.”
Respected Recruiters
Everbridge Inc. is a global software company that provides enterprise software applications that automate and accelerate organizations’ operational response to critical events to help keep people safe and businesses running. The company’s platform sent over 2.8 billion messages in 2018 and offers the ability to reach over 500 million people in more than 200 countries and territories, including the entire mobile populations on a country-wide scale in Sweden, the Netherlands, the Bahamas, Singapore, Greece and a number of the largest states in India.
Working in both the private and public sectors, True has offices throughout the U.S. as well as the EMEA and APAC regions. Since the late 1990s, the firm’s founders have refined their search process with a blend of data-centric insights, relationship-building and experience to produce a methodology that consistently improves hiring decisions and accelerates growth. Clients include: Jet, Work Front, Summit Partners. True is a subsidiary of True Talent Advisory, a global portfolio of human capital services and products for high-growth tech and tech-enabled organizations.
Mr. Withers, managing director and co-head of the firm’s CEO/board of directors practice, brings 15 years of experience to executive searches for True clients in the software and internet sectors. Before helping start True, Mr. Withers held consultant roles with Heidrick & Struggles, Howard Fischer & Associates and CTPartners. He is based in San Francisco.
Ms. Allen, who is co-head of CEO/board of directors practice, focuses primarily on board and CEO searches for B2B software companies. Based in Philadelphia, she has been a key contributor on a number of True’s searches with high growth businesses such as Workfront, BigCommerce, JAMF, Malwarebytes, Adaptive Insights and Zenoss. Prior to joining True as an associate, she began her professional career in recruiting at Philadelphia-based Insight Global.
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor; and Andrew W. Mitchell, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
