The Executive Review
Est. 2010 · Independent

The Executive Review

The Definitive Monthly Ranking of Private-Sector Growth Leaders

July 2026Edition
Current Events · July 2026 · Tech & Business Executives  

Top 10 Trending Chief Revenue Officers

July 2026 · Updated Monthly

The ten most upward-trending executives in each C-suite discipline across the private growth sector this month. Tap any discipline above; tap a name for the full profile.

01
Sam Blond
Sam Blond
President / CRO — Brex
Scaled Brex past $200M ARR as CRO then President — the definitive private fintech revenue architect
— Holding
Score 97.2
02
Ryan Longfield
Ryan Longfield
Chief Revenue Officer — Gong
Turned conversation intelligence into a required sales stack item — Gong ARR crossed $300M on his watch
— Holding
Score 93.5
03
Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger
Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger
Chief Revenue Officer — Figure AI
Bridging physical AI and enterprise sales — building a category that did not exist 18 months ago
▲ Rising
Score 88.4
04
Mark Roberge
Mark Roberge
Managing Director — Stage 2 Capital
Author of The Sales Acceleration Formula — defined the modern CRO playbook, now investing in the next generation
▲ Rising
Score 83.7
05
Stevie Case
Stevie Case
Chief Revenue Officer — Vanta
Turned compliance SaaS into a sales motion companies actually want to buy — fastest-growing CRO in security
▼ Dropped
Score 90.8
06
Dennis Lyandres
Dennis Lyandres
Chief Revenue Officer — Procore (Former)
Scaled construction software CRO to $1B ARR — brought enterprise discipline to a legacy vertical
▲ Rising
Score 81.2
07
Catie Ivey
Catie Ivey
Chief Revenue Officer — Demandbase
ABM revenue authority — turned Demandbase into the pipeline generation tool of choice for enterprise
▼ Dropped
Score 86.0
08
Scott Leese
Scott Leese
CRO / Founder — Scott Leese Consulting
Serial CRO at private SaaS companies — the practitioner architect who builds revenue teams from $0 to scale
— Holding
Score 78.9
09
Latane Conant
Latane Conant
Chief Revenue Officer — 6sense
ABM revenue architect — wrote the operator playbook for intent-driven pipeline that thousands of B2B teams now run
— Holding
Score 75.4
10
CD
Carlos Delatorre
Chief Revenue Officer — MongoDB (Former)
Veteran enterprise CRO who led go-to-market at MongoDB and Anaplan through scale
★ New Entry
Score 74.0
01
PC
Parker Conrad
Chief Executive Officer — Rippling
Scaling the only platform unifying HR, IT, and Finance — raised $500M at $13.5B valuation in 2024
— Holding
Score 99.0
02
DF
Dylan Field
Chief Executive Officer — Figma
Survived a $20B Adobe acquisition attempt and emerged stronger — 4M daily users, fully independent
▲ Rising
Score 92.6
03
Alexandr Wang
Alexandr Wang
Chief Executive Officer — Scale AI
Built the data labeling infrastructure that powers GPT-4, Gemini, and virtually every major frontier AI model
— Holding
Score 94.8
04
AG
Ali Ghodsi
Chief Executive Officer — Databricks
Built the definitive private AI and data platform — $62B valuation, processing over 1 exabyte of data monthly
▼ Dropped
Score 97.1
05
MP
Melanie Perkins
Chief Executive Officer — Canva
Built a $40B private design empire from Australia — the most valuable startup CEO most people overlook
— Holding
Score 90.3
06
PC
Patrick Collison
Chief Executive Officer — Stripe
Quietly built the payments infrastructure under the global internet — $70B private valuation, no IPO in sight
— Holding
Score 87.9
07
Amjad Masad
Amjad Masad
Chief Executive Officer — Replit
Made coding accessible to 25 million people — the CEO building the AI-native development environment
▲ Rising
Score 82.9
08
HW
Henry Ward
Chief Executive Officer — Carta
Turned cap table management into the infrastructure of private markets — 40,000+ companies on Carta
▼ Dropped
Score 85.4
09
Howie Liu
Howie Liu
Chief Executive Officer — Airtable
Redefined what a database product could look like — 450,000 organizations run on Airtable today
— Holding
Score 80.5
10
Guillaume Pousaz
Guillaume Pousaz
Chief Executive Officer — Checkout.com
Built a $40B private payments infrastructure company — the most valuable private fintech in Europe
— Holding
Score 78.1
01
BL
Brad Lightcap
Chief Operating Officer — OpenAI
Runs day-to-day operations at the most consequential private AI lab on Earth — the COO behind ChatGPT's scale
— Holding
Score 98.3
02
Matt MacInnis
Matt MacInnis
Chief Operating Officer — Rippling
Scaling Rippling's go-to-market and operations as the company approaches $500M ARR and global expansion
— Holding
Score 95.0
03
Claire Hughes Johnson
Claire Hughes Johnson
Chief Operating Officer — Stripe (Former)
Wrote the Stripe operating manual that became a template for high-growth tech ops
▲ Rising
Score 90.1
04
Vijay Gill
Vijay Gill
Chief Operating Officer — Navan
Scaling private enterprise travel and expense management — Navan valued at $9B and growing internationally
▲ Rising
Score 87.6
05
Naveen Rao
Naveen Rao
President — Databricks
Scaling the data intelligence platform at the center of every enterprise AI conversation
▼ Dropped
Score 92.4
06
Anna Baird
Anna Baird
Chief Revenue & Operating Officer — Outreach
Built the operational backbone of the leading private sales execution platform — took Outreach past $200M ARR
— Holding
Score 85.2
07
Sifat Sharif
Sifat Sharif
Chief Executive Officer — Intercom
Former COO turned CEO at the private customer messaging platform — led Intercom's AI-first transformation
— Holding
Score 82.7
08
Dan Sacks
Dan Sacks
Chief Operating Officer — Gong
Operationalizing the revenue intelligence platform scaling past $300M ARR — private SaaS efficiency model
— Holding
Score 80.3
09
Ali Rowghani
Ali Rowghani
Partner / Former COO — Y Combinator / Twitter
Ran operations at Twitter and Pixar before becoming one of Silicon Valley's most impactful growth investors
— Holding
Score 77.8
10
LB
Leah Busque Solivan
Founder / Operator — TaskRabbit
Built and operated the gig economy marketplace before it was a category — then led the operator-investor path
— Holding
Score 75.4
01
Vivian Fang
Vivian Fang
Chief Financial Officer — Figma
The CFO navigating Figma's post-Adobe independence and building toward one of tech's most anticipated IPOs
▲ Rising
Score 94.6
02
Michael Tannenbaum
Michael Tannenbaum
Co-Founder / COO — Brex
Built the financial infrastructure of the private corporate card that rewired startup spending — co-founder and original CFO
▼ Dropped
Score 97.8
03
Dave Morton
Dave Morton
Chief Financial Officer — Databricks
CFO at the most valuable private AI company — building the financial architecture for a generational IPO
▲ Rising
Score 89.7
04
Shem Elmelech
Shem Elmelech
Chief Financial Officer — Rippling
Managing the financial architecture of one of the most watched pre-IPO B2B SaaS companies on the market
▼ Dropped
Score 92.1
05
Ravi Mhatre
Ravi Mhatre
Founding Partner — Lightspeed Venture Partners
Operator-investor hybrid defining financial rigor at the growth stage — backed 3 private decacorns
▲ Rising
Score 80.1
06
Dave Sobota
Dave Sobota
Chief Financial Officer — Gong
The CFO behind one of the most capital-efficient paths to $300M ARR in private enterprise SaaS
▼ Dropped
Score 87.3
07
Rachel Quon
Rachel Quon
VP Finance — Brex
Financial infrastructure builder at one of the most innovative private fintech companies in the world
▼ Dropped
Score 84.9
08
Harjeet Taggar
Harjeet Taggar
Partner / Co-Founder — Y Combinator / Triplebyte
Startup finance and talent authority — shapes the capital strategy of 4,000+ funded private companies
▼ Dropped
Score 82.5
09
Amy Butte
Amy Butte
CFO / Board Member — NYSE (Former) / Private Boards
The Wall Street CFO who brought enterprise financial discipline to the private tech ecosystem
— Holding
Score 77.7
10
Dhivya Suryadevara
Dhivya Suryadevara
CFO — Stripe (Former)
Brought Wall Street CFO rigor to one of the world's most valuable private companies — Stripe at $95B
— Holding
Score 75.2
01
AK
Andrej Karpathy
Founder / CTO — Eureka Labs
The scientist who made self-driving and large language models real — founding his own private AI education company
— Holding
Score 99.2
02
MM
Mira Murati
Founder / CTO — OpenAI (Former)
Built the engineering culture behind GPT-4 — CTO of the most consequential AI lab on Earth
— Holding
Score 97.0
03
Pedro Franceschi
Pedro Franceschi
CTO / Co-Founder — Brex
Built bank-grade fintech infrastructure from scratch at 18 — one of the most technically accomplished founders in private SaaS
— Holding
Score 94.5
04
Shariq Rizvi
Shariq Rizvi
Chief Technology Officer — Rippling
Engineering the most ambitious private B2B SaaS architecture — unified HR, IT, and Finance in 140+ countries
— Holding
Score 92.1
05
Tomer London
Tomer London
CTO / Co-Founder — Gusto
Built the payroll and HR infrastructure trusted by 400,000 private businesses — a decade of technical leadership
— Holding
Score 89.7
06
Shishir Mehrotra
Shishir Mehrotra
CEO / Co-Founder — Coda
Former YouTube product head who built Coda into the $1.4B document platform replacing spreadsheets and apps
▲ Rising
Score 82.4
07
Harrison Chase
Harrison Chase
CEO / Co-Founder — LangChain
Built the most widely adopted framework for AI applications — powers thousands of private enterprise LLM deployments
▼ Dropped
Score 87.2
08
Guillermo Rauch
Guillermo Rauch
CEO / CTO — Vercel
Built the deployment platform under half the internet — Next.js has over 1M developers worldwide
▼ Dropped
Score 84.8
09
Astasia Myers
Astasia Myers
General Partner — Quiet Capital
One of the most influential operator-investors in developer tooling and AI infrastructure
— Holding
Score 80.0
10
Jared Friedman
Jared Friedman
Partner — Y Combinator
The technical gatekeeper of YC — shapes the technology choices of 4,000+ funded startups
— Holding
Score 77.5
01
AR
Atif Rafiq
President / CDO — MGM Resorts (Former)
Brought Silicon Valley product thinking to hospitality — one of the most impactful digital transformation leaders in private-sector enterprise
— Holding
Score 98.1
02
Monica Caldas
Monica Caldas
EVP and CIO — Liberty Mutual
Led cloud transformation of a $45B private insurance giant — zero critical system downtime in 18 months
— Holding
Score 95.3
03
BT
Bret Taylor
CEO / Co-Founder — Sierra AI
Co-creator of Google Maps, CTO of Salesforce, now founding the private enterprise AI platform built on trust
— Holding
Score 92.7
04
Tim Campos
Tim Campos
CIO — Meta / Facebook (Former)
Managed internal tech infrastructure for 2B users — now backing private companies as the CIO model evolves
— Holding
Score 90.2
05
Dione Hedgpeth
Dione Hedgpeth
Chief Customer Officer — Sophos
Building the customer and technology infrastructure at one of the world's most respected private cybersecurity companies
— Holding
Score 87.6
06
Jim Routh
Jim Routh
CISO — MassMutual
Security and technology leader protecting America's largest private repository of personal financial data
— Holding
Score 85.1
07
Mark Settle
Mark Settle
CIO / Author — Okta (Former)
Author of Truth from the Valley — the practitioner guide to private-company technology leadership
— Holding
Score 82.5
08
Alex Circei
Alex Circei
CEO / CTO — Waydev
Building the engineering analytics layer that gives CIOs real visibility into developer productivity at scale
▲ Rising
Score 77.4
09
Jocelyn Goldfein
Jocelyn Goldfein
General Partner — Andreessen Horowitz
From Facebook engineering director to a16z GP — the most technically credible technology investor in enterprise AI
▲ Rising
Score 74.9
10
Avon Puri
Avon Puri
Chief Information Officer — Mimecast
Technology leader at a private PE-backed cybersecurity company protecting 40,000+ businesses globally
▼ Dropped
Score 80.0
01
Sangram Vajre
Sangram Vajre
CEO / Co-Founder — GTM Partners / Terminus
The B2B CMO who wrote the ABM playbook and went on to define private go-to-market strategy itself
— Holding
Score 97.6
02
Meagen Eisenberg
Meagen Eisenberg
Chief Marketing Officer — Navan
Startup CMO who built demand gen machines at Docker, MongoDB, and now the $9B private travel platform
▲ Rising
Score 92.2
03
Latane Conant
Latane Conant
CMO — 6sense
Wrote No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls — rewired how enterprise marketing teams generate pipeline
▼ Dropped
Score 94.9
04
Camille Ricketts
Camille Ricketts
Chief Marketing Officer — Notion
The CMO who turned a productivity tool into a cultural movement — Notion reaches 35M users without advertising
— Holding
Score 89.5
05
Maria Pergolino
Maria Pergolino
Chief Marketing Officer — ActiveCampaign
Built enterprise demand gen machines at Marketo, Apttus, and Anaplan — now CMO at the $3B private automation platform
▲ Rising
Score 84.1
06
Jonathan Mildenhall
Jonathan Mildenhall
CMO / Founder — Airbnb (Former) / TwentyFirstCenturyBrand
Created Belong Anywhere — one of the most powerful brand positioning statements of the decade
▲ Rising
Score 81.4
07
Dave Gerhardt
Dave Gerhardt
CMO / Founder — Exit Five
The marketer who built a 25,000-person private community proving B2B marketing can be interesting
▼ Dropped
Score 86.8
08
Kyle Coleman
Kyle Coleman
CMO — Copy.ai
AI-first GTM leader at the frontier of what a sales motion looks like in a world of LLMs
— Holding
Score 78.7
09
Joe Chernov
Joe Chernov
Chief Marketing Officer — Pendo (Former)
Content-led demand gen pioneer — defined Pendo's brand in the product analytics category
— Holding
Score 76.0
10
Elissa Fink
Elissa Fink
Former CMO / Executive Advisor — Tableau (Former)
Core executive on the team that built Tableau into a $15B private-to-acquisition story — advising the next SaaS generation
— Holding
Score 73.3
01
Nathalie Scardino
Nathalie Scardino
Chief People Officer — Databricks
Building the people organization for the most valuable private AI company — 10,000 employees and growing rapidly
▲ Rising
Score 95.8
02
Jeff Diana
Jeff Diana
Chief People Officer — 1Password
Building the people function for one of the most trusted private security companies in the world
▲ Rising
Score 93.1
03
Maia Josebachvili
Maia Josebachvili
VP People — Stripe
Architect of Stripe's people strategy during the decade that built the internet's private financial infrastructure
▼ Dropped
Score 98.5
04
Lexi Reese
Lexi Reese
Chief People & Revenue Officer — Gusto
Built people-first culture at Gusto from 0 to 2,000+ employees — NPS consistently above 80
▲ Rising
Score 87.7
05
Holly May
Holly May
CHRO — Bacardi
People leader at one of the world's most beloved private family companies — Bacardi has been privately owned for 162 years
▼ Dropped
Score 90.4
06
Gianna Driver
Gianna Driver
CHRO — Exabeam
Security-sector people leader defining what modern HR looks like in a high-stakes technical environment
— Holding
Score 85.0
07
Amy Spurling
Amy Spurling
CEO / Founder — Compt
Founded the private benefits platform that finally lets companies offer flexible, personalized perks at scale
▲ Rising
Score 79.6
08
Lars Schmidt
Lars Schmidt
Founder — Amplify Talent
The practitioner-connector defining modern HR leadership in private tech — recruits and develops the world's best CHROs
▼ Dropped
Score 82.3
09
Katelin Holloway
Katelin Holloway
Partner — Initialized Capital
Former VP People at Reddit, now coaching private company founders on talent — operator-investor in the CHRO mold
▲ Rising
Score 74.2
10
Tim Sackett
Tim Sackett
President — HRU Technical Resources
The most candid practitioner voice in talent acquisition — author, speaker, operator of a private staffing firm
▼ Dropped
Score 76.9
01
Kyle Parrish
Kyle Parrish
VP Sales / CSO — Figma
First sales hire to VP — built the team that made design a team sport and led Figma to $20B valuation
— Holding
Score 97.9
02
Tonni Bennett
Tonni Bennett
VP of Sales — Terminus
ABM sales authority — built Terminus into the definitive account-based sales platform in B2B
— Holding
Score 95.2
03
Mark Kosoglow
Mark Kosoglow
VP Sales — Outreach
The practitioner CSO — blogs, teaches, and builds sequences that reps actually use
— Holding
Score 92.5
04
Jeremey Donovan
Jeremey Donovan
EVP Revenue Strategy — Insight Partners
The operator-investor defining modern sales science — builds sales playbooks that actually work at 800+ portfolio companies
— Holding
Score 89.8
05
Kevin Dorsey
Kevin Dorsey
Founder / CSO — Practice Lab
The most-followed sales practitioner on LinkedIn — his content is read by 500,000 sales professionals weekly
— Holding
Score 87.1
06
Jason Lemkin
Jason Lemkin
Founder / Managing Director — SaaStr
Built the world's largest private SaaS community — 15,000 founders and revenue leaders meet at SaaStr Annual
— Holding
Score 84.4
07
Scott Leese
Scott Leese
CRO / Founder — Scott Leese Consulting
Serial private-company CRO and Surf and Sales co-host — the architect building revenue teams from the ground up
▲ Rising
Score 76.3
08
Sahil Mansuri
Sahil Mansuri
CEO / Co-Founder — Bravado
Built the 150,000-member private professional community redefining sales careers and comp transparency
▼ Dropped
Score 81.7
09
Chris Orlob
Chris Orlob
Co-Founder — PClub
Turned Gong's sales intelligence data into the most widely taught enterprise sales methodology in private SaaS
▼ Dropped
Score 79.0
10
Keenan
Keenan
CEO / Founder — A Sales Guy Inc.
Author of Gap Selling — one of the most practical sales books of the decade, now training enterprise reps worldwide
— Holding
Score 73.6
01
DP
DJ Patil
Chief Data Scientist — US Gov / Devoted Health
America's first Chief Data Scientist — shaped national data policy and AI ethics at the highest level
— Holding
Score 98.7
02
UF
Usama Fayyad
CDO / Founder — Open Insights
Coined the term data mining — 30-year career at the intersection of data science and business
— Holding
Score 96.0
03
Nenshad Bardoliwalla
Nenshad Bardoliwalla
Chief Product Officer — Pendo
Data-native product leader — built the analytics layer that 7,000 software companies use to understand users
▲ Rising
Score 90.6
04
Josh Wills
Josh Wills
Head of Data Platform — Slack (Former)
Built the data platform infrastructure during Slack's rise from 0 to 12M daily users before the $27B acquisition
▼ Dropped
Score 93.3
05
Josh Bottger
Josh Bottger
CDO — Attentive
Building real-time data infrastructure behind 8,000 SMS marketing campaigns per second — private AI marketing leader
▲ Rising
Score 85.2
06
Ari Lightman
Ari Lightman
Professor / CDO — Carnegie Mellon
The academic-practitioner bridging enterprise CDO roles and modern data strategy
▼ Dropped
Score 87.9
07
Arif Janmohamed
Arif Janmohamed
Partner — Lightspeed Venture Partners
AI and data infrastructure investor with 5 unicorns in portfolio — operator before becoming a VC
— Holding
Score 82.5
08
Prukalpa Sankar
Prukalpa Sankar
Co-Founder — Atlan
Co-founded the private data catalog that Gartner named a Magic Quadrant leader — built for how data teams actually work
▲ Rising
Score 77.1
09
Elena Grewal
Elena Grewal
CDO — Airbnb (Former)
Led the data organization through Airbnb's most critical private-company years — IPO prep, COVID, and recovery
▼ Dropped
Score 79.8
10
Barr Moses
Barr Moses
CEO / Co-Founder — Monte Carlo
Coined 'data observability' and built the private category that became essential infrastructure for 150+ enterprises
— Holding
Score 74.4
How We Rank

An independent, editorial score — never pay-to-rank

Each month The Executive Review assigns a Trending Score (0–100): an editorial composite that weighs public momentum over the trailing 90 days — press and search interest, hiring and product milestones, funding and revenue disclosures, conference and community presence, and peer citations — against each leader's record of durable performance. The ▲▼ movement reflects change versus the prior edition.

Placement is editorial and independent. We do not accept payment for inclusion or ranking. Read the full methodology →

Executive Spotlight · July 2026

Scaled Brex past $200M ARR as CRO then President

Scaled Brex past $200M ARR as CRO then President — the definitive private fintech revenue architect

Sam Blond
CRO · #1 Trending
Sam Blond
President / CRO · Brex

Sam Blond is President at Brex, the corporate card and spend management platform for growth companies, where he oversees revenue, go-to-market, and commercial strategy. He previously served as Chief Revenue Officer at Brex and spent six years as CRO at Zenefits.

Blond is one of the most respected revenue executives in B2B SaaS and a frequent presence at sales conferences including SaaStr. Known for his philosophy that the best sales cultures are built on rigorous process, genuine customer value, and a rep-first management approach, he has helped Brex reposition from SMB to enterprise and scale past $200M in annual recurring revenue.

The Archive

Previous Executive Spotlights

June 2026
Stevie Case
Stevie Case
Chief Revenue Officer
Security and compliance software was supposed to be a long, friction-heavy sale. Stevie Case made it move at SaaS speed — and turned a back-office checkbox into a categor…
Read Spotlight →
May 2026
Latane Conant
Latane Conant
Chief Revenue Officer
For three decades, B2B revenue ran on volume — more emails, more calls, more cold pitches. Latane Conant wrote the book that said quit doing all of it. Then she ran a com…
Read Spotlight →
April 2026
Kory White
Kory White
Chief Revenue Officer
For sixteen years, this list has been reserved for Silicon Valley's elite — the names backed by Sequoia, the operators who scaled unicorns, the executives who move market…
Read Spotlight →
March 2026
Sam Blond
Sam Blond
President / CRO
Most CROs hit a ceiling. Sam Blond broke through it. He did not just scale Brex past $200M ARR — he earned something rarer than revenue: the President title, without leav…
Read Spotlight →
February 2026
Parker Conrad
Parker Conrad
CEO
Everyone told Parker Conrad to focus. He ignored them. Rippling does HR, IT, and Finance — all in one platform — and it works. His "compound startup" thesis broke the con…
Read Spotlight →
January 2026
Melanie Perkins
Melanie Perkins
CEO
Melanie Perkins pitched Canva over 100 times before getting her first yes. Now it has 135 million users, a $40B valuation, and she is systematically dismantling Adobe's g…
Read Spotlight →
December 2025
Brad Lightcap
Brad Lightcap
COO
Someone has to turn a research lab into a business that does $3B+ ARR while the entire world watches. That person is Brad Lightcap. While Sam Altman handles the vision an…
Read Spotlight →
November 2025
Ali Ghodsi
Ali Ghodsi
CEO
Ali Ghodsi raised $10B and made Databricks the data infrastructure company that every AI startup depends on. The strategy was counterintuitive — stay private, raise aggre…
Read Spotlight →
October 2025
Mark Roberge
Mark Roberge
Managing Director
Mark Roberge did not just build HubSpot's sales engine — he wrote the literal textbook on it. The Sales Acceleration Formula turned the art of selling into an engineering…
Read Spotlight →
September 2025
Scott Leese
Scott Leese
CEO
Scott Leese has built, fixed, or scaled more sales organizations than most CROs will ever touch. His resume reads like a tour of duty — SVP of Sales at Qualia, OutboundEn…
Read Spotlight →
August 2025
Claire Hughes Johnson
Claire Hughes Johnson
Corporate Officer & Advisor
Claire Hughes Johnson spent a decade as COO of Stripe, helping scale it from a few hundred employees to over 8,000 and from early revenue to a $95B valuation peak. She is…
Read Spotlight →
July 2025
Sangram Vajre
Sangram Vajre
Co-Founder
Sangram Vajre did not invent account-based marketing, but he is the reason most B2B companies know what it is. As co-founder and CMO of Terminus, he built the category, w…
Read Spotlight →
The Monthly Edition

Rankings, spotlights, and editorial insight — once a month

Join executives and operators who read The Executive Review. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.