Our executive leadership team
Søren Abildgaard
EVP of Engineering
Søren has more than two decades of experience in global software development and engineering in particular at high growth SaaS companies. He brings to Contentful his strong focus and deep expertise in delivering platforms and products that enable customers to design and deliver great digital experiences. Søren came to Contentful from Zendesk where, as EVP of Engineering, his team enabled growth in excess of $1B. Prior to Zendesk, Søren was VP of Engineering at Adobe’s Advertising Cloud (through the acquisition of TubeMogul, where he led engineering). Prior to that, Søren held senior product development positions at a number of companies including Autodesk and Microsoft. Søren is passionate about outdoor activities, traveling, classic rock, golf, food and wine, and spending time with his family and friends. He grew up in Copenhagen, spent 23 years in the US, and is now back in Europe working from Contentful’s Berlin office.
Carla Cooper
Chief Financial Officer
Carla has a drive to understand the inner workings of businesses—and after nearly 20 years as a financial analyst covering technology stocks, she moved into the tech industry herself. Carla served in key financial roles for both Responsys and Mulesoft during their journeys to going public. Most recently she was VP Finance & Strategy for Salesforce. She also is on the advisory board of Gappify, a provider of SaaS solutions for corporate accountants. Carla earned an MBA at Northwestern University and an AB in Public and International Relations from Princeton University. An accomplished athlete, she completed six marathons and countless triathlons before her kids were born.
Jason Holmes
President, Revenue and Field Operations
Jason brings a wealth of industry experience and a passion for focusing on metrics, process, and people to understand the customer experience and improve customer retention, growth, advocacy and lifetime value. Jason recently served as President and Chief Operating Officer at Showpad, and Chief Customer Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Marketo. He has also led large global customer operations teams at companies including Adobe and Oracle. Jason holds a bachelor of science degree in finance from Arizona State University and an MBA in marketing and strategy from Northern Illinois University.
Amy Kilpatrick
Chief Marketing Officer
Amy has nearly two decades of experience in marketing and operations, spanning a number of industries, including SaaS, Cybersecurity, and Telecommunications. Amy has a strong track record of scaling marketing organizations with an emphasis on growth and performance. Amy previously held leadership roles at Mailchimp, Aha!, Dell Secureworks, and Cbeyond. During her time at Mailchimp, she was part of the leadership team that helped drive extensive growth between 2016 and 2021. Amy holds a BS in Business Management and MBA from Appalachian State University. Outside of work, you will find Amy spending time outdoors or traveling with her family.
Sascha Konietzke
Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer
His fondness for programming helped Sascha land his first job at the age of 15, working as a webmaster for a VC-funded hardware startup Vircinity. In 2005, Sascha joined Hewlett-Packard where he was quickly recognized for spotting promising technologies and taking an entrepreneurial approach to day-to-day projects. After leaving HP in 2008, Sascha travelled extensively and founded Tagcrumbs, a geo-location based bookmarking service. In 2011, he started working on a publishing platform which went on to become Contentful. Sascha holds a degree in Business Information Technology from the University of Cooperative Education in Stuttgart.
Paolo Negri
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer
In 2006, Paolo left native Milan for London to be a part of the cloud revolution. He led the bid management development team at Forward, one of the fastest growing companies in the UK at the time, and later helped to scale the website of Autoscout24, the largest European car search engine. In 2010, Paolo joined the social gaming company Wooga, where he resolved Wooga's massive scaling issues and oversaw a 10X traffic growth spurt over his 2-year tenure. In 2012, Paolo met Sascha and founded Contentful. Paolo holds an Engineering Management degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan.
Mairead O'Donovan
Chief Product Officer
Mairead has nearly two decades of experience in product strategy and innovation, with a track record of growing $100M+ high-growth SaaS businesses. Mairead came to Contentful from Atlassian, where she joined in 2012, and most recently led the Atlassian Growth organization and was also responsible for founding new Atlassian products and businesses. She was previously the Head of Product for Jira, among other roles. Mairead got her start in tech working in product management at Microsoft for more than seven years where she launched several products for Microsoft Visual Studio, Bing and Xbox. Mairead is passionate about exploring this planet of ours, where she is continuously looking for new adventures in learning new cultures with her husband, two girls and recently added puppy, Moodle.
Steve Sloan
Chief Executive Officer
Steve brings a background in high-growth SaaS companies, leading product, marketing and engineering. He was most recently Twilio SendGrid’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer, and previously led global product and engineering at Marketo. He also held leadership roles at Amazon and Microsoft. Steve holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Away from work, you’ll most likely find him on an adventure with his family or swimming in the San Francisco Bay.
Margo M. Smith
Chief Legal Officer
Margo brings an extensive background representing technology companies on IPOs, corporate governance, intellectual property and international law to Contentful, where she will lead global legal strategy, privacy, compliance and strategic initiatives. Margo was most recently Chief Legal Officer at Snowflake Inc., one of the world’s fastest-growing SaaS companies. She has also served as the top legal executive at Apttus, Marketo, QuinStreet, and Verigy. Margo began her career at global technology law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and holds a JD from Columbia University School of Law and a BA from the University of Washington.
Laurence Trifon
Chief Business Operations Officer
Laurence builds and leads teams across the full customer lifecycle for B2B software companies. Before joining Contentful, Laurence was responsible for new product initiatives at Twilio as Vice President of Emerging Businesses. Prior to Twilio, Laurence helped scale SendGrid from startup through IPO in several leadership roles including Vice President of Revenue — leading sales, customer success and professional services — and Vice President of Strategic & Corporate Development. Before SendGrid, Laurence led business development and go-to-market strategy for Bloomspot, an ecommerce startup that was acquired by JP Morgan Chase. Laurence holds a B.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University.