Lucidya expands global leadership team, recruiting senior talent from ServiceNow, Qualtrics, Brandwatch, Talkdesk, and Genesys. RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, July 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Following its record-breaking Series B in 2025, the largest AI funding round in MENA at the time, Lucidya has expanded its global leadership team with the appointment of William O'Neill, former ServiceNow and Qualtrics executive, as Chief Revenue Officer; Steve Adkins, former Brandwatch executive, as Vice President of Sales; and Anand Shrivastava, former Talkdesk and Genesys product leader, as Vice President of Product. The appointments strengthen Lucidya's leadership bench as the company accelerates global expansion and scales its agentic customer experience platform that enables organizations to autonomously turn customer and market intelligence into real-time resolution and measurable business outcomes. Commenting on the recent appointments, Abdullah Asiri, Lucidya's Founder and CEO, shared, "Agentic CX is a different class of capability that very few can claim. We built Lucidya on billions of data points precisely because the fastest path to resolution starts with understanding what customers are saying before filing a complaint. This team is here to introduce wider audiences to what Lucidya can do." Leading the commercial organization is William O'Neill, who joins as Chief Revenue Officer after senior leadership roles at ServiceNow and Qualtrics. His experience spanning MENA, Africa, and CEE positions him to lead Lucidya's global revenue strategy, drive customer growth, and build the commercial infrastructure needed to open new markets as the company extends its reach beyond the region. Steve Adkins joins as Vice President of Sales, bringing deep expertise in enterprise sales leadership built over seven years at Brandwatch, where he led a 30-person global revenue organization responsible for USD50 million in recurring revenue. His appointment strengthens Lucidya's growing North American footprint and also broadens the company's commercial reach as it moves into new international markets. Anand Shrivastava joins as Vice President of Product, drawing on senior product leadership experience at Talkdesk and Genesys. The Stanford LEAD alumnus will lead the next phase of product development, ensuring the product roadmap keeps pace with the company's ambition to define the global standard for autonomous customer resolution at enterprise scale. Built on data sovereignty standards, enterprise-grade compliance, and credentials including the coveted ISO/IEC 42001 certification and full PDPL readiness that most global competitors are still working toward, Lucidya has earned the trust of enterprises across 13 markets and counting. With this leadership team, the company is positioned to take that standard global. For press inquiries, please email Dana Salem [email protected] From left to right: William O'Neill, Chief Revenue Officer; Steve Adkins, Vice President of Sales; Anand Shrivastava, Vice President of Product. Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. Advertising Industry Review do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.

Qualtrics rebuilds sales leadership as yearlong executive shakeup continues. JUL 13, 2026 Three of five new hires sit inside sales, as CEO Jason Maynard reshapes the company's leadership bench, including a poach of a former Medallia VP and GM. The gist. * A yearlong reset. Qualtrics' leadership turnover stretches back to February, when Jason Maynard took over as CEO, through an April shakeup that cleared five executives, to today's five new hires. * Sales is the clear priority. Three of today's five new leaders sit inside Sales, while Strategy and IT positions cut in April haven't been reported to be refilled. * A rival's bench gets raided. New CSO Adam Block spent eight years at Medallia, last in 2022, marking one of the more direct hires Qualtrics has made from its closest competitor in the voice of customer market. Qualtrics today named five new leaders to its sales, marketing and product organizations, capping a year of leadership turnover under new CEO Jason Maynard that has reshaped much of the company's executive bench. 5 new leaders, 4 of them in sales. Adam Block was named chief sales officer, taking over Qualtrics' Sales, Sales Development, Solutions Engineering, Revenue Operations, Partnerships & Alliances and Sales Enablement teams. Block joins from Motive, where he served as chief revenue officer, and spent eight years before that at Medallia in enterprise sales and industry expansion roles. That's a "we gotcha back," at least one, in terms of a Qualtrics-Medallia executive poaching battle. Medallia poached more than one Qualtrics executive earlier in the year. Qualtrics made sure to mention Medallia's in the headline on Block's announcement. Block was last with Medallia in 2022, according to his LinkedIn. "Qualtrics created the Experience Management category by helping organizations better understand the experiences they deliver," Block said in a statement. "What's exciting now is that AI changes what's possible. We're moving beyond understanding experiences to improving outcomes, often in real time. That shift matters because AI is raising the bar for every organization. Expectations from customers, employees and other stakeholders are increasing faster than most organizations can adapt." Two more sales leaders were named alongside Block. Khoi Hoang will lead Qualtrics' Global Sales Engineering organization, overseeing Solution Strategy and Solution Engineering. Hoang joins from Salesforce, where he was Worldwide Field Chief Technology Officer, and co-founded Siperian, the master data management platform later acquired by Informatica. "The quality of AI outcomes is determined by the quality, context, and trustworthiness of the data behind them," Hoang said. Aaron Ellis was named to lead Qualtrics' Corporate Sales organization. Ellis spent nearly a decade at Workday in sales leadership roles, and was part of NetSuite's global sales organization during its hypergrowth years. "The companies that win aren't necessarily the ones with the most data," Ellis said. "They're the ones that understand their customers and employees better than anyone else and use those insights to take action while it still matters." Marketing and product round out the slate. Ken Coleman was named SVP of marketing, replacing CMO Lynn Girotto, who departed the company as part of the broader leadership turnover this year, according to an April report from GeekWire. Coleman spent 12 years at Ramsey Solutions as an on-air personality, author and host before joining Qualtrics - an unconventional path for an enterprise SaaS marketing chief. "Today, experience is the business," Coleman said. "Great experiences drive growth, increase efficiency, strengthen trust, and build relationships where everyone is treated the way they deserve and want to be." Ken Hoang was promoted to SVP of Product, just three months after joining Qualtrics in April as VP of Product Management. He previously worked at IBM and Oracle NetSuite, and co-founded Siperian alongside Khoi Hoang. Editor in Chief - CMSWire Dom Nicastro Notable news & distinguished data for tomorrow's c-suite. "Closing this gap is where businesses win, and it requires deep human understanding and contextual inference that large language models alone can't provide," Hoang said. A Qualtrics leadership rebuild that started with April's Departures. Today's announcement follows a leadership shakeup in April, when five Qualtrics executives departed the company, according to the report from GeekWire. Those departures included Edward Chen, chief strategy and corporate development officer; Jeff Gelfuso, SVP and chief product & experience Officer; Brad Anderson, president of products, user experience and engineering; Juan Rodriguez Estevez, chief information officer; and CMO Lynn Girotto. The shakeup came roughly two months after Maynard, a former Oracle and NetSuite executive, was named CEO in February, and about three months before Qualtrics closed its $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta. Where Qualtrics is reinvesting - and where it isn't. Editor's note: Comparing April's departures to today's arrivals by department shows a clear pattern in where Maynard is rebuilding - and where he's letting seats go unfilled. | Department | April Departures | July Arrivals | Net Change | | Sales | 0 | 3 (Block, Khoi Hoang, Ellis) | New function built from scratch | | Marketing | 1 (Girotto) | 1 (Coleman) | Direct swap | | Product | 2 (Gelfuso, Anderson) | 1 (Ken Hoang) | Net loss of one seat | | Strategy/Corporate Development | 1 (Chen) | 0 | TBD | | IT | 1 (Juan Miguel R.) | 0 | TBD | Learning Opportunities Sales went from zero seats lost in April to three seats gained in July - the only function that grew rather than merely refilled. Strategy and IT, meanwhile, saw departures with no replacements named. Product actually shrank, going from two senior leaders to one. A familiar rival in the mix: Qualtrics nabs Medallia exec. Block's hire is notable given Qualtrics and Medallia's history of trading talent. In January 2025, Medallia named Mark Bishof CEO and brought four other former Qualtrics and Clarabridge executives with him - a far larger executive transplant than today's single hire from Medallia's bench. But the pattern is the same: the two biggest names in voice of customer software continue to shake up leadership talent as the category faces pressure to prove measurable outcomes rather than just deliver feedback and insights. Have a tip to share with our editorial team? Drop us a line: [email protected] Main image: Dom Nicastro is editor-in-chief of CMSWire and an award-winning journalist with a passion for technology, customer experience and marketing. With more than 20 years of experience, he has written for various publications, like the Gloucester Daily Times and Boston Magazine. He has a proven track record of delivering high-quality, informative, and engaging content to his readers. Dom works tirelessly to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry to provide readers with accurate, trustworthy information to help them make informed decisions. Featured Research

10 open-source tools worth trying in 2026. Self-hostable open-source tools for feedback, notes, PDFs, email, microservices, dashboards, photos, and web archiving-practical picks for 2026. Some tools make you wonder why you didn't find them sooner. This list is full of those projects-many can replace paid SaaS, and all are open source so you can use, customize, and often self-host them. 1. Formbricks. Formbricks is an open-source alternative to tools like Qualtrics for in-product feedback. You can run in-app surveys, NPS prompts, and feedback flows without shipping users to a third-party form host. Privacy-first and self-hostable, with audience segmentation, event-based triggers, analytics, and APIs. Strong fit for onboarding feedback and product research while keeping data under your control. 2. SiYuan Note. SiYuan Note is a privacy-focused personal knowledge base. Notes live in a structured document/block model with bidirectional links, Markdown, graph views, and block-level references. Data stays local; you can work offline or sync via self-hosted options. Common uses: research notes, long-term PKM, and private knowledge graphs. 3. Pake. Pake turns any website into a lightweight desktop app using Tauri instead of a heavy Electron shell. Useful for wrapping dashboards, internal tools, or web UIs into native-feeling apps on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Supports custom icons, shortcuts, and native window controls with relatively simple configuration. 4. Tolaria. Tolaria is a local-first knowledge tool aimed at developers. Notes are plain Markdown you own; Git-friendly versioning and sync fit engineering workflows. It supports bidirectional links, structured organization, and AI agent integration (including CLI agents). Fully offline-capable for personal knowledge bases and research notes. 5. Stirling PDF. Stirling-PDF is a self-hosted PDF toolkit: merge, split, convert, edit, sign, compress, OCR, batch jobs, and API automation. Everything runs on your infrastructure-a practical replacement for browser-based PDF utilities when documents can't leave your network. 6. Mailspring. Mailspring is a fast open-source desktop email client for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Unified inbox for multiple accounts, templates, search, keyboard shortcuts, and optional tracking features. A modern alternative to older, heavier mail apps for personal or professional mail. 7. Dapr. Dapr is a portable runtime for distributed and microservice apps. Building blocks cover service invocation, state, pub/sub, and more-usable across languages on Kubernetes or local setups. It runs alongside your app so you can focus on business logic instead of reinventing cloud-native plumbing for every service. 8. Dashy. Dashy is a self-hostable personal dashboard for links, apps, and status widgets. Themes, auth, monitoring, Docker-friendly config, and a UI editor help keep homelabs and internal tool stacks in one place. 9. Immich. Immich is a high-performance self-hosted photo and video platform-think Google Photos-style backup, timelines, facial recognition, and search, with your data on your servers. Mobile and desktop upload paths make it a common choice for private media libraries. 10. ArchiveBox. ArchiveBox archives web pages for the long term: HTML, images, PDFs, and other formats so content remains available if the live site disappears. Useful for research, compliance, personal bookmark preservation, and offline copies of important pages. Quick reference. | Tool | Best for | | Formbricks | In-app surveys & product feedback | | SiYuan Note | Local PKM & research notes | | Pake | Web apps as lightweight desktop shells | | Tolaria | Developer notes + AI workflows | | Stirling PDF | Self-hosted PDF operations | | Mailspring | Cross-platform email client | | Dapr | Microservices building blocks | | Dashy | Homelab / tools dashboard | | Immich | Self-hosted photo library | | ArchiveBox | Long-term web archiving | Try one that replaces a paid tool you already depend on-self-hosting pays off fastest when it cuts both cost and data lock-in. open-source tools self-hosting productivity developer-tools