Firstup Appoints New CPO and CTO to Advance Intelligent Communication for Employee Experience Optimization

Chief Product Officer Cheryl Chavez and Chief Technology Officer Ed Bielawa Bring Deep Expertise in Workforce Management and Customer Experience Platforms from UKG, Marketo, Engagio and Others

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – January 17, 2023 – Firstup, the first intelligent communication platform for the workplace that connects over 17 million employees worldwide, today welcomed Cheryl Chavez as Chief Product Officer and Ed Bielawa as Chief Technology Officer.

With decades of combined enterprise software experience, Chavez and Bielawa will play key roles in advancing the Firstup mission to help companies connect the employee experience ecosystem, understand employees better, and gain insights that can improve engagement, productivity and retention.

“Firstup is revolutionizing the employee experience through data-driven personalization. With industry veterans Cheryl and Ed joining our team from companies such as UKG and Marketo, we are poised to deliver enterprise-level personalization at scale for the moments that matter in each employee’s journey and set the new standard for employee engagement in the market,” stated Nicole Alvino, Firstup Co-Founder and CEO.

Chavez will lead Firstup’s product team as CPO, including product management and design, and will work closely with the technology team to deliver product strategy and roadmap for Firstup’s category-defining software. Chavez most recently served as CPO at Bloomreach where she was focused on connecting data to the right action for customers. Prior to that, she held product leadership roles at Duetto, Engagio and Marketo, where she was the company’s first product management hire and went on to lead the product and UX teams through $300 million in revenue and IPO.

As CTO, Bielawa will lead the company’s technology development. Bielawa brings more than twenty years experience delivering scalable architectures for enterprise class, multi-tenant SaaS and PaaS. Most recently, as Vice President of Engineering at UKG, Ed led a 500 person global engineering team and successfully delivered a next-generation SaaS product that grew into a $400M recurring revenue stream in under five years. He also previously held technology and engineering leadership roles at Kronos and Hasbro.

Today’s news comes after Firstup recently introduced a platform that connects all aspects of the employee experience ecosystem to unlock real-time intelligence and deliver personalized communications at scale.

As Josh Bersin recently stated in The New World of Intelligent Employee Communications, “Employee-centric communication depends on a new way of thinking, designing, and executing, and it needs new technologies to help it personalize and orchestrate. Intelligent communication platforms allow you to see a richer view of your employees’ journeys so you can make actionable, impactful decisions faster and drive better outcomes.”

For more information about the Firstup platform and to learn how real-time intelligence can fuel more meaningful employee engagement campaigns, please visit Firstup.io/platform.

About Firstup

Firstup is the world’s first intelligent communication platform. More than 40 percent of Fortune 100 companies use our platform to connect with their people, design and deliver personalized communications, and gain engagement insights throughout the employee journey. With Firstup, employers can view engagement data in real time, by organization, department, or employee. That helps leaders better understand their workforce, make informed decisions and provide better experiences from hire to retire. Companies like Amazon, Tesco, Ford, and Hilton use Firstup every day to improve outcomes for their employees.