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Hayden Brown is president and CEO of Upwork, the world’s work marketplace, where small businesses through Fortune 100 companies and highly skilled independent professionals from 180 countries connect and work together. Hayden joined Upwork in 2011 as a product manager and held roles running Upwork’s marketplace business, as chief product officer, and as chief marketing officer before being named CEO in January 2020.
Hayden is driven by her passion for delivering Upwork’s mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. Under her leadership, Upwork has vastly expanded its product portfolio, and today, she is animated about leveraging cutting-edge technology, including AI, to make work easier and more delightful for professionals and businesses alike. Most recently she oversaw the introduction of Uma, Upwork's Mindful AI, a powerful AI companion designed to help businesses and freelancers every step of the way across the Upwork experience.
During her time with the company, Upwork has grown from $10 million to more than $700 million in annual revenues, and from $100 million in Gross Services Volume to more than $4 billion in Gross Services Volume annually. Upwork’s workforce, now numbering more than 2500 team members, has always been made up of approximately 75% freelancers working remotely from around the world on the Upwork platform.
After receiving an AB in politics at Princeton, Hayden started her career at McKinsey and Company as a business analyst, where she fell in love with tech. She joined Microsoft’s online strategy team and then the company’s corporate strategy group, before starting the corporate development function at LivePerson prior to joining Upwork (then oDesk). She has been named to Forbes’ Future of Work 50, SIA's Staffing 100 North America and Global Power 150 Women in Staffing lists, and was at the helm when Upwork was named one of TIME’s Most Influential Companies.
When she’s not working remotely from somewhere new, she resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children.
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Brian Levey oversees Upwork's legal, regulatory and government affairs functions globally and engages stakeholders to promote Upwork’s reputation through corporate affairs initiatives.
Brian has more than 15 years of legal experience focused on the intersection of the internet and technology. Prior to joining Upwork, Brian served in a global leadership role at eBay Inc. for more than a decade, where he began as eBay's first corporate attorney and most recently served as its Deputy General Counsel. Before joining eBay, Brian served as VP, Legal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. and as a corporate attorney at Latham & Watkins. In 2017, Brian was named one of the world’s Top 20 General Counsels by The Financial Times.
Brian holds a law degree from Stanford Law School, where he was an Associate Editor of the Stanford Law Review, and a bachelor’s degree in economics, with honors and distinction, from Stanford University.
Erica Gessert is Chief Financial Officer at Upwork, where she oversees Upwork’s global finance team and operations.
Erica has more than 20 years of finance, operations, analytics and investor relations experience supporting technology companies. Prior to joining Upwork, Erica served in a number of senior executive finance roles for PayPal, most recently Chief Transformation Officer, reporting to the CEO. Previously, Erica held finance and investor relations leadership positions at Sprint Corporation and Virgin Mobile USA.
Erica studied economics and philosophy at Reed College.
As Chief People Officer at Upwork, Sunita is responsible for driving innovation in the company's workforce strategy and designing a world-class team member experience to support both its corporate employees and independent professionals from around the world that are part of the Upwork team.
Prior to joining Upwork, Sunita previously served as vice president, people at Convoy reporting to the CEO, and held several HR and people leadership positions at eBay and Airbnb, including head of people for Airbnb’s Homes Business division.
Sunita holds M.B.As in Human Resource Management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Symbiosis International University and a B.E. in Chemical Engineering from BITS, Pilani, India.
Dave Bottoms leads Upwork's Marketplace organization, a global team responsible for the core Talent Marketplace, search & discovery, ads & monetization, core mobile experiences, as well as new product innovation. Functional oversight includes Product Management, Product and Growth Marketing, Engineering, and UX - Design and Creative.
Dave brings more than 20 years of experience in Silicon Valley to Upwork. He joined the company in 2022 from Meta, where he led the Ads Manager Platform and Experiences team responsible for the flagship enterprise product used by millions of small businesses and global advertisers to drive valuable business outcomes across Facebook and Instagram. Prior to Meta, Dave led the self-service customer growth team at Dropbox, and multiple product teams at Yahoo!, including the Homepage, News, Sports and other core media experience.
Dave holds a BA in English Literature from Denison University.
Brandon Savage leads Upwork's Customer Experience & Trust organization, a globally distributed team that spans a wide range of product management, analytics, policy and operations functions.
Brandon joined Upwork in 2021 with more than 15 years of combined experience in product management, customer success and operations leadership roles at high-growth technology companies. Brandon holds multiple patents for his work in technology during this time. Prior to Upwork, Brandon was Global Vice President of Customer Support and Scaled Education at Box, overseeing scaled and paid service offerings to support the health and growth of all Box customers, from individuals to large enterprises.
Brandon holds an MBA with a focus on media and technology from New York University.
Mohit Kumar is currently General Manager of Payments at Upwork, where he leads Upwork's payments, work management, and tax solutions for both talent and clients.
Before joining Upwork, Mohit was Senior Director of Product Management at eBay where he led a team responsible for building core products that form the backbone of commerce at eBay, including order management, billing, loyalty, and tax. Mohit also spearheaded eBay's next-generation global payments offering, which intermediates multi-billion dollar payment volumes. Prior to its acquisition by eBay, Mohit held several product management leadership positions at Baazee.com.
Mohit holds a Bachelor of Engineering and a Master of Management Studies, Operations Management from Mumbai University.
Ernesto Lamaina is the General Manager of Enterprise at Upwork, where he oversees Upwork's global Enterprise and Managed Services organizations.
Ernesto brings over a decade of experience in staffing, finance & entrepreneurial fields, notably serving as CEO of Adia, a platform connecting talent with temporary jobs, built as a partnership between a global staffing company and a leading outsourcing organization.
Ernesto received a MS in Business & Finance from Università Carlo Cattaneo - LIUC.
Andrew Rabinovich is VP and head of artificial intelligence (AI) & machine learning (ML) at Upwork, where he leads all aspects of the company’s transformation to compete in the age of AI.
Andrew has been studying machine learning with an emphasis in computer vision and multimodal AI for over 20 years. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and patents. Andrew worked for years in R&D leadership positions at Google. In 2015, he joined the preeminent AR company Magic Leap as head of AI, focused on perception and human-centered AI for mixed and augmented reality. In 2020, Andrew co-founded Headroom, an AI-powered video conferencing platform. In 2023, Headroom was acquired by Upwork, with Andrew and the Headroom team joining the company.
Andrew holds a Ph.D. in computer science from University of California San Diego.
Peter Sanborn is Vice President, Strategy, Corporate Development and Partnerships at Upwork, where he oversees Upwork’s corporate strategy, M&A and investing activities as well as business development and channel partnerships. Peter has nearly 20 years of experience across strategy, M&A, investing and finance roles.
Prior to joining Upwork he was a General Partner of Arbor Ventures, focusing on early and growth-stage investments globally across fintech, payments and commerce enablement. Before Arbor, Peter served as Vice President, Head of Corporate Development at PayPal and Managing Partner of PayPal Ventures. Previously, Peter held strategy, M&A, finance and investor relations roles at HSBC in Hong Kong and Mexico City.
Peter holds a BA in Economics and International Studies from Northwestern University.