CYPHER Learning, provider of the leading AI-powered learning platform for business and academic settings, recently announced Coreen Sawdon, CPA, as chief financial officer (CFO) and Daniel Shih as vice president of customer experience.
Sawdon and Shih join newly appointed president John Kannapell and CYPHER Learning’s executive leadership team to continue the company’s rapid growth trajectory in the learning and development space.
Sawdon will oversee CYPHER Learning’s finance and accounting teams and will be responsible for the company’s day-to-day fiscal operations, while Shih is responsible for overseeing the customer success and implementation and training teams to further engage the company’s customers.
Appointing Sawdon and Shih enables CYPHER Learning to ensure fiscal responsibility and customer growth as the company continues to deliver new and innovative AI-enabled course creation and skills development to business and academic organizations. CYPHER’s AI solutions account for 80% of new orders and continue to rank highly among AI-powered LMS solutions.
“We continue to strategically build our organization with key hires in sales, marketing, and operations to help maximize our promising growth journey,” said Graham Glass, Founder and CEO of CYPHER Learning. “Coreen and Daniel bring exceptional fiscal and customer success knowledge to our organization and together they will help us capitalize on market and customer expansion opportunities.”
Sawdon brings more than three decades of financial, operational, and governance leadership and experience in expanding traditional and SaaS companies through high growth to staging for initial public offerings (IPOs). A trusted strategic advisor and multifaceted business leader, she has increased market share and profitability by leading organizational evolution, IPOs, debt refinancing, and secondary offerings. She has held several CFO positions, most recently at Acre Security, Trimeteor Oil and Gas Corporation, Ever After, and CG Technology/Cantor Entertainment Inc. At Acre Security, she led acquisitions domestically and globally, and increased revenue over three times by expanding the organization through both acquisition and organic growth, attaining an incremental annualized EBITDA contribution. She also drove a 900% revenue increase for CG Technology over two years by developing an optimized financial infrastructure while guiding the company from the development stage to being IPO-ready.
“CYPHER Learning’s impressive market growth and innovation sets it apart in the learning and development, training, and academia markets,” said Coreen Sawdon, CFO at CYPHER Learning. “CYPHER Learning has built its executive team to continue this impressive growth, and I look forward to working with this team to globally expand our leadership position as a modern learning platform and capitalize on additional growth opportunities.”
Shih’s extensive background spans across critical areas, including onboarding, adoption, upsell, renewal, and support. Previously, he held vice president of customer success roles at Aqueduct Technologies, Nymi, and iBoss, where he successfully led his teams in implementing best practices that significantly improved customer satisfaction and retention. In addition, he led pre-sales and implementation, giving him a comprehensive understanding of the entire customer journey. He also has experience delivering SaaS-based solutions throughout the breadth of the customer life cycle – from business development and sales, through assessment and delivery, to support, and account management and renewals.
“CYPHER Learning continues to delight customers with cutting-edge AI-powered solutions that help customers dramatically cut course creation and delivery time and uplevel skills management,” said Daniel Shih, vice president of customer success at CYPHER Learning. “I’m excited to work with the team to engage and support our customers so they can maximize their investment in CYPHER’s award-winning platform.”
Over the past two years, CYPHER Learning has expanded its executive team, hiring John Kannapell as president and Jennifer Geisler and Matt Kane in late 2022 to oversee marketing and sales operations respectively, and raised a $40 million growth equity round from Invictus Growth Partners (“Invictus”).
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About CYPHER Learning
CYPHER Learning exists to give learners the power to succeed in a rapidly changing world. Trainers, learning, and development (L&D) professionals, trainers, and educators get everything they need in one platform to deliver faster, more personalized, and better learning outcomes. The company provides the only all-in-one AI-powered learning platform that is easy-to-use, beautifully designed, and built to power hundreds of millions of learning moments every day. Create courses faster. Train and teach better. Learn even quicker. Experience the CYPHER Learning “just in time, just for you, just the way you want to learn” approach that puts people first. Find out more at www.cypherlearning.com. Follow us on X and LinkedIn.
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