Benchling Names Salesforce Executive Lindsey Irvine as Chief Marketing Officer

Enterprise software veteran to drive R&D Cloud's global marketing and market expansion

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Sept. 1, 2021 — Today Benchling, pioneer of the R&D Cloud powering the biotechnology industry, announced the appointment of Lindsey Irvine as Chief Marketing Officer. Irvine joins Benchling from Salesforce where she spent eight years, most recently as global CMO of MuleSoft.

"We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century shift in which biology has the potential to rewrite life as we know it, from the medicines we take, to the food we eat, and the clothes we wear. Benchling is building the software that will power the biotechnology revolution and help scientists tackle the world's toughest problems," said Irvine. "The company has been quietly disrupting the biotech space, with over 200,000 scientists from biopharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial enterprises as well as academic labs around the world using the platform to create life-changing products. I could not be more excited to join this exceptional team and bring our story to the world."

Irvine brings over 15 years of leadership experience in the technology industry, building and scaling go-to-market at large enterprises and early-stage startups. Most recently, Irvine served as CMO of MuleSoft, a Salesforce company, where she helped scale the company from $250 million to over $1 billion in ARR while supporting a range of industries, including life sciences . At Salesforce, she held multiple leadership roles in business development and go-to-market, drove global marketing strategies in the IoT and industry verticals, and brought industry-specific cloud solutions to market. Irvine began her career at the National Institutes of Health as Director of Strategy and Partnerships, where she launched public-private partnership initiatives with Google, Microsoft, and Intel. Irvine earned a B.A. in communications and corporate strategy from Vanderbilt University.

"Lindsey brings a wealth of expertise in cloud and the enterprise from Salesforce, where she helped them deliver transformational products and solutions to customers around the world," said Sajith Wickramasekara, CEO and co-founder of Benchling. "Her impressive track record of developing and leading world-class teams through rapid growth is exactly what Benchling needs at this point in our journey to power the century of biology. She'll play a key role as we scale Benchling's go-to-market and enable organizations globally to make breakthrough discoveries and bring them to market faster than ever before."

Irvine joins Benchling following a record year for the company, in which its community grew to over 200,000 scientists using Benchling across industries including biopharmaceuticals, agriculture, and consumer packaged goods. In March 2021 the company raised $200 million in Series E funding, led by Sequoia. With a focus on bringing Benchling to the world's largest biotech hubs to support key customers, the company also opened its EMEA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.

In the past year and a half, Benchling has added a set of seasoned tech leaders to its executive team:

• Richard Wong, CFO: former Vice President of Finance at LinkedIn who helped grow the business from pre-IPO to $5B+ in revenue and most recently the CFO at Houzz

• Zach Powers, CISO: former CIO and CISO at One Medical Group and senior security executive at Salesforce

• Meg Makalou, VP of People: former Chief People Officer at The Climate Corporation

• Malay Gandhi, Head of Strategy: previously SVP of Business Operations at Evidation Health and CEO of Rock Health

• Ricardo Vélez, General Counsel: previously VP of Business Affairs and General Counsel at Lookout

See how Benchling is helping its customers transform their businesses: benchling.com/customers

Join Benchling and apply for an open position: benchling.com/careers