Zendesk CIO Colleen Berube says 'it's just how we run the business' as she shares how OKRs flow into WorkBoard Biz Reviews and they ensure every major initiative has an OKR that clearly aligns to the company objectives.
Teams, time, and effort align and they're building stronger accountability muscles as they grow from 6k people to 10k.
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Colleen Berube is a customer-obsessed tech leader who redefined Zendesk's IT benchmark as CIO and SVP Operations, scaling global systems, data, and enterprise ops to fuel hypergrowth while linking employee and customer experiences end-to-end.
She unified tech, data, and processes into "three legs of the stool"guiding OKRs, roadmaps, and cloud architecture that enabled seamless remote pivots during COVID and drove revenue amid expansion.
A prior CTO at Fisher Investments and Adobe VP, she won the 2022 National CIO ORBIE Award for modernizing IT at scale without bureaucracy, always prioritizing experiences that win markets.

Deidre Paknad has founded and led three tech startups, acquired companies and been acquired, and led a high-growth business as an executive at IBM for several years; this affords her a unique perspective on using both speed and scale to drive growth. In her role as CEO at WorkBoard, she works with senior leadership teams at some of the world’s largest companies to clarify, align, and drive strategic priorities with greater speed and agility. She is a frequent speaker on Outcome Mindset™ and tapping into ambition.
Deidre has over a dozen patents and has twice been inducted into the Smithsonian Institution for innovation. Goldman Sachs named her one of the 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2019. Deidre hosts The OKR Podcast, which focuses on accelerating outcomes and fostering an outcomes culture.