Up the ranks: GitLab appoints Wendy Nice Barnes as Chief People Officer

GitLab, the DevOps platform delivered as a single application, has appointed Wendy Nice Barnes as Chief People Officer, effective November 2020. 

Based in the US, Barnes brings with her over 20 years of talent leadership experience in pre-IPO and Fortune 500 companies, and has served as Chief Human Resources Officer at Palo Alto Networks, Vice President of Human Resources at eHealth, and held senior HR leadership roles at Netflix and E*TRADE. 

Commenting on her priorities going forward, Barnes said: "I am looking forward to joining such a transparent group of people, leading with the members of the executive team and working closely with its DIB (Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging) and remote leaders to further the great foundation set forth."

In addition to Barnes' appointment, Gitlab also announced the appointment of Merline Saintil to its board of directors.

Saintil currently serves on the boards of Lightspeed, Alkami Technology, Banner Corporation, and ShotSpotter, and was recognised as one of the Most Influential Corporate Board Directors by Women Inc. She is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and is certified in Cybersecurity Oversight by NACD and the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.

Saintil previously held leadership roles with iconic Fortune 500 and privately held companies including Intuit, Yahoo!, PayPal, Adobe, Joyent and Sun Microsystems. She has also received a Lifetime Achievement Award by Girls in Tech.

On her new role, Saintil shared: "GitLab has enabled its enterprise customers to shift left by seamlessly incorporating security into its single DevOps platform making them a unique company to watch.

"I'm honoured to join its board of directors and have the opportunity to bring my engineering, enterprise risk and cybersecurity experience to support the company as it grows its footprint globally."

Overall, on both appointments, Sid Sijbrandij, Co-Founder and CEO, Gitlab, said: "As GitLab continues to grow, it is vital to our success to bring onboard key individuals who will help us maintain high growth and market leadership.

"Wendy has an impressive history of mentoring colleagues and growing leaders from within organisations, while Merline’s global award-winning product creation has enabled Fortune 500 companies to manage cyber risk at scale. Both embody our CREDIT values and are tremendous additions to the company."

Photo / Provided (Wendy Nice Barnes, Chief People Officer, GitLab)

Human Resources Online is on Telegram! Follow us @humanresourcesonline or click here for all the latest weekly HR and manpower news from around the region.