Leading With Our Customers In Mind
Applause’s approach to leadership is one of reinforcing our core values and partnering with customers to help drive their business forward. That’s why we continue to lead the pack.
Meet Our Executive Team
Chris Malone is the Chief Executive Officer and a board member at Applause. Chris joined Applause in 2013 and served as both chief financial officer and president, prior to his appointment as CEO. Chris has been instrumental in Applause’s growth and international expansion.
Prior to Applause, Chris worked at NTT Data, a top five global IT service provider, as the CFO of the North American business, responsible for financial oversight and operations of a billion-dollar operating unit. Chris took on that role after successfully exiting Keane to NTT Data in 2010. Prior to NTT Data, Chris held a number of leadership roles in finance, sales & operations. Chris began his career at KPMG and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Chris received his bachelor’s degree and MBA from Babson College in 2000. Chris serves as the Chair on the Babson College Advisory Board.
As Chief People Officer at Applause, Bradley is passionate about building inclusive cultures, embracing innovation and creating memorable employee experiences. He has helped Applause earn its reputation as a high-growth company by cultivating a diverse culture. As a result, Applause is consistently recognized as a top place to work both locally and globally by organizations like Inc. Magazine, Boston Business Journal and the Boston Globe.
Along with building a culture of collaboration, Bradley makes supporting Applause’s surrounding community a priority. Applause’s volunteer and fundraising efforts have been recognized by the United Way with awards including the Live United Award and the Good Neighbor Award.
Prior to joining Applause, Bradley held roles in recruiting and talent acquisition at Monster and Enterprise Search.
Tom Bonos is the Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Operations Officer at Applause. Tom drives the vision and execution of the global sales strategy and leads the company’s revenue generation and customer operations teams. Under his leadership, Applause has expanded its global footprint and achieved exponential growth, while ensuring our customers realize the value of Applause at each stage of their lifecycle.
Tom came to Applause with 15+ years of sales leadership. Most recently, he served as the executive vice president of sales for ServiceSource. Prior to ServiceSource, Tom was a group vice president at Oracle. Tom has also held leadership roles at SAP America and Benchmarking Partners/Surgency.
Tom graduated from Lehigh University with a degree in economics and geological sciences. Tom lives in Florida with his wife and children.
Luke is the Chief Growth Officer at Applause. He owns the go-to-market strategy for the company, including its marketing and sales operations functions.
With a focused eye on accelerating growth, Luke brings 20+ years of operating experience to Applause from national leadership positions at Oracle and EMC. During his tenure with Oracle, he led sales, business development and customer success initiatives across multiple growth priorities including solution development, strategic customer acquisition and engagement, and customer retention programs. Earlier in his career, Luke held significant roles at EMC serving in various leadership positions across sales and business development.
Luke holds an MBA and a BS from Babson College. He also earned an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Suzanne is the General Counsel and Vice President at Applause, responsible for the worldwide legal function for Applause and its subsidiaries. Suzanne oversees corporate governance and leads diversity; equity and inclusion; environment; social and governance initiatives.
Suzanne is a trusted advisor with 20+ years of highly diverse expertise in commercial law, compliance, data privacy, litigation, civil rights, IPO and more. She leads processes to minimize risk and grow customer acquisition and retention.
Suzanne has served on nonprofit boards: the Anti-Defamation League of New England; the Tyler Foundation in affiliation with Children’s Hospital; New England Corporate Counsel Association; and The Global Good Fund, mentoring young entrepreneurs.
Suzanne holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College and JD from Boston University School of Law.
Christopher Jolie is the Chief Financial Officer at Applause, managing the corporate areas of Finance & Accounting, IT and Business Applications & Systems. Chris is focused on delivering business oversight, strategic financial planning and process improvement across Applause.
Prior to joining Applause, Chris worked at NTT DATA Services, a top five global IT service provider. During his 17+ year tenure at NTT DATA, Chris held several high-profile roles including head of corporate financial planning & analysis, CFO of the Healthcare & Life-Science divisions and, most recently, CFO of the Manufacturing division. While at NTT Data Services, Chris played an active role in the NTT DATA acquisition of Keane, Inc., multiple M&A activities and financial oversight of $500M+ divisions. Prior to NTT DATA Services, Chris spent three years with Deutche Bank in the firm’s international equities group.
Chris received his Bachelor’s degree from Gordon College in 2000.
Heather Levy Sigel is the SVP of Corporate Strategy & Development. She acts as a chief of staff to the CEO and has responsibility for corporate strategy, corporate development, and Applause's partnership & alliance channel.
Most recently, Heather worked at Deloitte Consulting. At Deloitte, she worked with Fortune 100 companies to develop and implement strategies to improve organizational performance and efficiency.
She graduated from Cornell University with a degree in industrial & labor relations and she received her MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College.
Rob Mason has more than 20 years of operational, management, and software development experience across various companies, languages, platforms and technologies. A meticulous builder and obsessive tester, Rob’s teams produce innovative, robust software.
Prior to Applause, Rob was founder and executive vice president of engineering at Nasuni, where he took the company from initial product concept to more than 10 petabytes of managed storage consisting of billions of files in a global file system. Prior to Nasuni, Rob oversaw all development and quality assurance as the VP of engineering at Archivas.
Rob holds over 30 patents including several in the area of test automation. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA degree with honors from Rutgers University. Rob lives on a horse farm in Massachusetts with his wife.
As Senior Vice President of Customer Operations, Leanne implements strategies that drive customer success, retention and operational excellence for North America. She also oversees our strategic practices and global community of testers.
Leanne brings over 25 years of experience to Applause from leadership positions at NTT Data and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). At NTT Data, Leanne executed complex, global initiatives spanning business transformation, acquisition and integration efforts, global financial system and business intelligence implementations, as well as operational optimization. She also improved business processes and systems that drove more effective resource utilization, business controls and cost management metrics across five key delivery centers. Earlier in her career, Leanne was focused on sales and business development, client service delivery and business process and controls consulting at PWC.
Leanne received her bachelor's degree from Tufts University.
As SVP and GM, Strategic Accounts, Chris enables the success of Applause’s strategic account business including strategy, sales and operations to ensure continued growth and customer success of Applause’s largest customers. Since joining Applause in 2015, Chris has held roles on multiple teams at Applause including software delivery, product strategy and customer success.
Chris has over 22 years of experience with high-growth companies as an operating executive, investor and board member. Prior to Applause, Chris was COO of venture-backed TrueLens, a SaaS data platform. Previous experience includes seven years as a general partner of an early-stage technology VC fund, and operating roles at enterprise software company BEA Systems and Stax, a global strategy consulting firm.
Chris holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Queensland, Australia.
As SVP of Product and General Manager at Applause EU, Jan leads our product organization and sets the strategic roadmap. Partnering with Engineering, his organization ensures we build solutions that address ongoing key customer business challenges. In addition, Jan leads European operations. As such, he ensures that Applause Europe meets its revenue and customer acquisition goals while maintaining the highest levels of quality and customer satisfaction.
Before joining Applause, Jan was CEO and co-founder of Testhub, which was acquired by Applause in May 2014. Jan has long supported companies from different sectors in implementing and scaling innovative software testing solutions for years before joining Applause.
Jan holds a Master of Science degree from London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Science degree from University of Mannheim, Germany.
As SVP EMEA of Customer Operations, Julia oversees Solution Delivery, Testing Services, and Community Management in the EMEA region. In this role, she drives expansion, retention, operational excellence and continuous improvement in close alignment with Sales and Product. She also leads the European part of the global accessibility practice and helps clients create inclusive and legally compliant digital experiences for their end customers.
Julia has 15 years of experience leading large scale organizational transformations as a consultant at Kearney and project portfolio manager at Kion Group. She developed and led programs to drive operational excellence based on lean methods and enablement across all hierarchies, mainly for German 500 companies in the utilities, transportation and manufacturing sector. Earlier in her career, Julia worked as a public sector consultant focused on regional economic growth and industrial policy.
Julia holds a Master's Degree in Economics and Political Sciences from Freie Universität Berlin and has been a visiting student at Princeton University and Harvard University. She is a Certified Program Consultant for SAFe (Scaled Agile) and a Systemic Coach.
Meet Our Board of Directors
Think you have what it takes to join us?
Do you have passion, drive and the audacity to think that digital experiences can always be better? We’re looking for like-minded people who don’t stop at “good enough.”