Elisa Steele promoted to president of Jive, Tony Zingale retires
Tony Zingale has stepped down from the role of CEO at Jive, after overseeing the company’s IPO in 2011, and subsequent ales and stock decline. He is — strangely — continuing on as executive chairman.
Elisa Steele, who joined the company in January 2014 from Microsoft as chief marketing officer — and was subsequently named as executive vice president of marketing and products — will assume the role of president on November 10.
The training wheels aren’t off the bike for Steele, however, since along with Zingale as executive chairman, she is not CEO, but appointed to the ‘office of the CEO’ along with Bill Lanfri, a board member who has served since 2008. And the company’s announcement makes Steele’s appointment as president seem temporary, as the company is searching for a new CEO.
It’s a very muddled situation. If Zingale wants to retire, why continue on as executive chairman? If Stelle has the stuff to become president, why not make her CEO?
I predicted that Steele would take over at Jive, since the first announcement of her involvement at the company (see Elisa Steele assumes new role as Jive’s EVP of Strategy and CMO) and later, when Jive posted bad numbers (see Jive posts $146M in 2013 sales, with losses of $75M), based on premise that the board would want someone new to turn the company around.
The company’s announcement came on the heels of quarterly earnings results, which showed better sales — $42.2 million in their third quarter, up 25% on a year over year basis — but a loss of $12.1 million: still an improvement over $18 million in the third quarter of 2013.
Steele’s email announcing the change has a quite different tone from the press release, and she does not mention the CEO search at all. She does discuss other personnel changes: Chris Morace, a long time leader of strategy will be leaving the company after 7 years, and Colleen Jansen — who seems to be chief marketing officer in all but name — will be taking on analyst relations, on top of her role leading product marketing, customer marketing, and field and market insights. I believe Jansen and Steele worked together at Microsoft.
My read is that Steele is in charge, and after a perfunctory ‘CEO search’ she’ll be given the CEO title, especially if she can turn the red ink to black.
