Shopify Power Players: Meet the 16 leaders driving its growth as it looks to build the future of com

• Shopify focuses on predicting the future of commerce. 
• It has launched a number of new products to make sure merchants are ready for the next phase.
• Insider profiled the 16 people who are most pivotal to Shopify's future growth. 

Shopify has big plans for the future. 

After seeing huge gains during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian e-commerce company has set its sights on predicting what the next phase of commerce will look like and building the technology its merchants can use to be ready for it. 

In 2020, Shopify executives initially expected e-commerce to "permanently leap ahead by five or even ten years," but predictions for the sector have since come back down to earth. And Shopify has also adjusted its strategy to blend e-commerce and in-person retail and help merchants to meet their customers where they are. 

In the past year, Shopify has zeroed in on a strategy for its growing logistics service and overhauled many of its talent systems. It also further explored the use of new technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality in commerce. It launched its first foray into advertising and built new tools to enable influencer marketing.

Insider asked Shopify about the people behind its biggest initiatives. From leading new product launches to bringing entrepreneurs from around the world into the Shopify ecosystem, here are the 16 power players driving the company's next phase of growth. 

Aaron Brown, CEO of Shopify Logistics

Brown has been the CEO of Shopify Logistics since May 2022. He oversees the daily operations of the Shopify Fulfillment Network and the acquisitions of Deliverr and 6 River Systems. Before that, he held other leadership roles on the company's Shopify Fulfillment Network, ecosystem, global partnerships, and international teams. 

Brown said his job is about making sure that merchants of all sizes have access to reliable logistics systems for shipping, packing, and more. He also manages Shopify's partnerships with companies like Flexport and Loop Returns. 

"In today's world, merchants need to guarantee reliable, fast delivery for their customers across all channels without the complexity and massive spend of doing it on their own," Brown said. 

Before Shopify, Brown spent four years leading Alexa Voice Services and digital marketplaces at Amazon. He also spent more than a decade in leadership roles at Research in Motion, now known as BlackBerry. 

Andrea Mangini, vice president of user experience

Mangini joined Shopify in August 2022 to oversee design work across the company's merchant services and growth organizations. She also leads user experience and creative teams across Shopify. 

"User experience is a key reason that our merchants choose and stay with our platform," she said. "Our UX and creative teams create elegant and intuitive products and experiences that help merchants of every size start, run, grow and scale their businesses. We sweat every detail and are constantly raising the bar on experience excellence."

Before Shopify, Mangini worked as a director of product design at Netflix for more than four years. She also worked in design and UX leadership at companies like Autodesk and Adobe. 

Arpan Podduturi, vice president of product for retail

Podduturi leads teams working on products to help Shopify merchants sell in person. That includes point-of-sale products like Shopify's new mobile offering, POS Go, a handheld checkout device that launched last fall.

Shopify is best known for its online store technology, but Podduturi's team is responsible for the products that facilitate commerce in the physical world. 

"Shopify offers so much more than online stores," Podduturi said. "Our products give Main Street retailers the capabilities usually reserved for the world's largest companies: We bridge the online and offline experience to save merchants time, connect customer experiences, and make local shopping feel special and amazing. Ultimately, our work drives more dollars into local communities, and that's really important to us."

Before joining Shopify about five years ago, Podduturi ran his own Shopify store, a consumer packaged-goods company called The Wildist. He also held product leadership roles at Etsy. 

Cynthia Savard Saucier, vice president of user experience

Savard Saucier leads user experience for Shopify's Core platform, which handles all the products and tools that merchants get when they start using Shopify. 

UX is always involved in major decisions at Shopify, Savard Saucier said. 

"What's most critical for my role is ensuring all of the pieces across the Core product come together in an elegant experience for the user," she said. "My ultimate goal is to make sure no one using our tools gets frustrated, which requires a deep understanding of our merchants' needs and their buyers' needs to deliver the most value."

Savard Saucier has worked for Shopify for eight years, making her way up the ranks from designer to vice president. Before Shopify, she worked at a web agency called TP1. She has a background in industrial design. 

Daniel Beauchamp, principal engineer

Beauchamp leads the development of augmented- and virtual-reality tools at Shopify.

Shopify's AR and VR teams have created immersive experiences including tools that allow shoppers to visualize and interact with products in virtual reality before they buy them. 

Beauchamp said his job is to make sure that Shopify merchants can remain "on the cutting edge" when it comes to commerce. 

"Our aims are to see into the future and build for that future of commerce," he said. "By developing these tools, we help our merchants navigate the ever-changing landscape of commerce to unlock new opportunities."

Beauchamp has worked at Shopify for more than 12 years, joining the company after graduating from the University of Ottawa. 

Daniel Debow, vice president of product of demand

Debow leads Shopify's demand team, which helps merchants find new customers. Its products include Shopify's social-media integrations, its ad-targeting tool Shopify Audiences, and its influencer-management tool Shopify Collabs. 

It's grown increasingly more difficult and expensive for online sellers to reach new customers in recent years. The demand organization at Shopify wants to help merchants succeed despite the difficult environment. 

"My job at Shopify is to think about how we use our unique position to unlock new opportunities for merchants to find new customers," Debow said. "Whether it's social commerce, the creator economy, crypto, or new advertising models, we build the products that help merchants generate demand."

Debow calls himself "an entrepreneur with a day job." He joined Shopify when it acquired the video-messaging app Helpful.com, which he cofounded. He also cofounded the social-performance-management app Rypple, which Salesforce acquired. 

Desiree Motamedi, vice president and global head of product marketing

Motamedi has led product marketing for Shopify's Core platform since she joined the company in September 2021. She also leads the team behind Shopify Editions, the company's new biannual online publication highlighting its latest products and innovations. 

The team has released two Shopify Editions so far — one in the summer and one in the winter last year. Each highlighted more than 100 new products and updates that had been launched in the previous six months. She described the most recent one as a "love letter to the web" and said it brought in more than 1 million unique sessions. 

"This exciting work has helped us disrupt product marketing at Shopify and for the industry at large," Motamedi said. 

Before joining Shopify, Motamedi held product marketing leadership roles at Meta, Google, and Adobe. 

Ella Hilal, vice president of data science

Hilal oversees data operations across Shopify. Her teams include more than 300 data scientists, data engineers, researchers, and market strategists. 

Hilal has worked at Shopify for five years and has led data-science teams working across the organization. She's also helped shape Shopify's experimentation and machine-learning technology.

Before Shopify, Hilal held leadership roles at IMS and was an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, and its Centre for Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. 

Erin Pelton, vice president of communications and public affairs

Pelton joined Shopify in August last year and oversees all external communications, internal communications, and public affairs for the company. 

She said that Shopify is known as an entrepreneurship company and that applies to her teams, too. 

"There is so much runway for us to innovate right now, so even in communications we're applying new tools and tactics to our crafts," Pelton said. "Whether it's using AI, going deep on new media, like Substacks and podcasts, or leveraging data to inform policymakers and influencers, my focus is on being as entrepreneurial as our merchants."

Pelton previously worked at the White House, where she was a special assistant to President Joe Biden and the chief of staff at the Domestic Policy Council. 

Farhan Thawar, vice president of engineering

Thawar leads engineering teams working on all facets of Shopify's platform, from storefronts to checkout.

His teams also pressure test Shopify's systems to make sure they're ready for days when more traffic might be coming to merchants' sites, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or when a large merchant hosts a flash sale. 

"We are never afraid of arming our merchants with the latest technology and tools so they can focus on their customers and their community," Thawar said. "As a leader, my role is to enable the amazing crafters at Shopify to do the best work of their careers."

Thawar cofounded Helpful.com with Daniel Debow, the vice president of demand at Shopify, and they joined Shopify when it acquired Helpful.com in 2019. Thawar has also held leadership roles at Pivotal Labs, Achievers, and Microsoft. 

Jess Hertz, general counsel

Hertz has overseen Shopify's global legal, communications, and public affairs teams as general counsel since joining the company 2021. She helps the company remain compliant with local laws and regulations worldwide. 

Before Shopify, Hertz served as a deputy assistant to the president and a staff secretary to President Biden. She also worked as the general counsel to the Biden-Harris transition team.

Michael Merola, vice president of employee experience

Merola joined Shopify in April 2021 after seven years at Airbnb. 

Merola's team designs employee experiences, which has been especially important since Shopify has been fully remote since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020, it created a new policy called "Digital by Design," meaning that work and all employee events now take place online. 

Merola has led the launch of employee programs like Bursts, which are in-person team get-togethers, and Destination 90, which allows employees to work outside their home country for up to 90 days a year.  

"Leading in the employee experience space is incredibly rewarding and daunting. You need to constantly triangulate between the company's mission, the diverse needs of a global workforce, and the real-world limitation of resources and time," Merola said. 

Shaun Broughton, managing director for APAC and Japan

Broughton runs teams working on merchant growth and development across eight countries in the Asia Pacific region.

He said commerce has been growing quickly in Asia and that his teams want to further enable that through Shopify.  

"Shopify's at the forefront of helping local merchants unlock global commerce online, offline, and on social," he said. "Every day, we are launching new solutions across Asia for brands to expand cross-border, access business funding, and build custom shopping experiences to help entrepreneurs accelerate growth."

Before Shopify, Broughton worked in leadership roles at Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Lego. 

Shruti Patel, head of merchant services partnerships and monetization

Patel's team is responsible for creating "the next wave" of Shopify's financial and commerce tools. She works with partners in tech, fintech, cross-border, and banking services. 

"By giving merchants easy access to commerce tools on the same platform where they run their businesses, it opens huge opportunities for our merchants who wear several hats, as in doing multiple jobs from being a marketer, accountant, and customer-service representative all in a day's work," Patel said. "Commerce is changing and we're changing with it by redefining what people can expect from their commerce platforms."

Before joining Shopify in 2021, Patel oversaw digital-payments products and partnerships at JPMorgan Chase. She also spent over a decade working in strategy, business development, and product management at American Express. 

Stacy Kauk, head of sustainability

Kauk has led Shopify's sustainability efforts since joining the company in January 2020. 

"Shopify is empowering sustainable commerce and is one of the largest corporate purchasers of long-term carbon removal," she said. "My role is to ensure that the millions of businesses using Shopify's platform, shoppers around the globe, and climate entrepreneurs are working together in the fight against climate change."

As part of that work, Kauk leads Shopify's Sustainability Fund, which includes contributions of more than $33 million from 28 companies working to accelerate carbon-removal solutions. She led the launch of Shopify's Planet app, which helps merchants offer carbon-neutral shipping. She also helped build Frontier, Shopify's $925 million carbon-removal partnership with Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, and McKinsey Sustainability. 

Before Shopify, Kauk led the Ozone Layer Protection Program at Environment and Climate Change Canada. 

Tia Silas, chief human resources officer

Silas has overseen Shopify's talent, employee experience, and diversity and belonging teams since joining the company in April 2022. 

She has spearheaded multiple new programs in her year at the company. Silas helped launch Flex Comp, a new compensation system that allows employees to choose the makeup of cash, RSUs, and options in their pay packages. Most recently, Silas launched a new system that aims to reward individual contributors similarly to those in management positions. 

"Another area I've been passionate about is reshaping Shopify's hiring approach," Silas said. 

That includes a new program Shopify calls "VIP door," essentially a careers page that encourages "the world's most exceptional individuals" to apply for a job at the company, even if they don't think their skills match an open role. 

Prior to joining Shopify, Silas served as the executive vice president of human resources at Wells Fargo. She's also held leadership positions at IBM and Pitney Bowes. 

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