Leadership

As CEO, Craig Charlton leads all facets of the SugarCRM business, from setting our vision and strategic direction to making sure we’re executing in the best possible way on the ground every day. Craig has been building and running high-growth businesses for 25 years. Before joining SugarCRM he was CEO of Oildex – the financial automation software and services provider – where he drove growth and oversaw the company’s acquisition by Drillinginfo. Craig also served as CEO of Abila, the financial and CRM provider operating in the association, non-profit and government space. Abila, which was acquired by Community Brands, grew its revenues threefold and transformed its revenue base to a subscription-based (SaaS) model over a three-year period. Craig has also been senior vice president and general manager (Asia Pacific) for ERP provider Epicor Software Corporation, where he shaped the company’s regional strategy to deliver consistent revenue and profit growth.

As CFO, John Donaldson brings more than twenty years of financial management and investment banking experience to Sugar. Donaldson has direct financial management, strategy and company development experience for numerous growth stage enterprises. He brings exceptional financial leadership and project management skills to the company, as well as a wealth of significant expertise in working with middle-market businesses to Sugar. Donaldson most recently held the role of CFO at Togetherwork.

At Sugar, he is responsible for providing leadership, direction and management of the finance, accounting and human resources teams as well as providing strategic recommendations to the CEO and members of the executive management team. Prior to his role at Togetherwork, Donaldson was CFO of Community Investors, an association management software platform, and helped lead the firm through a sale to CIP Capital. He has also held CFO roles at ALPS Holdings and Northstar Exchange Corporation. Donaldson holds an MBA in Finance and Marketing from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA from Bucknell University.

As SugarCRM’s chief marketing officer, Clare Dorrian is responsible for overseeing the company’s overall integrated marketing strategy. She leads the customer marketing, revenue generation, product marketing and marketing operations teams.

Dorrian joins Sugar after more than five years as VP of Marketing at Verint Systems, where she led all facets of demand generation, brand and creative for the customer engagement portfolio. Prior to Verint, she held various international marketing roles in the CRM software market at KANA Software, Sword Group, Ciboodle and Graham Technology.

Clare is a results-oriented, creative and passionate marketing professional with a record of driving customer acquisition as well as brand and market awareness working for B2B software companies of various sizes. Highly motivated and known for her energy and commitment to teamwork, she prides herself on inspiring marketers to create real-world results that are good for business and good for customers.

While born and bred in the UK, Clare currently resides in San Francisco. She holds an MA with Honors from Glasgow University.

As Chief of Staff, Céline Felan is responsible for the strategy and operationalization of organization-wide initiatives, including the evaluation and integration of newly acquired businesses and the design of standard operating methodologies.

With more than 15 years of experience, Céline has held positions in the technology space driving the diligence and integration of numerous acquisitions as well as overseeing the governance of strategic programs in both Europe and the US. Through the years Céline has had the pleasure to launch new product offerings and services, optimize bookings-to-cash processes, rebuild Client Delivery Models and teams, conceive Centers of Operational Excellence and drive many other cross-departmental objectives.

Céline’s approach to meeting business objectives is to understand and balance all perspectives and needs to create a unified and lasting approach around a common goal. Céline believes in a culture of accountability, ownership and continuous improvement to bring out the best in a team.

Céline has as Bachelor in Business Economics and MBA from the University of Amsterdam and Master’s degree in Advanced Project Management from Villanova University.

As SugarCRM’s general counsel, Vincent Lowder is responsible for overseeing the company’s overall legal operations and brings extensive experience in the computer software, SaaS and consulting services industry.

Vincent joins Sugar after more than 20 years with Epicor Software Corporation, holding positions as Chief Legal Officer and Treasurer, where he helped the company grow from $100 million to nearly $1B in annual revenues.

After obtaining a B.S. in Political Science from UCLA, Vincent studied at Loyola Law School before practicing with Jones Day and Paul Hastings. Vincent is also a Certified Public Accountant (inactive).

Clint helped found SugarCRM in 2004 with the goal of enabling companies around the world to turn their customers into loyal fans. Today, he leads strategy and acquisitions for the company. Clint was one of the original architects and developers of the Sugar application and has focused on building out the product, company, partners and community in a variety of executive roles.

Prior to co-founding SugarCRM, Clint held senior roles in the development, professional services and product management organizations at Epiphany, Octane Software and Hewlett Packard. He has 20 years of experience in the enterprise software industry and over 15 years designing and building award-winning CRM software solutions. Clint holds a BS in computer science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and is the co-author of multiple CRM software patents. Clint enjoys traveling and speaking at conferences on a variety of customer experience and entrepreneurship topics, and has visited SugarCRM customers and partners in over 25 countries.

As SugarCRM’s chief customer officer, Chris Pennington is responsible for the Sugar customer journey. He leads the global Professional Services and Support business units to drive world-class outcomes leading to best-in-class customer satisfaction, retention, and referenceability.

Pennington joins Sugar after more than twelve years at Professional Advantage PTY Ltd., a global Independent Software Vendor and Reseller of IT business systems to medium-large scale organizations. While at Professional Advantage, he oversaw revenues of more than $50M as vice president of the US and general manager of Australia. He brings a wealth of experience across a broad portfolio of SaaS and on-premise products and services, to include CRM and managed services.

Prior to Professional Advantage, Pennington held executive senior level roles at Epicor Australia, Intelligent Building Solutions, Cedar Enterprise Solutions and Interleaf. He holds an honorary BSc degree from De Montfort University in the U.K. and PMP certification from the Sydney chapter of the Project Management Institute.

Zac leads SugarCRM’s globally distributed product management, user experience, and engineering organizations. He is responsible for defining the product vision and strategy of the Sugar platform and for the execution of that strategy. He has over 25 years of experience in technology companies having held a variety of leadership roles.

Previously, Zac served as Senior Vice President of Product, where he drove the strategic vision for the Sugar platform. Before SugarCRM, Zac held management positions at Geeknet, Mitel, VA Linux Systems and Corel Computer Corp.

As Chief Human Resources Officer, Shana Sweeney brings more than 20 years of experience across a broad array of industries and company sizes. She is responsible for providing an exceptional employee experience by ensuring that Sugar’s employees come first.

In 2015, Shana joined SugarCRM from Nuna Inc., where as co-founder she was instrumental in helping to build the company from the ground up.  Prior to Nuna, she held progressively more complex roles at companies such as Xactly, Google, Severn Trent Services, and Aetna. Shana holds an MS in Human Resource Management from Temple University’s Fox School of Business, and a BS in International Politics from UC Santa Cruz.

As SVP and GM, EMEA, James is a veteran of the technology arena, with over 23 years of ERP, CRM and IT Service Management experience. At Sugar, he is responsible for overseeing all aspects of sales, marketing, and service for the region. His most recent role was at Saba, a leading talent management company, where he was a spearheading the Go-To-Market functions across the EMEA region. While there, he was also a key member of the leadership team integrating two major acquisitions, with the business seeing growth from 80 to 500+ employees.

Throughout his career, James has been the executive sponsor for deployments of Salesforce.com and has witnessed firsthand the frustration in his own teams due to complexity and a lack of usability. As a result, he is passionate about evangelizing Sugar’s next-generation CX capabilities that create customers for life.

As GM, Americas, Jason Rushforth brings more than 20 years of product and SaaS experience to Sugar—all of it in CRM and CX. He is a respected technology industry veteran; his most recent role as VP and GM for Infor saw him implementing the vision and execution of their Customer Experience suite of solutions.

Prior to Infor, Jason was VP of Industry Solutions and Enterprise Sales at Oracle, where he joined via the acquisition of Eloqua and was responsible for top line revenue growth of the $750B Marketing Cloud. He served Eloqua as the GM of Industry Solutions and drove the go to market strategy for specific applications, resulting in a 1B+ sale to Oracle. Jason was also President of Front Office Solutions at CDC Software (now Aptean), and on the board of directors for Marketbright (now Act-On).

Armed with years of knowledge in building out both MarTech and CRM stacks, Jason is a subject matter expert in the discipline of customer service, with thousands of speaking engagements under his belt. He is passionate about education and thought leadership, and energized to build relationships with customers, analysts and prospects.

As the newest member of the Sugar executive team, Jason sees great things in the company’s future, particularly with the Sugar Discover and Market products, which allow for other innovative capabilities to be easily implemented to create customers for life.

As SugarCRM’s General Manager of Platform, Christian Wettre is responsible for gotomarket efforts for SugarCRM’s product line. He collaborates with the wider SugarCRM organization to ensure that the Sugar Platform is highly valued by our customers and the market. Christian cares deeply about ensuring that SugarCRM delivers measurable results for our customers.

Prior to joining SugarCRM in 2020, Christian was President of W-Systems Corp. where he led a team of over 100 technology professionals and oversaw numerous M&A integrations. He has gained over two decades of experience in designing and deploying innovative solutions for marketing, sales, and service organizations.

Christian originates from Norway and is based in New Jersey, USA. He holds a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.