Leigh Anne Cotter Chief Operating Officer, Keelvar

Company

Keelvar is the leading AI-native strategic sourcing software, automating tenders, optimising supplier awards, and transforming procurement at scale. Headquartered in Cork, the business was founded in Europe’s largest AI research lab by a team of computer scientists and engineers specialising in AI, optimisation and game theory applied to strategic sourcing. Keelvar has since grown to manage more than $90bn in spend annually for major enterprises globally across the Retail, CPG, Automotive, Pharmaceutical and Transportation markets and has successfully raised $42m in funding from 83North, Mosaic Ventures, Elephant and Act Venture Capital in recent years.

Search Background

Having successfully worked with Keelvar previously on a CRO mandate, Alan Holland and the Board engaged with Erevena again to bring in an execution-oriented COO with a product and engineering as well as broader operational focus. This pivotal role will drive operational excellence, strategic alignment, and innovation across all customer-facing and R&D functions working closely with the broader C-Suite team to drive and execute the next phase of growth for the company.

Requirements

Keelvar were looking for a proven Operations executive with a demonstrable track record of driving product and engineering velocity, managing a globally distributed team while aligning with GTM and Customer Feedback.

Result

Erevena were able to introduce Leigh-Anne Cotter to Keelvar who has a wealth of scaled operational leadership experience with global experience, while being based in Cork and close to Keelvar’s HQ. Leigh‑anne is an engineer‑trained operator who has most recently acted as COO for Ireland at TrueLayer where she built operations and licensing post‑Brexit and, as VP Customer, she bridged product, engineering and commercial functions to scale ARR significantly and ran multiple cross‑functional teams. Prior to this, Leigh-Anne held senior roles at WhatsApp where she led multi‑market payments launches and earlier roles at Global Payments and Accenture delivered large‑scale platform programmes and solution architecture — combining hands‑on technical delivery, compliance/licensing operationalisation, and cross‑discipline leadership for product launches and scaling which proved a great match for Keelvar in this remit.