Rory Stern Head of Northern Europe, Asana

Company

Asana is a leading work management platform that helps teams orchestrate work, from daily tasks to cross-functional initiatives. With Asana, teams have a living system of clarity where teams can see, discuss and execute their goals – no matter where, when or how they’re working.

Asana is using a self-serve and direct sales dual-motion model to grow its global footprint. Around the world, more than 119,000 paying customers and millions of teams rely on Asana to manage their work, including many prominent UK-based companies (like Sky, Dr. Martens and Made.com), as well as large global enterprises (like Zoom, Amazon and Accenture).

Over the past 12 months, Asana was recognized by Fast Company as a Most Innovative Company, Best Workplace for Innovators and Brand That Matters. Last year, Inc. recognized Asana as a Best Workplace and a Best-Led Company, while Fortune honoured Asana as a Best Workplace for Women, Millennials and Parents.

The work management market that Asana addresses is large and rapidly growing. According to IDC, the adoption of collaborative technologies accelerated by almost five years in early 2020. With the worldwide collaborative applications market growing at a five-year CAGR of 18%, there is a need to securely and effectively connect every worker to each other and their work.

Search Background

Asana has been expanding globally at a phenomenal rate, with outstanding traction in the EMEA region. In September 2020, Erevena Search placed Simon O’Kane as GM EMEA with the remit to create a playbook to double down on the immense opportunity in Europe. As part of the EMEA strategy, Simon identified the need to hire a Head of Northern Europe.

Asana engaged Erevena Growth to find an experienced sales leader with a track record of hypergrowth in Northern Europe. Reporting to Simon, this role is a key member of the sales leadership team and responsible for all go-to-market activities for the company in the region. Taking a proactive approach to attracting, developing and empowering talent within the team, this hire will have the experience and capability to drive forward a modern GTM with customers in the Enterprise segment.

Requirements

The Head of Northern Europe will be experienced leading and growing enterprise business in a fast-growing B2B SaaS environment. They will have led the development of a multi-year strategy to win the Northern Europe market through commercial leadership. With a demonstrable track record of success, they will be intellectually curious, open-minded and intrinsically motivated by the greatest challenges. In addition, they will be highly collaborative and comfortable operating within a matrixed organisation. Culturally, the Head of Northern Europe will be a low ego leader who can influence through smart, thoughtful, empathetic communication and execution.

Result

Erevena identified and introduced Rory Stern to Asana as Head of Northern Europe. He has vast experience of building B2B enterprise sales teams across the US and EMEA for Yext and CybelAngel. At Yext, Rory scaled their EMEA business from 3 to 200 people, implementing a GTM plan to drive rapid growth. He was motivated to join another category-defining, rapid growth B2B SaaS business and the alignment was clear for both Rory and Asana throughout the process.