Mike Boese (left) and Clara Shih (Photo: Radu Ranga)
Hearsay Systems says its longtime leader, Clara Shih, has passed the CEO baton to Mike Boese, who was named chief operating officer in the first quarter.
Shih — who started the tech firm focused on the use of compliant messaging by financial services firms on Sept. 1, 2009, with Steve Garrity — will stay on the board of directors and serve as executive chairperson.
"Just like advisors spend a lot of time thinking about succession planning and how they want to go about it, I've been thinking about that same journey myself over the past year, and this meant finding the right leader to take Hearsay into its next chapter," Shih said in an interview on Wednesday.
"In the past six months, the stars have really aligned with our product utilization surging because of the pandemic," she added. "Within a few months of Mike starting at Hearsay, he's aligned our teams, I've witnessed how he leads in the midst of a global health crisis, … and that's given me the clarity and confidence to know that he's the right person for the job."
Boese has some 25 years of leadership experience at software firms like SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle. Most recently, he was co-founder and CEO of Plantt and CEO of Certent, a fintech software-as-a-service company.
