Berkshire Grey, a robotics and AI company developing retail, ecommerce, and logistics fulfillment automation for global companies, today announced the appointment of Christine Washburn as Chief Marketing Officer. Washburn joins the executive team, and will report directly to Steve Johnson, the President and COO.
As CMO, Washburn will drive Berkshire Grey’s marketing strategy, lead generation, brand management, product marketing, and overall marketing planning and execution, guiding the team to meet the demands of the business at present and in the future. Washburn is a results-driven marketing executive who has helped organizations ranging from pre-revenue to multi-billion-dollar enterprises scale with successful exits, including an IPO and equity sales.
Washburn joins Berkshire Grey from Rocket Software, a modernization software company, where she served as CMO and was a member of the executive team that positioned Rocket for acquisition by Bain Capital for $2B. At Rocket, Washburn built out the marketing team, helped brand the company, and operationalized the demand generation function, linking sales and marketing insights together to achieve organic growth. While running marketing at Dassault Systemes SolidWorks, a 3D CAD systems company, Washburn leveraged digital and social strategies to deliver quarterly performance improvements and help the company hit aggressive financial goals. Washburn started her career in politics, serving as the press secretary for the U.S. House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance in Washington, DC. She attended Indiana University and holds a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University.
Johnson said, “We’ve experienced phenomenal growth as we’ve emerged from stealth and our marketing needs to scale to meet the enormous opportunity we have ahead of us. Christine is the right person to lead those efforts as we head into 2020 and beyond. Her data-driven approach and proven go-to-market experience are highly relevant in areas where we already see significant customer demand such as retail, parcel, ecommerce, and grocery and convenience.”
Berkshire Grey customers are using intelligent robotic solutions to automate fulfillment tasks never before performed by machines and are doing so at scale. Berkshire Grey solutions enable the robotic picking, packing, and sorting of individual items, inner packs, cases, and parcels for commerce, retail replenishment, and parcel logistics. By inventing and integrating multiple technologies in artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, sensing, gripping, and robotics, Berkshire Grey equips customers to efficiently process the broadest assortment of products, packages, and parcels. All while continuously improving speed and quality through autonomous learning.
