Avalara appoints new CMO & CIO to drive global expansion

Avalara has announced the appointments of Adrianna Burrows as Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, and Shahan Parshad as Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer.

Executive appointments

Burrows will lead Avalara's global marketing strategy in her new position as CMO, focusing on elevating brand presence, expanding market awareness, and driving demand for the company's tax compliance solutions. She joins Avalara's executive leadership team and will report directly to Ross Tennenbaum, President of Avalara.

Burrows has over twenty years of experience in marketing leadership within the technology sector. Prior to Avalara, she was the head of global marketing at Shopify where she contributed to establishing the company's position in the eCommerce marketplace. Her previous roles include serving as CMO at PayScale, Cornerstone OnDemand, and Stack Overflow. At Microsoft, Burrows held the role of General Manager for Windows Global Marketing, leading the worldwide launch of Windows 10.

In the role of CIO, Parshad will take responsibility for Avalara's worldwide IT operations, business systems, and data infrastructure. Reporting to Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Danny Fields, Parshad will work alongside engineering and executive teams to strengthen Avalara's technical systems, emphasising operational security and innovation.

Parshad has held senior roles specialising in scaling enterprise technology in rapidly growing organisations. Most recently, he served as CIO at Airtable, where he managed the modernisation of internal platforms in support of business and product growth. He also spent more than four years at Confluent, during which time he developed and led the Business Technology and Data division across the US, UK, and India, playing a role in the company's 10-fold growth and its public offering in 2021.

Strategic leadership

"Adrianna and Shahan's leadership will be key as Avalara advances our marketing and technology strategy to fuel growth and innovation," said Ross Tennenbaum, President of Avalara. "Their leadership will help shape Avalara's future, where AI-powered innovation and global growth define the next chapter of tax compliance."

Avalara states that these executive appointments are in line with the company's strategy to accelerate global expansion and respond to increased demand for its artificial intelligence-based tax and compliance platform.

The company provides tax compliance automation software for over 43,000 business and government clients in more than 75 countries. Its platform integrates with over 1,400 partner systems across eCommerce, enterprise resource planning, and billing tools, delivering support for tax calculation, document management, tax return filing, and tax content access.